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PROLOGUE
We should start back,” Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. “The
wildlings are dead.”
“Do the dead frighten you?” Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile.
Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the
lordlings come and go. “Dead is dead,” he said. “We have no business with the dead.”
“Are they dead?” Royce asked softly. “What proof have we?”
“Will saw them,” Gared said. “If he says they are dead, that’s proof enough for me.”
Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had
been later rather than sooner. “My mother told me that dead men sing no songs,” he put
in.
“My wet nurse said the same thing, Will,” Royce replied. “Never believe anything you
hear at a woman’s tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead.” His voice
echoed, too loud in the twilit forest.
“We have a long ride before us,” Gared pointed out. “Eight days, maybe nine. And night
is falling.”
Ser Waymar Royce glanced at the sky with disinterest. “It does that every day about this
time. Are you unmanned by the dark, Gared?”
Will could see the tightness around Gared’s mouth, the barely suppressed anger in his
eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Gared had spent forty years in the Night’s
Watch, man and boy, and he was not accustomed to being made light of. Yet it was more
than that. Under the wounded pride, Will could sense something else in the older man.
You could taste it; a nervous tension that came perilous close to fear.
Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he had been
sent beyond, all the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels had turned to
water. He had laughed about it afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by
�now, and the endless dark wilderness that the southron called the haunted forest had no
more terrors for him.
Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that
made his hackles rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and northwest and then
north again, farther and farther from the Wall, hard on the track of a band of wildling
raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that had come before it. Today was the
worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the trees rustle like
living things. All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something
cold and implacable that loved him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so
much as to ride hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share
with your commander.
Especially not a commander like this one.
Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He
was a handsome youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife.
Mounted on his huge black destrier, the knight towered above Will and Gared on their
smaller garrons. He wore black leather boots, black woolen pants, black moleskin gloves,
and a fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail over layers of black wool and boiled
leather. Ser Waymar had been a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch for less than half a
year, but no one could say he had not prepared for his vocation. At least insofar as his
wardrobe was concerned.
His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin. “Bet he killed
them all himself, he did,” Gared told the barracks over wine, “twisted their little heads
off, our mighty warrior.” They had all shared the laugh.
It is hard to take orders from a man you laughed at in your cups, Will reflected as he sat
shivering atop his garron. Gared must have felt the same.
“Mormont said as we should track them, and we did,” Gared said. “They’re dead. They
shan’t trouble us no more. There’s hard riding before us. I don’t like this weather. If it
snows, we could be a fortnight getting back, and snow’s the best we can hope for. Ever
seen an ice storm, my lord?”
The lordling seemed not to hear him. He studied the deepening twilight in that halfbored, half-distracted way he had. Will had ridden with the knight long enough to
understand that it was best not to interrupt him when he looked like that. “Tell me again
what you saw, Will. All the details. Leave nothing out.”
Will had been a hunter before he joined the Night’s Watch. Well, a poacher in truth.
�Mallister freeriders had caught him red-handed in the Mallisters’ own woods, skinning
one of the Mallisters’ own bucks, and it had been a choice of putting on the black or
losing a hand. No one could move through the woods as silent as Will, and it had not
taken the black brothers long to discover his talent.
“The camp is two miles farther on, over that ridge, hard beside a stream,” Will said. “I
got close as I dared. There’s eight of them, men and women both. No children I could
see. They put up a lean-to against the rock. The snow’s pretty well covered it now, but I
could still make it out. No fire burning, but the firepit was still plain as day. No one
moving. I watched a long time. No living man ever lay so still.”
“Did you see any blood?”
“Well, no,” Will admitted.
“Did you see any weapons?”
“Some swords, a few bows. One man had an axe. Heavy-looking, double-bladed, a cruel
piece of iron. It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand.”
“Did you make note of the position of the bodies?”
Will shrugged. “A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the ground.
Fallen, like.”
“Or sleeping,” Royce suggested.
“Fallen,” Will insisted. “There’s one woman up an ironwood, half-hid in the branches. A
far-eyes.” He smiled thinly. “I took care she never saw me. When I got closer, I saw that
she wasn’t moving neither.” Despite himself, he shivered.
“You have a chill?” Royce asked.
“Some,” Will muttered. “The wind, m’lord.”
The young knight turned back to his grizzled man-at-arms. Frostfallen leaves whispered
past them, and Royce’s destrier moved restlessly. “What do you think might have killed
these men, Gared?” Ser Waymar asked casually. He adjusted the drape of his long sable
cloak.
“It was the cold,” Gared said with iron certainty. “I saw men freeze last winter, and the
�one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and how
the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up
on you quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp
your feet and dream of mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns
like the cold. But only for a while. Then it gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and
after a while you don’t have the strength to fight it. It’s easier just to sit down or go to
sleep. They say you don’t feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and drowsy,
and everything starts to fade, and then it’s like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful,
like.”
“Such eloquence, Gared,” Ser Waymar observed. “I never suspected you had it in you.”
“I’ve had the cold in me too, lordling.” Gared pulled back his hood, giving Ser Waymar a
good long look at the stumps where his ears had been. “Two ears, three toes, and the
little finger off my left hand. I got off light. We found my brother frozen at his watch,
with a smile on his face.”
Ser Waymar shrugged. “You ought dress more warmly, Gared.”
Gared glared at the lordling, the scars around his ear holes flushed red with anger where
Maester Aemon had cut the ears away. “We’ll see how warm you can dress when the
winter comes.” He pulled up his hood and hunched over his garron, silent and sullen.
“If Gared said it was the cold . . . ” Will began.
“Have you drawn any watches this past week, Will?”
“Yes, m’lord.” There never was a week when he did not draw a dozen bloody watches.
What was the man driving at?
“And how did you find the Wall?”
“Weeping,” Will said, frowning. He saw it clear enough, now that the lordling had
pointed it out. “They couldn’t have froze. Not if the Wall was weeping. It wasn’t cold
enough.”
Royce nodded. “Bright lad. We’ve had a few light frosts this past week, and a quick flurry
of snow now and then, but surely no cold fierce enough to kill eight grown men. Men
clad in fur and leather, let me remind you, with shelter near at hand, and the means of
making fire.” The knight’s smile was cocksure. “Will, lead us there. I would see these
dead men for myself.”
�And then there was nothing to be done for it. The order had been given, and honor
bound them to obey.
Will went in front, his shaggy little garron picking the way carefully through the
undergrowth. A light snow had fallen the night before, and there were stones and roots
and hidden sinks lying just under its crust, waiting for the careless and the unwary. Ser
Waymar Royce came next, his great black destrier snorting impatiently. The warhorse
was the wrong mount for ranging, but try and tell that to the lordling. Gared brought up
the rear. The old man-at-arms muttered to himself as he rode.
Twilight deepened. The cloudless sky turned a deep purple, the color of an old bruise,
then faded to black. The stars began to come out. A half-moon rose. Will was grateful for
the light.
“We can make a better pace than this, surely,” Royce said when the moon was full risen.
“Not with this horse,” Will said. Fear had made him insolent. “Perhaps my lord would
care to take the lead?”
Ser Waymar Royce did not deign to reply.
Somewhere off in the wood a wolf howled.
Will pulled his garron over beneath an ancient gnarled ironwood and dismounted.
“Why are you stopping?” Ser Waymar asked.
“Best go the rest of the way on foot, m’lord. It’s just over that ridge.”
Royce paused a moment, staring off into the distance, his face reflective. A cold wind
whispered through the trees. His great sable cloak stirred behind like something halfalive.
“There’s something wrong here,” Gared muttered.
The young knight gave him a disdainful smile. “Is there?”
“Can’t you feel it?” Gared asked. “Listen to the darkness.”
Will could feel it. Four years in the Night’s Watch, and he had never been so afraid.
What was it?
�“Wind. Trees rustling. A wolf. Which sound is it that unmans you so, Gared?” When
Gared did not answer, Royce slid gracefully from his saddle. He tied the destrier securely
to a low-hanging limb, well away from the other horses, and drew his longsword from its
sheath. Jewels glittered in its hilt, and the moonlight ran down the shining steel. It was a
splendid weapon, castle-forged, and new-made from the look of it. Will doubted it had
ever been swung in anger.
“The trees press close here,” Will warned. “That sword will tangle you up, m’lord. Better
a knife.”
“If I need instruction, I will ask for it,” the young lord said. “Gared, stay here. Guard the
horses.”
Gared dismounted. “We need a fire. I’ll see to it.”
“How big a fool are you, old man? If there are enemies in this wood, a fire is the last
thing we want.”
“There’s some enemies a fire will keep away,” Gared said. “Bears and direwolves
and . . . and other things . . . ”
Ser Waymar’s mouth became a hard line. “No fire.”
Gared’s hood shadowed his face, but Will could see the hard glitter in his eyes as he
stared at the knight. For a moment he was afraid the older man would go for his sword.
It was a short, ugly thing, its grip discolored by sweat, its edge nicked from hard use, but
Will would not have given an iron bob for the lordling’s life if Gared pulled it from its
scabbard.
Finally Gared looked down. “No fire,” he muttered, low under his breath.
Royce took it for acquiescence and turned away. “Lead on,” he said to Will.
Will threaded their way through a thicket, then started up the slope to the low ridge
where he had found his vantage point under a sentinel tree. Under the thin crust of
snow, the ground was damp and muddy, slick footing, with rocks and hidden roots to
trip you up. Will made no sound as he climbed. Behind him, he heard the soft metallic
slither of the lordling’s ringmail, the rustle of leaves, and muttered curses as reaching
branches grabbed at his longsword and tugged on his splendid sable cloak.
The great sentinel was right there at the top of the ridge, where Will had known it would
�be, its lowest branches a bare foot off the ground. Will slid in underneath, flat on his
belly in the snow and the mud, and looked down on the empty clearing below.
His heart stopped in his chest. For a moment he dared not breathe. Moonlight shone
down on the clearing, the ashes of the firepit, the snow-covered lean-to, the great rock,
the little half-frozen stream. Everything was just as it had been a few hours ago.
They were gone. All the bodies were gone.
“Gods!” he heard behind him. A sword slashed at a branch as Ser Waymar Royce gained
the ridge. He stood there beside the sentinel, longsword in hand, his cloak billowing
behind him as the wind came up, outlined nobly against the stars for all to see.
“Get down!” Will whispered urgently. “Something’s wrong.”
Royce did not move. He looked down at the empty clearing and laughed. “Your dead
men seem to have moved camp, Will.”
Will’s voice abandoned him. He groped for words that did not come. It was not possible.
His eyes swept back and forth over the abandoned campsite, stopped on the axe. A huge
double-bladed battle-axe, still lying where he had seen it last, untouched. A valuable
weapon . . .
“On your feet, Will,” Ser Waymar commanded. “There’s no one here. I won’t have you
hiding under a bush.”
Reluctantly, Will obeyed.
Ser Waymar looked him over with open disapproval. “I am not going back to Castle
Black a failure on my first ranging. We will find these men.” He glanced around. “Up the
tree. Be quick about it. Look for a fire.”
Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It cut
right through him. He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green sentinel, and began to
climb. Soon his hands were sticky with sap, and he was lost among the needles. Fear
filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered a prayer to the nameless gods
of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its sheath. He put it between his teeth to keep
both hands free for climbing. The taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort.
Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, “Who goes there?” Will heard uncertainty
in the challenge. He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched.
�The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a distant hoot of
a snow owl.
The Others made no sound.
Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He
turned his head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone. Branches
stirred gently in the wind, scratching at one another with wooden fingers. Will opened
his mouth to call down a warning, and the words seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps
he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been a bird, a reflection on the snow, some trick of
the moonlight. What had he seen, after all?
“Will, where are you?” Ser Waymar called up. “Can you see anything?” He was turning in
a slow circle, suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt
them. There was nothing to see. “Answer me! Why is it so cold?”
It was cold. Shivering, Will clung more tightly to his perch. His face pressed hard
against the trunk of the sentinel. He could feel the sweet, sticky sap on his cheek.
A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and
gaunt and hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as
it moved; here it was white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere
dappled with the deep grey-green of the trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water
with every step it took.
Will heard the breath go out of Ser Waymar Royce in a long hiss. “Come no farther,” the
lordling warned. His voice cracked like a boy’s. He threw the long sable cloak back over
his shoulders, to free his arms for battle, and took his sword in both hands. The wind
had stopped. It was very cold.
The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had
ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with
moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when
seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played
around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor.
Ser Waymar met him bravely. “Dance with me then.” He lifted his sword high over his
head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in
that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of the Night’s Watch.
The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue
that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the
�moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he dared to hope.
They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of
them . . . four . . . five . . . Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them, but he
never saw them, never heard them. Will had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if
he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the silence.
The pale sword came shivering through the air.
Ser Waymar met it with steel. When the blades met, there was no ring of metal on metal;
only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal screaming in pain. Royce
checked a second blow, and a third, then fell back a step. Another flurry of blows, and he
fell back again.
Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient, faceless, silent,
the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood.
Yet they made no move to interfere.
Again and again the swords met, until Will wanted to cover his ears against the strange
anguished keening of their clash. Ser Waymar was panting from the effort now, his
breath steaming in the moonlight. His blade was white with frost; the Other’s danced
with pale blue light.
Then Royce’s parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the ringmail
beneath his arm. The young lord cried out in pain. Blood welled between the rings. It
steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire where they touched the snow.
Ser Waymar’s fingers brushed his side. His moleskin glove came away soaked with red.
The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the
cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking.
Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. “For Robert!” he shouted, and he came up snarling,
lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a flat
sidearm slash with all his weight behind it. The Other’s parry was almost lazy.
When the blades touched, the steel shattered.
A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a hundred
brittle pieces, the shards scattering like a rain of needles. Royce went to his knees,
shrieking, and covered his eyes. Blood welled between his fingers.
The watchers moved forward together, as if some signal had been given. Swords rose
�and fell, all in a deathly silence. It was cold butchery. The pale blades sliced through
ringmail as if it were silk. Will closed his eyes. Far beneath him, he heard their voices
and laughter sharp as icicles.
When he found the courage to look again, a long time had passed, and the ridge below
was empty.
He stayed in the tree, scarce daring to breathe, while the moon crept slowly across the
black sky. Finally, his muscles cramping and his fingers numb with cold, he climbed
down.
Royce’s body lay facedown in the snow, one arm outflung. The thick sable cloak had
been slashed in a dozen places. Lying dead like that, you saw how young he was. A boy.
He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like
a tree struck by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched it up. The
broken sword would be his proof. Gared would know what to make of it, and if not him,
then surely that old bear Mormont or Maester Aemon. Would Gared still be waiting with
the horses? He had to hurry.
Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him.
His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind
white pupil of his left eye.
The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw.
The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray. Long, elegant
hands brushed his cheek, then tightened around his throat. They were gloved in the
finest moleskin and sticky with blood, yet the touch was icy cold.
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BRAN
The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of
summer. They set forth at daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all, and Bran rode
among them, nervous with excitement. This was the first time he had been deemed old
enough to go with his lord father and his brothers to see the king’s justice done. It was
the ninth year of summer, and the seventh of Bran’s life.
The man had been taken outside a small holdfast in the hills. Robb thought he was a
wildling, his sword sworn to Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall. It made Bran’s
skin prickle to think of it. He remembered the hearth tales Old Nan told them. The
wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and slayers and thieves. They consorted with
giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and drank blood from polished
horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible halfhuman children.
But the man they found bound hand and foot to the holdfast wall awaiting the king’s
justice was old and scrawny, not much taller than Robb. He had lost both ears and a
finger to frostbite, and he dressed all in black, the same as a brother of the Night’s
Watch, except that his furs were ragged and greasy.
The breath of man and horse mingled, steaming, in the cold morning air as his lord
father had the man cut down from the wall and dragged before them. Robb and Jon sat
tall and still on their horses, with Bran between them on his pony, trying to seem older
than seven, trying to pretend that he’d seen all this before. A faint wind blew through the
holdfast gate. Over their heads flapped the banner of the Starks of Winterfell: a grey
direwolf racing across an ice-white field.
Bran’s father sat solemnly on his horse, long brown hair stirring in the wind. His closely
trimmed beard was shot with white, making him look older than his thirty-five years. He
had a grim cast to his grey eyes this day, and he seemed not at all the man who would sit
before the fire in the evening and talk softly of the age of heroes and the children of the
forest. He had taken off Father’s face, Bran thought, and donned the face of Lord Stark
of Winterfell.
There were questions asked and answers given there in the chill of morning, but
afterward Bran could not recall much of what had been said. Finally his lord father gave
�a command, and two of his guardsmen dragged the ragged man to the ironwood stump
in the center of the square. They forced his head down onto the hard black wood. Lord
Eddard Stark dismounted and his ward Theon Greyjoy brought forth the sword. “Ice,”
that sword was called. It was as wide across as a man’s hand, and taller even than Robb.
The blade was Valyrian steel, spell-forged and dark as smoke. Nothing held an edge like
Valyrian steel.
His father peeled off his gloves and handed them to Jory Cassel, the captain of his
household guard. He took hold of Ice with both hands and said, “In the name of Robert
of the House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and
the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by the word of
Eddard of the House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, I do sentence
you to die.” He lifted the greatsword high above his head.
Bran’s bastard brother Jon Snow moved closer. “Keep the pony well in hand,” he
whispered. “And don’t look away. Father will know if you do.”
Bran kept his pony well in hand, and did not look away.
His father took off the man’s head with a single sure stroke. Blood sprayed out across the
snow, as red as surnmerwine. One of the horses reared and had to be restrained to keep
from bolting. Bran could not take his eyes off the blood. The snows around the stump
drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched.
The head bounced off a thick root and rolled. It came up near Greyjoy’s feet. Theon was
a lean, dark youth of nineteen who found everything amusing. He laughed, put his boot
on the head, and kicked it away.
“Ass,” Jon muttered, low enough so Greyjoy did not hear. He put a hand on Bran’s
shoulder, and Bran looked over at his bastard brother. “You did well,” Jon told him
solemnly. Jon was fourteen, an old hand at justice.
It seemed colder on the long ride back to Winterfell, though the wind had died by then
and the sun was higher in the sky. Bran rode with his brothers, well ahead of the main
party, his pony struggling hard to keep up with their horses.
“The deserter died bravely,” Robb said. He was big and broad and growing every day,
with his mother’s coloring, the fair skin, red-brown hair, and blue eyes of the Tullys of
Riverrun. “He had courage, at the least.”
“No,” Jon Snow said quietly. “It was not courage. This one was dead of fear. You could
see it in his eyes, Stark.” Jon’s eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black, but
�there was little they did not see. He was of an age with Robb, but they did not look alike.
Jon was slender where Robb was muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and
quick where his half brother was strong and fast.
Robb was not impressed. “The Others take his eyes,” he swore. “He died well. Race you
to the bridge?”
“Done,” Jon said, kicking his horse forward. Robb cursed and followed, and they
galloped off down the trail, Robb laughing and hooting, Jon silent and intent. The
hooves of their horses kicked up showers of snow as they went.
Bran did not try to follow. His pony could not keep up. He had seen the ragged man’s
eyes, and he was thinking of them now. After a while, the sound of Robb’s laughter
receded, and the woods grew silent again.
So deep in thought was he that he never heard the rest of the party until his father
moved up to ride beside him. “Are you well, Bran?” he asked, not unkindly.
“Yes, Father,” Bran told him. He looked up. Wrapped in his furs and leathers, mounted
on his great warhorse, his lord father loomed over him like a giant. “Robb says the man
died bravely, but Jon says he was afraid.”
“What do you think?” his father asked.
Bran thought about it. “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”
“That is the only time a man can be brave,” his father told him. “Do you understand why
I did it?”
“He was a wildling,” Bran said. “They carry off women and sell them to the Others.”
His lord father smiled. “Old Nan has been telling you stories again. In truth, the man
was an oathbreaker, a deserter from the Night’s Watch. No man is more dangerous. The
deserter knows his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will not flinch from any crime, no
matter how vile. But you mistake me. The question was not why the man had to die, but
why I must do it.”
Bran had no answer for that. “King Robert has a headsman,” he said, uncertainly.
“He does,” his father admitted. “As did the Targaryen kings before him. Yet our way is
the older way. The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we
hold to the belief that the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you
�would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words.
And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.
“One day, Bran, you will be Robb’s bannerman, holding a keep of your own for your
brother and your king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take
no pleasure in the task, but neither must you look away. A ruler who hides behind paid
executioners soon forgets what death is.”
That was when Jon reappeared on the crest of the hill before them. He waved and
shouted down at them. “Father, Bran, come quickly, see what Robb has found!” Then
he was gone again.
Jory rode up beside them. “Trouble, my lord?”
“Beyond a doubt,” his lord father said. “Come, let us see what mischief my sons have
rooted out now.” He sent his horse into a trot. Jory and Bran and the rest came after.
They found Robb on the riverbank north of the bridge, with Jon still mounted beside
him. The late summer snows had been heavy this moonturn. Robb stood knee-deep in
white, his hood pulled back so the sun shone in his hair. He was cradling something in
his arm, while the boys talked in hushed, excited voices.
The riders picked their way carefully through the drifts, groping for solid footing on the
hidden, uneven ground. Jory Cassel and Theon Greyjoy were the first to reach the boys.
Greyjoy was laughing and joking as he rode. Bran heard the breath go out of him.
“Gods!” he exclaimed, struggling to keep control of his horse as he reached for his sword.
Jory’s sword was already out. “Robb, get away from it!” he called as his horse reared
under him.
Robb grinned and looked up from the bundle in his arms. “She can’t hurt you,” he said.
“She’s dead, Jory.”
Bran was afire with curiosity by then. He would have spurred the pony faster, but his
father made them dismount beside the bridge and approach on foot. Bran jumped off
and ran.
By then Jon, Jory, and Theon Greyjoy had all dismounted as well. “What in the seven
hells is it?” Greyjoy was saying.
“A wolf,” Robb told him.
�“A freak,” Greyjoy said. “Look at the size of it.”
Bran’s heart was thumping in his chest as he pushed through a waist-high drift to his
brothers’ side.
Half-buried in bloodstained snow, a huge dark shape slumped in death. Ice had formed
in its shaggy grey fur, and the faint smell of corruption clung to it like a woman’s
perfume. Bran glimpsed blind eyes crawling with maggots, a wide mouth full of yellowed
teeth. But it was the size of it that made him gasp. It was bigger than his pony, twice the
size of the largest hound in his father’s kennel.
“It’s no freak,” Jon said calmly. “That’s a direwolf. They grow larger than the other kind.”
Theon Greyjoy said, “There’s not been a direwolf sighted south of the Wall in two
hundred years.”
“I see one now,” Jon replied.
Bran tore his eyes away from the monster. That was when he noticed the bundle in
Robb’s arms. He gave a cry of delight and moved closer. The pup was a tiny ball of greyblack fur, its eyes still closed. It nuzzled blindly against Robb’s chest as he cradled it,
searching for milk among his leathers, making a sad little whimpery sound. Bran
reached out hesitantly. “Go on,” Robb told him. “You can touch him.”
Bran gave the pup a quick nervous stroke, then turned as Jon said, “Here you go.” His
half brother put a second pup into his arms. “There are five of them.” Bran sat down in
the snow and hugged the wolf pup to his face. Its fur was soft and warm against his
cheek.
“Direwolves loose in the realm, after so many years,” muttered Hullen, the master of
horse. “I like it not.”
“It is a sign,” Jory said.
Father frowned. “This is only a dead animal, Jory,” he said. Yet he seemed troubled.
Snow crunched under his boots as he moved around the body. “Do we know what killed
her?”
“There’s something in the throat,” Robb told him, proud to have found the answer before
his father even asked. “There, just under the jaw.”
�His father knelt and groped under the beast’s head with his hand. He gave a yank and
held it up for all to see. A foot of shattered antler, tines snapped off, all wet with blood.
A sudden silence descended over the party. The men looked at the antler uneasily, and
no one dared to speak. Even Bran could sense their fear, though he did not understand.
His father tossed the antler to the side and cleansed his hands in the snow. “I’m
surprised she lived long enough to whelp,” he said. His voice broke the spell.
“Maybe she didn’t,” Jory said. “I’ve heard tales . . . maybe the bitch was already dead
when the pups came.”
“Born with the dead,” another man put in. “Worse luck.”
“No matter,” said Hullen. “They be dead soon enough too.”
Bran gave a wordless cry of dismay.
“The sooner the better,” Theon Greyjoy agreed. He drew his sword. “Give the beast here,
Bran.”
The little thing squirmed against him, as if it heard and understood. “No!” Bran cried
out fiercely. “It’s mine.”
“Put away your sword, Greyjoy,” Robb said. For a moment he sounded as commanding
as their father, like the lord he would someday be. “We will keep these pups.”
“You cannot do that, boy,” said Harwin, who was Hullen’s son.
“It be a mercy to kill them,” Hullen said.
Bran looked to his lord father for rescue, but got only a frown, a furrowed brow. “Hullen
speaks truly, son. Better a swift death than a hard one from cold and starvation.”
“No!” He could feel tears welling in his eyes, and he looked away. He did not want to cry
in front of his father.
Robb resisted stubbornly. “Ser Rodrik’s red bitch whelped again last week,” he said. “It
was a small litter, only two live pups. She’ll have milk enough.”
“She’ll rip them apart when they try to nurse.”
�“Lord Stark,” Jon said. It was strange to hear him call Father that, so formal. Bran
looked at him with desperate hope. “There are five pups,” he told Father. “Three male,
two female.”
“What of it, Jon?”
“You have five trueborn children,” Jon said. “Three sons, two daughters. The direwolf is
the sigil of your House. Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord.”
Bran saw his father’s face change, saw the other men exchange glances. He loved Jon
with all his heart at that moment. Even at seven, Bran understood what his brother had
done. The count had come right only because Jon had omitted himself. He had included
the girls, included even Rickon, the baby, but not the bastard who bore the surname
Snow, the name that custom decreed be given to all those in the north unlucky enough to
be born with no name of their own.
Their father understood as well. “You want no pup for yourself, Jon?” he asked softly.
“The direwolf graces the banners of House Stark,” Jon pointed out. “I am no Stark,
Father.”
Their lord father regarded Jon thoughtfully. Robb rushed into the silence he left. “I will
nurse him myself, Father,” he promised. “I will soak a towel with warm milk, and give
him suck from that.”
“Me too!” Bran echoed.
The lord weighed his sons long and carefully with his eyes. “Easy to say, and harder to
do. I will not have you wasting the servants’ time with this. If you want these pups, you
will feed them yourselves. Is that understood?”
Bran nodded eagerly. The pup squirmed in his grasp, licked at his face with a warm
tongue.
“You must train them as well,” their father said. “You must train them. The
kennelmaster will have nothing to do with these monsters, I promise you that. And the
gods help you if you neglect them, or brutalize them, or train them badly. These are not
dogs to beg for treats and slink off at a kick. A direwolf will rip a man’s arm off his
shoulder as easily as a dog will kill a rat. Are you sure you want this?”
“Yes, Father,” Bran said.
�“Yes,” Robb agreed.
“The pups may die anyway, despite all you do.”
“They won’t die,” Robb said. “We won’t let them die.”
“Keep them, then. Jory, Desmond, gather up the other pups. It’s time we were back to
Winterfell.”
It was not until they were mounted and on their way that Bran allowed himself to taste
the sweet air of victory. By then, his pup was snuggled inside his leathers, warm against
him, safe for the long ride home. Bran was wondering what to name him.
Halfway across the bridge, Jon pulled up suddenly.
“What is it, Jon?” their lord father asked.
“Can’t you hear it?”
Bran could hear the wind in the trees, the clatter of their hooves on the ironwood planks,
the whimpering of his hungry pup, but Jon was listening to something else.
“There,” Jon said. He swung his horse around and galloped back across the bridge. They
watched him dismount where the direwolf lay dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A
moment later he was riding back to them, smiling.
“He must have crawled away from the others,” Jon said.
“Or been driven away,” their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur was white,
where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man
who had died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone would have
opened his eyes while the others were still blind.
“An albino,” Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement. “This one will die even faster than
the others.”
Jon Snow gave his father’s ward a long, chilling look. “I think not, Greyjoy,” he said.
“This one belongs to me.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
CATELYN
Catelyn had never liked this godswood.
She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of the Trident.
The godswood there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled
shadows across tinkling streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy
with the scent of flowers.
The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a dark, primal place, three
acres of old forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it.
It smelled of moist earth and decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of
stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as
old as the realm itself. Here thick black trunks crowded close together while twisted
branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshappen roots wrestled beneath the
soil. This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here
had no names.
But she knew she would find her husband here tonight. Whenever he took a man’s life,
afterward he would seek the quiet of the godswood.
Catelyn had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the rainbow of light that
filled the sept of Riverrun. She was of the Faith, like her father and grandfather and his
father before him. Her gods had names, and their faces were as familiar as the faces of
her parents. Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a seven-sided
crystal alive with light, voices raised in song. The Tullys kept a godswood, as all the great
houses did, but it was only a place to walk or read or lie in the sun. Worship was for the
sept.
For her sake, Ned had built a small sept where she might sing to the seven faces of god,
but the blood of the First Men still flowed in the veins of the Starks, and his own gods
were the old ones, the nameless, faceless gods of the greenwood they shared with the
vanished children of the forest.
At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the
waters were black and cold. “The heart tree,” Ned called it. The weirwood’s bark was
white as bone, its leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A face had been
�carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes
red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those eyes; older than
Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were
true; they had watched the castle’s granite walls rise around them. It was said that the
children of the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before
the coming of the First Men across the narrow sea.
In the south the last weirwoods had been cut down or burned out a thousand years ago,
except on the Isle of Faces where the green men kept their silent watch. Up here it was
different. Here every castle had its godswood, and every godswood had its heart tree,
and every heart tree its face.
Catelyn found her husband beneath the weirwood, seated on a moss-covered stone. The
greatsword Ice was across his lap, and he was cleaning the blade in those waters black as
night. A thousand years of humus lay thick upon the godswood floor, swallowing the
sound of her feet, but the red eyes of the weirwood seemed to follow her as she came.
“Ned,” she called softly.
He lifted his head to look at her. “Catelyn,” he said. His voice was distant and formal.
“Where are the children?”
He would always ask her that. “In the kitchen, arguing about names for the wolf pups.”
She spread her cloak on the forest floor and sat beside the pool, her back to the
weirwood. She could feel the eyes watching her, but she did her best to ignore them.
“Arya is already in love, and Sansa is charmed and gracious, but Rickon is not quite
sure.”
“Is he afraid?” Ned asked.
“A little,” she admitted. “He is only three.”
Ned frowned. “He must learn to face his fears. He will not be three forever. And winter is
coming.”
“Yes,” Catelyn agreed. The words gave her a chill, as they always did. The Stark words.
Every noble house had its words. Family mottoes, touchstones, prayers of sorts, they
boasted of honor and glory, promised loyalty and truth, swore faith and courage. All but
the Starks. Winter is coming, said the Stark words. Not for the first time, she reflected
on what a strange people these northerners were.
“The man died well, I’ll give him that,” Ned said. He had a swatch of oiled leather in one
hand. He ran it lightly up the greatsword as he spoke, polishing the metal to a dark glow.
�“I was glad for Bran’s sake. You would have been proud of Bran.”
“I am always proud of Bran,” Catelyn replied, watching the sword as he stroked it. She
could see the rippling deep within the steel, where the metal had been folded back on
itself a hundred times in the forging. Catelyn had no love for swords, but she could not
deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had been forged in Valyria, before the Doom had
come to the old Freehold, when the ironsmiths had worked their metal with spells as
well as hammers. Four hundred years old it was, and as sharp as the day it was forged.
The name it bore was older still, a legacy from the age of heroes, when the Starks were
Kings in the North.
“He was the fourth this year,” Ned said grimly. “The poor man was half-mad. Something
had put a fear in him so deep that my words could not reach him.” He sighed. “Ben
writes that the strength of the Night’s Watch is down below a thousand. It’s not only
desertions. They are losing men on rangings as well.”
“Is it the wildlings?” she asked.
“Who else?” Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool steel length of it. “And it will only grow
worse. The day may come when I will have no choice but to call the banners and ride
north to deal with this King-beyond-the-Wall for good and all.”
“Beyond the Wall?” The thought made Catelyn shudder.
Ned saw the dread on her face. “Mance Rayder is nothing for us to fear.”
“There are darker things beyond the Wall.” She glanced behind her at the heart tree, the
pale bark and red eyes, watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts.
His smile was gentle. “You listen to too many of Old Nan’s stories. The Others are as
dead as the children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you
they never lived at all. No living man has ever seen one.”
“Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a direwolf either,” Catelyn reminded
him.
“I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully,” he said with a rueful smile. He slid
Ice back into its sheath. “You did not come here to tell me crib tales. I know how little
you like this place. What is it, my lady?”
Catelyn took her husband’s hand. “There was grievous news today, my lord. I did not
wish to trouble you until you had cleansed yourself.” There was no way to soften the
�blow, so she told him straight. “I am so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn is dead.”
His eyes found hers, and she could see how hard it took him, as she had known it would.
In his youth, Ned had fostered at the Eyrie, and the childless Lord Arryn had become a
second father to him and his fellow ward, Robert Baratheon. When the Mad King Aerys
II Targaryen had demanded their heads, the Lord of the Eyrie had raised his moon-andfalcon banners in revolt rather than give up those he had pledged to protect.
And one day fifteen years ago, this second father had become a brother as well, as he and
Ned stood together in the sept at Riverrun to wed two sisters, the daughters of Lord
Hoster Tully.
“Jon . . . ” he said. “Is this news certain?”
“It was the king’s seal, and the letter is in Robert’s own hand. I saved it for you. He said
Lord Arryn was taken quickly. Even Maester Pycelle was helpless, but he brought the
milk of the poppy, so Jon did not linger long in pain.”
“That is some small mercy, I suppose,” he said. She could see the grief on his face, but
even then he thought first of her. “Your sister,” he said. “And Jon’s boy. What word of
them?”
“The message said only that they were well, and had returned to the Eyrie,” Catelyn said.
“I wish they had gone to Riverrun instead. The Eyrie is high and lonely, and it was ever
her husband’s place, not hers. Lord Jon’s memory will haunt each stone. I know my
sister. She needs the comfort of family and friends around her.”
“Your uncle waits in the Vale, does he not? Jon named him Knight of the Gate, I’d
heard.”
Catelyn nodded. “Brynden will do what he can for her, and for the boy. That is some
comfort, but still . . . ”
“Go to her,” Ned urged. “Take the children. Fill her halls with noise and shouts and
laughter. That boy of hers needs other children about him, and Lysa should not be alone
in her grief.”
“Would that I could,” Catelyn said. “The letter had other tidings. The king is riding to
Winterfell to seek you out.”
It took Ned a moment to comprehend her words, but when the understanding came, the
darkness left his eyes. “Robert is coming here?” When she nodded, a smile broke across
�his face.
Catelyn wished she could share his joy. But she had heard the talk in the yards; a
direwolf dead in the snow, a broken antler in its throat. Dread coiled within her like a
snake, but she forced herself to smile at this man she loved, this man who put no faith in
signs. “I knew that would please you,” she said. “We should send word to your brother
on the Wall.”
“Yes, of course,” he agreed. “Ben will want to be here. I shall tell Maester Luwin to send
his swiftest bird.” Ned rose and pulled her to her feet. “Damnation, how many years has
it been? And he gives us no more notice than this? How many in his party, did the
message say?”
“I should think a hundred knights, at the least, with all their retainers, and half again as
many freeriders. Cersei and the children travel with them.”
“Robert will keep an easy pace for their sakes,” he said. “It is just as well. That will give
us more time to prepare.”
“The queen’s brothers are also in the party,” she told him.
Ned grimaced at that. There was small love between him and the queen’s family, Catelyn
knew. The Lannisters of Casterly Rock had come late to Robert’s cause, when victory was
all but certain, and he had never forgiven them. “Well, if the price for Robert’s company
is an infestation of Lannisters, so be it. It sounds as though Robert is bringing half his
court.”
“Where the king goes, the realm follows,” she said.
“It will be good to see the children. The youngest was still sucking at the Lannister
woman’s teat the last time I saw him. He must be, what, five by now?”
“Prince Tommen is seven,” she told him. “The same age as Bran. Please, Ned, guard your
tongue. The Lannister woman is our queen, and her pride is said to grow with every
passing year.”
Ned squeezed her hand. “There must be a feast, of course, with singers, and Robert will
want to hunt. I shall send Jory south with an honor guard to meet them on the kingsroad
and escort them back. Gods, how are we going to feed them all? On his way already, you
said? Damn the man. Damn his royal hide.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
DAENERYS
Her brother held the gown up for her inspection. “This is beauty. Touch it. Go on. Caress
the fabric.”
Dany touched it. The cloth was so smooth that it seemed to run through her fingers like
water. She could not remember ever wearing anything so soft. It frightened her. She
pulled her hand away. “Is it really mine?”
“A gift from the Magister Illyrio,” Viserys said, smiling. Her brother was in a high mood
tonight. “The color will bring out the violet in your eyes. And you shall have gold as well,
and jewels of all sorts. Illyrio has promised. Tonight you must look like a princess.”
A princess, Dany thought. She had forgotten what that was like. Perhaps she had never
really known. “Why does he give us so much?” she asked. “What does he want from us?”
For nigh on half a year, they had lived in the magister’s house, eating his food, pampered
by his servants. Dany was thirteen, old enough to know that such gifts seldom come
without their price, here in the free city of Pentos.
“Illyrio is no fool,” Viserys said. He was a gaunt young man with nervous hands and a
feverish look in his pale lilac eyes. “The magister knows that I will not forget my friends
when I come into my throne.”
Dany said nothing. Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spices, gemstones, dragonbone, and
other, less savory things. He had friends in all of the Nine Free Cities, it was said, and
even beyond, in Vaes Dothrak and the fabled lands beside the Jade Sea. It was also said
that he’d never had a friend he wouldn’t cheerfully sell for the right price. Dany listened
to the talk in the streets, and she heard these things, but she knew better than to
question her brother when he wove his webs of dream. His anger was a terrible thing
when roused. Viserys called it “waking the dragon.”
Her brother hung the gown beside the door. “Illyrio will send the slaves to bathe you. Be
sure you wash off the stink of the stables. Khal Drogo has a thousand horses, tonight he
looks for a different sort of mount.” He studied her critically. “You still slouch.
Straighten yourself” He pushed back her shoulders with his hands. “Let them see that
you have a woman’s shape now.” His fingers brushed lightly over her budding breasts
and tightened on a nipple. “You will not fail me tonight. If you do, it will go hard for you.
�You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?” His fingers twisted her, the pinch cruelly
hard through the rough fabric of her tunic. “Do you?” he repeated.
“No,” Dany said meekly.
Her brother smiled. “Good.” He touched her hair, almost with affection. “When they
write the history of my reign, sweet sister, they will say that it began tonight.”
When he was gone, Dany went to her window and looked out wistfully on the waters of
the bay. The square brick towers of Pentos were black silhouettes outlined against the
setting sun. Dany could hear the singing of the red priests as they lit their night fires and
the shouts of ragged children playing games beyond the walls of the estate. For a
moment she wished she could be out there with them, barefoot and breathless and
dressed in tatters, with no past and no future and no feast to attend at Khal Drogo’s
manse.
Somewhere beyond the sunset, across the narrow sea, lay a land of green hills and
flowered plains and great rushing rivers, where towers of dark stone rose amidst
magnificent blue-grey mountains, and armored knights rode to battle beneath the
banners of their lords. The Dothraki called that land Rhaesh Andahli, the land of the
Andals. In the Free Cities, they talked of Westeros and the Sunset Kingdoms. Her
brother had a simpler name. “Our land,” he called it. The words were like a prayer with
him. If he said them enough, the gods were sure to hear. “Ours by blood right, taken
from us by treachery, but ours still, ours forever. You do not steal from the dragon, oh,
no. The dragon remembers.”
And perhaps the dragon did remember, but Dany could not. She had never seen this
land her brother said was theirs, this realm beyond the narrow sea. These places he
talked of, Casterly Rock and the Eyrie, Highgarden and the Vale of Arryn, Dorne and the
Isle of Faces, they were just words to her. Viserys had been a boy of eight when they fled
King’s Landing to escape the advancing armies of the Usurper, but Daenerys had been
only a quickening in their mother’s womb.
Yet sometimes Dany would picture the way it had been, so often had her brother told her
the stories. The midnight flight to Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering on the ship’s
black sails. Her brother Rhaegar battling the Usurper in the bloody waters of the Trident
and dying for the woman he loved. The sack of King’s Landing by the ones Viserys called
the Usurper’s dogs, the lords Lannister and Stark. Princess Elia of Dorne pleading for
mercy as Rhaegar’s heir was ripped from her breast and murdered before her eyes. The
polished skulls of the last dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne
room while the Kingslayer opened Father’s throat with a golden sword.
�She had been born on Dragonstone nine moons after their flight, while a raging summer
storm threatened to rip the island fastness apart. They said that storm was terrible. The
Targaryen fleet was smashed while it lay at anchor, and huge stone blocks were ripped
from the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild waters of the narrow sea. Her mother
had died birthing her, and for that her brother Viserys had never forgiven her.
She did not remember Dragonstone either. They had run again, just before the Usurper’s
brother set sail with his new-built fleet. By then only Dragonstone itself, the ancient seat
of their House, had remained of the Seven Kingdoms that had once been theirs. It would
not remain for long. The garrison had been prepared to sell them to the Usurper, but one
night Ser Willem Darry and four loyal men had broken into the nursery and stolen them
both, along with her wet nurse, and set sail under cover of darkness for the safety of the
Braavosian coast.
She remembered Ser Willem dimly, a great grey bear of a man, half-blind, roaring and
bellowing orders from his sickbed. The servants had lived in terror of him, but he had
always been kind to Dany. He called her “Little Princess” and sometimes “My Lady,” and
his hands were soft as old leather. He never left his bed, though, and the smell of
sickness clung to him day and night, a hot, moist, sickly sweet odor. That was when they
lived in Braavos, in the big house with the red door. Dany had her own room there, with
a lemon tree outside her window. After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen
what little money they had left, and soon after they had been put out of the big house.
Dany had cried when the red door closed behind them forever.
They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on to
Qohor and Volantis and Lys, never staying long in any one place. Her brother would not
allow it. The Usurper’s hired knives were close behind them, he insisted, though Dany
had never seen one.
At first the magisters and archons and merchant princes were pleased to welcome the
last Targaryens to their homes and tables, but as the years passed and the Usurper
continued to sit upon the Iron Throne, doors closed and their lives grew meaner. Years
past they had been forced to sell their last few treasures, and now even the coin they had
gotten from Mother’s crown had gone. In the alleys and wine sinks of Pentos, they called
her brother “the beggar king.” Dany did not want to know what they called her.
“We will have it all back someday, sweet sister,” he would promise her. Sometimes his
hands shook when he talked about it. “The jewels and the silks, Dragonstone and King’s
Landing, the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms, all they have taken from us, we will
have it back.” Viserys lived for that day. All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house
with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never
known.
�There came a soft knock on her door. “Come,” Dany said, turning away from the
window. Illyrio’s servants entered, bowed, and set about their business. They were
slaves, a gift from one of the magister’s many Dothraki friends. There was no slavery in
the free city of Pentos. Nonetheless, they were slaves. The old woman, small and grey as
a mouse, never said a word, but the girl made up for it. She was Illyrio’s favorite, a fairhaired, blue-eyed wench of sixteen who chattered constantly as she worked.
They filled her bath with hot water brought up from the kitchen and scented it with
fragrant oils. The girl pulled the rough cotton tunic over Dany’s head and helped her into
the tub. The water was scalding hot, but Daenerys did not flinch or cry out. She liked the
heat. It made her feel clean. Besides, her brother had often told her that it was never too
hot for a Targaryen. “Ours is the house of the dragon,” he would say. “The fire is in our
blood.”
The old woman washed her long, silver-pale hair and gently combed out the snags, all in
silence. The girl scrubbed her back and her feet and told her how lucky she was. “Drogo
is so rich that even his slaves wear golden collars. A hundred thousand men ride in his
khalasar, and his palace in Vaes Dothrak has two hundred rooms and doors of solid
silver.” There was more like that, so much more, what a handsome man the khal was, so
tall and fierce, fearless in battle, the best rider ever to mount a horse, a demon archer.
Daenerys said nothing. She had always assumed that she would wed Viserys when she
came of age. For centuries the Targaryens had married brother to sister, since Aegon the
Conqueror had taken his sisters to bride. The line must be kept pure, Viserys had told
her a thousand times; theirs was the kingsblood, the golden blood of old Valyria, the
blood of the dragon. Dragons did not mate with the beasts of the field, and Targaryens
did not mingle their blood with that of lesser men. Yet now Viserys schemed to sell her
to a stranger, a barbarian.
When she was clean, the slaves helped her from the water and toweled her dry. The girl
brushed her hair until it shone like molten silver, while the old woman anointed her with
the spiceflower perfume of the Dothraki plains, a dab on each wrist, behind her ears, on
the tips of her breasts, and one last one, cool on her lips, down there between her legs.
They dressed her in the wisps that Magister Illyrio had sent up, and then the gown, a
deep plum silk to bring out the violet in her eyes. The girl slid the gilded sandals onto her
feet, while the old woman fixed the tiara in her hair, and slid golden bracelets crusted
with amethysts around her wrists. Last of all came the collar, a heavy golden torc
emblazoned with ancient Valyrian glyphs.
“Now you look all a princess,” the girl said breathlessly when they were done. Dany
glanced at her image in the silvered looking glass that Illyrio had so thoughtfully
provided. A princess, she thought, but she remembered what the girl had said, how Khal
Drogo was so rich even his slaves wore golden collars. She felt a sudden chill, and
�gooseflesh pimpled her bare arms.
Her brother was waiting in the cool of the entry hall, seated on the edge of the pool, his
hand trailing in the water. He rose when she appeared and looked her over critically.
“Stand there,” he told her. “Turn around. Yes. Good. You look . . . ”
“Regal,” Magister Illyrio said, stepping through an archway. He moved with surprising
delicacy for such a massive man. Beneath loose garments of flame-colored silk, rolls of
fat jiggled as he walked. Gemstones glittered on every finger, and his man had oiled his
forked yellow beard until it shone like real gold. “May the Lord of Light shower you with
blessings on this most fortunate day, Princess Daenerys,” the magister said as he took
her hand. He bowed his head, showing a thin glimpse of crooked yellow teeth through
the gold of his beard. “She is a vision, Your Grace, a vision,” he told her brother. “Drogo
will be enraptured.”
“She’s too skinny,” Viserys said. His hair, the same silver-blond as hers, had been pulled
back tightly behind his head and fastened with a dragonbone brooch. It was a severe
look that emphasized the hard, gaunt lines of his face. He rested his hand on the hilt of
the sword that Illyrio had lent him, and said, “Are you sure that Khal Drogo likes his
women this young?”
“She has had her blood. She is old enough for the khal,” Illyrio told him, not for the first
time. “Look at her. That silver-gold hair, those purple eyes . . . she is the blood of old
Valyria, no doubt, no doubt . . . and highborn, daughter of the old king, sister to the new,
she cannot fail to entrance our Drogo.” When he released her hand, Daenerys found
herself trembling.
“I suppose,” her brother said doubtfully. “The savages have queer tastes. Boys, horses,
sheep . . . ”
“Best not suggest this to Khal Drogo,” Illyrio said.
Anger flashed in her brother’s lilac eyes. “Do you take me for a fool?”
The magister bowed slightly. “I take you for a king. Kings lack the caution of common
men. My apologies if I have given offense.” He turned away and clapped his hands for
his bearers.
The streets of Pentos were pitch-dark when they set out in Illyrio’s elaborately carved
palanquin. Two servants went ahead to light their way, carrying ornate oil lanterns with
panes of pale blue glass, while a dozen strong men hoisted the poles to their shoulders. It
was warm and close inside behind the curtains. Dany could smell the stench of Illyrio’s
�pallid flesh through his heavy perfumes.
Her brother, sprawled out on his pillows beside her, never noticed. His mind was away
across the narrow sea. “We won’t need his whole khalasar,” Viserys said. His fingers
toyed with the hilt of his borrowed blade, though Dany knew he had never used a sword
in earnest. “Ten thousand, that would be enough, I could sweep the Seven Kingdoms
with ten thousand Dothraki screamers. The realm will rise for its rightful king. Tyrell,
Redwyne, Darry, Greyjoy, they have no more love for the Usurper than I do. The
Dornishmen burn to avenge Elia and her children. And the smallfolk will be with us.
They cry out for their king.” He looked at Illyrio anxiously. “They do, don’t they?”
“They are your people, and they love you well,” Magister Illyrio said amiably. “In
holdfasts all across the realm, men lift secret toasts to your health while women sew
dragon banners and hide them against the day of your return from across the water.” He
gave a massive shrug. “Or so my agents tell me.”
Dany had no agents, no way of knowing what anyone was doing or thinking across the
narrow sea, but she mistrusted Illyrio’s sweet words as she mistrusted everything about
Illyrio. Her brother was nodding eagerly, however. “I shall kill the Usurper myself,” he
promised, who had never killed anyone, “as he killed my brother Rhaegar. And
Lannister too, the Kingslayer, for what he did to my father.”
“That would be most fitting,” Magister Illyrio said. Dany saw the smallest hint of a smile
playing around his full lips, but her brother did not notice. Nodding, he pushed back a
curtain and stared off into the night, and Dany knew he was fighting the Battle of the
Trident once again.
The nine-towered manse of Khal Drogo sat beside the waters of the bay, its high brick
walls overgrown with pale ivy. It had been given to the khal by the magisters of Pentos,
Illyrio told them. The Free Cities were always generous with the horselords. “It is not
that we fear these barbarians,” Illyrio would explain with a smile. “The Lord of Light
would hold our city walls against a million Dothraki, or so the red priests promise . . . yet
why take chances, when their friendship comes so cheap?”
Their palanquin was stopped at the gate, the curtains pulled roughly back by one of the
house guards. He had the copper skin and dark almond eyes of a Dothraki, but his face
was hairless and he wore the spiked bronze cap of the Unsullied. He looked them over
coldly. Magister Illyrio growled something to him in the rough Dothraki tongue; the
guardsman replied in the same voice and waved them through the gates.
Dany noticed that her brother’s hand was clenched tightly around the hilt of his
borrowed sword. He looked almost as frightened as she felt. “Insolent eunuch,” Viserys
�muttered as the palanquin lurched up toward the manse.
Magister Illyrio’s words were honey. “Many important men will be at the feast tonight.
Such men have enemies. The khal must protect his guests, yourself chief among them,
Your Grace. No doubt the Usurper would pay well for your head.”
“Oh, yes,” Viserys said darkly. “He has tried, Illyrio, I promise you that. His hired knives
follow us everywhere. I am the last dragon, and he will not sleep easy while I live.”
The palanquin slowed and stopped. The curtains were thrown back, and a slave offered a
hand to help Daenerys out. His collar, she noted, was ordinary bronze. Her brother
followed, one hand still clenched hard around his sword hilt. It took two strong men to
get Magister Illyrio back on his feet.
Inside the manse, the air was heavy with the scent of spices, pinchfire and sweet lemon
and cinnamon. They were escorted across the entry hall, where a mosaic of colored glass
depicted the Doom of Valyria. Oil burned in black iron lanterns all along the walls.
Beneath an arch of twining stone leaves, a eunuch sang their coming. “Viserys of the
House Targaryen, the Third of his Name,” he called in a high, sweet voice, “King of the
Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector
of the Realm. His sister, Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of Dragonstone. His honorable
host, Illyrio Mopatis, Magister of the Free City of Pentos.”
They stepped past the eunuch into a pillared courtyard overgrown in pale ivy. Moonlight
painted the leaves in shades of bone and silver as the guests drifted among them. Many
were Dothraki horselords, big men with red-brown skin, their drooping mustachios
bound in metal rings, their black hair oiled and braided and hung with bells. Yet among
them moved bravos and sellswords from Pentos and Myr and Tyrosh, a red priest even
fatter than Illyrio, hairy men from the Port of Ibben, and lords from the Summer Isles
with skin as black as ebony. Daenerys looked at them all in wonder . . . and realized, with
a sudden start of fear, that she was the only woman there.
Illyrio whispered to them. “Those three are Drogo’s bloodriders, there,” he said. “By the
pillar is Khal Moro, with his son Rhogoro. The man with the green beard is brother to
the Archon of Tyrosh, and the man behind him is Ser Jorah Mormont.”
The last name caught Daenerys. “A knight?”
“No less.” Illyrio smiled through his beard. “Anointed with the seven oils by the High
Septon himself.”
“What is he doing here?” she blurted.
�“The Usurper wanted his head,” Illyrio told them. “Some trifling affront. He sold some
poachers to a Tyroshi slaver instead of giving them to the Night’s Watch. Absurd law. A
man should be able to do as he likes with his own chattel.”
“I shall wish to speak with Ser Jorah before the night is done,” her brother said. Dany
found herself looking at the knight curiously. He was an older man, past forty and
balding, but still strong and fit. Instead of silks and cottons, he wore wool and leather.
His tunic was a dark green, embroidered with the likeness of a black bear standing on
two legs.
She was still looking at this strange man from the homeland she had never known when
Magister Illyrio placed a moist hand on her bare shoulder. “Over there, sweet princess,”
he whispered, “there is the khal himself.”
Dany wanted to run and hide, but her brother was looking at her, and if she displeased
him she knew she would wake the dragon. Anxiously, she turned and looked at the man
Viserys hoped would ask to wed her before the night was done.
The slave girl had not been far wrong, she thought. Khal Drogo was a head taller than
the tallest man in the room, yet somehow light on his feet, as graceful as the panther in
Illyrio’s menagerie. He was younger than she’d thought, no more than thirty. His skin
was the color of polished copper, his thick mustachios bound with gold and bronze rings.
“I must go and make my submissions,” Magister Illyrio said. “Wait here. I shall bring
him to you.”
Her brother took her by the arm as Illyrio waddled over to the khal, his fingers
squeezing so hard that they hurt. “Do you see his braid, sweet sister?”
Drogo’s braid was black as midnight and heavy with scented oil, hung with tiny bells that
rang softly as he moved. It swung well past his belt, below even his buttocks, the end of it
brushing against the back of his thighs.
“You see how long it is?” Viserys said. “When Dothraki are defeated in combat, they cut
off their braids in disgrace, so the world will know their shame. Khal Drogo has never
lost a fight. He is Aegon the Dragonlord come again, and you will be his queen.”
Dany looked at Khal Drogo. His face was hard and cruel, his eyes as cold and dark as
onyx. Her brother hurt her sometimes, when she woke the dragon, but he did not
frighten her the way this man frightened her. “I don’t want to be his queen,” she heard
herself say in a small, thin voice. “Please, please, Viserys, I don’t want to, I want to go
�home.”
“Home?” He kept his voice low, but she could hear the fury in his tone. “How are we to
go home, sweet sister? They took our home from us!” He drew her into the shadows, out
of sight, his fingers digging into her skin. “How are we to go home?” he repeated,
meaning King’s Landing, and Dragonstone, and all the realm they had lost.
Dany had only meant their rooms in Illyrio’s estate, no true home surely, though all they
had, but her brother did not want to hear that. There was no home there for him. Even
the big house with the red door had not been home for him. His fingers dug hard into
her arm, demanding an answer. “I don’t know . . . ”she said at last, her voice breaking.
Tears welled in her eyes.
“I do,” he said sharply. “We go home with an army, sweet sister. With Khal Drogo’s
army, that is how we go home. And if you must wed him and bed him for that, you will.”
He smiled at her. “I’d let his whole khalasar fuck you if need be, sweet sister, all forty
thousand men, and their horses too if that was what it took to get my army. Be grateful it
is only Drogo. In time you may even learn to like him. Now dry your eyes. Illyrio is
bringing him over, and he will not see you crying.”
Dany turned and saw that it was true. Magister Illyrio, all smiles and bows, was
escorting Khal Drogo over to where they stood. She brushed away unfallen tears with the
back of her hand.
“Smile,” Viserys whispered nervously, his hand failing to the hilt of his sword. “And
stand up straight. Let him see that you have breasts. Gods know, you have little enough
as is.”
Daenerys smiled, and stood up straight.
previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
The visitors poured through the castle gates in a river of gold and silver and polished
steel, three hundred strong, a pride of bannermen and knights, of sworn swords and
freeriders. Over their heads a dozen golden banners whipped back and forth in the
northern wind, emblazoned with the crowned stag of Baratheon.
Ned knew many of the riders. There came Ser Jaime Lannister with hair as bright as
beaten gold, and there Sandor Clegane with his terrible burned face. The tall boy beside
him could only be the crown prince, and that stunted little man behind them was surely
the Imp, Tyrion Lannister.
Yet the huge man at the head of the column, flanked by two knights in the snow-white
cloaks of the Kingsguard, seemed almost a stranger to Ned . . . until he vaulted off the
back of his warhorse with a familiar roar, and crushed him in a bone-crunching hug.
“Ned! Ah, but it is good to see that frozen face of yours.” The king looked him over top to
bottom, and laughed. “You have not changed at all.”
Would that Ned had been able to say the same. Fifteen years past, when they had ridden
forth to win a throne, the Lord of Storm’s End had been clean-shaven, clear-eyed, and
muscled like a maiden’s fantasy. Six and a half feet tall, he towered over lesser men, and
when he donned his armor and the great antlered helmet of his House, he became a
veritable giant. He’d had a giant’s strength too, his weapon of choice a spiked iron
warhammer that Ned could scarcely lift. In those days, the smell of leather and blood
had clung to him like perfume.
Now it was perfume that clung to him like perfume, and he had a girth to match his
height. Ned had last seen the king nine years before during Balon Greyjoy’s rebellion,
when the stag and the direwolf had joined to end the pretensions of the self-proclaimed
King of the Iron Islands. Since the night they had stood side by side in Greyjoy’s fallen
stronghold, where Robert had accepted the rebel lord’s surrender and Ned had taken his
son Theon as hostage and ward, the king had gained at least eight stone. A beard as
coarse and black as iron wire covered his jaw to hide his double chin and the sag of the
royal jowls, but nothing could hide his stomach or the dark circles under his eyes.
Yet Robert was Ned’s king now, and not just a friend, so he said only, “Your Grace.
Winterfell is yours.”
�By then the others were dismounting as well, and grooms were coming forward for their
mounts. Robert’s queen, Cersei Lannister, entered on foot with her younger children.
The wheelhouse in which they had ridden, a huge double-decked carriage of oiled oak
and gilded metal pulled by forty heavy draft horses, was too wide to pass through the
castle gate. Ned knelt in the snow to kiss the queen’s ring, while Robert embraced
Catelyn like a long-lost sister. Then the children had been brought forward, introduced,
and approved of by both sides.
No sooner had those formalities of greeting been completed than the king had said to his
host, “Take me down to your crypt, Eddard. I would pay my respects.”
Ned loved him for that, for remembering her still after all these years. He called for a
lantern. No other words were needed. The queen had begun to protest. They had been
riding since dawn, everyone was tired and cold, surely they should refresh themselves
first. The dead would wait. She had said no more than that; Robert had looked at her,
and her twin brother Jaime had taken her quietly by the arm, and she had said no more.
They went down to the crypt together, Ned and this king he scarcely recognized. The
winding stone steps were narrow. Ned went first with the lantern. “I was starting to
think we would never reach Winterfell,” Robert complained as they descended. “In the
south, the way they talk about my Seven Kingdoms, a man forgets that your part is as big
as the other six combined.”
“I trust you enjoyed the journey, Your Grace?”
Robert snorted. “Bogs and forests and fields, and scarcely a decent inn north of the
Neck. I’ve never seen such a vast emptiness. Where are all your people?”
“Likely they were too shy to come out,” Ned jested. He could feel the chill coming up the
stairs, a cold breath from deep within the earth. “Kings are a rare sight in the north.”
Robert snorted. “More likely they were hiding under the snow. Snow, Ned!” The king
put one hand on the wall to steady himself as they descended.
“Late summer snows are common enough,” Ned said. “I hope they did not trouble you.
They are usually mild.”
“The Others take your mild snows,” Robert swore. “What will this place be like in
winter? I shudder to think.”
“The winters are hard,” Ned admitted. “But the Starks will endure. We always have.”
�“You need to come south,” Robert told him. “You need a taste of summer before it flees.
In Highgarden there are fields of golden roses that stretch away as far as the eye can see.
The fruits are so ripe they explode in your mouth—melons, peaches, fireplums, you’ve
never tasted such sweetness. You’ll see, I brought you some. Even at Storm’s End, with
that good wind off the bay, the days are so hot you can barely move. And you ought to
see the towns, Ned! Flowers everywhere, the markets bursting with food, the
summerwines so cheap and so good that you can get drunk just breathing the air.
Everyone is fat and drunk and rich.” He laughed and slapped his own ample stomach a
thump. “And the girls, Ned!” he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling. “I swear, women lose all
modesty in the heat. They swim naked in the river, right beneath the castle. Even in the
streets, it’s too damn hot for wool or fur, so they go around in these short gowns, silk if
they have the silver and cotton if not, but it’s all the same when they start sweating and
the cloth sticks to their skin, they might as well be naked.” The king laughed happily.
Robert Baratheon had always been a man of huge appetites, a man who knew how to
take his pleasures. That was not a charge anyone could lay at the door of Eddard Stark.
Yet Ned could not help but notice that those pleasures were taking a toll on the king.
Robert was breathing heavily by the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, his face
red in the lantern light as they stepped out into the darkness of the crypt.
“Your Grace,” Ned said respectfully. He swept the lantern in a wide semicircle. Shadows
moved and lurched. Flickering light touched the stones underfoot and brushed against a
long procession of granite pillars that marched ahead, two by two, into the dark.
Between the pillars, the dead sat on their stone thrones against the walls, backs against
the sepulchres that contained their mortal remains. “She is down at the end, with Father
and Brandon.”
He led the way between the pillars and Robert followed wordlessly, shivering in the
subterranean chill. It was always cold down here. Their footsteps rang off the stones and
echoed in the vault overhead as they walked among the dead of House Stark. The Lords
of Winterfell watched them pass. Their likenesses were carved into the stones that sealed
the tombs. In long rows they sat, blind eyes staring out into eternal darkness, while great
stone direwolves curled round their feet. The shifting shadows made the stone figures
seem to stir as the living passed by.
By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who had been
Lord of Winterfell, to keep the vengeful spirits in their crypts. The oldest had long ago
rusted away to nothing, leaving only a few red stains where the metal had rested on
stone. Ned wondered if that meant those ghosts were free to roam the castle now. He
hoped not. The first Lords of Winterfell had been men hard as the land they ruled. In the
centuries before the Dragonlords came over the sea, they had sworn allegiance to no
man, styling themselves the Kings in the North.
�Ned stopped at last and lifted the oil lantern. The crypt continued on into darkness
ahead of them, but beyond this point the tombs were empty and unsealed; black holes
waiting for their dead, waiting for him and his children. Ned did not like to think on
that. “Here,” he told his king.
Robert nodded silently, knelt, and bowed his head.
There were three tombs, side by side. Lord Rickard Stark, Ned’s father, had a long, stern
face. The stonemason had known him well. He sat with quiet dignity, stone fingers
holding tight to the sword across his lap, but in life all swords had failed him. In two
smaller sepulchres on either side were his children.
Brandon had been twenty when he died, strangled by order of the Mad King Aerys
Targaryen only a few short days before he was to wed Catelyn Tully of Riverrun. His
father had been forced to watch him die. He was the true heir, the eldest, born to rule.
Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had loved
her with all his heart. Robert had loved her even more. She was to have been his bride.
“She was more beautiful than that,” the king said after a silence. His eyes lingered on
Lyanna’s face, as if he could will her back to life. Finally he rose, made awkward by his
weight. “Ah, damn it, Ned, did you have to bury her in a place like this?” His voice was
hoarse with remembered grief. “She deserved more than darkness . . . ”
“She was a Stark of Winterfell,” Ned said quietly. “This is her place.”
“She should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and clouds above
her and the rain to wash her clean.”
“I was with her when she died,” Ned reminded the king. “She wanted to come home, to
rest beside Brandon and Father.” He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had
cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken
her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word,
the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then,
how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals
spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had
found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland
Reed, had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. “I bring her flowers when
I can,” he said. “Lyanna was . . . fond of flowers.”
The king touched her cheek, his fingers brushing across the rough stone as gently as if it
�were living flesh. “I vowed to kill Rhaegar for what he did to her.”
“You did,” Ned reminded him.
“Only once,” Robert said bitterly.
They had come together at the ford of the Trident while the battle crashed around them,
Robert with his warhammer and his great antlered helm, the Targaryen prince armored
all in black. On his breastplate was the three-headed dragon of his House, wrought all in
rubies that flashed like fire in the sunlight. The waters of the Trident ran red around the
hooves of their destriers as they circled and clashed, again and again, until at last a
crushing blow from Robert’s hammer stove in the dragon and the chest beneath it.
When Ned had finally come on the scene, Rhaegar lay dead in the stream, while men of
both armies scrabbled in the swirling waters for rubies knocked free of his armor.
“In my dreams, I kill him every night,” Robert admitted. “A thousand deaths will still be
less than he deserves.”
There was nothing Ned could say to that. After a quiet, he said, “We should return, Your
Grace. Your wife will be waiting.”
“The Others take my wife,” Robert muttered sourly, but he started back the way they had
come, his footsteps falling heavily. “And if I hear ‘Your Grace’ once more, I’ll have your
head on a spike. We are more to each other than that.”
“I had not forgotten,” Ned replied quietly. When the king did not answer, he said, “Tell
me about Jon.”
Robert shook his head. “I have never seen a man sicken so quickly. We gave a tourney on
my son’s name day. If you had seen Jon then, you would have sworn he would live
forever. A fortnight later he was dead. The sickness was like a fire in his gut. It burned
right through him.” He paused beside a pillar, before the tomb of a long-dead Stark. “I
loved that old man.”
“We both did.” Ned paused a moment. “Catelyn fears for her sister. How does Lysa bear
her grief?”
Robert’s mouth gave a bitter twist. “Not well, in truth,” he admitted. “I think losing Jon
has driven the woman mad, Ned. She has taken the boy back to the Eyrie. Against my
wishes. I had hoped to foster him with Tywin Lannister at Casterly Rock. Jon had no
brothers, no other sons. Was I supposed to leave him to be raised by women?”
�Ned would sooner entrust a child to a pit viper than to Lord Tywin, but he left his doubts
unspoken. Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word. “The
wife has lost the husband,” he said carefully. “Perhaps the mother feared to lose the son.
The boy is very young.”
“Six, and sickly, and Lord of the Eyrie, gods have mercy,” the king swore. “Lord Tywin
had never taken a ward before. Lysa ought to have been honored. The Lannisters are a
great and noble House. She refused to even hear of it. Then she left in the dead of night,
without so much as a by-your-leave. Cersei was furious.” He sighed deeply. “The boy is
my namesake, did you know that? Robert Arryn. I am sworn to protect him. How can I
do that if his mother steals him away?”
“I will take him as ward, if you wish,” Ned said. “Lysa should consent to that. She and
Catelyn were close as girls, and she would be welcome here as well.”
“A generous offer, my friend,” the king said, “but too late. Lord Tywin has already given
his consent. Fostering the boy elsewhere would be a grievous affront to him.”
“I have more concern for my nephew’s welfare than I do for Lannister pride,” Ned
declared.
“That is because you do not sleep with a Lannister.” Robert laughed, the sound rattling
among the tombs and bouncing from the vaulted ceiling. His smile was a flash of white
teeth in the thicket of the huge black beard. “Ah, Ned,” he said, “you are still too
serious.” He put a massive arm around Ned’s shoulders. “I had planned to wait a few
days to speak to you, but I see now there’s no need for it. Come, walk with me.”
They started back down between the pillars. Blind stone eyes seemed to follow them as
they passed. The king kept his arm around Ned’s shoulder. “You must have wondered
why I finally came north to Winterfell, after so long.”
Ned had his suspicions, but he did not give them voice. “For the joy of my company,
surely,” he said lightly. “And there is the Wall. You need to see it, Your Grace, to walk
along its battlements and talk to those who man it. The Night’s Watch is a shadow of
what it once was. Benjen says—”
“No doubt I will hear what your brother says soon enough,” Robert said. “The Wall has
stood for what, eight thousand years? It can keep a few days more. I have more pressing
concerns. These are difficult times. I need good men about me. Men like Jon Arryn. He
served as Lord of the Eyrie, as Warden of the East, as the Hand of the King. He will not
be easy to replace.”
�“His son . . . ” Ned began.
“His son will succeed to the Eyrie and all its incomes,” Robert said brusquely. “No more.”
That took Ned by surprise. He stopped, startled, and turned to look at his king. The
words came unbidden. “The Arryns have always been Wardens of the East. The title goes
with the domain.”
“Perhaps when he comes of age, the honor can be restored to him,” Robert said. “I have
this year to think of, and next. A six-year-old boy is no war leader, Ned.”
“In peace, the title is only an honor. Let the boy keep it. For his father’s sake if not his
own. Surely you owe Jon that much for his service.”
The king was not pleased. He took his arm from around Ned’s shoulders. “Jon’s service
was the duty he owed his liege lord. I am not ungrateful, Ned. You of all men ought to
know that. But the son is not the father. A mere boy cannot hold the east.” Then his tone
softened. “Enough of this. There is a more important office to discuss, and I would not
argue with you.” Robert grasped Ned by the elbow. “I have need of you, Ned.”
“I am yours to command, Your Grace. Always.” They were words he had to say, and so he
said them, apprehensive about what might come next.
Robert scarcely seemed to hear him. “Those years we spent in the Eyrie . . . gods, those
were good years. I want you at my side again, Ned. I want you down in King’s Landing,
not up here at the end of the world where you are no damned use to anybody.” Robert
looked off into the darkness, for a moment as melancholy as a Stark. “I swear to you,
sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning one. Laws are a tedious
business and counting coppers is worse. And the people . . . there is no end of them. I sit
on that damnable iron chair and listen to them complain until my mind is numb and my
ass is raw. They all want something, money or land or justice. The lies they tell . . . and
my lords and ladies are no better. I am surrounded by flatterers and fools. It can drive a
man to madness, Ned. Half of them don’t dare tell me the truth, and the other half can’t
find it. There are nights I wish we had lost at the Trident. Ah, no, not truly, but . . .
“I understand,” Ned said softly.
Robert looked at him. “I think you do. If so, you are the only one, my old friend.” He
smiled. “Lord Eddard Stark, I would name you the Hand of the King.”
Ned dropped to one knee. The offer did not surprise him; what other reason could
Robert have had for coming so far? The Hand of the King was the second-most powerful
�man in the Seven Kingdoms. He spoke with the king’s voice, commanded the king’s
armies, drafted the king’s laws. At times he even sat upon the Iron Throne to dispense
king’s justice, when the king was absent, or sick, or otherwise indisposed. Robert was
offering him a responsibility as large as the realm itself.
It was the last thing in the world he wanted.
“Your Grace,” he said. “I am not worthy of the honor.”
Robert groaned with good-humored impatience. “If I wanted to honor you, I’d let you
retire. I am planning to make you run the kingdom and fight the wars while I eat and
drink and wench myself into an early grave.” He slapped his gut and grinned. “You know
the saying, about the king and his Hand?”
Ned knew the saying. “What the king dreams,” he said, “the Hand builds.”
“I bedded a fishmaid once who told me the lowborn have a choicer way to put it. The
king eats, they say, and the Hand takes the shit.” He threw back his head and roared his
laughter. The echoes rang through the darkness, and all around them the dead of
Winterfell seemed to watch with cold and disapproving eyes.
Finally the laughter dwindled and stopped. Ned was still on one knee, his eyes upraised.
“Damn it, Ned,” the king complained. “You might at least humor me with a smile.”
“They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a man’s laughter freezes in his throat
and chokes him to death,” Ned said evenly. “Perhaps that is why the Starks have so little
humor.”
“Come south with me, and I’ll teach you how to laugh again,” the king promised. “You
helped me win this damnable throne, now help me hold it. We were meant to rule
together. If Lyanna had lived, we should have been brothers, bound by blood as well as
affection. Well, it is not too late. I have a son. You have a daughter. My Joff and your
Sansa shall join our houses, as Lyanna and I might once have done.”
This offer did surprise him. “Sansa is only eleven.”
Robert waved an impatient hand. “Old enough for betrothal. The marriage can wait a
few years.” The king smiled. “Now stand up and say yes, curse you.”
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Your Grace,” Ned answered. He hesitated.
“These honors are all so unexpected. May I have some time to consider? I need to tell my
wife . . . ”
�“Yes, yes, of course, tell Catelyn, sleep on it if you must.” The king reached down, clasped
Ned by the hand, and pulled him roughly to his feet. “Just don’t keep me waiting too
long. I am not the most patient of men.”
For a moment Eddard Stark was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. This was his
place, here in the north. He looked at the stone figures all around them, breathed deep
in the chill silence of the crypt. He could feel the eyes of the dead. They were all
listening, he knew. And winter was coming.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
JON
There were times—not many, but a few—when Jon Snow was glad he was a bastard. As
he filled his wine cup once more from a passing flagon, it struck him that this might be
one of them.
He settled back in his place on the bench among the younger squires and drank. The
sweet, fruity taste of summerwine filled his mouth and brought a smile to his lips.
The Great Hall of Winterfell was hazy with smoke and heavy with the smell of roasted
meat and fresh-baked bread. Its grey stone walls were draped with banners. White, gold,
crimson: the direwolf of Stark, Baratheon’s crowned stag, the lion of Lannister. A singer
was playing the high harp and reciting a ballad, but down at this end of the hall his voice
could scarcely be heard above the roar of the fire, the clangor of pewter plates and cups,
and the low mutter of a hundred drunken conversations.
It was the fourth hour of the welcoming feast laid for the king. Jon’s brothers and sisters
had been seated with the royal children, beneath the raised platform where Lord and
Lady Stark hosted the king and queen. In honor of the occasion, his lord father would
doubtless permit each child a glass of wine, but no more than that. Down here on the
benches, there was no one to stop Jon drinking as much as he had a thirst for.
And he was finding that he had a man’s thirst, to the raucous delight of the youths
around him, who urged him on every time he drained a glass. They were fine company,
and Jon relished the stories they were telling, tales of battle and bedding and the hunt.
He was certain that his companions were more entertaining than the king’s offspring.
He had sated his curiosity about the visitors when they made their entrance. The
procession had passed not a foot from the place he had been given on the bench, and Jon
had gotten a good long look at them all.
His lord father had come first, escorting the queen. She was as beautiful as men said. A
jeweled tiara gleamed amidst her long golden hair, its emeralds a perfect match for the
green of her eyes. His father helped her up the steps to the dais and led her to her seat,
but the queen never so much as looked at him. Even at fourteen, Jon could see through
her smile.
Next had come King Robert himself, with Lady Stark on his arm. The king was a great
�disappointment to Jon. His father had talked of him often: the peerless Robert
Baratheon, demon of the Trident, the fiercest warrior of the realm, a giant among
princes. Jon saw only a fat man, red-faced under his beard, sweating through his silks.
He walked like a man half in his cups.
After them came the children. Little Rickon first, managing the long walk with all the
dignity a three-year-old could muster. Jon had to urge him on when he stopped to visit.
Close behind came Robb, in grey wool trimmed with white, the Stark colors. He had the
Princess Myrcella on his arm. She was a wisp of a girl, not quite eight, her hair a cascade
of golden curls under a jeweled net. Jon noticed the shy looks she gave Robb as they
passed between the tables and the timid way she smiled at him. He decided she was
insipid. Robb didn’t even have the sense to realize how stupid she was; he was grinning
like a fool.
His half sisters escorted the royal princes. Arya was paired with plump young Tommen,
whose white-blond hair was longer than hers. Sansa, two years older, drew the crown
prince, Joffrey Baratheon. He was twelve, younger than Jon or Robb, but taller than
either, to Jon’s vast dismay. Prince Joffrey had his sister’s hair and his mother’s deep
green eyes. A thick tangle of blond curls dripped down past his golden choker and high
velvet collar. Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like
Joffrey’s pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell’s Great Hall.
He was more interested in the pair that came behind him: the queen’s brothers, the
Lannisters of Casterly Rock. The Lion and the Imp; there was no mistaking which was
which. Ser Jaime Lannister was twin to Queen Cersei; tall and golden, with flashing
green eyes and a smile that cut like a knife. He wore crimson silk, high black boots, a
black satin cloak. On the breast of his tunic, the lion of his House was embroidered in
gold thread, roaring its defiance. They called him the Lion of Lannister to his face and
whispered “Kingslayer” behind his back.
Jon found it hard to look away from him. This is what a king should look like, he
thought to himself as the man passed.
Then he saw the other one, waddling along half-hidden by his brother’s side. Tyrion
Lannister, the youngest of Lord Tywin’s brood and by far the ugliest. All that the gods
had given to Cersei and Jaime, they had denied Tyrion. He was a dwarf, half his
brother’s height, struggling to keep pace on stunted legs. His head was too large for his
body, with a brute’s squashed-in face beneath a swollen shelf of brow. One green eye and
one black one peered out from under a lank fall of hair so blond it seemed white. Jon
watched him with fascination.
The last of the high lords to enter were his uncle, Benjen Stark of the Night’s Watch, and
�his father’s ward, young Theon Greyjoy. Benjen gave Jon a warm smile as he went by.
Theon ignored him utterly, but there was nothing new in that. After all had been seated,
toasts were made, thanks were given and returned, and then the feasting began.
Jon had started drinking then, and he had not stopped.
Something rubbed against his leg beneath the table. Jon saw red eyes staring up at him.
“Hungry again?” he asked. There was still half a honeyed chicken in the center of the
table. Jon reached out to tear off a leg, then had a better idea. He knifed the bird whole
and let the carcass slide to the floor between his legs. Ghost ripped into it in savage
silence. His brothers and sisters had not been permitted to bring their wolves to the
banquet, but there were more curs than Jon could count at this end of the hall, and no
one had said a word about his pup. He told himself he was fortunate in that too.
His eyes stung. Jon rubbed at them savagely, cursing the smoke. He swallowed another
gulp of wine and watched his direwolf devour the chicken.
Dogs moved between the tables, trailing after the serving girls. One of them, a black
mongrel bitch with long yellow eyes, caught a scent of the chicken. She stopped and
edged under the bench to get a share. Jon watched the confrontation. The bitch growled
low in her throat and moved closer. Ghost looked up, silent, and fixed the dog with those
hot red eyes. The bitch snapped an angry challenge. She was three times the size of the
direwolf pup. Ghost did not move. He stood over his prize and opened his mouth, baring
his fangs. The bitch tensed, barked again, then thought better of this fight. She turned
and slunk away, with one last defiant snap to save her pride. Ghost went back to his
meal.
Jon grinned and reached under the table to ruffle the shaggy white fur. The direwolf
looked up at him, nipped gently at his hand, then went back to eating.
“Is this one of the direwolves I’ve heard so much of?” a familiar voice asked close at hand.
Jon looked up happily as his uncle Ben put a hand on his head and ruffled his hair much
as Jon had ruffled the wolf’s. “Yes,” he said. “His name is Ghost.”
One of the squires interrupted the bawdy story he’d been telling to make room at the
table for their lord’s brother. Benjen Stark straddled the bench with long legs and took
the wine cup out of Jon’s hand. “Summerwine,” he said after a taste. “Nothing so sweet.
How many cups have you had, Jon?”
Jon smiled.
�Ben Stark laughed. “As I feared. Ah, well. I believe I was younger than you the first time
I got truly and sincerely drunk.” He snagged a roasted onion, dripping brown with gravy,
from a nearby trencher and bit into it. It crunched.
His uncle was sharp-featured and gaunt as a mountain crag, but there was always a hint
of laughter in his blue-grey eyes. He dressed in black, as befitted a man of the Night’s
Watch. Tonight it was rich black velvet, with high leather boots and a wide belt with a
silver buckle. A heavy silver chain was looped round his neck. Benjen watched Ghost
with amusement as he ate his onion. “A very quiet wolf,” he observed.
“He’s not like the others,” Jon said. “He never makes a sound. That’s why I named him
Ghost. That, and because he’s white. The others are all dark, grey or black.”
“There are still direwolves beyond the Wall. We hear them on our rangings.” Benjen
Stark gave Jon a long look. “Don’t you usually eat at table with your brothers?”
“Most times,” Jon answered in a flat voice. “But tonight Lady Stark thought it might give
insult to the royal family to seat a bastard among them.”
“I see.” His uncle glanced over his shoulder at the raised table at the far end of the hall.
“My brother does not seem very festive tonight.”
Jon had noticed that too. A bastard had to learn to notice things, to read the truth that
people hid behind their eyes. His father was observing all the courtesies, but there was
tightness in him that Jon had seldom seen before. He said little, looking out over the hall
with hooded eyes, seeing nothing. Two seats away, the king had been drinking heavily all
night. His broad face was flushed behind his great black beard. He made many a toast,
laughed loudly at every jest, and attacked each dish like a starving man, but beside him
the queen seemed as cold as an ice sculpture. “The queen is angry too,” Jon told his
uncle in a low, quiet voice. “Father took the king down to the crypts this afternoon. The
queen didn’t want him to go.”
Benjen gave Jon a careful, measuring look. “You don’t miss much, do you, Jon? We
could use a man like you on the Wall.”
Jon swelled with pride. “Robb is a stronger lance than I am, but I’m the better sword,
and Hullen says I sit a horse as well as anyone in the castle.”
“Notable achievements.”
“Take me with you when you go back to the Wall,” Jon said in a sudden rush. “Father
will give me leave to go if you ask him, I know he will.”
�Uncle Benjen studied his face carefully. “The Wall is a hard place for a boy, Jon.”
“I am almost a man grown,” Jon protested. “I will turn fifteen on my next name day, and
Maester Luwin says bastards grow up faster than other children.”
“That’s true enough,” Benjen said with a downward twist of his mouth. He took Jon’s
cup from the table, filled it fresh from a nearby pitcher, and drank down a long swallow.
“Daeren Targaryen was only fourteen when he conquered Dorne,” Jon said. The Young
Dragon was one of his heroes.
“A conquest that lasted a summer,” his uncle pointed out. “Your Boy King lost ten
thousand men taking the place, and another fifty trying to hold it. Someone should have
told him that war isn’t a game.” He took another sip of wine. “Also,” he said, wiping his
mouth, “Daeren Targaryen was only eighteen when he died. Or have you forgotten that
part?”
“I forget nothing,” Jon boasted. The wine was making him bold. He tried to sit very
straight, to make himself seem taller. “I want to serve in the Night’s Watch, Uncle.”
He had thought on it long and hard, lying abed at night while his brothers slept around
him. Robb would someday inherit Winterfell, would command great armies as the
Warden of the North. Bran and Rickon would be Robb’s bannermen and rule holdfasts
in his name. His sisters Arya and Sansa would marry the heirs of other great houses and
go south as mistress of castles of their own. But what place could a bastard hope to earn?
“You don’t know what you’re asking, Jon. The Night’s Watch is a sworn brotherhood. We
have no families. None of us will ever father sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is
honor.”
“A bastard can have honor too,” Jon said. “I am ready to swear your oath.”
“You are a boy of fourteen,” Benjen said. “Not a man, not yet. Until you have known a
woman, you cannot understand what you would be giving up.”
“I don’t care about that!” Jon said hotly.
“You might, if you knew what it meant,” Benjen said. “If you knew what the oath would
cost you, you might be less eager to pay the price, son.”
Jon felt anger rise inside him. “I’m not your son!”
�Benjen Stark stood up. “More’s the pity.” He put a hand on Jon’s shoulder. “Come back
to me after you’ve fathered a few bastards of your own, and we’ll see how you feel.”
Jon trembled. “I will never father a bastard,” he said carefully. “Never!” He spat it out
like venom.
Suddenly he realized that the table had fallen silent, and they were all looking at him. He
felt the tears begin to well behind his eyes. He pushed himself to his feet.
“I must be excused,” he said with the last of his dignity. He whirled and bolted before
they could see him cry. He must have drunk more wine than he had realized. His feet got
tangled under him as he tried to leave, and he lurched sideways into a serving girl and
sent a flagon of spiced wine crashing to the floor. Laughter boomed all around him, and
Jon felt hot tears on his cheeks. Someone tried to steady him. He wrenched free of their
grip and ran, half-blind, for the door. Ghost followed close at his heels, out into the night.
The yard was quiet and empty. A lone sentry stood high on the battlements of the inner
wall, his cloak pulled tight around him against the cold. He looked bored and miserable
as he huddled there alone, but Jon would have traded places with him in an instant.
Otherwise the castle was dark and deserted. Jon had seen an abandoned holdfast once, a
drear place where nothing moved but the wind and the stones kept silent about whatever
people had lived there. Winterfell reminded him of that tonight.
The sounds of music and song spilled through the open windows behind him. They were
the last things Jon wanted to hear. He wiped away his tears on the sleeve of his shirt,
furious that he had let them fall, and turned to go.
“Boy,” a voice called out to him. Jon turned.
Tyrion Lannister was sitting on the ledge above the door to the Great Hall, looking for all
the world like a gargoyle. The dwarf grinned down at him. “Is that animal a wolf?”
“A direwolf,” Jon said. “His name is Ghost.” He stared up at the little man, his
disappointment suddenly forgotten. “What are you doing up there? Why aren’t you at
the feast?”
“Too hot, too noisy, and I’d drunk too much wine,” the dwarf told him. “I learned long
ago that it is considered rude to vomit on your brother. Might I have a closer look at your
wolf?”
Jon hesitated, then nodded slowly. “Can you climb down, or shall I bring a ladder?”
�“Oh, bleed that,” the little man said. He pushed himself off the ledge into empty air. Jon
gasped, then watched with awe as Tyrion Lannister spun around in a tight ball, landed
lightly on his hands, then vaulted backward onto his legs.
Ghost backed away from him uncertainly.
The dwarf dusted himself off and laughed. “I believe I’ve frightened your wolf. My
apologies.”
“He’s not scared,” Jon said. He knelt and called out. “Ghost, come here. Come on. That’s
it.”
The wolf pup padded closer and nuzzled at Jon’s face, but he kept a wary eye on Tyrion
Lannister, and when the dwarf reached out to pet him, he drew back and bared his fangs
in a silent snarl. “Shy, isn’t he?” Lannister observed.
“Sit, Ghost,” Jon commanded. “That’s it. Keep still.” He looked up at the dwarf. “You can
touch him now. He won’t move until I tell him to. I’ve been training him.”
“I see,” Lannister said. He ruffled the snow-white fur between Ghost’s ears and said,
“Nice wolf.”
“If I wasn’t here, he’d tear out your throat,” Jon said. It wasn’t actually true yet, but it
would be.
“In that case, you had best stay close,” the dwarf said. He cocked his oversized head to
one side and looked Jon over with his mismatched eyes. “I am Tyrion Lannister.”
“I know,” Jon said. He rose. Standing, he was taller than the dwarf. It made him feel
strange.
“You’re Ned Stark’s bastard, aren’t you?”
Jon felt a coldness pass right through him. He pressed his lips together and said nothing.
“Did I offend you?” Lannister said. “Sorry. Dwarfs don’t have to be tactful. Generations
of capering fools in motley have won me the right to dress badly and say any damn thing
that comes into my head.” He grinned. “You are the bastard, though.”
“Lord Eddard Stark is my father,” Jon admitted stiffly.
�Lannister studied his face. “Yes,” he said. “I can see it. You have more of the north in you
than your brothers.”
“Half brothers,” Jon corrected. He was pleased by the dwarf’s comment, but he tried not
to let it show.
“Let me give you some counsel, bastard,” Lannister said. “Never forget what you are, for
surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness.
Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
Jon was in no mood for anyone’s counsel. “What do you know about being a bastard?”
“All dwarfs are bastards in their father’s eyes.”
“You are your mother’s trueborn son of Lannister.”
“Am I?” the dwarf replied, sardonic. “Do tell my lord father. My mother died birthing
me, and he’s never been sure.”
“I don’t even know who my mother was,” Jon said.
“Some woman, no doubt. Most of them are.” He favored Jon with a rueful grin.
“Remember this, boy. All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs.”
And with that he turned and sauntered back into the feast, whistling a tune. When he
opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow clear across the yard, and for
just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
CATELYN
Of all the rooms in Winterfell’s Great Keep, Catelyn’s bedchambers were the hottest. She
seldom had to light a fire. The castle had been built over natural hot springs, and the
scalding waters rushed through its walls and chambers like blood through a man’s body,
driving the chill from the stone halls, filling the glass gardens with a moist warmth,
keeping the earth from freezing. Open pools smoked day and night in a dozen small
courtyards. That was a little thing, in summer; in winter, it was the difference between
life and death.
Catelyn’s bath was always hot and steaming, and her walls warm to the touch. The
warmth reminded her of Riverrun, of days in the sun with Lysa and Edmure, but Ned
could never abide the heat. The Starks were made for the cold, he would tell her, and she
would laugh and tell him in that case they had certainly built their castle in the wrong
place.
So when they had finished, Ned rolled off and climbed from her bed, as he had a
thousand times before. He crossed the room, pulled back the heavy tapestries, and threw
open the high narrow windows one by one, letting the night air into the chamber.
The wind swirled around him as he stood facing the dark, naked and empty-handed.
Catelyn pulled the furs to her chin and watched him. He looked somehow smaller and
more vulnerable, like the youth she had wed in the sept at Riverrun, fifteen long years
gone. Her loins still ached from the urgency of his lovemaking. It was a good ache. She
could feel his seed within her. She prayed that it might quicken there. It had been three
years since Rickon. She was not too old. She could give him another son.
“I will refuse him,” Ned said as he turned back to her. His eyes were haunted, his voice
thick with doubt.
Catelyn sat up in the bed. “You cannot. You must not.”
“My duties are here in the north. I have no wish to be Robert’s Hand.”
“He will not understand that. He is a king now, and kings are not like other men. If you
refuse to serve him, he will wonder why, and sooner or later he will begin to suspect that
you oppose him. Can’t you see the danger that would put us in?”
�Ned shook his head, refusing to believe. “Robert would never harm me or any of mine.
We were closer than brothers. He loves me. If I refuse him, he will roar and curse and
bluster, and in a week we will laugh about it together. I know the man!”
“You knew the man,” she said. “The king is a stranger to you.” Catelyn remembered the
direwolf dead in the snow, the broken antler lodged deep in her throat. She had to make
him see. “Pride is everything to a king, my lord. Robert came all this way to see you, to
bring you these great honors, you cannot throw them back in his face.”
“Honors?” Ned laughed bitterly.
“In his eyes, yes,” she said.
“And in yours?”
“And in mine,” she blazed, angry now. Why couldn’t he see? “He offers his own son in
marriage to our daughter, what else would you call that? Sansa might someday be queen.
Her sons could rule from the Wall to the mountains of Dorne. What is so wrong with
that?”
“Gods, Catelyn, Sansa is only eleven,” Ned said. “And Joffrey . . . Joffrey is . . . ”
She finished for him. “ . . . crown prince, and heir to the Iron Throne. And I was only
twelve when my father promised me to your brother Brandon.”
That brought a bitter twist to Ned’s mouth. “Brandon. Yes. Brandon would know what to
do. He always did. It was all meant for Brandon. You, Winterfell, everything. He was
born to be a King’s Hand and a father to queens. I never asked for this cup to pass to me.”
“Perhaps not,” Catelyn said, “but Brandon is dead, and the cup has passed, and you must
drink from it, like it or not.”
Ned turned away from her, back to the night. He stood staring out in the darkness,
watching the moon and the stars perhaps, or perhaps the sentries on the wall.
Catelyn softened then, to see his pain. Eddard Stark had married her in Brandon’s place,
as custom decreed, but the shadow of his dead brother still lay between them, as did the
other, the shadow of the woman he would not name, the woman who had borne him his
bastard son.
She was about to go to him when the knock came at the door, loud and unexpected. Ned
�turned, frowning. “What is it?”
Desmond’s voice came through the door. “My lord, Maester Luwin is without and begs
urgent audience.”
“You told him I had left orders not to be disturbed?”
“Yes, my lord. He insists.”
“Very well. Send him in.”
Ned crossed to the wardrobe and slipped on a heavy robe. Catelyn realized suddenly how
cold it had become. She sat up in bed and pulled the furs to her chin. “Perhaps we should
close the windows,” she suggested.
Ned nodded absently. Maester Luwin was shown in.
The maester was a small grey man. His eyes were grey, and quick, and saw much. His
hair was grey, what little the years had left him. His robe was grey wool, trimmed with
white fur, the Stark colors. Its great floppy sleeves had pockets hidden inside. Luwin was
always tucking things into those sleeves and producing other things from them: books,
messages, strange artifacts, toys for the children. With all he kept hidden in his sleeves,
Catelyn was surprised that Maester Luwin could lift his arms at all.
The maester waited until the door had closed behind him before he spoke. “My lord,” he
said to Ned, “pardon for disturbing your rest. I have been left a message.”
Ned looked irritated. “Been left? By whom? Has there been a rider? I was not told.”
“There was no rider, my lord. Only a carved wooden box, left on a table in my
observatory while I napped. My servants saw no one, but it must have been brought by
someone in the king’s party. We have had no other visitors from the south.”
“A wooden box, you say?” Catelyn said.
“Inside was a fine new lens for the observatory, from Myr by the look of it. The
lenscrafters of Myr are without equal.”
Ned frowned. He had little patience for this sort of thing, Catelyn knew. “A lens,” he said.
“What has that to do with me?”
�“I asked the same question,” Maester Luwin said. “Clearly there was more to this than
the seeming.”
Under the heavy weight of her furs, Catelyn shivered. “A lens is an instrument to help us
see.”
“Indeed it is.” He fingered the collar of his order; a heavy chain worn tight around the
neck beneath his robe, each link forged from a different metal.
Catelyn could feel dread stirring inside her once again. “What is it that they would have
us see more clearly?”
“The very thing I asked myself.” Maester Luwin drew a tightly rolled paper out of his
sleeve. “I found the true message concealed within a false bottom when I dismantled the
box the lens had come in, but it is not for my eyes.”
Ned held out his hand. “Let me have it, then.”
Luwin did not stir. “Pardons, my lord. The message is not for you either. It is marked for
the eyes of the Lady Catelyn, and her alone. May I approach?”
Catelyn nodded, not trusting to speak. The maester placed the paper on the table beside
the bed. It was sealed with a small blob of blue wax. Luwin bowed and began to retreat.
“Stay,” Ned commanded him. His voice was grave. He looked at Catelyn. “What is it? My
lady, you’re shaking.”
“I’m afraid,” she admitted. She reached out and took the letter in trembling hands. The
furs dropped away from her nakedness, forgotten. In the blue wax was the moon-andfalcon seal of House Arryn. “It’s from Lysa.” Catelyn looked at her husband. “It will not
make us glad,” she told him. “There is grief in this message, Ned. I can feel it.”
Ned frowned, his face darkening. “Open it.”
Catelyn broke the seal.
Her eyes moved over the words. At first they made no sense to her. Then she
remembered. “Lysa took no chances. When we were girls together, we had a private
language, she and I.”
“Can you read it?”
�“Yes,” Catelyn admitted.
“Then tell us.”
“Perhaps I should withdraw,” Maester Luwin said.
“No,” Catelyn said. “We will need your counsel.” She threw back the furs and climbed
from the bed. The night air was as cold as the grave on her bare skin as she padded
across the room.
Maester Luwin averted his eyes. Even Ned looked shocked. “What are you doing?” he
asked.
“Lighting a fire,” Catelyn told him. She found a dressing gown and shrugged into it, then
knelt over the cold hearth.
“Maester Luwin—” Ned began.
“Maester Luwin has delivered all my children,” Catelyn said. “This is no time for false
modesty.” She slid the paper in among the kindling and placed the heavier logs on top of
it.
Ned crossed the room, took her by the arm, and pulled her to her feet. He held her there,
his face inches from her. “My lady, tell me! What was this message?”
Catelyn stiffened in his grasp. “A warning,” she said softly. “If we have the wits to hear.”
His eyes searched her face. “Go on.”
“Lysa says Jon Arryn was murdered.”
His fingers tightened on her arm. “By whom?”
“The Lannisters,” she told him. “The queen.”
Ned released his hold on her arm. There were deep red marks on her skin. “Gods,” he
whispered. His voice was hoarse. “Your sister is sick with grief. She cannot know what
she is saying.”
“She knows,” Catelyn said. “Lysa is impulsive, yes, but this message was carefully
planned, cleverly hidden. She knew it meant death if her letter fell into the wrong hands.
�To risk so much, she must have had more than mere suspicion.” Catelyn looked to her
husband. “Now we truly have no choice. You must be Robert’s Hand. You must go south
with him and learn the truth.”
She saw at once that Ned had reached a very different conclusion. “The only truths I
know are here. The south is a nest of adders I would do better to avoid.”
Luwin plucked at his chain collar where it had chafed the soft skin of his throat. “The
Hand of the King has great power, my lord. Power to find the truth of Lord Arryn’s
death, to bring his killers to the king’s justice. Power to protect Lady Arryn and her son,
if the worst be true.”
Ned glanced helplessly around the bedchamber. Catelyn’s heart went out to him, but she
knew she could not take him in her arms just then. First the victory must be won, for her
children’s sake. “You say you love Robert like a brother. Would you leave your brother
surrounded by Lannisters?”
“The Others take both of you,” Ned muttered darkly. He turned away from them and
went to the window. She did not speak, nor did the maester. They waited, quiet, while
Eddard Stark said a silent farewell to the home he loved. When he turned away from the
window at last, his voice was tired and full of melancholy, and moisture glittered faintly
in the corners of his eyes. “My father went south once, to answer the summons of a king.
He never came home again.”
“A different time,” Maester Luwin said. “A different king.”
“Yes,” Ned said dully. He seated himself in a chair by the hearth. “Catelyn, you shall stay
here in Winterfell.”
His words were like an icy draft through her heart. “No,” she said, suddenly afraid. Was
this to be her punishment? Never to see his face again, nor to feel his arms around her?
“Yes,” Ned said, in words that would brook no argument. “You must govern the north in
my stead, while I run Robert’s errands. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. Robb
is fourteen. Soon enough, he will be a man grown. He must learn to rule, and I will not
be here for him. Make him part of your councils. He must be ready when his time
comes.”
“Gods will, not for many years,” Maester Luwin murmured.
“Maester Luwin, I trust you as I would my own blood. Give my wife your voice in all
things great and small. Teach my son the things he needs to know. Winter is coming.”
�Maester Luwin nodded gravely. Then silence fell, until Catelyn found her courage and
asked the question whose answer she most dreaded. “What of the other children?”
Ned stood, and took her in his arms, and held her face close to his. “Rickon is very
young,” he said gently. “He should stay here with you and Robb. The others I would take
with me.”
“I could not bear it,” Catelyn said, trembling.
“You must,” he said. “Sansa must wed Joffrey, that is clear now, we must give them no
grounds to suspect our devotion. And it is past time that Arya learned the ways of a
southron court. In a few years she will be of an age to marry too.”
Sansa would shine in the south, Catelyn thought to herself, and the gods knew that Arya
needed refinement. Reluctantly, she let go of them in her heart. But not Bran. Never
Bran. “Yes,” she said, “but please, Ned, for the love you bear me, let Bran remain here at
Winterfell. He is only seven.”
“I was eight when my father sent me to foster at the Eyrie,” Ned said. “Ser Rodrik tells
me there is bad feeling between Robb and Prince Joffrey. That is not healthy. Bran can
bridge that distance. He is a sweet boy, quick to laugh, easy to love. Let him grow up
with the young princes, let him become their friend as Robert became mine. Our House
will be the safer for it.”
He was right; Catelyn knew it. It did not make the pain any easier to bear. She would
lose all four of them, then: Ned, and both girls, and her sweet, loving Bran. Only Robb
and little Rickon would be left to her. She felt lonely already. Winterfell was such a vast
place. “Keep him off the walls, then,” she said bravely. “You know how Bran loves to
climb.”
Ned kissed the tears from her eyes before they could fall. “Thank you, my lady,” he
whispered. “This is hard, I know.”
“What of Jon Snow, my lord?” Maester Luwin asked.
Catelyn tensed at the mention of the name. Ned felt the anger in her, and pulled away.
Many men fathered bastards. Catelyn had grown up with that knowledge. It came as no
surprise to her, in the first year of her marriage, to learn that Ned had fathered a child
on some girl chance met on campaign. He had a man’s needs, after all, and they had
spent that year apart, Ned off at war in the south while she remained safe in her father’s
�castle at Riverrun. Her thoughts were more of Robb, the infant at her breast, than of the
husband she scarcely knew. He was welcome to whatever solace he might find between
battles. And if his seed quickened, she expected he would see to the child’s needs.
He did more than that. The Starks were not like other men. Ned brought his bastard
home with him, and called him “son” for all the north to see. When the wars were over at
last, and Catelyn rode to Winterfell, Jon and his wet nurse had already taken up
residence.
That cut deep. Ned would not speak of the mother, not so much as a word, but a castle
has no secrets, and Catelyn heard her maids repeating tales they heard from the lips of
her husband’s soldiers. They whispered of Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning,
deadliest of the seven knights of Aerys’s Kingsguard, and of how their young lord had
slain him in single combat. And they told how afterward Ned had carried Ser Arthur’s
sword back to the beautiful young sister who awaited him in a castle called Starfall on
the shores of the Summer Sea. The Lady Ashara Dayne, tall and fair, with haunting
violet eyes. It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally, in bed one
night, Catelyn had asked her husband the truth of it, asked him to his face.
That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her. “Never ask me
about Jon,” he said, cold as ice. “He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. And
now I will learn where you heard that name, my lady.” She had pledged to obey; she told
him; and from that day on, the whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne’s name was
never heard in Winterfell again.
Whoever Jon’s mother had been, Ned must have loved her fiercely, for nothing Catelyn
said would persuade him to send the boy away. It was the one thing she could never
forgive him. She had come to love her husband with all her heart, but she had never
found it in her to love Jon. She might have overlooked a dozen bastards for Ned’s sake,
so long as they were out of sight. Jon was never out of sight, and as he grew, he looked
more like Ned than any of the trueborn sons she bore him. Somehow that made it worse.
“Jon must go,” she said now.
“He and Robb are close,” Ned said. “I had hoped . . . ”
“He cannot stay here,” Catelyn said, cutting him off. “He is your son, not mine. I will not
have him.” It was hard, she knew, but no less the truth. Ned would do the boy no
kindness by leaving him here at Winterfell.
The look Ned gave her was anguished. “You know I cannot take him south. There will be
no place for him at court. A boy with a bastard’s name . . . you know what they will say of
him. He will be shunned.”
�Catelyn armored her heart against the mute appeal in her husband’s eyes. “They say
your friend Robert has fathered a dozen bastards himself.”
“And none of them has ever been seen at court!” Ned blazed. “The Lannister woman has
seen to that. How can you be so damnably cruel, Catelyn? He is only a boy. He—”
His fury was on him. He might have said more, and worse, but Maester Luwin cut in.
“Another solution presents itself,” he said, his voice quiet. “Your brother Benjen came to
me about Jon a few days ago. It seems the boy aspires to take the black.”
Ned looked shocked. “He asked to join the Night’s Watch?”
Catelyn said nothing. Let Ned work it out in his own mind; her voice would not be
welcome now. Yet gladly would she have kissed the maester just then. His was the
perfect solution. Benjen Stark was a Sworn Brother. Jon would be a son to him, the child
he would never have. And in time the boy would take the oath as well. He would father
no sons who might someday contest with Catelyn’s own grandchildren for Winterfell.
Maester Luwin said, “There is great honor in service on the Wall, my lord.”
“And even a bastard may rise high in the Night’s Watch,” Ned reflected. Still, his voice
was troubled. “Jon is so young. If he asked this when he was a man grown, that would be
one thing, but a boy of fourteen . . . ”
“A hard sacrifice,” Maester Luwin agreed. “Yet these are hard times, my lord. His road is
no crueler than yours or your lady’s.”
Catelyn thought of the three children she must lose. It was not easy keeping silent then.
Ned turned away from them to gaze out the window, his long face silent and thoughtful.
Finally he sighed, and turned back. “Very well,” he said to Maester Luwin. “I suppose it
is for the best. I will speak to Ben.”
“When shall we tell Jon?” the maester asked.
“When I must. Preparations must be made. It will be a fortnight before we are ready to
depart. I would sooner let Jon enjoy these last few days. Summer will end soon enough,
and childhood as well. When the time comes, I will tell him myself.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
ARYA
Arya’s stitches were crooked again.
She frowned down at them with dismay and glanced over to where her sister Sansa sat
among the other girls. Sansa’s needlework was exquisite. Everyone said so. “Sansa’s
work is as pretty as she is,” Septa Mordane told their lady mother once. “She has such
fine, delicate hands.” When Lady Catelyn had asked about Arya, the septa had sniffed.
“Arya has the hands of a blacksmith.”
Arya glanced furtively across the room, worried that Septa Mordane might have read her
thoughts, but the septa was paying her no attention today. She was sitting with the
Princess Myrcella, all smiles and admiration. It was not often that the septa was
privileged to instruct a royal princess in the womanly arts, as she had said when the
queen brought Myrcella to join them. Arya thought that Myrcella’s stitches looked a little
crooked too, but you would never know it from the way Septa Mordane was cooing.
She studied her own work again, looking for some way to salvage it, then sighed and put
down the needle. She looked glumly at her sister. Sansa was chatting away happily as she
worked. Beth Cassel, Ser Rodrik’s little girl, was sitting by her feet, listening to every
word she said, and Jeyne Poole was leaning over to whisper something in her ear.
“What are you talking about?” Arya asked suddenly.
Jeyne gave her a startled look, then giggled. Sansa looked abashed. Beth blushed. No one
answered.
“Tell me,” Arya said.
Jeyne glanced over to make certain that Septa Mordane was not listening. Myrcella said
something then, and the septa laughed along with the rest of the ladies.
“We were talking about the prince,” Sansa said, her voice soft as a kiss.
Arya knew which prince she meant: Jofftey, of course. The tall, handsome one. Sansa got
to sit with him at the feast. Arya had to sit with the little fat one. Naturally.
�“Joffrey likes your sister,” Jeyne whispered, proud as if she had something to do with it.
She was the daughter of Winterfell’s steward and Sansa’s dearest friend. “He told her she
was very beautiful.”
“He’s going to marry her,” little Beth said dreamily, hugging herself. “Then Sansa will be
queen of all the realm.”
Sansa had the grace to blush. She blushed prettily. She did everything prettily, Arya
thought with dull resentment. “Beth, you shouldn’t make up stories,” Sansa corrected
the younger girl, gently stroking her hair to take the harshness out of her words. She
looked at Arya. “What did you think of Prince Joff, sister? He’s very gallant, don’t you
think?”
“Jon says he looks like a girl,” Arya said.
Sansa sighed as she stitched. “Poor Jon,” she said. “He gets jealous because he’s a
bastard.”
“He’s our brother,” Arya said, much too loudly. Her voice cut through the afternoon
quiet of the tower room.
Septa Mordane raised her eyes. She had a bony face, sharp eyes, and a thin lipless mouth
made for frowning. It was frowning now. “What are you talking about, children?”
“Our half brother,” Sansa corrected, soft and precise. She smiled for the septa. “Arya and
I were remarking on how pleased we were to have the princess with us today,” she said.
Septa Mordane nodded. “Indeed. A great honor for us all.” Princess Myrcella smiled
uncertainly at the compliment. “Arya, why aren’t you at work?” the septa asked. She rose
to her feet, starched skirts rustling as she started across the room. “Let me see your
stitches.”
Arya wanted to scream. It was just like Sansa to go and attract the septa’s attention.
“Here,” she said, surrendering up her work.
The septa examined the fabric. “Arya, Arya, Arya,” she said. “This will not do. This will
not do at all.”
Everyone was looking at her. It was too much. Sansa was too well bred to smile at her
sister’s disgrace, but Jeyne was smirking on her behalf. Even Princess Myrcella looked
sorry for her. Arya felt tears filling her eyes. She pushed herself out of her chair and
bolted for the door.
�Septa Mordane called after her. “Arya, come back here! Don’t you take another step!
Your lady mother will hear of this. In front of our royal princess too! You’ll shame us all!”
Arya stopped at the door and turned back, biting her lip. The tears were running down
her cheeks now. She managed a stiff little bow to Myrcella. “By your leave, my lady.”
Myrcella blinked at her and looked to her ladies for guidance. But if she was uncertain,
Septa Mordane was not. “Just where do you think you are going, Arya?” the septa
demanded.
Arya glared at her. “I have to go shoe a horse,” she said sweetly, taking a brief
satisfaction in the shock on the septa’s face. Then she whirled and made her exit,
running down the steps as fast as her feet would take her.
It wasn’t fair. Sansa had everything. Sansa was two years older; maybe by the time Arya
had been born, there had been nothing left. Often it felt that way. Sansa could sew and
dance and sing. She wrote poetry. She knew how to dress. She played the high harp and
the bells. Worse, she was beautiful. Sansa had gotten their mother’s fine high
cheekbones and the thick auburn hair of the Tullys. Arya took after their lord father. Her
hair was a lusterless brown, and her face was long and solemn. Jeyne used to call her
Arya Horseface, and neigh whenever she came near. It hurt that the one thing Arya
could do better than her sister was ride a horse. Well, that and manage a household.
Sansa had never had much of a head for figures. If she did marry Prince Joff, Arya hoped
for his sake that he had a good steward.
Nymeria was waiting for her in the guardroom at the base of the stairs. She bounded to
her feet as soon as she caught sight of Arya. Arya grinned. The wolf pup loved her, even
if no one else did. They went everywhere together, and Nymeria slept in her room, at the
foot of her bed. If Mother had not forbidden it, Arya would gladly have taken the wolf
with her to needlework. Let Septa Mordane complain about her stitches then.
Nymeria nipped eagerly at her hand as Arya untied her. She had yellow eyes. When they
caught the sunlight, they gleamed like two golden coins. Arya had named her after the
warrior queen of the Rhoyne, who had led her people across the narrow sea. That had
been a great scandal too. Sansa, of course, had named her pup “Lady.” Arya made a face
and hugged the wolfling tight. Nymeria licked her ear, and she giggled.
By now Septa Mordane would certainly have sent word to her lady mother. If she went to
her room, they would find her. Arya did not care to be found. She had a better notion.
The boys were at practice in the yard. She wanted to see Robb put gallant Prince Joffrey
flat on his back. “Come,” she whispered to Nymeria. She got up and ran, the wolf coming
�hard at her heels.
There was a window in the covered bridge between the armory and the Great Keep
where you had a view of the whole yard. That was where they headed.
They arrived, flushed and breathless, to find Jon seated on the sill, one leg drawn up
languidly to his chin. He was watching the action, so absorbed that he seemed unaware
of her approach until his white wolf moved to meet them. Nymeria stalked closer on
wary feet. Ghost, already larger than his litter mates, smelled her, gave her ear a careful
nip, and settled back down.
Jon gave her a curious look. “Shouldn’t you be working on your stitches, little sister?”
Arya made a face at him. “I wanted to see them fight.”
He smiled. “Come here, then.”
Arya climbed up on the window and sat beside him, to a chorus of thuds and grunts from
the yard below.
To her disappointment, it was the younger boys drilling. Bran was so heavily padded he
looked as though he had belted on a featherbed, and Prince Tommen, who was plump to
begin with, seemed positively round. They were huffing and puffing and hitting at each
other with padded wooden swords under the watchful eye of old Ser Rodrik Cassel, the
master-at-arms, a great stout keg of a man with magnificent white cheek whiskers. A
dozen spectators, man and boy, were calling out encouragement, Robb’s voice the
loudest among them. She spotted Theon Greyjoy beside him, his black doublet
emblazoned with the golden kraken of his House, a look of wry contempt on his face.
Both of the combatants were staggering. Arya judged that they had been at it awhile.
“A shade more exhausting than needlework,” Jon observed.
“A shade more fun than needlework,” Arya gave back at him. Jon grinned, reached over,
and messed up her hair. Arya flushed. They had always been close. Jon had their father’s
face, as she did. They were the only ones. Robb and Sansa and Bran and even little
Rickon all took after the Tullys, with easy smiles and fire in their hair. When Arya had
been little, she had been afraid that meant that she was a bastard too. It been Jon she
had gone to in her fear, and Jon who had reassured her.
“Why aren’t you down in the yard?” Arya asked him.
He gave her a half smile. “Bastards are not allowed to damage young princes,” he said.
�“Any bruises they take in the practice yard must come from trueborn swords.”
“Oh.” Arya felt abashed. She should have realized. For the second time today, Arya
reflected that life was not fair.
She watched her little brother whack at Tommen. “I could do just as good as Bran,” she
said. “He’s only seven. I’m nine.”
Jon looked her over with all his fourteen-year-old wisdom. “You’re too skinny,” he said.
He took her arm to feel her muscle. Then he sighed and shook his head. “I doubt you
could even lift a longsword, little sister, never mind swing one.”
Arya snatched back her arm and glared at him. Jon messed up her hair again. They
watched Bran and Tommen circle each other.
“You see Prince Joffrey?” Jon asked.
She hadn’t, not at first glance, but when she looked again she found him to the back,
under the shade of the high stone wall. He was surrounded by men she did not
recognize, young squires in the livery of Lannister and Baratheon, strangers all. There
were a few older men among them; knights, she surmised.
“Look at the arms on his surcoat,” Jon suggested.
Arya looked. An ornate shield had been embroidered on the prince’s padded surcoat. No
doubt the needlework was exquisite. The arms were divided down the middle; on one
side was the crowned stag of the royal House, on the other the lion of Lannister.
“The Lannisters are proud,” Jon observed. “You’d think the royal sigil would be
sufficient, but no. He makes his mother’s House equal in honor to the king’s.”
“The woman is important too!” Arya protested.
Jon chuckled. “Perhaps you should do the same thing, little sister. Wed Tully to Stark in
your arms.”
“A wolf with a fish in its mouth?” It made her laugh. “That would look silly. Besides, if a
girl can’t fight, why should she have a coat of arms?”
Jon shrugged. “Girls get the arms but not the swords. Bastards get the swords but not
the arms. I did not make the rules, little sister.”
�There was a shout from the courtyard below. Prince Tommen was rolling in the dust,
trying to get up and failing. All the padding made him look like a turtle on its back. Bran
was standing over him with upraised wooden sword, ready to whack him again once he
regained his feet. The men began to laugh.
“Enough!” Ser Rodrik called out. He gave the prince a hand and yanked him back to his
feet. “Well fought. Lew, Donnis, help them out of their armor.” He looked around.
“Prince Joffrey, Robb, will you go another round?”
Robb, already sweaty from a previous bout, moved forward eagerly. “Gladly.”
Joffrey moved into the sunlight in response to Rodrik’s summons. His hair shone like
spun gold. He looked bored. “This is a game for children, Ser Rodrik.”
Theon Greyjoy gave a sudden bark of laughter. “You are children,” he said derisively.
“Robb may be a child,” Joffrey said. “I am a prince. And I grow tired of swatting at
Starks with a play sword.”
“You got more swats than you gave, Joff,” Robb said. “Are you afraid?”
Prince Joffrey looked at him. “Oh, terrified,” he said. “You’re so much older.” Some of
the Lannister men laughed.
Jon looked down on the scene with a frown. “Joffrey is truly a little shit,” he told Arya.
Ser Rodrik tugged thoughtfully at his white whiskers. “What are you suggesting?” he
asked the prince.
“Live steel.”
“Done,” Robb shot back. “You’ll be sorry!”
The master-at-arms put a hand on Robb’s shoulder to quiet him. “Live steel is too
dangerous. I will permit you tourney swords, with blunted edges.”
Joffrey said nothing, but a man strange to Arya, a tall knight with black hair and burn
scars on his face, pushed forward in front of the prince. “This is your prince. Who are
you to tell him he may not have an edge on his sword, ser?”
“Master-at-arms of Winterfell, Clegane, and you would do well not to forget it.”
�“Are you training women here?” the burned man wanted to know. He was muscled like a
bull.
“I am training knights,” Ser Rodrik said pointedly. “They will have steel when they are
ready. When they are of an age.”
The burned man looked at Robb. “How old are you, boy?”
“Fourteen,” Robb said.
“I killed a man at twelve. You can be sure it was not with a blunt sword.”
Arya could see Robb bristle. His pride was wounded. He turned on Ser Rodrik. “Let me
do it. I can beat him.”
“Beat him with a tourney blade, then,” Ser Rodrik said.
Joffrey shrugged. “Come and see me when you’re older, Stark. If you’re not too old.”
There was laughter from the Lannister men.
Robb’s curses rang through the yard. Arya covered her mouth in shock. Theon Greyjoy
seized Robb’s arm to keep him away from the prince. Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers
in dismay.
Joffrey feigned a yawn and turned to his younger brother. “Come, Tommen,” he said.
“The hour of play is done. Leave the children to their frolics.”
That brought more laughter from the Lannisters, more curses from Robb. Ser Rodrik’s
face was beet-red with fury under the white of his whiskers. Theon kept Robb locked in
an iron grip until the princes and their party were safely away.
Jon watched them leave, and Arya watched Jon. His face had grown as still as the pool at
the heart of the godswood. Finally he climbed down off the window. “The show is done,”
he said. He bent to scratch Ghost behind the ears. The white wolf rose and rubbed
against him. “You had best run back to your room, little sister. Septa Mordane will surely
be lurking. The longer you hide, the sterner the penance. You’ll be sewing all through
winter. When the spring thaw comes, they will find your body with a needle still locked
tight between your frozen fingers.”
Arya didn’t think it was funny. “I hate needlework!” she said with passion. “It’s not fair!”
�“Nothing is fair,” Jon said. He messed up her hair again and walked away from her,
Ghost moving silently beside him. Nymeria started to follow too, then stopped and came
back when she saw that Arya was not coming.
Reluctantly she turned in the other direction.
It was worse than Jon had thought. It wasn’t Septa Mordane waiting in her room. It was
Septa Mordane and her mother.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
BRAN
The hunt left at dawn. The king wanted wild boar at the feast tonight. Prince Joffrey
rode with his father, so Robb had been allowed to join the hunters as well. Uncle Benjen,
Jory, Theon Greyjoy, Ser Rodrik, and even the queen’s funny little brother had all ridden
out with them. It was the last hunt, after all. On the morrow they left for the south.
Bran had been left behind with Jon and the girls and Rickon. But Rickon was only a
baby and the girls were only girls and Jon and his wolf were nowhere to be found. Bran
did not look for him very hard. He thought Jon was angry at him. Jon seemed to be
angry at everyone these days. Bran did not know why. He was going with Uncle Ben to
the Wall, to join the Night’s Watch. That was almost as good as going south with the
king. Robb was the one they were leaving behind, not Jon.
For days, Bran could scarcely wait to be off. He was going to ride the kingsroad on a
horse of his own, not a pony but a real horse. His father would be the Hand of the King,
and they were going to live in the red castle at King’s Landing, the castle the Dragonlords
had built. Old Nan said there were ghosts there, and dungeons where terrible things had
been done, and dragon heads on the walls. It gave Bran a shiver just to think of it, but he
was not afraid. How could he be afraid? His father would be with him, and the king with
all his knights and sworn swords.
Bran was going to be a knight himself someday, one of the Kingsguard. Old Nan said
they were the finest swords in all the realm. There were only seven of them, and they
wore white armor and had no wives or children, but lived only to serve the king. Bran
knew all the stories. Their names were like music to him. Serwyn of the Mirror Shield.
Ser Ryam Redwyne. Prince Aemon the Dragonknight. The twins Ser Erryk and Ser
Arryk, who had died on one another’s swords hundreds of years ago, when brother
fought sister in the war the singers called the Dance of the Dragons. The White Bull,
Gerold Hightower. Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. Barristan the Bold.
Two of the Kingsguard had come north with King Robert. Bran had watched them with
fascination, never quite daring to speak to them. Ser Boros was a bald man with a jowly
face, and Ser Meryn had droopy eyes and a beard the color of rust. Ser Jaime Lannister
looked more like the knights in the stories, and he was of the Kingsguard too, but Robb
said he had killed the old mad king and shouldn’t count anymore. The greatest living
knight was Ser Barristan Selmy, Barristan the Bold, the Lord Commander of the
�Kingsguard. Father had promised that they would meet Ser Barristan when they reached
King’s Landing, and Bran had been marking the days on his wall, eager to depart, to see
a world he had only dreamed of and begin a life he could scarcely imagine.
Yet now that the last day was at hand, suddenly Bran felt lost. Winterfell had been the
only home he had ever known. His father had told him that he ought to say his farewells
today, and he had tried. After the hunt had ridden out, he wandered through the castle
with his wolf at his side, intending to visit the ones who would be left behind, Old Nan
and Gage the cook, Mikken in his smithy, Hodor the stableboy who smiled so much and
took care of his pony and never said anything but “Hodor,” the man in the glass gardens
who gave him a blackberry when he came to visit . . .
But it was no good. He had gone to the stable first, and seen his pony there in its stall,
except it wasn’t his pony anymore, he was getting a real horse and leaving the pony
behind, and all of a sudden Bran just wanted to sit down and cry. He turned and ran off
before Hodor and the other stableboys could see the tears in his eyes. That was the end
of his farewells. Instead Bran spent the morning alone in the godswood, trying to teach
his wolf to fetch a stick, and failing. The wolfling was smarter than any of the hounds in
his father’s kennel and Bran would have sworn he understood every word that was said
to him, but he showed very little interest in chasing sticks.
He was still trying to decide on a name. Robb was calling his Grey Wind, because he ran
so fast. Sansa had named hers Lady, and Arya named hers after some old witch queen in
the songs, and little Rickon called his Shaggydog, which Bran thought was a pretty
stupid name for a direwolf. Jon’s wolf, the white one, was Ghost. Bran wished he had
thought of that first, even though his wolf wasn’t white. He had tried a hundred names
in the last fortnight, but none of them sounded right.
Finally he got tired of the stick game and decided to go climbing. He hadn’t been up to
the broken tower for weeks with everything that had happened, and this might be his
last chance.
He raced across the godswood, taking the long way around to avoid the pool where the
heart tree grew. The heart tree had always frightened him; trees ought not have eyes,
Bran thought, or leaves that looked like hands. His wolf came sprinting at his heels. “You
stay here,” he told him at the base of the sentinel tree near the armory wall. “Lie down.
That’s right. Now stay—”
The wolf did as he was told. Bran scratched him behind the ears, then turned away,
jumped, grabbed a low branch, and pulled himself up. He was halfway up the tree,
moving easily from limb to limb, when the wolf got to his feet and began to howl.
�Bran looked back down. His wolf fell silent, staring up at him through slitted yellow
eyes. A strange chill went through him. He began to climb again. Once more the wolf
howled. “Quiet,” he yelled. “Sit down. Stay. You’re worse than Mother.” The howling
chased him all the way up the tree, until finally he jumped off onto the armory roof and
out of sight.
The rooftops of Winterfell were Bran’s second home. His mother often said that Bran
could climb before he could walk. Bran could not remember when he first learned to
walk, but he could not remember when he started to climb either, so he supposed it must
be true.
To a boy, Winterfell was a grey stone labyrinth of walls and towers and courtyards and
tunnels spreading out in all directions. In the older parts of the castle, the halls slanted
up and down so that you couldn’t even be sure what floor you were on. The place had
grown over the centuries like some monstrous stone tree, Maester Luwin told him once,
and its branches were gnarled and thick and twisted, its roots sunk deep into the earth.
When he got out from under it and scrambled up near the sky, Bran could see all of
Winterfell in a glance. He liked the way it looked, spread out beneath him, only birds
wheeling over his head while all the life of the castle went on below. Bran could perch for
hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles that brooded over the First Keep,
watching it all: the men drilling with wood and steel in the yard, the cooks tending their
vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels, the
silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing well. It made him feel
like he was lord of the castle, in a way even Robb would never know.
It taught him Winterfell’s secrets too. The builders had not even leveled the earth; there
were hills and valleys behind the walls of Winterfell. There was a covered bridge that
went from the fourth floor of the bell tower across to the second floor of the rookery.
Bran knew about that. And he knew you could get inside the inner wall by the south gate,
climb three floors and run all the way around Winterfell through a narrow tunnel in the
stone, and then come out on ground level at the north gate, with a hundred feet of wall
looming over you. Even Maester Luwin didn’t know that, Bran was convinced.
His mother was terrified that one day Bran would slip off a wall and kill himself. He told
her that he wouldn’t, but she never believed him. Once she made him promise that he
would stay on the ground. He had managed to keep that promise for almost a fortnight,
miserable every day, until one night he had gone out the window of his bedroom when
his brothers were fast asleep.
He confessed his crime the next day in a fit of guilt. Lord Eddard ordered him to the
godswood to cleanse himself. Guards were posted to see that Bran remained there alone
�all night to reflect on his disobedience. The next morning Bran was nowhere to be seen.
They finally found him fast asleep in the upper branches of the tallest sentinel in the
grove.
As angry as he was, his father could not help but laugh. “You’re not my son,” he told
Bran when they fetched him down, “you’re a squirrel. So be it. If you must climb, then
climb, but try not to let your mother see you.”
Bran did his best, although he did not think he ever really fooled her. Since his father
would not forbid it, she turned to others. Old Nan told him a story about a bad little boy
who climbed too high and was struck down by lightning, and how afterward the crows
came to peck out his eyes. Bran was not impressed. There were crows’ nests atop the
broken tower, where no one ever went but him, and sometimes he filled his pockets with
corn before he climbed up there and the crows ate it right out of his hand. None of them
had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in pecking out his eyes.
Later, Maester Luwin built a little pottery boy and dressed him in Bran’s clothes and
flung him off the wall into the yard below, to demonstrate what would happen to Bran if
he fell. That had been fun, but afterward Bran just looked at the maester and said, “I’m
not made of clay. And anyhow, I never fall.”
Then for a while the guards would chase him whenever they saw him on the roofs, and
try to haul him down. That was the best time of all. It was like playing a game with his
brothers, except that Bran always won. None of the guards could climb half so well as
Bran, not even Jory. Most of the time they never saw him anyway. People never looked
up. That was another thing he liked about climbing; it was almost like being invisible.
He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by stone, fingers and toes digging
hard into the small crevices between. He always took off his boots and went barefoot
when he climbed; it made him feel as if he had four hands instead of two. He liked the
deep, sweet ache it left in the muscles afterward. He liked the way the air tasted way up
high, sweet and cold as a winter peach. He liked the birds: the crows in the broken
tower, the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones, the ancient owl
that slept in the dusty loft above the old armory. Bran knew them all.
Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go, and seeing the grey sprawl of
Winterfell in a way that no one else ever saw it. It made the whole castle Bran’s secret
place.
His favorite haunt was the broken tower. Once it had been a watchtower, the tallest in
Winterfell. A long time ago, a hundred years before even his father had been born, a
lightning strike had set it afire. The top third of the structure had collapsed inward, and
�the tower had never been rebuilt. Sometimes his father sent ratters into the base of the
tower, to clean out the nests they always found among the jumble of fallen stones and
charred and rotten beams. But no one ever got up to the jagged top of the structure now
except for Bran and the crows.
He knew two ways to get there. You could climb straight up the side of the tower itself,
but the stones were loose, the mortar that held them together long gone to ash, and Bran
never liked to put his full weight on them.
The best way was to start from the godswood, shinny up the tall sentinel, and cross over
the armory and the guards hall, leaping roof to roof, barefoot so the guards wouldn’t
hear you overhead. That brought you up to the blind side of the First Keep, the oldest
part of the castle, a squat round fortress that was taller than it looked. Only rats and
spiders lived there now but the old stones still made for good climbing. You could go
straight up to where the gargoyles leaned out blindly over empty space, and swing from
gargoyle to gargoyle, hand over hand, around to the north side. From there, if you really
stretched, you could reach out and pull yourself over to the broken tower where it leaned
close. The last part was the scramble up the blackened stones to the eyrie, no more than
ten feet, and then the crows would come round to see if you’d brought any corn.
Bran was moving from gargoyle to gargoyle with the ease of long practice when he heard
the voices. He was so startled he almost lost his grip. The First Keep had been empty all
his life.
“I do not like it,” a woman was saying. There was a row of windows beneath him, and the
voice was drifting out of the last window on this side. “You should be the Hand.”
“Gods forbid,” a man’s voice replied lazily. “It’s not an honor I’d want. There’s far too
much work involved.”
Bran hung, listening, suddenly afraid to go on. They might glimpse his feet if he tried to
swing by.
“Don’t you see the danger this puts us in?” the woman said. “Robert loves the man like a
brother.”
“Robert can barely stomach his brothers. Not that I blame him. Stannis would be enough
to give anyone indigestion.”
“Don’t play the fool. Stannis and Renly are one thing, and Eddard Stark is quite another.
Robert will listen to Stark. Damn them both. I should have insisted that he name you,
but I was certain Stark would refuse him.”
�“We ought to count ourselves fortunate,” the man said. “The king might as easily have
named one of his brothers, or even Littlefinger, gods help us. Give me honorable
enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I’ll sleep more easily by night.”
They were talking about Father, Bran realized. He wanted to hear more. A few more
feet . . . but they would see him if he swung out in front of the window.
“We will have to watch him carefully,” the woman said.
“I would sooner watch you,” the man said. He sounded bored. “Come back here.”
“Lord Eddard has never taken any interest in anything that happened south of the
Neck,” the woman said. “Never. I tell you, he means to move against us. Why else would
he leave the seat of his power?”
“A hundred reasons. Duty. Honor. He yearns to write his name large across the book of
history, to get away from his wife, or both. Perhaps he just wants to be warm for once in
his life.”
“His wife is Lady Arryn’s sister. It’s a wonder Lysa was not here to greet us with her
accusations.”
Bran looked down. There was a narrow ledge beneath the window, only a few inches
wide. He tried to lower himself toward it. Too far. He would never reach.
“You fret too much. Lysa Arryn is a frightened cow.”
“That frightened cow shared Jon Arryn’s bed.”
“If she knew anything, she would have gone to Robert before she fled King’s Landing.”
“When he had already agreed to foster that weakling son of hers at Casterly Rock? I
think not. She knew the boy’s life would be hostage to her silence. She may grow bolder
now that he’s safe atop the Eyrie.”
“Mothers.” The man made the word sound like a curse. “I think birthing does something
to your minds. You are all mad.” He laughed. It was a bitter sound. “Let Lady Arryn grow
as bold as she likes. Whatever she knows, whatever she thinks she knows, she has no
proof.” He paused a moment. “Or does she?”
“Do you think the king will require proof?” the woman said. “I tell you, he loves me not.”
�“And whose fault is that, sweet sister?”
Bran studied the ledge. He could drop down. It was too narrow to land on, but if he
could catch hold as he fell past, pull himself up . . . except that might make a noise, draw
them to the window. He was not sure what he was hearing, but he knew it was not meant
for his ears.
“You are as blind as Robert,” the woman was saying.
“If you mean I see the same thing, yes,” the man said. “I see a man who would sooner die
than betray his king.”
“He betrayed one already, or have you forgotten?” the woman said. “Oh, I don’t deny
he’s loyal to Robert, that’s obvious. What happens when Robert dies and Joff takes the
throne? And the sooner that comes to pass, the safer we’ll all be. My husband grows
more restless every day. Having Stark beside him will only make him worse. He’s still in
love with the sister, the insipid little dead sixteen-year-old. How long till he decides to
put me aside for some new Lyanna?”
Bran was suddenly very frightened. He wanted nothing so much as to go back the way he
had come, to find his brothers. Only what would he tell them? He had to get closer, Bran
realized. He had to see who was talking.
The man sighed. “You should think less about the future and more about the pleasures
at hand.”
“Stop that!” the woman said. Bran heard the sudden slap of flesh on flesh, then the
man’s laughter.
Bran pulled himself up, climbed over the gargoyle, crawled out onto the roof. This was
the easy way. He moved across the roof to the next gargoyle, right above the window of
the room where they were talking.
“All this talk is getting very tiresome, sister,” the man said. “Come here and be quiet.”
Bran sat astride the gargoyle, tightened his legs around it, and swung himself around,
upside down. He hung by his legs and slowly stretched his head down toward the
window. The world looked strange upside down. A courtyard swam dizzily below him, its
stones still wet with melted snow.
�Bran looked in the window.
Inside the room, a man and a woman were wrestling. They were both naked. Bran could
not tell who they were. The man’s back was to him, and his body screened the woman
from view as he pushed her up against a wall.
There were soft, wet sounds. Bran realized they were kissing. He watched, wide-eyed
and frightened, his breath tight in his throat. The man had a hand down between her
legs, and he must have been hurting her there, because the woman started to moan, low
in her throat. “Stop it,” she said, “stop it, stop it. Oh, please . . . ” But her voice was low
and weak, and she did not push him away. Her hands buried themselves in his hair, his
tangled golden hair, and pulled his face down to her breast.
Bran saw her face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open, moaning. Her golden
hair swung from side to side as her head moved back and forth, but still he recognized
the queen.
He must have made a noise. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she was staring right at him.
She screamed.
Everything happened at once then. ‘ The woman pushed the man away wildly, shouting
and pointing. Bran tried to pull himself up, bending double as he reached for the
gargoyle. He was in too much of a hurry. His hand scraped uselessly across smooth
stone, and in his panic his legs slipped, and suddenly he was failing. There was an
instant of vertigo, a sickening lurch as the window flashed past. He shot out a hand,
grabbed for the ledge, lost it, caught it again with his other hand. He swung against the
building, hard. The impact took the breath out of him. Bran dangled, one-handed,
panting.
Faces appeared in the window above him.
The queen. And now Bran recognized the man beside her. They looked as much alike as
reflections in a mirror.
“He saw us,” the woman said shrilly.
“So he did,” the man said.
Bran’s fingers started to slip. He grabbed the ledge with his other hand. Fingernails dug
into unyielding stone. The man reached down. “Take my hand,” he said. “Before you fall.”
Bran seized his arm and held on tight with all his strength. The man yanked him up to
�the ledge. “What are you doing?” the woman demanded.
The man ignored her. He was very strong. He stood Bran up on the sill. “How old are
you, boy?”
“Seven,” Bran said, shaking with relief. His fingers had dug deep gouges in the man’s
forearm. He let go sheepishly.
The man looked over at the woman. “The things I do for love,” he said with loathing. He
gave Bran a shove.
Screaming, Bran went backward out the window into empty air. There was nothing to
grab on to. The courtyard rushed up to meet him.
Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf was howling. Crows circled the broken tower,
waiting for corn.
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TYRION
Somewhere in the great stone maze of Winterfell, a wolf howled. The sound hung over
the castle like a flag of mourning.
Tyrion Lannister looked up from his books and shivered, though the library was snug
and warm. Something about the howling of a wolf took a man right out of his here and
now and left him in a dark forest of the mind, running naked before the pack.
When the direwolf howled again, Tyrion shut the heavy leatherbound cover on the book
he was reading, a hundred-year-old discourse on the changing of the seasons by a longdead maester. He covered a yawn with the back of his hand. His reading lamp was
flickering, its oil all but gone, as dawn light leaked through the high windows. He had
been at it all night, but that was nothing new. Tyrion Lannister was not much a one for
sleeping.
His legs were stiff and sore as he eased down off the bench. He massaged some life back
into them and limped heavily to the table where the septon was snoring softly, his head
pillowed on an open book in front of him. Tyrion glanced at the title. A life of the Grand
Maester Aethelmure, no wonder. “Chayle,” he said softly. The young man jerked up,
blinking, confused, the crystal of his order swinging wildly on its silver chain. “I’m off to
break my fast. See that you return the books to the shelves. Be gentle with the Valyrian
scrolls, the parchment is very dry. Ayrmidon’s Engines of War is quite rare, and yours is
the only complete copy I’ve ever seen.” Chayle gaped at him, still half-asleep. Patiently,
Tyrion repeated his instructions, then clapped the septon on the shoulder and left him to
his tasks.
Outside, Tyrion swallowed a lungful of the cold morning air and began his laborious
descent of the steep stone steps that corkscrewed around the exterior of the library
tower. It was slow going; the steps were cut high and narrow, while his legs were short
and twisted. The rising sun had not yet cleared the walls of Winterfell, but the men were
already hard at it in the yard below. Sandor Clegane’s rasping voice drifted up to him.
“The boy is a long time dying. I wish he would be quicker about it.”
Tyrion glanced down and saw the Hound standing with young Joffrey as squires
swarmed around them. “At least he dies quietly,” the prince replied. “It’s the wolf that
makes the noise. I could scarce sleep last night.”
�Clegane cast a long shadow across the hard-packed earth as his squire lowered the black
helm over his head. “I could silence the creature, if it please you,” he said through his
open visor. His boy placed a longsword in his hand. He tested the weight of it, slicing at
the cold morning air. Behind him, the yard rang to the clangor of steel on steel.
The notion seemed to delight the prince. “Send a dog to kill a dog!” he exclaimed.
“Winterfell is so infested with wolves, the Starks would never miss one.”
Tyrion hopped off the last step onto the yard. “I beg to differ, nephew,” he said. “The
Starks can count past six. Unlike some princes I might name.”
Joffrey had the grace at least to blush.
“A voice from nowhere,” Sandor said. He peered through his helm, looking this way and
that. “Spirits of the air!”
The prince laughed, as he always laughed when his bodyguard did this mummer’s farce.
Tyrion was used to it. “Down here.”
The tall man peered down at the ground, and pretended to notice him. “The little lord
Tyrion,” he said. “My pardons. I did not see you standing there.”
“I am in no mood for your insolence today.” Tyrion turned to his nephew. “Joffrey, it is
past time you called on Lord Eddard and his lady, to offer them your comfort.”
Joffrey looked as petulant as only a boy prince can look. “What good will my comfort do
them?”
“None,” Tyrion said. “Yet it is expected of you. Your absence has been noted.”
“The Stark boy is nothing to me,” Joffrey said. “I cannot abide the wailing of women.”
Tyrion Lannister reached up and slapped his nephew hard across the face. The boy’s
cheek began to redden.
“One word,” Tyrion said, “and I will hit you again.”
“I’m going to tell Mother!” Joffrey exclaimed.
Tyrion hit him again. Now both cheeks flamed.
�“You tell your mother,” Tyrion told him. “But first you get yourself to Lord and Lady
Stark, and you fall to your knees in front of them, and you tell them how very sorry you
are, and that you are at their service if there is the slightest thing you can do for them or
theirs in this desperate hour, and that all your prayers go with them. Do you
understand? Do you?”
The boy looked as though he was going to cry. Instead, he managed a weak nod. Then he
turned and fled headlong from the yard, holding his cheek. Tyrion watched him run.
A shadow fell across his face. He turned to find Clegane looming overhead like a cliff.
His soot-dark armor seemed to blot out the sun. He had lowered the visor on his helm. It
was fashioned in the likeness of a snarling black hound, fearsome to behold, but Tyrion
had always thought it a great improvement over Clegane’s hideously burned face.
“The prince will remember that, little lord,” the Hound warned him. The helm turned his
laugh into a hollow rumble.
“I pray he does,” Tyrion Lannister replied. “If he forgets, be a good dog and remind
him.” He glanced around the courtyard. “Do you know where I might find my brother?”
“Breaking fast with the queen.”
“Ah,” Tyrion said. He gave Sandor Clegane a perfunctory nod and walked away as briskly
as his stunted legs would carry him, whistling. He pitied the first knight to try the Hound
today. The man did have a temper.
A cold, cheerless meal had been laid out in the morning room of the Guest House. Jaime
sat at table with Cersei and the children, talking in low, hushed voices.
“Is Robert still abed?” Tyrion asked as he seated himself, uninvited, at the table.
His sister peered at him with the same expression of faint distaste she had worn since
the day he was born. “The king has not slept at all,” she told him. “He is with Lord
Eddard. He has taken their sorrow deeply to heart.”
“He has a large heart, our Robert,” Jaime said with a lazy smile. There was very little
that Jaime took seriously. Tyrion knew that about his brother, and forgave it. During all
the terrible long years of his childhood, only Jaime had ever shown him the smallest
measure of affection or respect, and for that Tyrion was willing to forgive him most
anything.
A servant approached. “Bread,” Tyrion told him, “and two of those little fish, and a mug
�of that good dark beer to wash them down. Oh, and some bacon. Burn it until it turns
black.” The man bowed and moved off. Tyrion turned back to his siblings. Twins, male
and female. They looked very much the part this morning. Both had chosen a deep green
that matched their eyes. Their blond curls were all a fashionable tumble, and gold
ornaments shone at wrists and fingers and throats.
Tyrion wondered what it would be like to have a twin, and decided that he would rather
not know. Bad enough to face himself in a looking glass every day. Another him was a
thought too dreadful to contemplate.
Prince Tommen spoke up. “Do you have news of Bran, Uncle?”
“I stopped by the sickroom last night,” Tyrion announced. “There was no change. The
maester thought that a hopeful sign.”
“I don’t want Brandon to die,” Tommen said timorously. He was a sweet boy. Not like
his brother, but then Jaime and Tyrion were somewhat less than peas in a pod
themselves.
“Lord Eddard had a brother named Brandon as well,” Jaime mused. “One of the
hostages murdered by Targaryen. It seems to be an unlucky name.”
“Oh, not so unlucky as all that, surely,” Tyrion said. The servant brought his plate. He
ripped off a chunk of black bread.
Cersei was studying him warily. “What do you mean?”
Tyrion gave her a crooked smile. “Why, only that Tommen may get his wish. The
maester thinks the boy may yet live.” He took a sip of beer.
Myrcella gave a happy gasp, and Tommen smiled nervously, but it was not the children
Tyrion was watching. The glance that passed between Jaime and Cersei lasted no more
than a second, but he did not miss it. Then his sister dropped her gaze to the table. “That
is no mercy. These northern gods are cruel to let the child linger in such pain.”
“What were the maester’s words?” Jaime asked.
The bacon crunched when he bit into it. Tyrion chewed thoughtfully for a moment and
said, “He thinks that if the boy were going to die, he would have done so already. It has
been four days with no change.”
�“Will Bran get better, Uncle?” little Myrcella asked. She had all of her mother’s beauty,
and none of her nature.
“His back is broken, little one,” Tyrion told her. “The fall shattered his legs as well. They
keep him alive with honey and water, or he would starve to death. Perhaps, if he wakes,
he will be able to eat real food, but he will never walk again.”
“If he wakes,” Cersei repeated. “Is that likely?”
“The gods alone know,” Tyrion told her. “The maester only hopes.” He chewed some
more bread. “I would swear that wolf of his is keeping the boy alive. The creature is
outside his window day and night, howling. Every time they chase it away, it returns.
The maester said they closed the window once, to shut out the noise, and Bran seemed
to weaken. When they opened it again, his heart beat stronger.”
The queen shuddered. “There is something unnatural about those animals,” she said.
“They are dangerous. I will not have any of them coming south with us.”
Jaime said, “You’ll have a hard time stopping them, sister. They follow those girls
everywhere.”
Tyrion started on his fish. “Are you leaving soon, then?”
“Not near soon enough,” Cersei said. Then she frowned. “Are we leaving?” she echoed.
“What about you? Gods, don’t tell me you are staying here?”
Tyrion shrugged. “Benjen Stark is returning to the Night’s Watch with his brother’s
bastard. I have a mind to go with them and see this Wall we have all heard so much of.”
Jaime smiled. “I hope you’re not thinking of taking the black on us, sweet brother.”
Tyrion laughed. “What, me, celibate? The whores would go begging from Dorne to
Casterly Rock. No, I just want to stand on top of the Wall and piss off the edge of the
world.”
Cersei stood abruptly. “The children don’t need to hear this filth. Tommen, Myrcella,
come.” She strode briskly from the morning room, her train and her pups trailing behind
her.
Jaime Lannister regarded his brother thoughtfully with those cool green eyes. “Stark will
never consent to leave Winterfell with his son lingering in the shadow of death.”
�“He will if Robert commands it,” Tyrion said. “And Robert will command it. There is
nothing Lord Eddard can do for the boy in any case.”
“He could end his torment,” Jaime said. “I would, if it were my son. It would be a mercy.”
“I advise against putting that suggestion to Lord Eddard, sweet brother,” Tyrion said.
“He would not take it kindly.”
“Even if the boy does live, he will be a cripple. Worse than a cripple. A grotesque. Give
me a good clean death.”
Tyrion replied with a shrug that accentuated the twist of his shoulders. “Speaking for the
grotesques,” he said, “I beg to differ. Death is so terribly final, while life is full of
possibilities.”
Jaime smiled. “You are a perverse little imp, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” Tyrion admitted. “I hope the boy does wake. I would be most interested to
hear what he might have to say.”
His brother’s smile curdled like sour milk. “Tyrion, my sweet brother,” he said darkly,
“there are times when you give me cause to wonder whose side you are on.”
Tyrion’s mouth was full of bread and fish. He took a swallow of strong black beer to
wash it all down, and grinned up wolfishly at Jaime, “Why, Jaime, my sweet brother,” he
said, “you wound me. You know how much I love my family.”
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JON
Jon climbed the steps slowly, trying not to think that this might be the last time ever.
Ghost padded silently beside him. Outside, snow swirled through the castle gates, and
the yard was all noise and chaos, but inside the thick stone walls it was still warm and
quiet. Too quiet for Jon’s liking.
He reached the landing and stood for a long moment, afraid. Ghost nuzzled at his hand.
He took courage from that. He straightened, and entered the room.
Lady Stark was there beside his bed. She had been there, day and night, for close on a
fortnight. Not for a moment had she left Bran’s side. She had her meals brought to her
there, and chamber pots as well, and a small hard bed to sleep on, though it was said she
had scarcely slept at all. She fed him herself, the honey and water and herb mixture that
sustained life. Not once did she leave the room. So Jon had stayed away.
But now there was no more time.
He stood in the door for a moment, afraid to speak, afraid to come closer. The window
was open. Below, a wolf howled. Ghost heard and lifted his head.
Lady Stark looked over. For a moment she did not seem to recognize him. Finally she
blinked. “What are you doing here?” she asked in a voice strangely flat and emotionless.
“I came to see Bran,” Jon said. “To say good-bye.”
Her face did not change. Her long auburn hair was dull and tangled. She looked as
though she had aged twenty years. “You’ve said it. Now go away.”
Part of him wanted only to flee, but he knew that if he did he might never see Bran again.
He took a nervous step into the room. “Please,” he said.
Something cold moved in her eyes. “I told you to leave,” she said. “We don’t want you
here.”
Once that would have sent him running. Once that might even have made him cry. Now
it only made him angry. He would be a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch soon, and
�face worse dangers than Catelyn Tully Stark. “He’s my brother,” he said.
“Shall I call the guards?”
“Call them,” Jon said, defiant. “You can’t stop me from seeing him.” He crossed the
room, keeping the bed between them, and looked down on Bran where he lay.
She was holding one of his hands. It looked like a claw. This was not the Bran he
remembered. The flesh had all gone from him. His skin stretched tight over bones like
sticks. Under the blanket, his legs bent in ways that made Jon sick. His eyes were sunken
deep into black pits; open, but they saw nothing. The fall had shrunken him somehow.
He looked half a leaf, as if the first strong wind would carry him off to his grave.
Yet under the frail cage of those shattered ribs, his chest rose and fell with each shallow
breath.
“Bran,” he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t come before. I was afraid.” He could feel the tears
rolling down his cheeks. Jon no longer cared. “Don’t die, Bran. Please. We’re all waiting
for you to wake up. Me and Robb and the girls, everyone . . . ”
Lady Stark was watching. She had not raised a cry. Jon took that for acceptance. Outside
the window, the direwolf howled again. The wolf that Bran had not had time to name.
“I have to go now,” Jon said. “Uncle Benjen is waiting. I’m to go north to the Wall. We
have to leave today, before the snows come.” He remembered how excited Bran had
been at the prospect of the journey. It was more than he could bear, the thought of
leaving him behind like this. Jon brushed away his tears, leaned over, and kissed his
brother lightly on the lips.
“I wanted him to stay here with me,” Lady Stark said softly.
Jon watched her, wary. She was not even looking at him. She was talking to him, but for
a part of her, it was as though he were not even in the room.
“I prayed for it,” she said dully. “He was my special boy. I went to the sept and prayed
seven times to the seven faces of god that Ned would change his mind and leave him
here with me. Sometimes prayers are answered.”
Jon did not know what to say. “It wasn’t your fault,” he managed after an awkward
silence.
�Her eyes found him. They were full of poison. “I need none of your absolution, bastard.”
Jon lowered his eyes. She was cradling one of Bran’s hands. He took the other, squeezed
it. Fingers like the bones of birds. “Good-bye,” he said.
He was at the door when she called out to him. “Jon,” she said. He should have kept
going, but she had never called him by his name before. He turned to find her looking at
his face, as if she were seeing it for the first time.
“Yes?” he said.
“It should have been you,” she told him. Then she turned back to Bran and began to
weep, her whole body shaking with the sobs. Jon had never seen her cry before.
It was a long walk down to the yard.
Outside, everything was noise and confusion. Wagons were being loaded, men were
shouting, horses were being harnessed and saddled and led from the stables. A light
snow had begun to fall, and everyone was in an uproar to be off.
Robb was in the middle of it, shouting commands with the best of them. He seemed to
have grown of late, as if Bran’s fall and his mother’s collapse had somehow made him
stronger. Grey Wind was at his side.
“Uncle Benjen is looking for you,” he told Jon. “He wanted to be gone an hour ago.”
“I know,” Jon said. “Soon.” He looked around at all the noise and confusion. “Leaving is
harder than I thought.”
“For me too,” Robb said. He had snow in his hair, melting from the heat of his body.
“Did you see him?”
Jon nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“He’s not going to die,” Robb said. “I know it.”
“You Starks are hard to kill,” Jon agreed. His voice was flat and tired. The visit had taken
all the strength from him.
Robb knew something was wrong. “My mother . . . ”
�“She was . . . very kind,” Jon told him.
Robb looked relieved. “Good.” He smiled. “The next time I see you, you’ll be all in black.”
Jon forced himself to smile back. “It was always my color. How long do you think it will
be?”
“Soon enough,” Robb promised. He pulled Jon to him and embraced him fiercely.
“Farewell, Snow.”
Jon hugged him back. “And you, Stark. Take care of Bran.”
“I will.” They broke apart and looked at each other awkwardly. “Uncle Benjen said to
send you to the stables if I saw you,” Robb finally said.
“I have one more farewell to make,” Jon told him.
“Then I haven’t seen you,” Robb replied. Jon left him standing there in the snow,
surrounded by wagons and wolves and horses. It was a short walk to the armory. He
picked up his package and took the covered bridge across to the Keep.
Arya was in her room, packing a polished ironwood chest that was bigger than she was.
Nymeria was helping. Arya would only have to point, and the wolf would bound across
the room, snatch up some wisp of silk in her jaws, and fetch it back. But when she
smelled Ghost, she sat down on her haunches and yelped at them.
Arya glanced behind her, saw Jon, and jumped to her feet. She threw her skinny arms
tight around his neck. “I was afraid you were gone,” she said, her breath catching in her
throat. “They wouldn’t let me out to say good-bye.”
“What did you do now?” Jon was amused.
Arya disentangled herself from him and made a face. “Nothing. I was all packed and
everything.” She gestured at the huge chest, no more than a third full, and at the clothes
that were scattered all over the room. “Septa Mordane says I have to do it all over. My
things weren’t properly folded, she says. A proper southron lady doesn’t just throw her
clothes inside her chest like old rags, she says.”
“Is that what you did, little sister?”
“Well, they’re going to get all messed up anyway,” she said. “Who cares how they’re
�folded?”
“Septa Mordane,” Jon told her. “I don’t think she’d like Nymeria helping, either.” The
she-wolf regarded him silently with her dark golden eyes. “It’s just as well. I have
something for you to take with you, and it has to be packed very carefully.”
Her face lit up. “A present?”
“You could call it that. Close the door.”
Wary but excited, Arya checked the hall. “Nymeria, here. Guard.” She left the wolf out
there to warn of intruders and closed the door. By then Jon had pulled off the rags he’d
wrapped it in. He held it out to her.
Arya’s eyes went wide. Dark eyes, like his. “A sword,” she said in a small, hushed breath.
The scabbard was soft grey leather, supple as sin. Jon drew out the blade slowly, so she
could see the deep blue sheen of the steel. “This is no toy,” he told her. “Be careful you
don’t cut yourself. The edges are sharp enough to shave with.”
“Girls don’t shave,” Arya said.
“Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa’s legs?”
She giggled at him. “It’s so skinny.”
“So are you,” Jon told her. “I had Mikken make this special. The bravos use swords like
this in Pentos and Myr and the other Free Cities. It won’t hack a man’s head off, but it
can poke him full of holes if you’re fast enough.”
“I can be fast,” Arya said.
“You’ll have to work at it every day.” He put the sword in her hands, showed her how to
hold it, and stepped back. “How does it feel? Do you like the balance?”
“I think so,” Arya said.
“First lesson,” Jon said. “Stick them with the pointy end.”
Arya gave him a whap on the arm with the flat of her blade. The blow stung, but Jon
found himself grinning like an idiot. “I know which end to use,” Arya said. A doubtful
�look crossed her face. “Septa Mordane will take it away from me.”
“Not if she doesn’t know you have it,” Jon said.
“Who will I practice with?”
“You’ll find someone,” Jon promised her. “King’s Landing is a true city, a thousand times
the size of Winterfell. Until you find a partner, watch how they fight in the yard. Run,
and ride, make yourself strong. And whatever you do . . . ”
Arya knew what was coming next. They said it together.
“ . . . don’t . . . tell . . . Sansa!”
Jon messed up her hair. “I will miss you, little sister.”
Suddenly she looked like she was going to cry. “I wish you were coming with us.”
“Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle. Who knows?” He was feeling better
now. He was not going to let himself be sad. “I better go. I’ll spend my first year on the
Wall emptying chamber pots if I keep Uncle Ben waiting any longer.”
Arya ran to him for a last hug. “Put down the sword first,” Jon warned her, laughing. She
set it aside almost shyly and showered him with kisses.
When he turned back at the door, she was holding it again, trying it for balance. “I
almost forgot,” he told her. “All the best swords have names.”
“Like Ice,” she said. She looked at the blade in her hand. “Does this have a name? Oh,
tell me.”
“Can’t you guess?” Jon teased. “Your very favorite thing.”
Arya seemed puzzled at first. Then it came to her. She was that quick. They said it
together:
“Needle!”
The memory of her laughter warmed him on the long ride north.
�previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
DAENERYS
Daenerys Targaryen wed Khal Drogo with fear and barbaric splendor in a field beyond
the walls of Pentos, for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man’s life
must be done beneath the open sky.
Drogo had called his khalasar to attend him and they had come, forty thousand
Dothraki warriors and uncounted numbers of women, children, and slaves. Outside the
city walls they camped with their vast herds, raising palaces of woven grass, eating
everything in sight, and making the good folk of Pentos more anxious with every passing
day.
“My fellow magisters have doubled the size of the city guard,” Illyrio told them over
platters of honey duck and orange snap peppers one night at the manse that had been
Drogo’s. The khal had joined his khalasar, his estate given over to Daenerys and her
brother until the wedding.
“Best we get Princess Daenerys wedded quickly before they hand half the wealth of
Pentos away to sellswords and bravos,” Ser Jorah Mormont jested. The exile had offered
her brother his sword the night Dany had been sold to Kbal Drogo; Viserys had accepted
eagerly. Mormont had been their constant companion ever since.
Magister Illyrio laughed lightly through his forked beard, but Viserys did not so much as
smile. “He can have her tomorrow, if he likes,” her brother said. He glanced over at
Dany, and she lowered her eyes. “So long as he pays the price.”
Illyrio waved a languid hand in the air, rings glittering on his fat fingers. “I have told
you, all is settled. Trust me. The khal has promised you a crown, and you shall have it.”
“Yes, but when?”
“When the khal chooses,” Illyrio said. “He will have the girl first, and after they are wed
he must make his procession across the plains and present her to the dosh khaleen at
Vaes Dothrak. After that, perhaps. If the omens favor war.”
Viserys seethed with impatience. “I piss on Dothraki omens. The Usurper sits on my
father’s throne. How long must I wait?”
�Illyrio gave a massive shrug. “You have waited most of your life, great king. What is
another few months, another few years?”
Ser Jorah, who had traveled as far east as Vaes Dothrak, nodded in agreement. “I
counsel you to be patient, Your Grace. The Dothraki are true to their word, but they do
things in their own time. A lesser man may beg a favor from the khal, but must never
presume to berate him.”
Viserys bristled. “Guard your tongue, Mormont, or I’ll have it out. I am no lesser man, I
am the rightful Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. The dragon does not beg.”
Ser Jorah lowered his eyes respectfully. Illyrio smiled enigmatically and tore a wing from
the duck. Honey and grease ran over his fingers and dripped down into his beard as he
nibbled at the tender meat. There are no more dragons, Dany thought, staring at her
brother, though she did not dare say it aloud.
Yet that night she dreamt of one. Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She was naked,
clumsy with fear. She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly. He struck
her again. She stumbled and fell. “You woke the dragon,” he screamed as he kicked her.
“You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon.” Her thighs were slick with blood. She
closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in answer, there was a hideous ripping sound and
the crackling of some great fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, great columns
of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great
head slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine
sheen of sweat. She had never been so afraid . . .
. . . until the day of her wedding came at last.
The ceremony began at dawn and continued until dusk, an endless day of drinking and
feasting and fighting. A mighty earthen ramp had been raised amid the grass palaces,
and there Dany was seated beside Khal Drogo, above the seething sea of Dothraki. She
had never seen so many people in one place, nor people so strange and frightening. The
horselords might put on rich fabrics and sweet perfumes when they visited the Free
Cities, but out under the open sky they kept the old ways. Men and women alike wore
painted leather vests over bare chests and horsehair leggings cinched by bronze
medallion belts, and the warriors greased their long braids with fat from the rendering
pits. They gorged themselves on horseflesh roasted with honey and peppers, drank
themselves blind on fermented mare’s milk and Illyrio’s fine wines, and spat jests at
each other across the fires, their voices harsh and alien in Dany’s ears.
Viserys was seated just below her, splendid in a new black wool tunic with a scarlet
�dragon on the chest. Illyrio and Ser Jorah sat beside him. Theirs was a place of high
honor, just below the khal’s own bloodriders, but Dany could see the anger in her
brother’s lilac eyes. He did not like sitting beneath her, and he fumed when the slaves
offered each dish first to the khal and his bride, and served him from the portions they
refused. He could do nothing but nurse his resentment, so nurse it he did, his mood
growing blacker by the hour at each insult to his person.
Dany had never felt so alone as she did seated in the midst of that vast horde. Her
brother had told her to smile, and so she smiled until her face ached and the tears came
unbidden to her eyes. She did her best to hide them, knowing how angry Viserys would
be if he saw her crying, terrified of how Khal Drogo might react. Food was brought to
her, steaming joints of meat and thick black sausages and Dothraki blood pies, and later
fruits and sweetgrass stews and delicate pastries from the kitchens of Pentos, but she
waved it all away. Her stomach was a roil, and she knew she could keep none of it down.
There was no one to talk to. Khal Drogo shouted commands and jests down to his
bloodriders, and laughed at their replies, but he scarcely glanced at Dany beside him.
They had no common language. Dothraki was incomprehensible to her, and the khal
knew only a few words of the bastard Valyrian of the Free Cities, and none at all of the
Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms. She would even have welcomed the
conversation of Illyrio and her brother, but they were too far below to hear her.
So she sat in her wedding silks, nursing a cup of honeyed wine, afraid to eat, talking
silently to herself. I am blood of the dragon, she told herself. I am Daenerys Stormborn,
Princess of Dragonstone, of the blood and seed of Aegon the Conqueror.
The sun was only a quarter of the way up the sky when she saw her first man die. Drums
were beating as some of the women danced for the khal. Drogo watched without
expression, but his eyes followed their movements, and from time to time he would toss
down a bronze medallion for the women to fight over.
The warriors were watching too. One of them finally stepped into the circle, grabbed a
dancer by the arm, pushed her down to the ground, and mounted her right there, as a
stallion mounts a mare. Illyrio had told her that might happen. “The Dothraki mate like
the animals in their herds. There is no privacy in a khalasar, and they do not understand
sin or shame as we do.”
Dany looked away from the coupling, frightened when she realized what was happening,
but a second warrior stepped forward, and a third, and soon there was no way to avert
her eyes. Then two men seized the same woman. She heard a shout, saw a shove, and in
the blink of an eye the arakhs were out, long razor-sharp blades, half sword and half
scythe. A dance of death began as the warriors circled and slashed, leaping toward each
�other, whirling the blades around their heads, shrieking insults at each clash. No one
made a move to interfere.
It ended as quickly as it began. The arakhs shivered together faster than Dany could
follow, one man missed a step, the other swung his blade in a flat arc. Steel bit into flesh
just above the Dothraki’s waist, and opened him from backbone to belly button, spilling
his entrails into the dust. As the loser died, the winner took hold of the nearest woman—
not even the one they had been quarreling over—and had her there and then. Slaves
carried off the body, and the dancing resumed.
Magister Illyrio had warned Dany about this too. “A Dothraki wedding without at least
three deaths is deemed a dull affair,” he had said. Her wedding must have been
especially blessed; before the day was over, a dozen men had died.
As the hours passed, the terror grew in Dany, until it was all she could do not to scream.
She was afraid of the Dothraki, whose ways seemed alien and monstrous, as if they were
beasts in human skins and not true men at all. She was afraid of her brother, of what he
might do if she failed him. Most of all, she was afraid of what would happen tonight
under the stars, when her brother gave her up to the hulking giant who sat drinking
beside her with a face as still and cruel as a bronze mask.
I am the blood of the dragon, she told herself again.
When at last the sun was low in the sky, Khal Drogo clapped his hands together, and the
drums and the shouting and feasting came to a sudden halt. Drogo stood and pulled
Dany to her feet beside him. It was time for her bride gifts.
And after the gifts, she knew, after the sun had gone down, it would be time for the first
ride and the consummation of her marriage. Dany tried to put the thought aside, but it
would not leave her. She hugged herself to try to keep from shaking.
Her brother Viserys gifted her with three handmaids. Dany knew they had cost him
nothing; Illyrio no doubt had provided the girls. Irri and Jhiqui were copper-skinned
Dothraki with black hair and almond-shaped eyes, Doreah a fair-haired, blue-eyed
Lysene girl. “These are no common servants, sweet sister,” her brother told her as they
were brought forward one by one. “Illyrio and I selected them personally for you. Irri
will teach you riding, Jhiqui the Dothraki tongue, and Doreah will instruct you in the
womanly arts of love.” He smiled thinly. “She’s very good, Illyrio and I can both swear to
that.”
Ser Jorah Mormont apologized for his gift. “It is a small thing, my princess, but all a
poor exile could afford,” he said as he laid a small stack of old books before her. They
�were histories and songs of the Seven Kingdoms, she saw, written in the Common
Tongue. She thanked him with all her heart.
Magister Illyrio murmured a command, and four burly slaves hurried forward, bearing
between them a great cedar chest bound in bronze. When she opened it, she found piles
of the finest velvets and damasks the Free Cities could produce . . . and resting on top,
nestled in the soft cloth, three huge eggs. Dany gasped. They were the most beautiful
things she had ever seen, each different than the others, patterned in such rich colors
that at first she thought they were crusted with jewels, and so large it took both of her
hands to hold one. She lifted it delicately, expecting that it would be made of some fine
porcelain or delicate enamel, or even blown glass, but it was much heavier than that, as
if it were all of solid stone. The surface of the shell was covered with tiny scales, and as
she turned the egg between her fingers, they shimmered like polished metal in the light
of the setting sun. One egg was a deep green, with burnished bronze flecks that came
and went depending on how Dany turned it. Another was pale cream streaked with gold.
The last was black, as black as a midnight sea, yet alive with scarlet ripples and swirls.
“What are they?” she asked, her voice hushed and full of wonder.
“Dragon’s eggs, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai,” said Magister Illyrio. “The eons
have turned them to stone, yet still they burn bright with beauty.”
“I shall treasure them always.” Dany had heard tales of such eggs, but she had never
seen one, nor thought to see one. It was a truly magnificent gift, though she knew that
Illyrio could afford to be lavish. He had collected a fortune in horses and slaves for his
part in selling her to Khal Drogo.
The khal’s bloodriders offered her the traditional three weapons, and splendid weapons
they were. Haggo gave her a great leather whip with a silver handle, Cohollo a
magnificent arakh chased in gold, and Qotho a double-curved dragonbone bow taller
than she was. Magister Illyrio and Ser Jorah had taught her the traditional refusals for
these offerings. “This is a gift worthy of a great warrior, O blood of my blood, and I am
but a woman. Let my lord husband bear these in my stead.” And so Khal Drogo too
received his “bride gifts.”
Other gifts she was given in plenty by other Dothraki: slippers and jewels and silver
rings for her hair, medallion belts and painted vests and soft furs, sandsilks and jars of
scent, needles and feathers and tiny bottles of purple glass, and a gown made from the
skin of a thousand mice. “A handsome gift, Khaleesi,” Magister Illyrio said of the last,
after he had told her what it was. “Most lucky.” The gifts mounted up around her in great
piles, more gifts than she could possibly imagine, more gifts than she could want or use.
And last of all, Khal Drogo brought forth his own bride gift to her. An expectant hush
�rippled out from the center of the camp as he left her side, growing until it had
swallowed the whole khalasar. When he returned, the dense press of Dothraki giftgivers parted before him, and he led the horse to her.
She was a young filly, spirited and splendid. Dany knew just enough about horses to
know that this was no ordinary animal. There was something about her that took the
breath away. She was grey as the winter sea, with a mane like silver smoke.
Hesitantly she reached out and stroked the horse’s neck, ran her fingers through the
silver of her mane. Khal Drogo said something in Dothraki and Magister Illyrio
translated. “Silver for the silver of your hair, the khal says.”
“She’s beautiful,” Dany murmured.
“She is the pride of the khalasar, “ Illyrio said. “Custom decrees that the khaleesi must
ride a mount worthy of her place by the side of the khal.”
Drogo stepped forward and put his hands on her waist. He lifted her up as easily as if she
were a child and set her on the thin Dothraki saddle, so much smaller than the ones she
was used to. Dany sat there uncertain for a moment. No one had told her about this part.
“What should I do?” she asked Illyrio.
It was Ser Jorah Mormont who answered. “Take the reins and ride. You need not go far.”
Nervously Dany gathered the reins in her hands and slid her feet into the short stirrups.
She was only a fair rider; she had spent far more time traveling by ship and wagon and
palanquin than by horseback. Praying that she would not fall off and disgrace herself,
she gave the filly the lightest and most timid touch with her knees.
And for the first time in hours, she forgot to be afraid. Or perhaps it was for the first time
ever.
The silver-grey filly moved with a smooth and silken gait, and the crowd parted for her,
every eye upon them. Dany found herself moving faster than she had intended, yet
somehow it was exciting rather than terrifying. The horse broke into a trot, and she
smiled. Dothraki scrambled to clear a path. The slightest pressure with her legs, the
lightest touch on the reins, and the filly responded. She sent it into a gallop, and now the
Dothraki were hooting and laughing and shouting at her as they jumped out of her way.
As she turned to ride back, a firepit loomed ahead, directly in her path. They were
hemmed in on either side, with no room to stop. A daring she had never known filled
Daenerys then, and she gave the filly her head.
�The silver horse leapt the flames as if she had wings.
When she pulled up before Magister Illyrio, she said, “Tell Khal Drogo that he has given
me the wind.” The fat Pentoshi stroked his yellow beard as he repeated her words in
Dothraki, and Dany saw her new husband smile for the first time.
The last sliver of sun vanished behind the high walls of Pentos to the west just then.
Dany had lost all track of time. Khal Drogo commanded his bloodriders to bring forth
his own horse, a lean red stallion. As the khal was saddling the horse, Viserys slid close
to Dany on her silver, dug his fingers into her leg, and said, “Please him, sweet sister, or I
swear, you will see the dragon wake as it has never woken before.”
The fear came back to her then, with her brother’s words. She felt like a child once more,
only thirteen and all alone, not ready for what was about to happen to her.
They rode out together as the stars came out, leaving the khalasar and the grass palaces
behind. Khal Drogo spoke no word to her, but drove his stallion at a hard trot through
the gathering dusk. The tiny silver bells in his long braid rang softly as he rode. “I am the
blood of the dragon,” she whispered aloud as she followed, trying to keep her courage
up. “I am the blood of the dragon. I am the blood of the dragon.” The dragon was never
afraid.
Afterward she could not say how far or how long they had ridden, but it was full dark
when they stopped at a grassy place beside a small stream. Drogo swung off his horse
and lifted her down from hers. She felt as fragile as glass in his hands, her limbs as weak
as water. She stood there helpless and trembling in her wedding silks while he secured
the horses, and when he turned to look at her, she began to cry.
Khal Drogo stared at her tears, his face strangely empty of expression. “No,” he said. He
lifted his hand and rubbed away the tears roughly with a callused thumb.
“You speak the Common Tongue,” Dany said in wonder.
“No,” he said again.
Perhaps he had only that word, she thought, but it was one word more than she had
known he had, and somehow it made her feel a little better. Drogo touched her hair
lightly, sliding the silver-blond strands between his fingers and murmuring softly in
Dothraki. Dany did not understand the words, yet there was warmth in the tone, a
tenderness she had never expected from this man.
He put his finger under her chin and lifted her head, so she was looking up into his eyes.
�Drogo towered over her as he towered over everyone. Taking her lightly under the arms,
he lifted her and seated her on a rounded rock beside the stream. Then he sat on the
ground facing her, legs crossed beneath him, their faces finally at a height. “No,” he said.
“Is that the only word you know?” she asked him.
Drogo did not reply. His long heavy braid was coiled in the dirt beside him. He pulled it
over his right shoulder and began to remove the bells from his hair, one by one. After a
moment Dany leaned forward to help. When they were done, Drogo gestured. She
understood. Slowly, carefully, she began to undo his braid.
It took a long time. All the while he sat there silently, watching her. When she was done,
he shook his head, and his hair spread out behind him like a river of darkness, oiled and
gleaming. She had never seen hair so long, so black, so thick.
Then it was his turn. He began to undress her.
His fingers were deft and strangely tender. He removed her silks one by one, carefully,
while Dany sat unmoving, silent, looking at his eyes. When he bared her small breasts,
she could not help herself. She averted her eyes and covered herself with her hands.
“No,” Drogo said. He pulled her hands away from her breasts, gently but firmly, then
lifted her face again to make her look at him. “No,” he repeated.
“No,” she echoed back at him.
He stood her up then and pulled her close to remove the last of her silks. The night air
was chilly on her bare skin. She shivered, and gooseflesh covered her arms and legs. She
was afraid of what would come next, but for a while nothing happened. Khal Drogo sat
with his legs crossed, looking at her, drinking in her body with his eyes.
After a while he began to touch her. Lightly at first, then harder. She could sense the
fierce strength in his hands, but he never hurt her. He held her hand in his own and
brushed her fingers, one by one. He ran a hand gently down her leg. He stroked her face,
tracing the curve of her ears, running a finger gently around her mouth. He put both
hands in her hair and combed it with his fingers. He turned her around, massaged her
shoulders, slid a knuckle down the path of her spine.
It seemed as if hours passed before his hands finally went to her breasts. He stroked the
soft skin underneath until it tingled. He circled her nipples with his thumbs, pinched
them between thumb and forefinger, then began to pull at her, very lightly at first, then
more insistently, until her nipples stiffened and began to ache.
�He stopped then, and drew her down onto his lap. Dany was flushed and breathless, her
heart fluttering in her chest. He cupped her face in his huge hands and looked into his
eyes. “No?” he said, and she knew it was a question.
She took his hand and moved it down to the wetness between her thighs. “Yes,” she
whispered as she put his finger inside her.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
The summons came in the hour before the dawn, when the world was still and grey.
Alyn shook him roughly from his dreams and Ned stumbled into the predawn chill,
groggy from sleep, to find his horse saddled and the king already mounted. Robert wore
thick brown gloves and a heavy fur cloak with a hood that covered his ears, and looked
for all the world like a bear sitting a horse. “Up, Stark!” he roared. “Up, up! We have
matters of state to discuss.”
“By all means,” Ned said. “Come inside, Your Grace.” Alyn lifted the flap of the tent.
“No, no, no,” Robert said. His breath steamed with every word. “The camp is full of ears.
Besides, I want to ride out and taste this country of yours.” Ser Boros and Ser Meryn
waited behind him with a dozen guardsmen, Ned saw. There was nothing to do but rub
the sleep from his eyes, dress, and mount up.
Robert set the pace, driving his huge black destrier hard as Ned galloped along beside
him, trying to keep up. He called out a question as they rode, but the wind blew his
words away, and the king did not hear him. After that Ned rode in silence. They soon left
the kingsroad and took off across rolling plains dark with mist. By then the guard had
fallen back a small distance, safely out of earshot, but still Robert would not slow.
Dawn broke as they crested a low ridge, and finally the king pulled up. By then they were
miles south of the main party. Robert was flushed and exhilarated as Ned reined up
beside him. “Gods,” he swore, laughing, “it feels good to get out and ride the way a man
was meant to ride! I swear, Ned, this creeping along is enough to drive a man mad.” He
had never been a patient man, Robert Baratheon. “That damnable wheelhouse, the way
it creaks and groans, climbing every bump in the road as if it were a mountain . . . I
promise you, if that wretched thing breaks another axle, I’m going to burn it, and Cersei
can walk!”
Ned laughed. “I will gladly light the torch for you.”
“Good man!” The king clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve half a mind to leave them all
behind and just keep going.”
�A smile touched Ned’s lips. “I do believe you mean it.”
“I do, I do,” the king said. “What do you say, Ned? Just you and me, two vagabond
knights on the kingsroad, our swords at our sides and the gods know what in front of us,
and maybe a farmer’s daughter or a tavern wench to warm our beds tonight.”
“Would that we could,” Ned said, “but we have duties now, my liege . . . to the realm, to
our children, I to my lady wife and you to your queen. We are not the boys we were.”
“You were never the boy you were,” Robert grumbled. “More’s the pity. And yet there
was that one time . . . what was her name, that common girl of yours? Becca? No, she
was one of mine, gods love her, black hair and these sweet big eyes, you could drown in
them. Yours was . . . Aleena? No. You told me once. Was it Merryl? You know the one I
mean, your bastard’s mother?”
“Her name was Wylla,” Ned replied with cool courtesy, “and I would sooner not speak of
her.”
“Wylla. Yes.” The king grinned. “She must have been a rare wench if she could make
Lord Eddard Stark forget his honor, even for an hour. You never told me what she
looked like . . . ”
Ned’s mouth tightened in anger. “Nor will I. Leave it be, Robert, for the love you say you
bear me. I dishonored myself and I dishonored Catelyn, in the sight of gods and men.”
“Gods have mercy, you scarcely knew Catelyn.”
“I had taken her to wife. She was carrying my child.”
“You are too hard on yourself, Ned. You always were. Damn it, no woman wants Baelor
the Blessed in her bed.” He slapped a hand on his knee. “Well, I’ll not press you if you
feel so strong about it, though I swear, at times you’re so prickly you ought to take the
hedgehog as your sigil.”
The rising sun sent fingers of light through the pale white mists of dawn. A wide plain
spread out beneath them, bare and brown, its flatness here and there relieved by long,
low hummocks. Ned pointed them out to his king. “The barrows of the First Men.”
Robert frowned. “Have we ridden onto a graveyard?”
“There are barrows everywhere in the north, Your Grace,” Ned told him. “This land is
old.”
�“And cold,” Robert grumbled, pulling his cloak more tightly around himself. The guard
had reined up well behind them, at the bottom of the ridge. “Well, I did not bring you
out here to talk of graves or bicker about your bastard. There was a rider in the night,
from Lord Varys in King’s Landing. Here.” The king pulled a paper from his belt and
handed it to Ned.
Varys the eunuch was the king’s master of whisperers. He served Robert now as he had
once served Aerys Targaryen. Ned unrolled the paper with trepidation, thinking of Lysa
and her terrible accusation, but the message did not concern Lady Arryn. “What is the
source for this information?”
“Do you remember Ser Jorah Mormont?”
“Would that I might forget him,” Ned said bluntly. The Mormonts of Bear Island were an
old house, proud and honorable, but their lands were cold and distant and poor. Ser
Jorah had tried to swell the family coffers by selling some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver.
As the Mormonts were bannermen to the Starks, his crime had dishonored the north.
Ned had made the long journey west to Bear Island, only to find when he arrived that
Jorah had taken ship beyond the reach of Ice and the king’s justice. Five years had
passed since then.
“Ser Jorah is now in Pentos, anxious to earn a royal pardon that would allow him to
return from exile,” Robert explained. “Lord Varys makes good use of him.”
“So the slaver has become a spy,” Ned said with distaste. He handed the letter back. “I
would rather he become a corpse.”
“Varys tells me that spies are more useful than corpses,” Robert said. “Jorah aside, what
do you make of his report?”
“Daenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What of it? Shall we send her a
wedding gift?”
The king frowned. “A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and a bold man to wield it.”
Ned did not feign surprise; Robert’s hatred of the Targaryens was a madness in him. He
remembered the angry words they had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had presented
Robert with the corpses of Rhaegar’s wife and children as a token of fealty. Ned had
named that murder; Robert called it war. When he had protested that the young prince
and princess were no more than babes, his new-made king had replied, “I see no babes.
Only dragonspawn.” Not even Jon Arryn had been able to calm that storm. Eddard Stark
�had ridden out that very day in a cold rage, to fight the last battles of the war alone in the
south. It had taken another death to reconcile them; Lyanna’s death, and the grief they
had shared over her passing.
This time, Ned resolved to keep his temper. “Your Grace, the girl is scarcely more than a
child. You are no Tywin Lannister, to slaughter innocents.” It was said that Rhaegar’s
little girl had cried as they dragged her from beneath her bed to face the swords. The boy
had been no more than a babe in arms, yet Lord Tywin’s soldiers had torn him from his
mother’s breast and dashed his head against a wall.
“And how long will this one remain an innocent?” Robert’s mouth grew hard. “This child
will soon enough spread her legs and start breeding more dragonspawn to plague me.”
“Nonetheless,” Ned said, “the murder of children . . . it would be
vile . . . unspeakable . . . ”
“Unspeakable?” the king roared. “What Aerys did to your brother Brandon was
unspeakable. The way your lord father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar . . . how
many times do you think he raped your sister? How many hundreds of times?” His voice
had grown so loud that his horse whinnied nervously beneath him. The king jerked the
reins hard, quieting the animal, and pointed an angry finger at Ned. “I will kill every
Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as their dragons, and then I will
piss on their graves.”
Ned knew better than to defy him when the wrath was on him. If the years had not
quenched Robert’s thirst for revenge, no words of his would help. “You can’t get your
hands on this one, can you?” he said quietly.
The king’s mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. “No, gods be cursed. Some pox-ridden
Pentoshi cheesemonger had her brother and her walled up on his estate with pointyhatted eunuchs all around them, and now he’s handed them over to the Dothraki. I
should have had them both killed years ago, when it was easy to get at them, but Jon was
as bad as you. More fool I, I listened to him.”
“Jon Arryn was a wise man and a good Hand.”
Robert snorted. The anger was leaving him as suddenly as it had come. “This Khal Drogo
is said to have a hundred thousand men in his horde. What would Jon say to that?”
“He would say that even a million Dothraki are no threat to the realm, so long as they
remain on the other side of the narrow sea,” Ned replied calmly. “The barbarians have
no ships. They hate and fear the open sea.”
�The king shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. “Perhaps. There are ships to be had in the
Free Cities, though. I tell you, Ned, I do not like this marriage. There are still those in the
Seven Kingdoms who call me Usurper. Do you forget how many houses fought for
Targaryen in the war? They bide their time for now, but give them half a chance, they
will murder me in my bed, and my sons with me. If the beggar king crosses with a
Dothraki horde at his back, the traitors will join him.”
“He will not cross,” Ned promised. “And if by some mischance he does, we will throw
him back into the sea. Once you choose a new Warden of the East—”
The king groaned. “For the last time, I will not name the Arryn boy Warden. I know the
boy is your nephew, but with Targaryens climbing in bed with Dothraki, I would be mad
to rest one quarter of the realm on the shoulders of a sickly child.”
Ned was ready for that. “Yet we still must have a Warden of the East. If Robert Arryn will
not do, name one of your brothers. Stannis proved himself at the siege of Storm’s End,
surely.”
He let the name hang there for a moment. The king frowned and said nothing. He
looked uncomfortable.
“That is,” Ned finished quietly, watching, “unless you have already promised the honor
to another.”
For a moment Robert had the grace to look startled. Just as quickly, the look became
annoyance. “What if I have?”
“It’s Jaime Lannister, is it not?”
Robert kicked his horse back into motion and started down the ridge toward the
barrows. Ned kept pace with him. The king rode on, eyes straight ahead. “Yes,” he said at
last. A single hard word to end the matter.
“Kingslayer,” Ned said. The rumors were true, then. He rode on dangerous ground now,
he knew. “An able and courageous man, no doubt,” he said carefully, “but his father is
Warden of the West, Robert. In time Ser Jaime will succeed to that honor. No one man
should hold both East and West.” He left unsaid his real concern; that the appointment
would put half the armies of the realm into the hands of Lannisters.
“I will fight that battle when the enemy appears on the field,” the king said stubbornly.
“At the moment, Lord Tywin looms eternal as Casterly Rock, so I doubt that Jaime will
�be succeeding anytime soon. Don’t vex me about this, Ned, the stone has been set.”
“Your Grace, may I speak frankly?”
“I seem unable to stop you,” Robert grumbled. They rode through tall brown grasses.
“Can you trust Jaime Lannister?”
“He is my wife’s twin, a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard, his life and fortune and honor
all bound to mine.”
“As they were bound to Aerys Targaryen’s,” Ned pointed out.
“Why should I mistrust him? He has done everything I have ever asked of him. His
sword helped win the throne I sit on.”
His sword helped taint the throne you sit on, Ned thought, but he did not permit the
words to pass his lips. “He swore a vow to protect his king’s life with his own. Then he
opened that king’s throat with a sword.”
“Seven hells, someone had to kill Aerys!” Robert said, reining his mount to a sudden halt
beside an ancient barrow. “If Jaime hadn’t done it, it would have been left for you or me.”
“We were not Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard,” Ned said. The time had come for
Robert to hear the whole truth, he decided then and there. “Do you remember the
Trident, Your Grace?”
“I won my crown there. How should I forget it?”
“You took a wound from Rhaegar,” Ned reminded him. “So when the Targaryen host
broke and ran, you gave the pursuit into my hands. The remnants of Rhaegar’s army fled
back to King’s Landing. We followed. Aerys was in the Red Keep with several thousand
loyalists. I expected to find the gates closed to us.”
Robert gave an impatient shake of his head. “Instead you found that our men had
already taken the city. What of it?”
“Not our men,” Ned said patiently. “Lannister men. The lion of Lannister flew over the
ramparts, not the crowned stag. And they had taken the city by treachery.”
The war had raged for close to a year. Lords great and small had flocked to Robert’s
�banners; others had remained loyal to Targaryen. The mighty Lannisters of Casterly
Rock, the Wardens of the West, had remained aloof from the struggle, ignoring calls to
arms from both rebels and royalists. Aerys Targaryen must have thought that his gods
had answered his prayers when Lord Tywin Lannister appeared before the gates of
King’s Landing with an army twelve thousand strong, professing loyalty. So the mad
king had ordered his last mad act. He had opened his city to the lions at the gate.
“Treachery was a coin the Targaryens knew well,” Robert said. The anger was building in
him again. “Lannister paid them back in kind. It was no less than they deserved. I shall
not trouble my sleep over it.”
“You were not there,” Ned said, bitterness in his voice. Troubled sleep was no stranger to
him. He had lived his lies for fourteen years, yet they still haunted him at night. “There
was no honor in that conquest.”
“The Others take your honor!” Robert swore. “What did any Targaryen ever know of
honor? Go down into your crypt and ask Lyanna about the dragon’s honor!”
“You avenged Lyanna at the Trident,” Ned said, halting beside the king. Promise me,
Ned, she had whispered.
“That did not bring her back.” Robert looked away, off into the grey distance. “The gods
be damned. It was a hollow victory they gave me. A crown . . . it was the girl I prayed
them for. Your sister, safe . . . and mine again, as she was meant to be. I ask you, Ned,
what good is it to wear a crown? The gods mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike.”
“I cannot answer for the gods, Your Grace . . . only for what I found when I rode into the
throne room that day,” Ned said. “Aerys was dead on the floor, drowned in his own
blood. His dragon skulls stared down from the walls. Lannister’s men were everywhere.
Jaime wore the white cloak of the Kingsguard over his golden armor. I can see him still.
Even his sword was gilded. He was seated on the Iron Throne, high above his knights,
wearing a helm fashioned in the shape of a lion’s head. How he glittered!”
“This is well known,” the king complained.
“I was still mounted. I rode the length of the hall in silence, between the long rows of
dragon skulls. It felt as though they were watching me, somehow. I stopped in front of
the throne, looking up at him. His golden sword was across his legs, its edge red with a
king’s blood. My men were filling the room behind me. Lannister’s men drew back. I
never said a word. I looked at him seated there on the throne, and I waited. At last Jaime
laughed and got up. He took off his helm, and he said to me, ‘Have no fear, Stark. I was
only keeping it warm for our friend Robert. It’s not a very comfortable seat, I’m afraid.’ ”
�The king threw back his head and roared. His laughter startled a flight of crows from the
tall brown grass. They took to the air in a wild beating of wings. “You think I should
mistrust Lannister because he sat on my throne for a few moments?” He shook with
laughter again. “Jaime was all of seventeen, Ned. Scarce more than a boy.”
“Boy or man, he had no right to that throne.”
“Perhaps he was tired,” Robert suggested. “Killing kings is weary work. Gods know,
there’s no place else to rest your ass in that damnable room. And he spoke truly, it is a
monstrous uncomfortable chair. In more ways than one.” The king shook his head.
“Well, now I know Jaime’s dark sin, and the matter can be forgotten. I am heartily sick
of secrets and squabbles and matters of state, Ned. It’s all as tedious as counting
coppers. Come, let’s ride, you used to know how. I want to feel the wind in my hair
again.” He kicked his horse back into motion and galloped up over the barrow, raining
earth down behind him.
For a moment Ned did not follow. He had run out of words, and he was filled with a vast
sense of helplessness. Not for the first time, he wondered what he was doing here and
why he had come. He was no Jon Arryn, to curb the wildness of his king and teach him
wisdom. Robert would do what he pleased, as he always had, and nothing Ned could say
or do would change that. He belonged in Winterfell. He belonged with Catelyn in her
grief, and with Bran.
A man could not always be where he belonged, though. Resigned, Eddard Stark put his
boots into his horse and set off after the king.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
TYRION
The north went on forever.
Tyrion Lannister knew the maps as well as anyone, but a fortnight on the wild track that
passed for the kingsroad up here had brought home the lesson that the map was one
thing and the land quite another.
They had left Winterfell on the same day as the king, amidst all the commotion of the
royal departure, riding out to the sound of men shouting and horses snorting, to the
rattle of wagons and the groaning of the queen’s huge wheelhouse, as a light snow
flurried about them. The kingsroad was just beyond the sprawl of castle and town. There
the banners and the wagons and the columns of knights and freeriders turned south,
taking the tumult with them, while Tyrion turned north with Benjen Stark and his
nephew.
It had grown colder after that, and far more quiet.
West of the road were flint hills, grey and rugged, with tall watchtowers on their stony
summits. To the east the land was lower, the ground flattening to a rolling plain that
stretched away as far as the eye could see. Stone bridges spanned swift, narrow rivers,
while small farms spread in rings around holdfasts walled in wood and stone. The road
was well trafficked, and at night for their comfort there were rude inns to be found.
Three days ride from Winterfell, however, the farmland gave way to dense wood, and the
kingsroad grew lonely. The flint hills rose higher and wilder with each passing mile, until
by the fifth day they had turned into mountains, cold blue-grey giants with jagged
promontories and snow on their shoulders. When the wind blew from the north, long
plumes of ice crystals flew from the high peaks like banners.
With the mountains a wall to the west, the road veered north by northeast through the
wood, a forest of oak and evergreen and black brier that seemed older and darker than
any Tyrion had ever seen. “The wolfswood,” Benjen Stark called it, and indeed their
nights came alive with the howls of distant packs, and some not so distant. Jon Snow’s
albino direwolf pricked up his ears at the nightly howling, but never raised his own voice
in reply. There was something very unsettling about that animal, Tyrion thought.
�There were eight in the party by then, not counting the wolf. Tyrion traveled with two of
his own men, as befit a Lannister. Benjen Stark had only his bastard nephew and some
fresh mounts for the Night’s Watch, but at the edge of the wolfswood they stayed a night
behind the wooden walls of a forest holdfast, and there joined up with another of the
black brothers, one Yoren. Yoren was stooped and sinister, his features hidden behind a
beard as black as his clothing, but he seemed as tough as an old root and as hard as
stone. With him were a pair of ragged peasant boys from the Fingers. “Rapers,” Yoren
said with a cold look at his charges. Tyrion understood. Life on the Wall was said to be
hard, but no doubt it was preferable to castration.
Five men, three boys, a direwolf, twenty horses, and a cage of ravens given over to
Benjen Stark by Maester Luwin. No doubt they made a curious fellowship for the
kingsroad, or any road.
Tyrion noticed Jon Snow watching Yoren and his sullen companions, with an odd cast to
his face that looked uncomfortably like dismay. Yoren had a twisted shoulder and a sour
smell, his hair and beard were matted and greasy and full of lice, his clothing old,
patched, and seldom washed. His two young recruits smelled even worse, and seemed as
stupid as they were cruel.
No doubt the boy had made the mistake of thinking that the Night’s Watch was made up
of men like his uncle. If so, Yoren and his companions were a rude awakening. Tyrion
felt sorry for the boy. He had chosen a hard life . . . or perhaps he should say that a hard
life had been chosen for him.
He had rather less sympathy for the uncle. Benjen Stark seemed to share his brother’s
distaste for Lannisters, and he had not been pleased when Tyrion had told him of his
intentions. “I warn you, Lannister, you’ll find no inns at the Wall,” he had said, looking
down on him.
“No doubt you’ll find some place to put me,” Tyrion had replied. “As you might have
noticed, I’m small.”
One did not say no to the queen’s brother, of course, so that had settled the matter, but
Stark had not been happy. “You will not like the ride, I promise you that,” he’d said
curtly, and since the moment they set out, he had done all he could to live up to that
promise.
By the end of the first week, Tyrion’s thighs were raw from hard riding, his legs were
cramping badly, and he was chilled to the bone. He did not complain. He was damned if
he would give Benjen Stark that satisfaction.
�He took a small revenge in the matter of his riding fur, a tattered bearskin, old and
musty-smelling. Stark had offered it to him in an excess of Night’s Watch gallantry, no
doubt expecting him to graciously decline. Tyrion had accepted with a smile. He had
brought his warmest clothing with him when they rode out of Winterfell, and soon
discovered that it was nowhere near warm enough. It was cold up here, and growing
colder. The nights were well below freezing now, and when the wind blew it was like a
knife cutting right through his warmest woolens. By now Stark was no doubt regretting
his chivalrous impulse. Perhaps he had learned a lesson. The Lannisters never declined,
graciously or otherwise. The Lannisters took what was offered.
Farms and holdfasts grew scarcer and smaller as they pressed northward, ever deeper
into the darkness of the wolfswood, until finally there were no more roofs to shelter
under, and they were thrown back on their own resources.
Tyrion was never much use in making a camp or breaking one. Too small, too hobbled,
too in-the-way. So while Stark and Yoren and the other men erected rude shelters,
tended the horses, and built a fire, it became his custom to take his fur and a wineskin
and go off by himself to read.
On the eighteenth night of their journey, the wine was a rare sweet amber from the
Summer Isles that he had brought all the way north from Casterly Rock, and the book a
rumination on the history and properties of dragons. With Lord Eddard Stark’s
permission, Tyrion had borrowed a few rare volumes from the Winterfell library and
packed them for the ride north.
He found a comfortable spot just beyond the noise of the camp, beside a swift-running
stream with waters clear and cold as ice. A grotesquely ancient oak provided shelter
from the biting wind. Tyrion curled up in his fur with his back against the trunk, took a
sip of the wine, and began to read about the properties of dragonbone. Dragonbone is
black because of its high iron content, the book told him. It is strong as steel, yet lighter
and far more flexible, and of course utterly impervious to fire. Dragonbone bows are
greatly prized by the Dothraki, and small wonder. An archer so armed can outrange
any wooden bow.
Tyrion had a morbid fascination with dragons. When he had first come to King’s
Landing for his sister’s wedding to Robert Baratheon, he had made it a point to seek out
the dragon skulls that had hung on the walls of Targaryen’s throne room. King Robert
had replaced them with banners and tapestries, but Tyrion had persisted until he found
the skulls in the dank cellar where they had been stored.
He had expected to find them impressive, perhaps even frightening. He had not thought
to find them beautiful. Yet they were. As black as onyx, polished smooth, so the bone
�seemed to shimmer in the light of his torch. They liked the fire, he sensed. He’d thrust
the torch into the mouth of one of the larger skulls and made the shadows leap and
dance on the wall behind him. The teeth were long, curving knives of black diamond.
The flame of the torch was nothing to them; they had bathed in the heat of far greater
fires. When he had moved away, Tyrion could have sworn that the beast’s empty eye
sockets had watched him go.
There were nineteen skulls. The oldest was more than three thousand years old; the
youngest a mere century and a half. The most recent were also the smallest; a matched
pair no bigger than mastiff’s skulls, and oddly misshapen, all that remained of the last
two hatchlings born on Dragonstone. They were the last of the Targaryen dragons,
perhaps the last dragons anywhere, and they had not lived very long.
From there the skulls ranged upward in size to the three great monsters of song and
story, the dragons that Aegon Targaryen and his sisters had unleashed on the Seven
Kingdoms of old. The singers had given them the names of gods: Balerion, Meraxes,
Vhaghar. Tyrion had stood between their gaping jaws, wordless and awed. You could
have ridden a horse down Vhaghar’s gullet, although you would not have ridden it out
again. Meraxes was even bigger. And the greatest of them, Balerion, the Black Dread,
could have swallowed an aurochs whole, or even one of the hairy mammoths said to
roam the cold wastes beyond the Port of Ibben.
Tyrion stood in that dank cellar for a long time, staring at Balerion’s huge, empty-eyed
skull until his torch burned low, trying to grasp the size of the living animal, to imagine
how it must have looked when it spread its great black wings and swept across the skies,
breathing fire.
His own remote ancestor, King Loren of the Rock, had tried to stand against the fire
when he joined with King Mern of the Reach to oppose the Targaryen conquest. That
was close on three hundred years ago, when the Seven Kingdoms were kingdoms, and
not mere provinces of a greater realm. Between them, the Two Kings had six hundred
banners flying, five thousand mounted knights, and ten times as many freeriders and
men-at-arms. Aegon Dragonlord had perhaps a fifth that number, the chroniclers said,
and most of those were conscripts from the ranks of the last king he had slain, their
loyalties uncertain.
The hosts met on the broad plains of the Reach, amidst golden fields of wheat ripe for
harvest. When the Two Kings charged, the Targaryen army shivered and shattered and
began to run. For a few moments, the chroniclers wrote, the conquest was at an
end . . . but only for those few moments, before Aegon Targaryen and his sisters joined
the battle.
�It was the only time that Vhaghar, Meraxes, and Balerion were all unleashed at once.
The singers called it the Field of Fire.
Near four thousand men had burned that day, among them King Mern of the Reach.
King Loren had escaped, and lived long enough to surrender, pledge his fealty to the
Targaryens, and beget a son, for which Tyrion was duly grateful.
“Why do you read so much?”
Tyrion looked up at the sound of the voice. Jon Snow was standing a few feet away,
regarding him curiously. He closed the book on a finger and said, “Look at me and tell
me what you see.”
The boy looked at him suspiciously. “Is this some kind of trick? I see you. Tyrion
Lannister.”
Tyrion sighed. “You are remarkably polite for a bastard, Snow. What you see is a dwarf.
You are what, twelve?”
“Fourteen,” the boy said.
“Fourteen, and you’re taller than I will ever be. My legs are short and twisted, and I walk
with difficulty. I require a special saddle to keep from falling off my horse. A saddle of
my own design, you may be interested to know. It was either that or ride a pony. My
arms are strong enough, but again, too short. I will never make a swordsman. Had I
been born a peasant, they might have left me out to die, or sold me to some slaver’s
grotesquerie. Alas, I was born a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and the grotesqueries are all
the poorer. Things are expected of me. My father was the Hand of the King for twenty
years. My brother later killed that very same king, as it turns out, but life is full of these
little ironies. My sister married the new king and my repulsive nephew will be king after
him. I must do my part for the honor of my House, wouldn’t you agree? Yet how? Well,
my legs may be too small for my body, but my head is too large, although I prefer to
think it is just large enough for my mind. I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths
and weaknesses. My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his
warhammer, and I have my mind . . . and a mind needs books as a sword needs a
whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” Tyrion tapped the leather cover of the book. “That’s
why I read so much, Jon Snow.”
The boy absorbed that all in silence. He had the Stark face if not the name: long, solemn,
guarded, a face that gave nothing away. Whoever his mother had been, she had left little
of herself in her son. “What are you reading about?” he asked.
�“Dragons,” Tyrion told him.
“What good is that? There are no more dragons,” the boy said with the easy certainty of
youth.
“So they say,” Tyrion replied. “Sad, isn’t it? When I was your age, used to dream of
having a dragon of my own.”
“You did?” the boy said suspiciously. Perhaps he thought Tyrion was making fun of him.
“Oh, yes. Even a stunted, twisted, ugly little boy can look down over the world when he’s
seated on a dragon’s back.” Tyrion pushed the bearskin aside and climbed to his feet. “I
used to start fires in the bowels of Casterly Rock and stare at the flames for hours,
pretending they were dragonfire. Sometimes I’d imagine my father burning. At other
times, my sister.” Jon Snow was staring at him, a look equal parts horror and
fascination. Tyrion guffawed. “Don’t look at me that way, bastard. I know your secret.
You’ve dreamt the same kind of dreams.”
“No,” Jon Snow said, horrified. “I wouldn’t . . . ”
“No? Never?” Tyrion raised an eyebrow. “Well, no doubt the Starks have been terribly
good to you. I’m certain Lady Stark treats you as if you were one of her own. And your
brother Robb, he’s always been kind, and why not? He gets Winterfell and you get the
Wall. And your father . . . he must have good reasons for packing you off to the Night’s
Watch . . . ”
“Stop it,” Jon Snow said, his face dark with anger. “The Night’s Watch is a noble calling!”
Tyrion laughed. “You’re too smart to believe that. The Night’s Watch is a midden heap
for all the misfits of the realm. I’ve seen you looking at Yoren and his boys. Those are
your new brothers, Jon Snow, how do you like them? Sullen peasants, debtors, poachers,
rapers, thieves, and bastards like you all wind up on the Wall, watching for grumkins
and snarks and all the other monsters your wet nurse warned you about. The good part
is there are no grumkins or snarks, so it’s scarcely dangerous work. The bad part is you
freeze your balls off, but since you’re not allowed to breed anyway, I don’t suppose that
matters.”
“Stop it!” the boy screamed. He took a step forward, his hands coiling into fists, close to
tears.
Suddenly, absurdly, Tyrion felt guilty. He took a step forward, intending to give the boy a
reassuring pat on the shoulder or mutter some word of apology.
�He never saw the wolf, where it was or how it came at him. One moment he was walking
toward Snow and the next he was flat on his back on the hard rocky ground, the book
spinning away from him as he fell, the breath going out of him at the sudden impact, his
mouth full of dirt and blood and rotting leaves. As he tried to get up, his back spasmed
painfully. He must have wrenched it in the fall. He ground his teeth in frustration,
grabbed a root, and pulled himself back to a sitting position. “Help me,” he said to the
boy, reaching up a hand.
And suddenly the wolf was between them. He did not growl. The damned thing never
made a sound. He only looked at him with those bright red eyes, and showed him his
teeth, and that was more than enough. Tyrion sagged back to the ground with a grunt.
“Don’t help me, then. I’ll sit right here until you leave.”
Jon Snow stroked Ghost’s thick white fur, smiling now. “Ask me nicely.”
Tyrion Lannister felt the anger coiling inside him, and crushed it out with a will. It was
not the first time in his life he had been humiliated, and it would not be the last. Perhaps
he even deserved this. “I should be very grateful for your kind assistance, Jon,” he said
mildly.
“Down, Ghost,” the boy said. The direwolf sat on his haunches. Those red eyes never left
Tyrion. Jon came around behind him, slid his hands under his arms, and lifted him
easily to his feet. Then he picked up the book and handed it back.
“Why did he attack me?” Tyrion asked with a sidelong glance at the direwolf. He wiped
blood and dirt from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Maybe he thought you were a grumkin.”
Tyrion glanced at him sharply. Then he laughed, a raw snort of amusement that came
bursting out through his nose entirely without his permission. “Oh, gods,” he said,
choking on his laughter and shaking his head, “I suppose I do rather look like a grumkin.
What does he do to snarks?”
“You don’t want to know.” Jon picked up the wineskin and handed it to Tyrion.
Tyrion pulled out the stopper, tilted his head, and squeezed a long stream into his
mouth. The wine was cool fire as it trickled down his throat and warmed his belly. He
held out the skin to Jon Snow. “Want some?”
The boy took the skin and tried a cautious swallow. “It’s true, isn’t it?” he said when he
�was done. “What you said about the Night’s Watch.”
Tyrion nodded.
Jon Snow set his mouth in a grim line. “If that’s what it is, that’s what it is.”
Tyrion grinned at him. “That’s good, bastard. Most men would rather deny a hard truth
than face it.”
“Most men,” the boy said. “But not you.”
“No,” Tyrion admitted, “not me. I seldom even dream of dragons anymore. There are no
dragons.” He scooped up the fallen bearskin. “Come, we had better return to camp
before your uncle calls the banners.”
The walk was short, but the ground was rough underfoot and his legs were cramping
badly by the time they got back. Jon Snow offered a hand to help him over a thick tangle
of roots, but Tyrion shook him off. He would make his own way, as he had all his life.
Still, the camp was a welcome sight. The shelters had been thrown up against the
tumbledown wall of a long-abandoned holdfast, a shield against the wind. The horses
had been fed and a fire had been laid. Yoren sat on a stone, skinning a squirrel. The
savory smell of stew filled Tyrion’s nostrils. He dragged himself over to where his man
Morrec was tending the stewpot. Wordlessly, Morrec handed him the ladle. Tyrion
tasted and handed it back. “More pepper,” he said.
Benjen Stark emerged from the shelter he shared with his nephew. “There you are. Jon,
damn it, don’t go off like that by yourself. I thought the Others had gotten you.”
“It was the grumkins,” Tyrion told him, laughing. Jon Snow smiled. Stark shot a baffled
look at Yoren. The old man grunted, shrugged, and went back to his bloody work.
The squirrel gave some body to the stew, and they ate it with black bread and hard
cheese that night around their fire. Tyrion shared around his skin of wine until even
Yoren grew mellow. One by one the company drifted off to their shelters and to sleep, all
but Jon Snow, who had drawn the night’s first watch.
Tyrion was the last to retire, as always. As he stepped into the shelter his men had built
for him, he paused and looked back at Jon Snow. The boy stood near the fire, his face
still and hard, looking deep into the flames.
Tyrion Lannister smiled sadly and went to bed.
�previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
CATELYN
Ned and the girls were eight days gone when Maester Luwin came to her one night in
Bran’s sickroom, carrying a reading lamp and the books of account. “It is past time that
we reviewed the figures, my lady,” he said. “You’ll want to know how much this royal
visit cost us.”
Catelyn looked at Bran in his sickbed and brushed his hair back off his forehead. It had
grown very long, she realized. She would have to cut it soon. “I have no need to look at
figures, Maester Luwin,” she told him, never taking her eyes from Bran. “I know what
the visit cost us. Take the books away.”
“My lady, the king’s party had healthy appetites. We must replenish our stores before—”
She cut him off. “I said, take the books away. The steward will attend to our needs.”
“We have no steward,” Maester Luwin reminded her. Like a little grey rat, she thought,
he would not let go. “Poole went south to establish Lord Eddard’s household at King’s
Landing.”
Catelyn nodded absently. “Oh, yes. I remember.” Bran looked so pale. She wondered
whether they might move his bed under the window, so he could get the morning sun.
Maester Luwin set the lamp in a niche by the door and fiddled with its wick. “There are
several appointments that require your immediate attention, my lady. Besides the
steward, we need a captain of the guards to fill Jory’s place, a new master of horse—”
Her eyes snapped around and found him. “A master of horse?” Her voice was a whip.
The maester was shaken. “Yes, my lady. Hullen rode south with Lord Eddard, so—”
“My son lies here broken and dying, Luwin, and you wish to discuss a new master of
horse? Do you think I care what happens in the stables? Do you think it matters to me
one whit? I would gladly butcher every horse in Winterfell with my own hands if it would
open Bran’s eyes, do you understand that? Do you?”
He bowed his head. “Yes, my lady, but the appointments—”
�“I’ll make the appointments,” Robb said.
Catelyn had not heard him enter, but there he stood in the doorway, looking at her. She
had been shouting, she realized with a sudden flush of shame. What was happening to
her? She was so tired, and her head hurt all the time.
Maester Luwin looked from Catelyn to her son. “I have prepared a list of those we might
wish to consider for the vacant offices,” he said, offering Robb a paper plucked from his
sleeve.
Her son glanced at the names. He had come from outside, Catelyn saw; his cheeks were
red from the cold, his hair shaggy and windblown. “Good men,” he said. “We’ll talk
about them tomorrow.” He handed back the list of names.
“Very good, my lord.” The paper vanished into his sleeve.
“Leave us now,” Robb said. Maester Luwin bowed and departed. Robb closed the door
behind him and turned to her. He was wearing a sword, she saw. “Mother, what are you
doing?”
Catelyn had always thought Robb looked like her; like Bran and Rickon and Sansa, he
had the Tully coloring, the auburn hair, the blue eyes. Yet now for the first time she saw
something of Eddard Stark in his face, something as stern and hard as the north. “What
am I doing?” she echoed, puzzled. “How can you ask that? What do you imagine I’m
doing? I am taking care of your brother. I am taking care of Bran.”
“Is that what you call it? You haven’t left this room since Bran was hurt. You didn’t even
come to the gate when Father and the girls went south.”
“I said my farewells to them here, and watched them ride out from that window.” She
had begged Ned not to go, not now, not after what had happened; everything had
changed now, couldn’t he see that? It was no use. He had no choice, he had told her, and
then he left, choosing. “I can’t leave him, even for a moment, not when any moment
could be his last. I have to be with him, if . . . if . . . ” She took her son’s limp hand, sliding
his fingers through her own. He was so frail and thin, with no strength left in his hand,
but she could still feel the warmth of life through his skin.
Robb’s voice softened. “He’s not going to die, Mother. Maester Luwin says the time of
greatest danger has passed.”
“And what if Maester Luwin is wrong? What if Bran needs me and I’m not here?”
�“Rickon needs you,” Robb said sharply. “He’s only three, he doesn’t understand what’s
happening. He thinks everyone has deserted him, so he follows me around all day,
clutching my leg and crying. I don’t know what to do with him.” He paused a moment,
chewing on his lower lip the way he’d done when he was little. “Mother, I need you too.
I’m trying but I can’t . . . I can’t do it all by myself.” His voice broke with sudden
emotion, and Catelyn remembered that he was only fourteen. She wanted to get up and
go to him, but Bran was still holding her hand and she could not move.
Outside the tower, a wolf began to howl. Catelyn trembled, just for a second.
“Bran’s.” Robb opened the window and let the night air into the stuffy tower room. The
howling grew louder. It was a cold and lonely sound, full of melancholy and despair.
“Don’t,” she told him. “Bran needs to stay warm.”
“He needs to hear them sing,” Robb said. Somewhere out in Winterfell, a second wolf
began to howl in chorus with the first. Then a third, closer. “Shaggydog and Grey Wind,”
Robb said as their voices rose and fell together. “You can tell them apart if you listen
close.”
Catelyn was shaking. It was the grief, the cold, the howling of the direwolves. Night after
night, the howling and the cold wind and the grey empty castle, on and on they went,
never changing, and her boy lying there broken, the sweetest of her children, the
gentlest, Bran who loved to laugh and climb and dreamt of knighthood, all gone now,
she would never hear him laugh again. Sobbing, she pulled her hand free of his and
covered her ears against those terrible howls. “Make them stop!” she cried. “I can’t stand
it, make them stop, make them stop, kill them all if you must, just make them stop!”
She didn’t remember falling to the floor, but there she was, and Robb was lifting her,
holding her in strong arms. “Don’t be afraid, Mother. They would never hurt him.” He
helped her to her narrow bed in the corner of the sickroom. “Close your eyes,” he said
gently. “Rest. Maester Luwin tells me you’ve hardly slept since Bran’s fall.”
“I can’t,” she wept. “Gods forgive me, Robb, I can’t, what if he dies while I’m asleep,
what if he dies, what if he dies . . . ” The wolves were still howling. She screamed and
held her ears again. “Oh, gods, close the window!”
“If you swear to me you’ll sleep.” Robb went to the window, but as he reached for the
shutters another sound was added to the mournful howling of the direwolves. “Dogs,” he
said, listening. “All the dogs are barking. They’ve never done that before . . . ” Catelyn
heard his breath catch in his throat. When she looked up, his face was pale in the
�lamplight. “Fire,” he whispered.
Fire, she thought, and then, Bran! “Help me,” she said urgently, sitting up. “Help me
with Bran.”
Robb did not seem to hear her. “The library tower’s on fire,” he said.
Catelyn could see the flickering reddish light through the open window now. She sagged
with relief. Bran was safe. The library was across the bailey, there was no way the fire
would reach them here. “Thank the gods,” she whispered.
Robb looked at her as if she’d gone mad. “Mother, stay here. I’ll come back as soon as
the fire’s out.” He ran then. She heard him shout to the guards outside the room, heard
them descending together in a wild rush, taking the stairs two and three at a time.
Outside, there were shouts of “Fire!” in the yard, screams, running footsteps, the whinny
of frightened horses, and the frantic barking of the castle dogs. The howling was gone,
she realized as she listened to the cacophony. The direwolves had fallen silent.
Catelyn said a silent prayer of thanks to the seven faces of god as she went to the
window. Across the bailey, long tongues of flame shot from the windows of the library.
She watched the smoke rise into the sky and thought sadly of all the books the Starks
had gathered over the centuries. Then she closed the shutters.
When she turned away from the window, the man was in the room with her.
“You weren’t s’posed to be here,” he muttered sourly. “No one was s’posed to be here.”
He was a small, dirty man in filthy brown clothing, and he stank of horses. Catelyn knew
all the men who worked in their stables, and he was none of them. He was gaunt, with
limp blond hair and pale eyes deep-sunk in a bony face, and there was a dagger in his
hand.
Catelyn looked at the knife, then at Bran. “No,” she said. The word stuck in her throat,
the merest whisper.
He must have heard her. “It’s a mercy,” he said. “He’s dead already.”
“No,” Catelyn said, louder now as she found her voice again. “No, you can’t.” She spun
back toward the window to scream for help, but the man moved faster than she would
have believed. One hand clamped down over her mouth and yanked back her head, the
other brought the dagger up to her windpipe. The stench of him was overwhelming.
�She reached up with both hands and grabbed the blade with all her strength, pulling it
away from her throat. She heard him cursing into her ear. Her fingers were slippery with
blood, but she would not let go of the dagger. The hand over her mouth clenched more
tightly, shutting off her air. Catelyn twisted her head to the side and managed to get a
piece of his flesh between her teeth. She bit down hard into his palm. The man grunted
in pain. She ground her teeth together and tore at him, and all of a sudden he let go. The
taste of his blood filled her mouth. She sucked in air and screamed, and he grabbed her
hair and pulled her away from him, and she stumbled and went down, and then he was
standing over her, breathing hard, shaking. The dagger was still clutched tightly in his
right hand, slick with blood. “You weren’t s’posed to be here,” he repeated stupidly.
Catelyn saw the shadow slip through the open door behind him. There was a low rumble,
less than a snarl, the merest whisper of a threat, but he must have heard something,
because he started to turn just as the wolf made its leap. They went down together, half
sprawled over Catelyn where she’d fallen. The wolf had him under the jaw. The man’s
shriek lasted less than a second before the beast wrenched back its head, taking out half
his throat.
His blood felt like warm rain as it sprayed across her face.
The wolf was looking at her. Its jaws were red and wet and its eyes glowed golden in the
dark room. It was Bran’s wolf, she realized. Of course it was. “Thank you,” Catelyn
whispered, her voice faint and tiny. She lifted her hand, trembling. The wolf padded
closer, sniffed at her fingers, then licked at the blood with a wet rough tongue. When it
had cleaned all the blood off her hand, it turned away silently and jumped up on Bran’s
bed and lay down beside him. Catelyn began to laugh hysterically.
That was the way they found them, when Robb and Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik burst
in with half the guards in Winterfell. When the laughter finally died in her throat, they
wrapped her in warm blankets and led her back to the Great Keep, to her own chambers.
Old Nan undressed her and helped her into a scalding hot bath and washed the blood off
her with a soft cloth.
Afterward Maester Luwin arrived to dress her wounds. The cuts in her fingers went
deep, almost to the bone, and her scalp was raw and bleeding where he’d pulled out a
handful of hair. The maester told her the pain was just starting now, and gave her milk
of the poppy to help her sleep.
Finally she closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, they told her that she had slept four days. Catelyn nodded
�and sat up in bed. It all seemed like a nightmare to her now, everything since Bran’s fall,
a terrible dream of blood and grief, but she had the pain in her hands to remind her that
it was real. She felt weak and light-headed, yet strangely resolute, as if a great weight had
lifted from her.
“Bring me some bread and honey,” she told her servants, “and take word to Maester
Luwin that my bandages want changing.” They looked at her in surprise and ran to do
her bidding.
Catelyn remembered the way she had been before, and she was ashamed. She had let
them all down, her children, her husband, her House. It would not happen again. She
would show these northerners how strong a Tully of Riverrun could be.
Robb arrived before her food. Rodrik Cassel came with him, and her husband’s ward
Theon Greyjoy, and lastly Hallis Mollen, a muscular guardsman with a square brown
beard. He was the new captain of the guard, Robb said. Her son was dressed in boiled
leather and ringmail, she saw, and a sword hung at his waist.
“Who was he?” Catelyn asked them.
“No one knows his name,” Hallis Mollen told her. “He was no man of Winterfell, m’lady,
but some says they seen him here and about the castle these past few weeks.”
“One of the king’s men, then,” she said, “or one of the Lannisters’. He could have waited
behind when the others left.”
“Maybe,” Hal said. “With all these strangers filling up Winterfell of late, there’s no way
of saying who he belonged to.”
“He’d been hiding in your stables,” Greyjoy said. “You could smell it on him.”
“And how could he go unnoticed?” she said sharply.
Hallis Mollen looked abashed. “Between the horses Lord Eddard took south and them
we sent north to the Night’s Watch, the stalls were half-empty. It were no great trick to
hide from the stableboys. Could be Hodor saw him, the talk is that boy’s been acting
queer, but simple as he is . . . ” Hal shook his head.
“We found where he’d been sleeping,” Robb put in. “He had ninety silver stags in a
leather bag buried beneath the straw.”
“It’s good to know my son’s life was not sold cheaply,” Catelyn said bitterly.
�Hallis Mollen looked at her, confused. “Begging your grace, m’lady, you saying he was
out to kill your boy?”
Greyjoy was doubtful. “That’s madness.”
“He came for Bran,” Catelyn said. “He kept muttering how I wasn’t supposed to be there.
He set the library fire thinking I would rush to put it out, taking any guards with me. If I
hadn’t been half-mad with grief, it would have worked.”
“Why would anyone want to kill Bran?” Robb said. “Gods, he’s only a little boy, helpless,
sleeping . . . ”
Catelyn gave her firstborn a challenging look. “If you are to rule in the north, you must
think these things through, Robb. Answer your own question. Why would anyone want
to kill a sleeping child?”
Before he could answer, the servants returned with a plate of food fresh from the
kitchen. There was much more than she’d asked for: hot bread, butter and honey and
blackberry preserves, a rasher of bacon and a soft-boiled egg, a wedge of cheese, a pot of
mint tea. And with it came Maester Luwin.
“How is my son, Maester?” Catelyn looked at all the food and found she had no appetite.
Maester Luwin lowered his eyes. “Unchanged, my lady.”
It was the reply she had expected, no more and no less. Her hands throbbed with pain,
as if the blade were still in her, cutting deep. She sent the servants away and looked back
to Robb. “Do you have the answer yet?”
“Someone is afraid Bran might wake up,” Robb said, “afraid of what he might say or do,
afraid of something he knows.”
Catelyn was proud of him. “Very good.” She turned to the new captain of the guard. “We
must keep Bran safe. If there was one killer, there could be others.”
“How many guards do you want, rn’lady?” Hal asked.
“So long as Lord Eddard is away, my son is the master of Winterfell,” she told him.
Robb stood a little taller. “Put one man in the sickroom, night and day, one outside the
�door, two at the bottom of the stairs. No one sees Bran without my warrant or my
mother’s.”
“As you say, m’lord.”
“Do it now,” Catelyn suggested.
“And let his wolf stay in the room with him,” Robb added.
“Yes,” Catelyn said. And then again: “Yes.”
Hallis Mollen bowed and left the room.
“Lady Stark,” Ser Rodrik said when the guardsman had gone, “did you chance to notice
the dagger the killer used?”
“The circumstances did not allow me to examine it closely, but I can vouch for its edge,”
Catelyn replied with a dry smile. “Why do you ask?”
“We found the knife still in the villain’s grasp. It seemed to me that it was altogether too
fine a weapon for such a man, so I looked at it long and hard. The blade is Valyrian steel,
the hilt dragonbone. A weapon like that has no business being in the hands of such as
him. Someone gave it to him.”
Catelyn nodded, thoughtful. “Robb, close the door.”
He looked at her strangely, but did as she told him.
“What I am about to tell you must not leave this room,” she told them. “I want your
oaths on that. If even part of what I suspect is true, Ned and my girls have ridden into
deadly danger, and a word in the wrong ears could mean their lives.”
“Lord Eddard is a second father to me,” said Theon Greyjoy. “I do so swear.”
“You have my oath,” Maester Luwin said.
“And mine, my lady,” echoed Ser Rodrik.
She looked at her son. “And you, Robb?”
He nodded his consent.
�“My sister Lysa believes the Lannisters murdered her husband, Lord Arryn, the Hand of
the King,” Catelyn told them. “It comes to me that Jaime Lannister did not join the hunt
the day Bran fell. He remained here in the castle.” The room was deathly quiet. “I do not
think Bran fell from that tower,” she said into the stillness. “I think he was thrown.”
The shock was plain on their faces. “My lady, that is a monstrous suggestion,” said
Rodrik Cassel. “Even the Kingslayer would flinch at the murder of an innocent child.”
“Oh, would he?” Theon Greyjoy asked. “I wonder.”
“There is no limit to Lannister pride or Lannister ambition,” Catelyn said.
“The boy had always been surehanded in the past,” Maester Luwin said thoughtfully.
“He knew every stone in Winterfell.”
“Gods,” Robb swore, his young face dark with anger. “If this is true, he will pay for it.”
He drew his sword and waved it in the air. “I’ll kill him myself!”
Ser Rodrik bristled at him. “Put that away! The Lannisters are a hundred leagues away.
Never draw your sword unless you mean to use it. How many times must I tell you,
foolish boy?”
Abashed, Robb sheathed his sword, suddenly a child again. Catelyn said to Ser Rodrik, “I
see my son is wearing steel now.”
The old master-at-arms said, “I thought it was time.”
Robb was looking at her anxiously. “Past time,” she said. “Winterfell may have need of
all its swords soon, and they had best not be made of wood.”
Theon Greyjoy put a hand on the hilt of his blade and said, “My lady, if it comes to that,
my House owes yours a great debt.”
Maester Luwin pulled at his chain collar where it chafed against his neck. “All we have is
conjecture. This is the queen’s beloved brother we mean to accuse. She will not take it
kindly. We must have proof, or forever keep silent.”
“Your proof is in the dagger,” Ser Rodrik said. “A fine blade like that will not have gone
unnoticed.”
There was only one place to find the truth of it, Catelyn realized. “Someone must go to
�King’s Landing.”
“I’ll go,” Robb said.
“No,” she told him. “Your place is here. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell.” She
looked at Ser Rodrik with his great white whiskers, at Maester Luwin in his grey robes,
at young Greyjoy, lean and dark and impetuous. Who to send? Who would be believed?
Then she knew. Catelyn struggled to push back the blankets, her bandaged fingers as
stiff and unyielding as stone. She climbed out of bed. “I must go myself.”
“My lady,” said Maester Luwin, “is that wise? Surely the Lannisters would greet your
arrival with suspicion.”
“What about Bran?” Robb asked. The poor boy looked utterly confused now. “You can’t
mean to leave him.”
“I have done everything I can for Bran,” she said, laying a wounded hand on his arm.
“His life is in the hands of the gods and Maester Luwin. As you reminded me yourself,
Robb, I have other children to think of now.”
“You will need a strong escort, my lady,” Theon said.
“I’ll send Hal with a squad of guardsmen,” Robb said.
“No,” Catelyn said. “A large party attracts unwelcome attention. I would not have the
Lannisters know I am coming.”
Ser Rodrik protested. “My lady, let me accompany you at least. The kingsroad can be
perilous for a woman alone.”
“I will not be taking the kingsroad,” Catelyn replied. She thought for a moment, then
nodded her consent. “Two riders can move as fast as one, and a good deal faster than a
long column burdened by wagons and wheelhouses. I will welcome your company, Ser
Rodrik. We will follow the White Knife down to the sea, and hire a ship at White Harbor.
Strong horses and brisk winds should bring us to King’s Landing well ahead of Ned and
the Lannisters.” And then, she thought, we shall see what we shall see.
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SANSA
Eddard Stark had left before dawn, Septa Mordane informed Sansa as they broke their
fast. “The king sent for him. Another hunt, I do believe. There are still wild aurochs in
these lands, I am told.”
“I’ve never seen an aurochs,” Sansa said, feeding a piece of bacon to Lady under the
table. The direwolf took it from her hand, as delicate as a queen.
Septa Mordane sniffed in disapproval. “A noble lady does not feed dogs at her table,” she
said, breaking off another piece of comb and letting the honey drip down onto her bread.
“She’s not a dog, she’s a direwolf,” Sansa pointed out as Lady licked her fingers with a
rough tongue. “Anyway, Father said we could keep them with us if we want.”
The septa was not appeased. “You’re a good girl, Sansa, but I do vow, when it comes to
that creature you’re as willful as your sister Arya.” She scowled. “And where is Arya this
morning?”
“She wasn’t hungry,” Sansa said, knowing full well that her sister had probably stolen
down to the kitchen hours ago and wheedled a breakfast out of some cook’s boy.
“Do remind her to dress nicely today. The grey velvet, perhaps. We are all invited to ride
with the queen and Princess Myrcella in the royal wheelhouse, and we must look our
best.”
Sansa already looked her best. She had brushed out her long auburn hair until it shone,
and picked her nicest blue silks. She had been looking forward to today for more than a
week. It was a great honor to ride with the queen, and besides, Prince Joffrey might be
there. Her betrothed. Just thinking it made her feel a strange fluttering inside, even
though they were not to marry for years and years. Sansa did not really know Joffrey yet,
but she was already in love with him. He was all she ever dreamt her prince should be,
tall and handsome and strong, with hair like gold. She treasured every chance to spend
time with him, few as they were. The only thing that scared her about today was Arya.
Arya had a way of ruining everything. You never knew what she would do. “I’ll tell her,”
Sansa said uncertainly, “but she’ll dress the way she always does.” She hoped it wouldn’t
be too embarrassing. “May I be excused?”
�“You may.” Septa Mordane helped herself to more bread and honey, and Sansa slid from
the bench. Lady followed at her heels as she ran from the inn’s common room.
Outside, she stood for a moment amidst the shouts and curses and the creak of wooden
wheels as the men broke down the tents and pavilions and loaded the wagons for
another day’s march. The inn was a sprawling three-story structure of pale stone, the
biggest that Sansa had ever seen, but even so, it had accommodations for less than a
third of the king’s party, which had swollen to more than four hundred with the addition
of her father’s household and the freeriders who had joined them on the road.
She found Arya on the banks of the Trident, trying to hold Nymeria still while she
brushed dried mud from her fur. The direwolf was not enjoying the process. Arya was
wearing the same riding leathers she had worn yesterday and the day before.
“You better put on something pretty,” Sansa told her. “Septa Mordane said so. We’re
traveling in the queen’s wheelhouse with Princess Myrcella today.”
“I’m not,” Arya said, trying to brush a tangle out of Nymeria’s matted grey fur. “Mycah
and I are going to ride upstream and look for rubies at the ford.”
“Rubies,” Sansa said, lost. “What rubies?”
Arya gave her a look like she was so stupid. “Rhaegar’s rubies. This is where King Robert
killed him and won the crown.”
Sansa regarded her scrawny little sister in disbelief. “You can’t look for rubies, the
princess is expecting us. The queen invited us both.”
“I don’t care,” Arya said. “The wheelhouse doesn’t even have windows, you can’t see a
thing.”
“What could you want to see?” Sansa said, annoyed. She had been thrilled by the
invitation, and her stupid sister was going to ruin everything, just as she’d feared. “It’s
all just fields and farms and holdfasts.”
“It is not,” Arya said stubbornly. “If you came with us sometimes, you’d see.”
“I hate riding,” Sansa said fervently. “All it does is get you soiled and dusty and sore.”
Arya shrugged. “Hold still,” she snapped at Nymeria, “I’m not hurting you.” Then to
Sansa she said, “When we were crossing the Neck, I counted thirty-six flowers I never
�saw before, and Mycah showed me a lizard-lion.”
Sansa shuddered. They had been twelve days crossing the Neck, rumbling down a
crooked causeway through an endless black bog, and she had hated every moment of it.
The air had been damp and clammy, the causeway so narrow they could not even make
proper camp at night, they had to stop right on the kingsroad. Dense thickets of halfdrowned trees pressed close around them, branches dripping with curtains of pale
fungus. Huge flowers bloomed in the mud and floated on pools of stagnant water, but if
you were stupid enough to leave the causeway to pluck them, there were quicksands
waiting to suck you down, and snakes watching from the trees, and lizard-lions floating
half-submerged in the water, like black logs with eyes and teeth.
None of which stopped Arya, of course. One day she came back grinning her horsey grin,
her hair all tangled and her clothes covered in mud, clutching a raggedy bunch of purple
and green flowers for Father. Sansa kept hoping he would tell Arya to behave herself and
act like the highborn lady she was supposed to be, but he never did, he only hugged her
and thanked her for the flowers. That just made her worse.
Then it turned out the purple flowers were called poison kisses, and Arya got a rash on
her arms. Sansa would have thought that might have taught her a lesson, but Arya
laughed about it, and the next day she rubbed mud all over her arms like some ignorant
bog woman just because her friend Mycah told her it would stop the itching. She had
bruises on her arms and shoulders too, dark purple welts and faded green-and-yellow
splotches, Sansa had seen them when her sister undressed for sleep. How she had gotten
those only the seven gods knew.
Arya was still going on, brushing out Nymeria’s tangles and chattering about things
she’d seen on the trek south. “Last week we found this haunted watchtower, and the day
before we chased a herd of wild horses. You should have seen them run when they
caught a scent of Nymeria.” The wolf wriggled in her grasp and Arya scolded her. “Stop
that, I have to do the other side, you’re all muddy.”
“You’re not supposed to leave the column,” Sansa reminded her. “Father said so.”
Arya shrugged. “I didn’t go far. Anyway, Nymeria was with me the whole time. I don’t
always go off, either. Sometimes it’s fun just to ride along with the wagons and talk to
people.”
Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and
serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth.
Arya would make friends with anybody. This Mycah was the worst; a butcher’s boy,
thirteen and wild, he slept in the meat wagon and smelled of the slaughtering block. Just
�the sight of him was enough to make Sansa feel sick, but Arya seemed to prefer his
company to hers.
Sansa was running out of patience now. “You have to come with me,” she told her sister
firmly. “You can’t refuse the queen. Septa Mordane will expect you.”
Arya ignored her. She gave a hard yank with the brush. Nymeria growled and spun away,
affronted. “Come back here!”
“There’s going to be lemon cakes and tea,” Sansa went on, all adult and reasonable. Lady
brushed against her leg. Sansa scratched her ears the way she liked, and Lady sat beside
her on her haunches, watching Arya chase Nymeria. “Why would you want to ride a
smelly old horse and get all sore and sweaty when you could recline on feather pillows
and eat cakes with the queen?”
“I don’t like the queen,” Arya said casually. Sansa sucked in her breath, shocked that
even Arya would say such a thing, but her sister prattled on, heedless. “She won’t even
let me bring Nymeria.” She thrust the brush under her belt and stalked her wolf.
Nymeria watched her approach warily.
“A royal wheelhouse is no place for a wolf,” Sansa said. “And Princess Myrcella is afraid
of them, you know that.”
“Myrcella is a little baby.” Arya grabbed Nymeria around her neck, but the moment she
pulled out the brush again the direwolf wriggled free and bounded off. Frustrated, Arya
threw down the brush. “Bad wolf!” she shouted.
Sansa couldn’t help but smile a little. The kennelmaster once told her that an animal
takes after its master. She gave Lady a quick little hug. Lady licked her cheek. Sansa
giggled. Arya heard and whirled around, glaring. “I don’t care what you say, I’m going
out riding.” Her long horsey face got the stubborn look that meant she was going to do
something willful.
“Gods be true, Arya, sometimes you act like such a child,” Sansa said. “I’ll go by myself
then. It will be ever so much nicer that way. Lady and I will eat all the lemon cakes and
just have the best time without you.”
She turned to walk off, but Arya shouted after her, “They won’t let you bring Lady
either.” She was gone before Sansa could think of a reply, chasing Nymeria along the
river.
Alone and humiliated, Sansa took the long way back to the inn, where she knew Septa
�Mordane would be waiting. Lady padded quietly by her side. She was almost in tears. All
she wanted was for things to be nice and pretty, the way they were in the songs. Why
couldn’t Arya be sweet and delicate and kind, like Princess Myrcella? She would have
liked a sister like that.
Sansa could never understand how two sisters, born only two years apart, could be so
different. It would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother
Jon. She even looked like Jon, with the long face and brown hair of the Starks, and
nothing of their lady mother in her face or her coloring. And Jon’s mother had been
common, or so people whispered. Once, when she was littler, Sansa had even asked
Mother if perhaps there hadn’t been some mistake. Perhaps the grumkins had stolen her
real sister. But Mother had only laughed and said no, Arya was her daughter and Sansa’s
trueborn sister, blood of their blood. Sansa could not think why Mother would want to
lie about it, so she supposed it had to be true.
As she neared the center of camp, her distress was quickly forgotten. A crowd had
gathered around the queen’s wheelhouse. Sansa heard excited voices buzzing like a hive
of bees. The doors had been thrown open, she saw, and the queen stood at the top of the
wooden steps, smiling down at someone. She heard her saying, “The council does us
great honor, my good lords.”
“What’s happening?” she asked a squire she knew.
“The council sent riders from King’s Landing to escort us the rest of the way,” he told
her. “An honor guard for the king.”
Anxious to see, Sansa let Lady clear a path through the crowd. People moved aside
hastily for the direwolf. When she got closer, she saw two knights kneeling before the
queen, in armor so fine and gorgeous that it made her blink.
One knight wore an intricate suit of white enameled scales, brilliant as a field of newfallen snow, with silver chasings and clasps that glittered in the sun. When he removed
his helm, Sansa saw that he was an old man with hair as pale as his armor, yet he
seemed strong and graceful for all that. From his shoulders hung the pure white cloak of
the Kingsguard.
His companion was a man near twenty whose armor was steel plate of a deep forestgreen. He was the handsomest man Sansa had ever set eyes upon; tall and powerfully
made, with jet-black hair that fell to his shoulders and framed a clean-shaven face, and
laughing green eyes to match his armor. Cradled under one arm was an antlered helm,
its magnificent rack shimmering in gold.
�At first Sansa did not notice the third stranger. He did not kneel with the others. He
stood to one side, beside their horses, a gaunt grim man who watched the proceedings in
silence. His face was pockmarked and beardless, with deepset eyes and hollow cheeks.
Though he was not an old man, only a few wisps of hair remained to him, sprouting
above his ears, but those he had grown long as a woman’s. His armor was iron-grey
chainmail over layers of boiled leather, plain and unadorned, and it spoke of age and
hard use. Above his right shoulder the stained leather hilt of the blade strapped to his
back was visible; a two-handed greatsword, too long to be worn at his side.
“The king is gone hunting, but I know he will be pleased to see you when he returns,” the
queen was saying to the two knights who knelt before her, but Sansa could not take her
eyes off the third man. He seemed to feel the weight of her gaze. Slowly he turned his
head. Lady growled. A terror as overwhelming as anything Sansa Stark had ever felt
filled her suddenly. She stepped backward and bumped into someone.
Strong hands grasped her by the shoulders, and for a moment Sansa thought it was her
father, but when she turned, it was the burned face of Sandor Clegane looking down at
her, his mouth twisted in a terrible mockery of a smile. “You are shaking, girl,” he said,
his voice rasping. “Do I frighten you so much?”
He did, and had since she had first laid eyes on the ruin that fire had made of his face,
though it seemed to her now that he was not half so terrifying as the other. Still, Sansa
wrenched away from him, and the Hound laughed, and Lady moved between them,
rumbling a warning. Sansa dropped to her knees to wrap her arms around the wolf. They
were all gathered around gaping, she could feel their eyes on her, and here and there she
heard muttered comments and titters of laughter.
“A wolf,” a man said, and someone else said, “Seven hells, that’s a direwolf,” and the first
man said, “What’s it doing in camp?” and the Hound’s rasping voice replied, “The Starks
use them for wet nurses,” and Sansa realized that the two stranger knights were looking
down on her and Lady, swords in their hands, and then she was frightened again, and
ashamed. Tears filled her eyes.
She heard the queen say, “Joffrey, go to her.”
And her prince was there.
“Leave her alone,” Joffrey said. He stood over her, beautiful in blue wool and black
leather, his golden curls shining in the sun like a crown. He gave her his hand, drew her
to her feet. “What is it, sweet lady? Why are you afraid? No one will hurt you. Put away
your swords, all of you. The wolf is her little pet, that’s all.” He looked at Sandor Clegane.
“And you, dog, away with you, you’re scaring my betrothed.”
�The Hound, ever faithful, bowed and slid away quietly through the press. Sansa
struggled to steady herself. She felt like such a fool. She was a Stark of Winterfell, a
noble lady, and someday she would be a queen. “It was not him, my sweet prince,” she
tried to explain. “It was the other one.”
The two stranger knights exchanged a look. “Payne?” chuckled the young man in the
green armor.
The older man in white spoke to Sansa gently. “Ofttimes Ser Ilyn frightens me as well,
sweet lady. He has a fearsome aspect.”
“As well he should.” The queen had descended from the wheelhouse. The spectators
parted to make way for her. “If the wicked do not fear the Mng’s Justice, you have put
the wrong man in the office.”
Sansa finally found her words. “Then surely you have chosen the right one, Your Grace,”
she said, and a gale of laughter erupted all around her.
“Well spoken, child,” said the old man in white. “As befits the daughter of Eddard Stark.
I am honored to know you, however irregular the manner of our meeting. I am Ser
Barristan Selmy, of the Kingsguard.” He bowed.
Sansa knew the name, and now the courtesies that Septa Mordane had taught her over
the years came back to her. “The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard,” she said, “and
councillor to Robert our king and to Aerys Targaryen before him. The honor is mine,
good knight. Even in the far north, the singers praise the deeds of Barristan the Bold.”
The green knight laughed again. “Barristan the Old, you mean. Don’t flatter him too
sweetly, child, he thinks overmuch of himself already.” He smiled at her. “Now, wolf girl,
if you can put a name to me as well, then I must concede that you are truly our Hand’s
daughter.”
Joffrey stiffened beside her. “Have a care how you address my betrothed.”
“I can answer,” Sansa said quickly, to quell her prince’s anger. She smiled at the green
knight. “Your helmet bears golden antlers, my lord. The stag is the sigil of the royal
House. King Robert has two brothers. By your extreme youth, you can only be Renly
Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End and councillor to the king, and so I name you.”
Ser Barristan chuckled. “By his extreme youth, he can only be a prancing jackanapes,
and so I name him.”
�There was general laughter, led by Lord Renly himself. The tension of a few moments
ago was gone, and Sansa was beginning to feel comfortable . . . until Ser Ilyn Payne
shouldered two men aside, and stood before her, unsmiling. He did not say a word. Lady
bared her teeth and began to growl, a low rumble full of menace, but this time Sansa
silenced the wolf with a gentle hand to the head. “I am sorry if I offended you, Ser Ilyn,”
she said.
She waited for an answer, but none came. As the headsman looked at her, his pale
colorless eyes seemed to strip the clothes away from her, and then the skin, leaving her
soul naked before him. Still silent, he turned and walked away.
Sansa did not understand. She looked at her prince. “Did I say something wrong, Your
Grace? Why will he not speak to me?”
“Ser Ilyn has not been feeling talkative these past fourteen years,” Lord Renly
commented with a sly smile.
Joffrey gave his uncle a look of pure loathing, then took Sansa’s hands in his own. “Aerys
Targaryen had his tongue ripped out with hot pincers.”
“He speaks most eloquently with his sword, however,” the queen said, “and his devotion
to our realm is unquestioned.” Then she smiled graciously and said, “Sansa, the good
councillors and I must speak together until the king returns with your father. I fear we
shall have to postpone your day with Myrcella. Please give your sweet sister my
apologies. Joffrey, perhaps you would be so kind as to entertain our guest today.”
“It would be my pleasure, Mother,” Joffrey said very formally. He took her by the arm
and led her away from the wheelhouse, and Sansa’s spirits took flight. A whole day with
her prince! She gazed at Joffrey worshipfully. He was so gallant, she thought. The way he
had rescued her from Ser Ilyn and the Hound, why, it was almost like the songs, like the
time Serwyn of the Mirror Shield saved the Princess Daeryssa from the giants, or Prince
Aemon the Dragonknight championing Queen Naerys’s honor against evil Ser Morgil’s
slanders.
The touch of Joffrey’s hand on her sleeve made her heart beat faster. “What would you
like to do?”
Be with you, Sansa thought, but she said, “Whatever you’d like to do, my prince.”
Jofftey reflected a moment. “We could go riding.”
�“Oh, I love riding,” Sansa said.
Joffrey glanced back at Lady, who was following at their heels. “Your wolf is liable to
frighten the horses, and my dog seems to frighten you. Let us leave them both behind
and set off on our own, what do you say?”
Sansa hesitated. “If you like,” she said uncertainly. “I suppose I could tie Lady up.” She
did not quite understand, though. “I didn’t know you had a dog . . . ”
Joffrey laughed. “He’s my mother’s dog, in truth. She has set him to guard me, and so he
does.”
“You mean the Hound,” she said. She wanted to hit herself for being so slow. Her prince
would never love her if she seemed stupid. “Is it safe to leave him behind?”
Prince Joffrey looked annoyed that she would even ask. “Have no fear, lady. I am almost
a man grown, and I don’t fight with wood like your brothers. All I need is this.” He drew
his sword and showed it to her; a longsword adroitly shrunken to suit a boy of twelve,
gleaming blue steel, castle-forged and double-edged, with a leather grip and a lion’shead pommel in gold. Sansa exclaimed over it admiringly, and Joffrey looked pleased. “I
call it Lion’s Tooth,” he said.
And so they left her direwolf and his bodyguard behind them, while they ranged east
along the north bank of the Trident with no company save Lion’s Tooth.
It was a glorious day, a magical day. The air was warm and heavy with the scent of
flowers, and the woods here had a gentle beauty that Sansa had never seen in the north.
Prince Joffrey’s mount was a blood bay courser, swift as the wind, and he rode it with
reckless abandon, so fast that Sansa was hard-pressed to keep up on her mare. It was a
day for adventures. They explored the caves by the riverbank, and tracked a shadowcat
to its lair, and when they grew hungry, Joffrey found a holdfast by its smoke and told
them to fetch food and wine for their prince and his lady. They dined on trout fresh from
the river, and Sansa drank more wine than she had ever drunk before. “My father only
lets us have one cup, and only at feasts,” she confessed to her prince.
“My betrothed can drink as much as she wants,” Joffrey said, refilling her cup.
They went more slowly after they had eaten. Joffrey sang for her as they rode, his voice
high and sweet and pure. Sansa was a little dizzy from the wine. “Shouldn’t we be
starting back?” she asked.
“Soon,” Joffrey said. “The battleground is right up ahead, where the river bends. That
�was where my father killed Rhaegar Targaryen, you know. He smashed in his chest,
crunch, right through the armor.” Joffrey swung an imaginary warhammer to show her
how it was done. “Then my uncle Jaime killed old Aerys, and my father was king. What’s
that sound?”
Sansa heard it too, floating through the woods, a kind of wooden clattering, snack snack
snack. “I don’t know,” she said. It made her nervous, though. “Joffrey, let’s go back.”
“I want to see what it is.” Joffrey turned his horse in the direction of the sounds, and
Sansa had no choice but to follow. The noises grew louder and more distinct, the clack of
wood on wood, and as they grew closer they heard heavy breathing as well, and now and
then a grunt.
“Someone’s there,” Sansa said anxiously. She found herself thinking of Lady, wishing the
direwolf was with her.
“You’re safe with me.” Joffrey drew his Lion’s Tooth from its sheath. The sound of steel
on leather made her tremble. “This way,” he said, riding through a stand of trees.
Beyond, in a clearing overlooking the river, they came upon a boy and a girl playing at
knights. Their swords were wooden sticks, broom handles from the look of them, and
they were rushing across the grass, swinging at each other lustily. The boy was years
older, a head taller, and much stronger, and he was pressing the attack. The girl, a
scrawny thing in soiled leathers, was dodging and managing to get her stick in the way of
most of the boy’s blows, but not all. When she tried to lunge at him, he caught her stick
with his own, swept it aside, and slid his wood down hard on her fingers. She cried out
and lost her weapon.
Prince Joffrey laughed. The boy looked around, wide-eyed and startled, and dropped his
stick in the grass. The girl glared at them, sucking on her knuckles to take the sting out,
and Sansa was horrified. “Arya?” she called out incredulously.
“Go away,” Arya shouted back at them, angry tears in her eyes. “What are you doing
here? Leave us alone.”
Joffrey glanced from Arya to Sansa and back again. “Your sister?” She nodded, blushing.
Joffrey examined the boy, an ungainly lad with a coarse, freckled face and thick red hair.
“And who are you, boy?” he asked in a commanding tone that took no notice of the fact
that the other was a year his senior.
“Mycah,” the boy muttered. He recognized the prince and averted his eyes. “M’lord.”
�“He’s the butcher’s boy,” Sansa said.
“He’s my friend,” Arya said sharply. “You leave him alone.”
“A butcher’s boy who wants to be a knight, is it?” Joffrey swung down from his mount,
sword in hand. “Pick up your sword, butcher’s boy,” he said, his eyes bright with
amusement. “Let us see how good you are.”
Mycah stood there, frozen with fear.
Joffrey walked toward him. “Go on, pick it up. Or do you only fight little girls?”
“She ast me to, m’lord,” Mycah said. “She ast me to.”
Sansa had only to glance at Arya and see the flush on her sister’s face to know the boy
was telling the truth, but Joffrey was in no mood to listen. The wine had made him wild.
“Are you going to pick up your sword?”
Mycah shook his head. “It’s only a stick, m’lord. It’s not no sword, it’s only a stick.”
“And you’re only a butcher’s boy, and no knight.” Joffrey lifted Lion’s Tooth and laid its
point on Mycah’s cheek below the eye, as the butcher’s boy stood trembling. “That was
my lady’s sister you were hitting, do you know that?” A bright bud of blood blossomed
where his sword pressed into Mycah’s flesh, and a slow red line trickled down the boy’s
cheek.
“Stop it!” Arya screamed. She grabbed up her fallen stick.
Sansa was afraid. “Arya, you stay out of this.”
“I won’t hurt him . . . much,” Prince Joffrey told Arya, never taking his eyes off the
butcher’s boy.
Arya went for him.
Sansa slid off her mare, but she was too slow. Arya swung with both hands. There was a
loud crack as the wood split against the back of the prince’s head, and then everything
happened at once before Sansa’s horrified eyes. Joffrey staggered and whirled around,
roaring curses. Mycah ran for the trees as fast as his legs would take him. Arya swung at
the prince again, but this time Joffrey caught the blow on Lion’s Tooth and sent her
broken stick flying from her hands. The back of his head was all bloody and his eyes
�were on fire. Sansa was shrieking, “No, no, stop it, stop it, both of you, you’re spoiling it,”
but no one was listening. Arya scooped up a rock and hurled it at Joffrey’s head. She hit
his horse instead, and the blood bay reared and went galloping off after Mycah. “Stop it,
don’t, stop it!” Sansa screamed. Joffrey slashed at Arya with his sword, screaming
obscenities, terrible words, filthy words. Arya darted back, frightened now, but Joffrey
followed, hounding her toward the woods, backing her up against a tree. Sansa didn’t
know what to do. She watched helplessly, almost blind from her tears.
Then a grey blur flashed past her, and suddenly Nymeria was there, leaping, jaws closing
around Joffrey’s sword arm. The steel fell from his fingers as the wolf knocked him off
his feet, and they rolled in the grass, the wolf snarling and ripping at him, the prince
shrieking in pain. “Get it off,” he screamed. “Get it off!”
Arya’s voice cracked like a whip. “Nymeria!”
The direwolf let go of Joffrey and moved to Arya’s side. The prince lay in the grass,
whimpering, cradling his mangled arm. His shirt was soaked in blood. Arya said, “She
didn’t hurt you . . . much.” She picked up Lion’s Tooth where it had fallen, and stood
over him, holding the sword with both hands.
Jofftey made a scared whimpery sound as he looked up at her. “No,” he said, “don’t hurt
me. I’ll tell my mother.”
“You leave him alone!” Sansa screamed at her sister.
Arya whirled and heaved the sword into the air, putting her whole body into the throw.
The blue steel flashed in the sun as the sword spun out over the river. It hit the water
and vanished with a splash. Joffrey moaned. Arya ran off to her horse, Nymeria loping at
her heels.
After they had gone, Sansa went to Prince Joffrey. His eyes were closed in pain, his
breath ragged. Sansa knelt beside him. “Joffrey,” she sobbed. “Oh, look what they did,
look what they did. My poor prince. Don’t be afraid. I’ll ride to the holdfast and bring
help for you.” Tenderly she reached out and brushed back his soft blond hair.
His eyes snapped open and looked at her, and there was nothing but loathing there,
nothing but the vilest contempt. “Then go,” he spit at her. “And don’t touch me.”
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EDDARD
They’ve found her, my lord.”
Ned rose quickly. “Our men or Lannister’s?”
“It was Jory,” his steward Vayon Poole replied. “She’s not been harmed.”
“Thank the gods,” Ned said. His men had been searching for Arya for four days now, but
the queen’s men had been out hunting as well. “Where is she? Tell Jory to bring her here
at once.”
“I am sorry, my lord,” Poole told him. “The guards on the gate were Lannister men, and
they informed the queen when Jory brought her in. She’s being taken directly before the
king . . . ”
“Damn that woman!” Ned said, striding to the door. “Find Sansa and bring her to the
audience chamber. Her voice may be needed.” He descended the tower steps in a red
rage. He had led searches himself for the first three days, and had scarcely slept an hour
since Arya had disappeared. This morning he had been so heartsick and weary he could
scarcely stand, but now his fury was on him, filling him with strength.
Men called out to him as he crossed the castle yard, but Ned ignored them in his haste.
He would have run, but he was still the King’s Hand, and a Hand must keep his dignity.
He was aware of the eyes that followed him, of the muttered voices wondering what he
would do.
The castle was a modest holding a half day’s ride south of the Trident. The royal party
had made themselves the uninvited guests of its lord, Ser Raymun Darry, while the hunt
for Arya and the butcher’s boy was conducted on both sides of the river. They were not
welcome visitors. Ser Raymun lived under the king’s peace, but his family had fought
beneath Rhaegar’s dragon banners at the Trident, and his three older brothers had died
there, a truth neither Robert nor Ser Raymun had forgotten. With king’s men, Darry
men, Lannister men, and Stark men all crammed into a castle far too small for them,
tensions burned hot and heavy.
The king had appropriated Ser Raymun’s audience chamber, and that was where Ned
�found them. The room was crowded when he burst in. Too crowded, he thought; left
alone, he and Robert might have been able to settle the matter amicably.
Robert was slumped in Darry’s high seat at the far end of the room, his face closed and
sullen. Cersei Lannister and her son stood beside him. The queen had her hand on
Joffrey’s shoulder. Thick silken bandages still covered the boy’s arm.
Arya stood in the center of the room, alone but for Jory Cassel, every eye upon her.
“Arya,” Ned called loudly. He went to her, his boots ringing on the stone floor. When she
saw him, she cried out and began to sob.
Ned went to one knee and took her in his arms. She was shaking. “I’m sorry,” she
sobbed, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“I know,” he said. She felt so tiny in his arms, nothing but a scrawny little girl. It was
hard to see how she had caused so much trouble. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” Her face was dirty, and her tears left pink tracks down her cheeks. “Hungry some.
I ate some berries, but there was nothing else.”
“We’ll feed you soon enough,” Ned promised. He rose to face the king. “What is the
meaning of this?” His eyes swept the room, searching for friendly faces. But for his own
men, they were few enough. Ser Raymun Darry guarded his look well. Lord Renly wore a
half smile that might mean anything, and old Ser Barristan was grave; the rest were
Lannister men, and hostile. Their only good fortune was that both Jaime Lannister and
Sandor Clegane were missing, leading searches north of the Trident. “Why was I not told
that my daughter had been found?” Ned demanded, his voice ringing. “Why was she not
brought to me at once?”
He spoke to Robert, but it was Cersei Lannister who answered. “How dare you speak to
your king in that manner!”
At that, the king stirred. “Quiet, woman,” he snapped. He straightened in his seat. “I am
sorry, Ned. I never meant to frighten the girl. It seemed best to bring her here and get
the business done with quickly.”
“And what business is that?” Ned put ice in his voice.
The queen stepped forward. “You know full well, Stark. This girl of yours attacked my
son. Her and her butcher’s boy. That animal of hers tried to tear his arm off.”
“That’s not true,” Arya said loudly. “She just bit him a little. He was hurting Mycah.”
�“Joff told us what happened,” the queen said. “You and the butcher boy beat him with
clubs while you set your wolf on him.”
“That’s not how it was,” Arya said, close to tears again. Ned put a hand on her shoulder.
“Yes it is!” Prince Joffrey insisted. “They all attacked me, and she threw Lion’s Tooth in
the river!” Ned noticed that he did not so much as glance at Arya as he spoke.
“Liar!” Arya yelled.
“Shut up!” the prince yelled back.
“Enough!” the king roared, rising from his seat, his voice thick with irritation. Silence
fell. He glowered at Arya through his thick beard. “Now, child, you will tell me what
happened. Tell it all, and tell it true. It is a great crime to lie to a king.” Then he looked
over at his son. “When she is done, you will have your turn. Until then, hold your
tongue.”
As Arya began her story, Ned heard the door open behind him. He glanced back and saw
Vayon Poole enter with Sansa. They stood quietly at the back of the hall as Arya spoke.
When she got to the part where she threw Joffrey’s sword into the middle of the Trident,
Renly Baratheon began to laugh. The king bristled. “Ser Barristan, escort my brother
from the hall before he chokes.”
Lord Renly stifled his laughter. “My brother is too kind. I can find the door myself.” He
bowed to Joffrey. “Perchance later you’ll tell me how a nine-year-old girl the size of a wet
rat managed to disarm you with a broom handle and throw your sword in the river.” As
the door swung shut behind him, Ned heard him say, “Lion’s Tooth,” and guffaw once
more.
Prince Joffrey was pale as he began his very different version of events. When his son
was done talking, the king rose heavily from his seat, looking like a man who wanted to
be anywhere but here. “What in all the seven hells am I supposed to make of this? He
says one thing, she says another.”
“They were not the only ones present,” Ned said. “Sansa, come here.” Ned had heard her
version of the story the night Arya had vanished. He knew the truth. “Tell us what
happened.”
His eldest daughter stepped forward hesitantly. She was dressed in blue velvets trimmed
with white, a silver chain around her neck. Her thick auburn hair had been brushed until
�it shone. She blinked at her sister, then at the young prince. “I don’t know,” she said
tearfully, looking as though she wanted to bolt. “I don’t remember. Everything happened
so fast, I didn’t see . . . ”
“You rotten!” Arya shrieked. She flew at her sister like an arrow, knocking Sansa down to
the ground, pummeling her. “Liar, liar, liar, liar.”
“Arya, stop it!” Ned shouted. Jory pulled her off her sister, kicking. Sansa was pale and
shaking as Ned lifted her back to her feet. “Are you hurt?” he asked, but she was staring
at Arya, and she did not seem to hear.
“The girl is as wild as that filthy animal of hers,” Cersei Lannister said. “Robert, I want
her punished.”
“Seven hells,” Robert swore. “Cersei, look at her. She’s a child. What would you have me
do, whip her through the streets? Damn it, children fight. It’s over. No lasting harm was
done.”
The queen was furious. “Joff will carry those scars for the rest of his life.”
Robert Baratheon looked at his eldest son. “So he will. Perhaps they will teach him a
lesson. Ned, see that your daughter is disciplined. I will do the same with my son.”
“Gladly, Your Grace,” Ned said with vast relief.
Robert started to walk away, but the queen was not done. “And what of the direwolf?”
she called after him. “What of the beast that savaged your son?”
The king stopped, turned back, frowned. “I’d forgotten about the damned wolf.”
Ned could see Arya tense in Jory’s arms. Jory spoke up quickly. “We found no trace of
the direwolf, Your Grace.”
Robert did not look unhappy. “No? So be it.”
The queen raised her voice. “A hundred golden dragons to the man who brings me its
skin!”
“A costly pelt,” Robert grumbled. “I want no part of this, woman. You can damn well buy
your furs with Lannister gold.”
�The queen regarded him coolly. “I had not thought you so niggardly. The king I’d
thought to wed would have laid a wolfskin across my bed before the sun went down.”
Robert’s face darkened with anger. “That would be a fine trick, without a wolf.”
“We have a wolf,” Cersei Lannister said. Her voice was very quiet, but her green eyes
shone with triumph.
It took them all a moment to comprehend her words, but when they did, the king
shrugged irritably. “As you will. Have Ser Ilyn see to it.”
“Robert, you cannot mean this,” Ned protested.
The king was in no mood for more argument. “Enough, Ned, I will hear no more. A
direwolf is a savage beast. Sooner or later it would have turned on your girl the same way
the other did on my son. Get her a dog, she’ll be happier for it.”
That was when Sansa finally seemed to comprehend. Her eyes were frightened as they
went to her father. “He doesn’t mean Lady, does he?” She saw the truth on his face.
“No,” she said. “No, not Lady, Lady didn’t bite anybody, she’s good . . . ”
“Lady wasn’t there,” Arya shouted angrily. “You leave her alone!”
“Stop them,” Sansa pleaded, “don’t let them do it, please, please, it wasn’t Lady, it was
Nymeria, Arya did it, you can’t, it wasn’t Lady, don’t let them hurt Lady, I’ll make her be
good, I promise, I promise . . . ” She started to cry.
All Ned could do was take her in his arms and hold her while she wept. He looked across
the room at Robert. His old friend, closer than any brother. “Please, Robert. For the love
you bear me. For the love you bore my sister. Please.”
The king looked at them for a long moment, then turned his eyes on his wife. “Damn
you, Cersei,” he said with loathing.
Ned stood, gently disengaging himself from Sansa’s grasp. All the weariness of the past
four days had returned to him. “Do it yourself then, Robert,” he said in a voice cold and
sharp as steel. “At least have the courage to do it yourself.”
Robert looked at Ned with flat, dead eyes and left without a word, his footsteps heavy as
lead. Silence filled the hall.
�“Where is the direwolf?” Cersei Lannister asked when her husband was gone. Beside her,
Prince Joffrey was smiling.
“The beast is chained up outside the gatehouse, Your Grace,” Ser Barristan Selmy
answered reluctantly.
“Send for Ilyn Payne.”
“No,” Ned said. “Jory, take the girls back to their rooms and bring me Ice.” The words
tasted of bile in his throat, but he forced them out. “If it must be done, I will do it.”
Cersei Lannister regarded him suspiciously. “You, Stark? Is this some trick? Why would
you do such a thing?”
They were all staring at him, but it was Sansa’s look that cut. “She is of the north. She
deserves better than a butcher.”
He left the room with his eyes burning and his daughter’s wails echoing in his ears, and
found the direwolf pup where they chained her. Ned sat beside her for a while. “Lady,”
he said, tasting the name. He had never paid much attention to the names the children
had picked, but looking at her now, he knew that Sansa had chosen well. She was the
smallest of the litter, the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. She looked at him with
bright golden eyes, and he ruffled her thick grey fur.
Shortly, Jory brought him Ice.
When it was over, he said, “Choose four men and have them take the body north. Bury
her at Winterfell.”
“All that way?” Jory said, astonished.
“All that way,” Ned affirmed. “The Lannister woman shall never have this skin.”
He was walking back to the tower to give himself up to sleep at last when Sandor
Clegane and his riders came pounding through the castle gate, back from their hunt.
There was something slung over the back of his destrier, a heavy shape wrapped in a
bloody cloak. “No sign of your daughter, Hand,” the Hound rasped down, “but the day
was not wholly wasted. We got her little pet.” He reached back and shoved the burden
off, and it fell with a thump in front of Ned.
�Bending, Ned pulled back the cloak, dreading the words he would have to find for Arya,
but it was not Nymeria after all. It was the butcher’s boy, Mycah, his body covered in
dried blood. He had been cut almost in half from shoulder to waist by some terrible blow
struck from above.
“You rode him down,” Ned said.
The Hound’s eyes seemed to glitter through the steel of that hideous dog’s-head helm.
“He ran.” He looked at Ned’s face and laughed. “But not very fast.”
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BRAN
It seemed as though he had been falling for years.
Fly, a voice whispered in the darkness, but Bran did not know how to fly, so all he could
do was fall.
Maester Luwin made a little boy of clay, baked him till he was hard and brittle, dressed
him in Bran’s clothes, and flung him off a roof. Bran remembered the way he shattered.
“But I never fall,” he said, falling.
The ground was so far below him he could barely make it out through the grey mists that
whirled around him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and he knew what was
waiting for him down there. Even in dreams, you could not fall forever. He would wake
up in the instant before he hit the ground, he knew. You always woke up in the instant
before you hit the ground.
And if you don’t? the voice asked.
The ground was closer now, still far far away, a thousand miles away, but closer than it
had been. It was cold here in the darkness. There was no sun, no stars, only the ground
below coming up to smash him, and the grey mists, and the whispering voice. He wanted
to cry.
Not cry. Fly.
“I can’t fly,” Bran said. “I can’t, I can’t . . . ”
How do you know? Have you ever tried?
The voice was high and thin. Bran looked around to see where it was coming from. A
crow was spiraling down with him, just out of reach, following him as he fell. “Help me,”
he said.
I’m trying, the crow replied. Say, got any corn?
�Bran reached into his pocket as the darkness spun dizzily around him. When he pulled
his hand out, golden kernels slid from between his fingers into the air. They fell with him.
The crow landed on his hand and began to eat.
“Are you really a crow?” Bran asked.
Are you really falling? the crow asked back.
“It’s just a dream,” Bran said.
Is it? asked the crow.
“I’ll wake up when I hit the ground,” Bran told the bird.
You’ll die when you hit the ground, the crow said. It went back to eating corn.
Bran looked down. He could see mountains now, their peaks white with snow, and the
silver thread of rivers in dark woods. He closed his eyes and began to cry.
That won’t do any good, the crow said. I told you, the answer is flying, not crying. How
hard can it be? I’m doing it. The crow took to the air and flapped around Bran’s hand.
“You have wings,” Bran pointed out.
Maybe you do too.
Bran felt along his shoulders, groping for feathers.
There are different kinds of wings, the crow said.
Bran was staring at his arms, his legs. He was so skinny, just skin stretched taut over
bones. Had he always been so thin? He tried to remember. A face swam up at him out of
the grey mist, shining with light, golden. “The things I do for love,” it said.
Bran screamed.
The crow took to the air, cawing. Not that, it shrieked at him. Forget that, you do not
need it now, put it aside, put it away. It landed on Bran’s shoulder, and pecked at him,
and the shining golden face was gone.
�Bran was falling faster than ever. The grey mists howled around him as he plunged
toward the earth below. “What are you doing to me?” he asked the crow, tearful.
Teaching you how to fly.
“I can’t fly!”
You’re flying tight now.
“I’m falling!”
Every flight begins with a fall, the crow said. Look down.
“I’m afraid . . . ”
LOOK DOWN!
Bran looked down, and felt his insides turn to water. The ground was rushing up at him
now. The whole world was spread out below him, a tapestry of white and brown and
green. He could see everything so clearly that for a moment he forgot to be afraid. He
could see the whole realm, and everyone in it.
He saw Winterfell as the eagles see it, the tall towers looking squat and stubby from
above, the castle walls just lines in the dirt. He saw Maester Luwin on his balcony,
studying the sky through a polished bronze tube and frowning as he made notes in a
book. He saw his brother Robb, taller and stronger than he remembered him, practicing
swordplay in the yard with real steel in his hand. He saw Hodor, the simple giant from
the stables, carrying an anvil to Mikken’s forge, hefting it onto his shoulder as easily as
another man might heft a bale of hay. At the heart of the godswood, the great white
weirwood brooded over its reflection in the black pool, its leaves rustling in a chill wind.
When it felt Bran watching, it lifted its eyes from the still waters and stared back at him
knowingly.
He looked east, and saw a galley racing across the waters of the Bite. He saw his mother
sitting alone in a cabin, looking at a bloodstained knife on a table in front of her, as the
rowers pulled at their oars and Ser Rodrik leaned across a rail, shaking and heaving. A
storm was gathering ahead of them, a vast dark roaring lashed by lightning, but
somehow they could not see it.
He looked south, and saw the great blue-green rush of the Trident. He saw his father
pleading with the king, his face etched with grief. He saw Sansa crying herself to sleep at
night, and he saw Arya watching in silence and holding her secrets hard in her heart.
�There were shadows all around them. One shadow was dark as ash, with the terrible face
of a hound. Another was armored like the sun, golden and beautiful. Over them both
loomed a giant in armor made of stone, but when he opened his visor, there was nothing
inside but darkness and thick black blood.
He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green
Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the
Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise.
Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard
brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory
of all warmth fled from him. And he looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in
snow, past the frozen shore and the great blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains
where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he looked, to the curtain of light
at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into the heart of
winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.
Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you
must live.
“Why?” Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling.
Because winter is coming.
Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes,
and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing
below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged bluewhite spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the
bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately
afraid.
“Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?” he heard his own voice saying, small and far
away.
And his father’s voice replied to him. “That is the only time a man can be brave.”
Now, Bran, the crow urged. Choose. Fly or die.
Death reached for him, screaming.
Bran spread his arms and flew.
�Wings unseen drank the wind and filled and pulled him upward. The terrible needles of
ice receded below him. The sky opened up above. Bran soared. It was better than
climbing. It was better than anything. The world grew small beneath him.
“I’m flying!” he cried out in delight.
I’ve noticed, said the three-eyed crow. It took to the air, flapping its wings in his face,
slowing him, blinding him. He faltered in the air as its pinions beat against his cheeks.
Its beak stabbed at him fiercely, and Bran felt a sudden blinding pain in the middle of
his forehead, between his eyes.
“What are you doing?” he shrieked.
The crow opened its beak and cawed at him, a shrill scream of fear, and the grey mists
shuddered and swirled around him and ripped away like a veil, and he saw that the crow
was really a woman, a serving woman with long black hair, and he knew her from
somewhere, from Winterfell, yes, that was it, he remembered her now, and then he
realized that he was in Winterfell, in a bed high in some chilly tower room, and the blackhaired woman dropped a basin of water to shatter on the floor and ran down the steps,
shouting, “He’s awake, he’s awake, he’s awake.”
Bran touched his forehead, between his eyes. The place where the crow had pecked him
was still burning, but there was nothing there, no blood, no wound. He felt weak and
dizzy. He tried to get out of bed, but nothing happened.
And then there was movement beside the bed, and something landed lightly on his legs.
He felt nothing. A pair of yellow eyes looked into his own, shining like the sun. The
window was open and it was cold in the room, but the warmth that came off the wolf
enfolded him like a hot bath. His pup, Bran realized . . . or was it? He was so big now. He
reached out to pet him, his hand trembling like a leaf.
When his brother Robb burst into the room, breathless from his dash up the tower steps,
the direwolf was licking Bran’s face. Bran looked up calmly. “His name is Summer,” he
said.
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CATELYN
We will make King’s Landing within the hour.”
Catelyn turned away from the rail and forced herself to smile. “Your oarmen have done
well by us, Captain. Each one of them shall have a silver stag, as a token of my gratitude.”
Captain Moreo Turnitis favored her with a half bow. “You are far too generous, Lady
Stark. The honor of carrying a great lady like yourself is all the reward they need.”
“But they’ll take the silver anyway.”
Moreo smiled. “As you say.” He spoke the Common Tongue fluently, with only the
slightest hint of a Tyroshi accent. He’d been plying the narrow sea for thirty years, he’d
told her, as oarman, quartermaster, and finally captain of his own trading galleys. The
Storm Dancer was his fourth ship, and his fastest, a two-masted galley of sixty oars.
She had certainly been the fastest of the ships available in White Harbor when Catelyn
and Ser Rodrik Cassel had arrived after their headlong gallop downriver. The Tyroshi
were notorious for their avarice, and Ser Rodrik had argued for hiring a fishing sloop out
of the Three Sisters, but Catelyn had insisted on the galley. It was good that she had. The
winds had been against them much of the voyage, and without the galley’s oars they’d
still be beating their way past the Fingers, instead of skimming toward King’s Landing
and journey’s end.
So close, she thought. Beneath the linen bandages, her fingers still throbbed where the
dagger had bitten. The pain was her scourge, Catelyn felt, lest she forget. She could not
bend the last two fingers on her left hand, and the others would never again be
dexterous. Yet that was a small enough price to pay for Bran’s life.
Ser Rodrik chose that moment to appear on deck. “My good friend,” said Moreo through
his forked green beard. The Tyroshi loved bright colors, even in their facial hair. “It is so
fine to see you looking better.”
“Yes,” Ser Rodrik agreed. “I haven’t wanted to die for almost two days now.” He bowed
to Catelyn. “My lady.”
�He was looking better. A shade thinner than he had been when they set out from White
Harbor, but almost himself again. The strong winds in the Bite and the roughness of the
narrow sea had not agreed with him, and he’d almost gone over the side when the storm
seized them unexpectedly off Dragonstone, yet somehow he had clung to a rope until
three of Moreo’s men could rescue him and carry him safely below decks.
“The captain was just telling me that our voyage is almost at an end,” she said.
Ser Rodrik managed a wry smile. “So soon?” He looked odd without his great white side
whiskers; smaller somehow, less fierce, and ten years older. Yet back on the Bite it had
seemed prudent to submit to a crewman’s razor, after his whiskers had become
hopelessly befouled for the third time while he leaned over the rail and retched into the
swirling winds.
“I will leave you to discuss your business,” Captain Moreo said. He bowed and took his
leave of them.
The galley skimmed the water like a dragonfly, her oars rising and falling in perfect time.
Ser Rodrik held the rail and looked out over the passing shore. “I have not been the most
valiant of protectors.”
Catelyn touched his arm. “We are here, Ser Rodrik, and safely. That is all that truly
matters.” Her hand groped beneath her cloak, her fingers stiff and fumbling. The dagger
was still at her side. She found she had to touch it now and then, to reassure herself.
“Now we must reach the king’s master-at-arms, and pray that he can be trusted.”
“Ser Aron Santagar is a vain man, but an honest one.” Ser Rodrik’s hand went to his face
to stroke his whiskers and discovered once again that they were gone. He looked
nonplussed. “He may know the blade, yes . . . but, my lady, the moment we go ashore we
are at risk. And there are those at court who will know you on sight.”
Catelyn’s mouth grew tight. “Littlefinger,” she murmured. His face swam up before her;
a boy’s face, though he was a boy no longer. His father had died several years before, so
he was Lord Baelish now, yet still they called him Littlefinger. Her brother Edmure had
given him that name, long ago at Riverrun. His family’s modest holdings were on the
smallest of the Fingers, and Petyr had been slight and short for his age.
Ser Rodrik cleared his throat. “Lord Baelish once, ah . . . ” His thought trailed off
uncertainly in search of the polite word.
Catelyn was past delicacy. “He was my father’s ward. We grew up together in Riverrun. I
thought of him as a brother, but his feelings for me were . . . more than brotherly. When
�it was announced that I was to wed Brandon Stark, Petyr challenged for the right to my
hand. It was madness. Brandon was twenty, Petyr scarcely fifteen. I had to beg Brandon
to spare Petyr’s life. He let him off with a scar. Afterward my father sent him away. I
have not seen him since.” She lifted her face to the spray, as if the brisk wind could blow
the memories away. “He wrote to me at Riverrun after Brandon was killed, but I burned
the letter unread. By then I knew that Ned would marry me in his brother’s place.”
Ser Rodrik’s fingers fumbled once again for nonexistent whiskers. “Littlefinger sits on
the small council now.”
“I knew he would rise high,” Catelyn said. “He was always clever, even as a boy, but it is
one thing to be clever and another to be wise. I wonder what the years have done to him.”
High overhead, the far-eyes sang out from the rigging. Captain Moreo came scrambling
across the deck, giving orders, and all around them the Storm Dancer burst into frenetic
activity as King’s Landing slid into view atop its three high hills.
Three hundred years ago, Catelyn knew, those heights had been covered with forest, and
only a handful of fisherfolk had lived on the north shore of the Blackwater Rush where
that deep, swift river flowed into the sea. Then Aegon the Conqueror had sailed from
Dragonstone. It was here that his army had put ashore, and there on the highest hill that
he built his first crude redoubt of wood and earth.
Now the city covered the shore as far as Catelyn could see; manses and arbors and
granaries, brick storehouses and timbered inns and merchant’s stalls, taverns and
graveyards and brothels, all piled one on another. She could hear the clamor of the fish
market even at this distance. Between the buildings were broad roads lined with trees,
wandering crookback streets, and alleys so narrow that two men could not walk abreast.
Visenya’s hill was crowned by the Great Sept of Baelor with its seven crystal towers.
Across the city on the hill of Rhaenys stood the blackened walls of the Dragonpit, its
huge dome collapsing into ruin, its bronze doors closed now for a century. The Street of
the Sisters ran between them, straight as an arrow. The city walls rose in the distance,
high and strong.
A hundred quays lined the waterfront, and the harbor was crowded with ships.
Deepwater fishing boats and river runners came and went, ferrymen poled back and
forth across the Blackwater Rush, trading galleys unloaded goods from Braavos and
Pentos and Lys. Catelyn spied the queen’s ornate barge, tied up beside a fat-bellied
whaler from the Port of Ibben, its hull black with tar, while upriver a dozen lean golden
warships rested in their cribs, sails furled and cruel iron rams lapping at the water.
And above it all, frowning down from Aegon’s high hill, was the Red Keep; seven huge
�drum-towers crowned with iron ramparts, an immense grim barbican, vaulted halls and
covered bridges, barracks and dungeons and granaries, massive curtain walls studded
with archers’ nests, all fashioned of pale red stone. Aegon the Conqueror had
commanded it built. His son Maegor the Cruel had seen it completed. Afterward he had
taken the heads of every stonemason, woodworker, and builder who had labored on it.
Only the blood of the dragon would ever know the secrets of the fortress the Dragonlords
had built, he vowed.
Yet now the banners that flew from its battlements were golden, not black, and where
the three-headed dragon had once breathed fire, now pranced the crowned stag of
House Baratheon.
A high-masted swan ship from the Summer Isles was beating out from port, its white
sails huge with wind. The Storm Dancer moved past it, pulling steadily for shore.
“My lady,” Ser Rodrik said, “I have thought on how best to proceed while I lay abed. You
must not enter the castle. I will go in your stead and bring Ser Aron to you in some safe
place.”
She studied the old knight as the galley drew near to a pier. Moreo was shouting in the
vulgar Valyrian of the Free Cities. “You would be as much at risk as I would.”
Ser Rodrik smiled. “I think not. I looked at my reflection in the water earlier and scarcely
recognized myself. My mother was the last person to see me without whiskers, and she is
forty years dead. I believe I am safe enough, my lady.”
Moreo bellowed a command. As one, sixty oars lifted from the river, then reversed and
backed water. The galley slowed. Another shout. The oars slid back inside the hull. As
they thumped against the dock, Tyroshi seamen leapt down to tie up. Moreo came
bustling up, all smiles. “King’s Landing, my lady, as you did command, and never has a
ship made a swifter or surer passage. Will you be needing assistance to carry your things
to the castle?”
“We shall not be going to the castle. Perhaps you can suggest an inn, someplace clean
and comfortable and not too far from the river.”
The Tyroshi fingered his forked green beard. “Just so. I know of several establishments
that might suit your needs. Yet first, if I may be so bold, there is the matter of the second
half of the payment we agreed upon. And of course the extra silver you were so kind as to
promise. Sixty stags, I believe it was.”
“For the oarmen,” Catelyn reminded him.
�“Oh, of a certainty,” said Moreo. “Though perhaps I should hold it for them until we
return to Tyrosh. For the sake of their wives and children. If you give them the silver
here, my lady, they will dice it away or spend it all for a night’s pleasure.”
“There are worse things to spend money on,” Ser Rodrik put in. “Winter is coming.”
“A man must make his own choices,” Catelyn said. “They earned the silver. How they
spend it is no concern of mine.”
“As you say, my lady,” Moreo replied, bowing and smiling.
Just to be sure, Catelyn paid the oarmen herself, a stag to each man, and a copper to the
two men who carried their chests halfway up Visenya’s hill to the inn that Moreo had
suggested. It was a rambling old place on Eel Alley. The woman who owned it was a sour
crone with a wandering eye who looked them over suspiciously and bit the coin that
Catelyn offered her to make sure it was real. Her rooms were large and airy, though, and
Moreo swore that her fish stew was the most savory in all the Seven Kingdoms. Best of
all, she had no interest in their names.
“I think it best if you stay away from the common room,” Ser Rodrik said, after they had
settled in. “Even in a place like this, one never knows who may be watching.” He wore
ringmail, dagger, and longsword under a dark cloak with a hood he could pull up over
his head. “I will be back before nightfall, with Ser Aron,” he promised. “Rest now, my
lady.”
Catelyn was tired. The voyage had been long and fatiguing, and she was no longer as
young as she had been. Her windows opened on the alley and rooftops, with a view of
the Blackwater beyond. She watched Ser Rodrik set off, striding briskly through the busy
streets until he was lost in the crowds, then decided to take his advice. The bedding was
stuffed with straw instead of feathers, but she had no trouble falling asleep.
She woke to a pounding on her door.
Catelyn sat up sharply. Outside the window, the rooftops of King’s Landing were red in
the light of the setting sun. She had slept longer than she intended. A fist hammered at
her door again, and a voice called out, “Open, in the name of the king.”
“A moment,” she called out. She wrapped herself in her cloak. The dagger was on the
bedside table. She snatched it up before she unlatched the heavy wooden door.
The men who pushed into the room wore the black ringmail and golden cloaks of the
�City Watch. Their leader smiled at the dagger in her hand and said, “No need for that,
m’lady. We’re to escort you to the castle.”
“By whose authority?” she said.
He showed her a ribbon. Catelyn felt her breath catch in her throat. The seal was a
mockingbird, in grey wax. “Petyr,” she said. So soon. Something must have happened to
Ser Rodrik. She looked at the head guardsman. “Do you know who I am?”
“No, m’lady,” he said. “M’lord Littlefinger said only to bring you to him, and see that you
were not mistreated.”
Catelyn nodded. “You may wait outside while I dress.”
She bathed her hands in the basin and wrapped them in clean linen. Her fingers were
thick and awkward as she struggled to lace up her bodice and knot a drab brown cloak
about her neck. How could Littlefinger have known she was here? Ser Rodrik would
never have told him. Old he might be, but he was stubborn, and loyal to a fault. Were
they too late, had the Lannisters reached King’s Landing before her? No, if that were
true, Ned would be here too, and surely he would have come to her. How . . . ?
Then she thought, Moreo. The Tyroshi knew who they were and where they were, damn
him. She hoped he’d gotten a good price for the information.
They had brought a horse for her. The lamps were being lit along the streets as they set
out, and Catelyn felt the eyes of the city on her as she rode, surrounded by the guard in
their golden cloaks. When they reached the Red Keep, the portcullis was down and the
great gates sealed for the night, but the castle windows were alive with flickering lights.
The guardsmen left their mounts outside the walls and escorted her through a narrow
postern door, then up endless steps to a tower.
He was alone in the room, seated at a heavy wooden table, an oil lamp beside him as he
wrote. When they ushered her inside, he set down his pen and looked at her. “Cat,” he
said quietly.
“Why have I been brought here in this fashion?”
He rose and gestured brusquely to the guards. “Leave us.” The men departed. “You were
not mistreated, I trust,” he said after they had gone. “I gave firm instructions.” He
noticed her bandages. “Your hands . . . ”
Catelyn ignored the implied question. “I am not accustomed to being summoned like a
�serving wench,” she said icily. “As a boy, you still knew the meaning of courtesy.”
“I’ve angered you, my lady. That was never my intent.” He looked contrite. The look
brought back vivid memories for Catelyn. He had been a sly child, but after his mischiefs
he always looked contrite; it was a gift he had. The years had not changed him much.
Petyr had been a small boy, and he had grown into a small man, an inch or two shorter
than Catelyn, slender and quick, with the sharp features she remembered and the same
laughing grey-green eyes. He had a little pointed chin beard now, and threads of silver in
his dark hair, though he was still shy of thirty. They went well with the silver
mockingbird that fastened his cloak. Even as a child, he had always loved his silver.
“How did you know I was in the city?” she asked him.
“Lord Varys knows all,” Petyr said with a sly smile. “He will be joining us shortly, but I
wanted to see you alone first. It has been too long, Cat. How many years?”
Catelyn ignored his familiarity. There were more important questions. “So it was the
King’s Spider who found me.”
Littlefinger winced. “You don’t want to call him that. He’s very sensitive. Comes of being
an eunuch, I imagine. Nothing happens in this city without Varys knowing. Oftimes he
knows about it before it happens. He has informants everywhere. His little birds, he calls
them. One of his little birds heard about your visit. Thankfully, Varys came to me first.”
“Why you?”
He shrugged. “Why not me? I am master of coin, the king’s own councillor. Selmy and
Lord Renly rode north to meet Robert, and Lord Stannis is gone to Dragonstone, leaving
only Maester Pycelle and me. I was the obvious choice. I was ever a friend to your sister
Lysa, Varys knows that.”
“Does Varys know about . . . ”
“Lord Varys knows everything . . . except why you are here.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Why
are you here?”
“A wife is allowed to yearn for her husband, and if a mother needs her daughters close,
who can tell her no?”
Littlefinger laughed. “Oh, very good, my lady, but please don’t expect me to believe that.
I know you too well. What were the Tully words again?”
�Her throat was dry. “Family, Duty, Honor,” she recited stiffly. He did know her too well.
“Family, Duty, Honor,” he echoed. “All of which required you to remain in Winterfell,
where our Hand left you. No, my lady, something has happened. This sudden trip of
yours bespeaks a certain urgency. I beg of you, let me help. Old sweet friends should
never hesitate to rely upon each other.” There was a soft knock on the door. “Enter,”
Littlefinger called out.
The man who stepped through the door was plump, perfumed, powdered, and as
hairless as an egg. He wore a vest of woven gold thread over a loose gown of purple silk,
and on his feet were pointed slippers of soft velvet. “Lady Stark,” he said, taking her
hand in both of his, “to see you again after so many years is such a joy.” His flesh was
soft and moist, and his breath smelled of lilacs. “Oh, your poor hands. Have you burned
yourself, sweet lady? The fingers are so delicate . . . Our good Maester Pycelle makes a
marvelous salve, shall I send for a jar?”
Catelyn slid her fingers from his grasp. “I thank you, my lord, but my own Maester
Luwin has already seen to my hurts.”
Varys bobbed his head. “I was grievous sad to hear about your son. And him so young.
The gods are cruel.”
“On that we agree, Lord Varys,” she said. The title was but a courtesy due him as a
council member; Varys was lord of nothing but the spiderweb, the master of none but
his whisperers.
The eunuch spread his soft hands. “On more than that, I hope, sweet lady. I have great
esteem for your husband, our new Hand, and I know we do both love King Robert.”
“Yes,” she was forced to say. “For a certainty.”
“Never has a king been so beloved as our Robert,” quipped Littlefinger. He smiled slyly.
“At least in Lord Varys’s hearing.”
“Good lady,” Varys said with great solicitude. “There are men in the Free Cities with
wondrous healing powers. Say only the word, and I will send for one for your dear Bran.”
“Maester Luwin is doing all that can be done for Bran,” she told him. She would not
speak of Bran, not here, not with these men. She trusted Littlefinger only a little, and
Varys not at all. She would not let them see her grief. “Lord Baelish tells me that I have
you to thank for bringing me here.”
�Varys giggled like a little girl. “Oh, yes. I suppose I am guilty. I hope you forgive me, kind
lady.” He eased himself down into a seat and put his hands together. “I wonder if we
might trouble you to show us the dagger?”
Catelyn Stark stared at the eunuch in stunned disbelief. He was a spider, she thought
wildly, an enchanter or worse. He knew things no one could possibly know,
unless . . . “What have you done to Ser Rodrik?” she demanded.
Littlefinger was lost. “I feel rather like the knight who arrives at the battle without his
lance. What dagger are we talking about? Who is Ser Rodrik?”
“Ser Rodrik Cassel is master-at-arms at Winterfell,” Varys informed him. “I assure you,
Lady Stark, nothing at all has been done to the good knight. He did call here early this
afternoon. He visited with Ser Aron Santagar in the armory, and they talked of a certain
dagger. About sunset, they left the castle together and walked to that dreadful hovel
where you were staying. They are still there, drinking in the common room, waiting for
your return. Ser Rodrik was very distressed to find you gone.”
“How could you know all that?”
“The whisperings of little birds,” Varys said, smiling. “I know things, sweet lady. That is
the nature of my service.” He shrugged. “You do have the dagger with you, yes?”
Catelyn pulled it out from beneath her cloak and threw it down on the table in front of
him. “Here. Perhaps your little birds will whisper the name of the man it belongs to.”
Varys lifted the knife with exaggerated delicacy and ran a thumb along its edge. Blood
welled, and he let out a squeal and dropped the dagger back on the table.
“Careful,” Catelyn told him, “it’s sharp.”
“Nothing holds an edge like Valyrian steel,” Littlefinger said as Varys sucked at his
bleeding thumb and looked at Catelyn with sullen admonition. Littlefinger hefted the
knife lightly in his hand, testing the grip. He flipped it in the air, caught it again with his
other hand. “Such sweet balance. You want to find the owner, is that the reason for this
visit? You have no need of Ser Aron for that, my lady. You should have come to me.”
“And if I had,” she said, “what would you have told me?”
“I would have told you that there was only one knife like this at King’s Landing.” He
grasped the blade between thumb and forefinger, drew it back over his shoulder, and
threw it across the room with a practiced flick of his wrist. It struck the door and buried
�itself deep in the oak, quivering. “It’s mine.”
“Yours?” It made no sense. Petyr had not been at Winterfell.
“Until the tourney on Prince Joffrey’s name day,” he said, crossing the room to wrench
the dagger from the wood. “I backed Ser Jaime in the jousting, along with half the
court.” Petyr’s sheepish grin made him look half a boy again. “When Loras Tyrell
unhorsed him, many of us became a trifle poorer. Ser Jaime lost a hundred golden
dragons, the queen lost an emerald pendant, and I lost my knife. Her Grace got the
emerald back, but the winner kept the rest.”
“Who?” Catelyn demanded, her mouth dry with fear. Her fingers ached with
remembered pain.
“The Imp,” said Littlefinger as Lord Varys watched her face. “Tyrion Lannister.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
JON
The courtyard rang to the song of swords.
Under black wool, boiled leather, and mail, sweat trickled icily down Jon’s chest as he
pressed the attack. Grenn stumbled backward, defending himself clumsily. When he
raised his sword, Jon went underneath it with a sweeping blow that crunched against the
back of the other boy’s leg and sent him staggering. Grenn’s downcut was answered by
an overhand that dented his helm. When he tried a sideswing, Jon swept aside his blade
and slammed a mailed forearm into his chest. Grenn lost his footing and sat down hard
in the snow. Jon knocked his sword from his fingers with a slash to his wrist that
brought a cry of pain.
“Enough!” Ser Alliser Thorne had a voice with an edge like Valyrian steel.
Grenn cradled his hand. “The bastard broke my wrist.”
“The bastard hamstrung you, opened your empty skull, and cut off your hand. Or would
have, if these blades had an edge. It’s fortunate for you that the Watch needs stableboys
as well as rangers.” Ser Alliser gestured at Jeren and Toad. “Get the Aurochs on his feet,
he has funeral arrangements to make.”
Jon took off his helm as the other boys were pulling Grenn to his feet. The frosty
morning air felt good on his face. He leaned on his sword, drew a deep breath, and
allowed himself a moment to savor the victory.
“That is a longsword, not an old man’s cane,” Ser Alliser said sharply. “Are your legs
hurting, Lord Snow?”
Jon hated that name, a mockery that Ser Alliser had hung on him the first day he came
to practice. The boys had picked it up, and now he heard it everywhere. He slid the
longsword back into its scabbard. “No,” he replied.
Thorne strode toward him, crisp black leathers whispering faintly as he moved. He was a
compact man of fifty years, spare and hard, with grey in his black hair and eyes like
chips of onyx. “The truth now,” he commanded.
�“I’m tired,” Jon admitted. His arm burned from the weight of the longsword, and he was
starting to feel his bruises now that the fight was done.
“What you are is weak.”
“I won.”
“No. The Aurochs lost.”
One of the other boys sniggered. Jon knew better than to reply. He had beaten everyone
that Ser Alliser had sent against him, yet it gained him nothing. The master-at-arms
served up only derision. Thorne hated him, Jon had decided; of course, he hated the
other boys even worse.
“That will be all,” Thorne told them. “I can only stomach so much ineptitude in any one
day. If the Others ever come for us, I pray they have archers, because you lot are fit for
nothing more than arrow fodder.”
Jon followed the rest back to the armory, walking alone. He often walked alone here.
There were almost twenty in the group he trained with, yet not one he could call a friend.
Most were two or three years his senior, yet not one was half the fighter Robb had been
at fourteen. Dareon was quick but afraid of being hit. Pyp used his sword like a dagger,
Jeren was weak as a girl, Grenn slow and clumsy. Halder’s blows were brutally hard but
he ran right into your attacks. The more time he spent with them, the more Jon despised
them.
Inside, Jon hung sword and scabbard from a hook in the stone wall, ignoring the others
around him. Methodically, he began to strip off his mail, leather, and sweat-soaked
woolens. Chunks of coal burned in iron braziers at either end of the long room, but Jon
found himself shivering. The chill was always with him here. In a few years he would
forget what it felt like to be warm.
The weariness came on him suddenly, as he donned the roughspun blacks that were
their everyday wear. He sat on a bench, his fingers fumbling with the fastenings on his
cloak. So cold, he thought, remembering the warm halls of Winterfell, where the hot
waters ran through the walls like blood through a man’s body. There was scant warmth
to be found in Castle Black; the walls were cold here, and the people colder.
No one had told him the Night’s Watch would be like this; no one except Tyrion
Lannister. The dwarf had given him the truth on the road north, but by then it had been
too late. Jon wondered if his father had known what the Wall would be like. He must
have, he thought; that only made it hurt the worse.
�Even his uncle had abandoned him in this cold place at the end of the world. Up here,
the genial Benjen Stark he had known became a different person. He was First Ranger,
and he spent his days and nights with Lord Commander Mormont and Maester Aemon
and the other high officers, while Jon was given over to the less than tender charge of
Ser Alliser Thorne.
Three days after their arrival, Jon had heard that Benjen Stark was to lead a half-dozen
men on a ranging into the haunted forest. That night he sought out his uncle in the great
timbered common hall and pleaded to go with him. Benjen refused him curtly. “This is
not Winterfell,” he told him as he cut his meat with fork and dagger. “On the Wall, a man
gets only what he earns. You’re no ranger, Jon, only a green boy with the smell of
summer still on you.”
Stupidly, Jon argued. “I’ll be fifteen on my name day,” he said. “Almost a man grown.”
Benjen Stark frowned. “A boy you are, and a boy you’ll remain until Ser Alliser says you
are fit to be a man of the Night’s Watch. If you thought your Stark blood would win you
easy favors, you were wrong. We put aside our old families when we swear our vows.
Your father will always have a place in my heart, but these are my brothers now.” He
gestured with his dagger at the men around them, all the hard cold men in black.
Jon rose at dawn the next day to watch his uncle leave. One of his rangers, a big ugly
man, sang a bawdy song as he saddled his garron, his breath steaming in the cold
morning air. Ben Stark smiled at that, but he had no smile for his nephew. “How often
must I tell you no, Jon? We’ll speak when I return.”
As he watched his uncle lead his horse into the tunnel, Jon had remembered the things
that Tyrion Lannister told him on the kingsroad, and in his mind’s eye he saw Ben Stark
lying dead, his blood red on the snow. The thought made him sick. What was he
becoming?
Afterward he sought out Ghost in the loneliness of his cell, and buried his face in his
thick white fur.
If he must be alone, he would make solitude his armor. Castle Black had no godswood,
only a small sept and a drunken septon, but Jon could not find it in him to pray to any
gods, old or new. If they were real, he thought, they were as cruel and implacable as
winter.
He missed his true brothers: little Rickon, bright eyes shining as he begged for a sweet;
Robb, his rival and best friend and constant companion; Bran, stubborn and curious,
�always wanting to follow and join in whatever Jon and Robb were doing. He missed the
girls too, even Sansa, who never called him anything but “my half brother” since she was
old enough to understand what bastard meant. And Arya . . . he missed her even more
than Robb, skinny little thing that she was, all scraped knees and tangled hair and torn
clothes, so fierce and willful. Arya never seemed to fit, no more than he had . . . yet she
could always make Jon smile. He would give anything to be with her now, to muss up
her hair once more and watch her make a face, to hear her finish a sentence with him.
“You broke my wrist, bastard boy.”
Jon lifted his eyes at the sullen voice. Grenn loomed over him, thick of neck and red of
face, with three of his friends behind him. He knew Todder, a short ugly boy with an
unpleasant voice. The recruits all called him Toad. The other two were the ones Yoren
had brought north with them, Jon remembered, rapers taken down in the Fingers. He’d
forgotten their names. He hardly ever spoke to them, if he could help it. They were
brutes and bullies, without a thimble of honor between them.
Jon stood up. “I’ll break the other one for you if you ask nicely.” Grenn was sixteen and a
head taller than Jon. All four of them were bigger than he was, but they did not scare
him. He’d beaten every one of them in the yard.
“Maybe we’ll break you,” one of the rapers said.
“Try.” Jon reached back for his sword, but one of them grabbed his arm and twisted it
behind his back.
“You make us look bad,” complained Toad.
“You looked bad before I ever met you,” Jon told him. The boy who had his arm jerked
upward on him, hard. Pain lanced through him, but Jon would not cry out.
Toad stepped close. “The little lordling has a mouth on him,” he said. He had pig eyes,
small and shiny. “Is that your mommy’s mouth, bastard? What was she, some whore?
Tell us her name. Maybe I had her a time or two.” He laughed.
Jon twisted like an eel and slammed a heel down across the instep of the boy holding
him. There was a sudden cry of pain, and he was free. He flew at Toad, knocked him
backward over a bench, and landed on his chest with both hands on his throat,
slamming his head against the packed earth.
The two from the Fingers pulled him off, throwing him roughly to the ground. Grenn
began to kick at him. Jon was rolling away from the blows when a booming voice cut
�through the gloom of the armory. “STOP THIS! NOW!”
Jon pulled himself to his feet. Donal Noye stood glowering at them. “The yard is for
fighting,” the armorer said. “Keep your quarrels out of my armory, or I’ll make them my
quarrels. You won’t like that.”
Toad sat on the floor, gingerly feeling the back of his head. His fingers came away
bloody. “He tried to kill me.”
“ ’S true. I saw it,” one of the rapers put in.
“He broke my wrist,” Grenn said again, holding it out to Noye for inspection.
The armorer gave the offered wrist the briefest of glances. “A bruise. Perhaps a sprain.
Maester Aemon will give you a salve. Go with him, Todder, that head wants looking
after. The rest of you, return to your cells. Not you, Snow. You stay.”
Jon sat heavily on the long wooden bench as the others left, oblivious to the looks they
gave him, the silent promises of future retribution. His arm was throbbing.
“The Watch has need of every man it can get,” Donal Noye said when they were alone.
“Even men like Toad. You won’t win any honors killing him.”
Jon’s anger flared. “He said my mother was—”
“—a whore. I heard him. What of it?”
“Lord Eddard Stark was not a man to sleep with whores,” Jon said icily. “His honor—”
“—did not prevent him from fathering a bastard. Did it?”
Jon was cold with rage. “Can I go?”
“You go when I tell you to go.”
Jon stared sullenly at the smoke rising from the brazier, until Noye took him under the
chin, thick fingers twisting his head around. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy.”
Jon looked. The armorer had a chest like a keg of ale and a gut to match. His nose was
flat and broad, and he always seemed in need of a shave. The left sleeve of his black wool
tunic was fastened at the shoulder with a silver pin in the shape of a longsword. “Words
�won’t make your mother a whore. She was what she was, and nothing Toad says can
change that. You know, we have men on the Wall whose mothers were whores.”
Not my mother, Jon thought stubbornly. He knew nothing of his mother; Eddard Stark
would not talk of her. Yet he dreamed of her at times, so often that he could almost see
her face. In his dreams, she was beautiful, and highborn, and her eyes were kind.
“You think you had it hard, being a high lord’s bastard?” the armorer went on. “That boy
Jeren is a septon’s get, and Cotter Pyke is the baseborn son of a tavern wench. Now he
commands Eastwatch by the Sea.”
“I don’t care,” Jon said. “I don’t care about them and I don’t care about you or Thorne or
Benjen Stark or any of it. I hate it here. It’s too . . . it’s cold.”
“Yes. Cold and hard and mean, that’s the Wall, and the men who walk it. Not like the
stories your wet nurse told you. Well, piss on the stories and piss on your wet nurse. This
is the way it is, and you’re here for life, same as the rest of us.”
“Life,” Jon repeated bitterly. The armorer could talk about life. He’d had one. He’d only
taken the black after he’d lost an arm at the siege of Storm’s End. Before that he’d
smithed for Stannis Baratheon, the king’s brother. He’d seen the Seven Kingdoms from
one end to the other; he’d feasted and wenched and fought in a hundred battles. They
said it was Donal Noye who’d forged King Robert’s warhammer, the one that crushed
the life from Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident. He’d done all the things that Jon would
never do, and then when he was old, well past thirty, he’d taken a glancing blow from an
axe and the wound had festered until the whole arm had to come off. Only then,
crippled, had Donal Noye come to the Wall, when his life was all but over.
“Yes, life,” Noye said. “A long life or a short one, it’s up to you, Snow. The road you’re
walking, one of your brothers will slit your throat for you one night.”
“They’re not my brothers,” Jon snapped. “They hate me because I’m better than they
are.”
“No. They hate you because you act like you’re better than they are. They look at you and
see a castle-bred bastard who thinks he’s a lordling.” The armorer leaned close. “You’re
no lordling. Remember that. You’re a Snow, not a Stark. You’re a bastard and a bully.”
“A bully?” Jon almost choked on the word. The accusation was so unjust it took his
breath away. “They were the ones who came after me. Four of them.”
“Four that you’ve humiliated in the yard. Four who are probably afraid of you. I’ve
�watched you fight. It’s not training with you. Put a good edge on your sword, and they’d
be dead meat; you know it, I know it, they know it. You leave them nothing. You shame
them. Does that make you proud?”
Jon hesitated. He did feel proud when he won. Why shouldn’t he? But the armorer was
taking that away too, making it sound as if he were doing something wrong. “They’re all
older than me,” he said defensively.
“Older and bigger and stronger, that’s the truth. I’ll wager your master-at-arms taught
you how to fight bigger men at Winterfell, though. Who was he, some old knight?”
“Ser Rodrik Cassel,” Jon said warily. There was a trap here. He felt it closing around him.
Donal Noye leaned forward, into Jon’s face. “Now think on this, boy. None of these
others have ever had a master-at-arms until Ser Alliser. Their fathers were farmers and
wagonmen and poachers, smiths and miners and oars on a trading galley. What they
know of fighting they learned between decks, in the alleys of Oldtown and Lannisport, in
wayside brothels and taverns on the kingsroad. They may have clacked a few sticks
together before they came here, but I promise you, not one in twenty was ever rich
enough to own a real sword.” His look was grim. “So how do you like the taste of your
victories now, Lord Snow?”
“Don’t call me that!” Jon said sharply, but the force had gone out of his anger. Suddenly
he felt ashamed and guilty. “I never . . . I didn’t think . . . ”
“Best you start thinking,” Noye warned him. “That, or sleep with a dagger by your bed.
Now go.”
By the time Jon left the armory, it was almost midday. The sun had broken through the
clouds. He turned his back on it and lifted his eyes to the Wall, blazing blue and
crystalline in the sunlight. Even after all these weeks, the sight of it still gave him the
shivers. Centuries of windblown dirt had pocked and scoured it, covering it like a film,
and it often seemed a pale grey, the color of an overcast sky . . . but when the sun caught
it fair on a bright day, it shone, alive with light, a colossal blue-white cliff that filled up
half the sky.
The largest structure ever built by the hands of man, Benjen Stark had told Jon on the
kingsroad when they had first caught sight of the Wall in the distance. “And beyond a
doubt the most useless,” Tyrion Lannister had added with a grin, but even the Imp grew
silent as they rode closer. You could see it from miles off, a pale blue line across the
northern horizon, stretching away to the east and west and vanishing in the far distance,
immense and unbroken. This is the end of the world, it seemed to say.
�When they finally spied Castle Black, its timbered keeps and stone towers looked like
nothing more than a handful of toy blocks scattered on the snow, beneath the vast wall
of ice. The ancient stronghold of the black brothers was no Winterfell, no true castle at
all. Lacking walls, it could not be defended, not from the south, or east, or west; but it
was only the north that concerned the Night’s Watch, and to the north loomed the Wall.
Almost seven hundred feet high it stood, three times the height of the tallest tower in the
stronghold it sheltered. His uncle said the top was wide enough for a dozen armored
knights to ride abreast. The gaunt outlines of huge catapults and monstrous wooden
cranes stood sentry up there, like the skeletons of great birds, and among them walked
men in black as small as ants.
As he stood outside the armory looking up, Jon felt almost as overwhelmed as he had
that day on the kingsroad, when he’d seen it for the first time. The Wall was like that.
Sometimes he could almost forget that it was there, the way you forgot about the sky or
the earth underfoot, but there were other times when it seemed as if there was nothing
else in the world. It was older than the Seven Kingdoms, and when he stood beneath it
and looked up, it made Jon dizzy. He could feel the great weight of all that ice pressing
down on him, as if it were about to topple, and somehow Jon knew that if it fell, the
world fell with it.
“Makes you wonder what lies beyond,” a familiar voice said.
Jon looked around. “Lannister. I didn’t see—I mean, I thought I was alone.”
Tyrion Lannister was bundled in furs so thickly he looked like a very small bear. “There’s
much to be said for taking people unawares. You never know what you might learn.”
“You won’t learn anything from me,” Jon told him. He had seen little of the dwarf since
their journey ended. As the queen’s own brother, Tyrion Lannister had been an honored
guest of the Night’s Watch. The Lord Commander had given him rooms in the King’s
Tower—so-called, though no king had visited it for a hundred years—and Lannister
dined at Mormont’s own table and spent his days riding the Wall and his nights dicing
and drinking with Ser Alliser and Bowen Marsh and the other high officers.
“Oh, I learn things everywhere I go.” The little man gestured up at the Wall with a
gnarled black walking stick. “As I was saying . . . why is it that when one man builds a
wall, the next man immediately needs to know what’s on the other side?” He cocked his
head and looked at Jon with his curious mismatched eyes. “You do want to know what’s
on the other side, don’t you?”
“It’s nothing special,” Jon said. He wanted to ride with Benjen Stark on his rangings,
�deep into the mysteries of the haunted forest, wanted to fight Mance Rayder’s wildlings
and ward the realm against the Others, but it was better not to speak of the things you
wanted. “The rangers say it’s just woods and mountains and frozen lakes, with lots of
snow and ice.”
“And the grumkins and the snarks,” Tyrion said. “Let us not forget them, Lord Snow, or
else what’s that big thing for?”
“Don’t call me Lord Snow.”
The dwarf lifted an eyebrow. “Would you rather be called the Imp? Let them see that
their words can cut you, and you’ll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you
a name, take it, make it your own. Then they can’t hurt you with it anymore.” He
gestured with his stick. “Come, walk with me. They’ll be serving some vile stew in the
common hall by now, and I could do with a bowl of something hot.”
Jon was hungry too, so he fell in beside Lannister and slowed his pace to match the
dwarf’s awkward, waddling steps. The wind was rising, and they could hear the old
wooden buildings creaking around them, and in the distance a heavy shutter banging,
over and over, forgotten. Once there was a muffled thump as a blanket of snow slid from
a roof and landed near them.
“I don’t see your wolf,” Lannister said as they walked.
“I chain him up in the old stables when we’re training. They board all the horses in the
east stables now, so no one bothers him. The rest of the time he stays with me. My
sleeping cell is in Hardin’s Tower.”
“That’s the one with the broken battlement, no? Shattered stone in the yard below, and a
lean to it like our noble king Robert after a long night’s drinking? I thought all those
buildings had been abandoned.”
Jon shrugged. “No one cares where you sleep. Most of the old keeps are empty, you can
pick any cell you want.” Once Castle Black had housed five thousand fighting men with
all their horses and servants and weapons. Now it was home to a tenth that number, and
parts of it were falling into ruin.
Tyrion Lannister’s laughter steamed in the cold air. “I’ll be sure to tell your father to
arrest more stonemasons, before your tower collapses.”
Jon could taste the mockery there, but there was no denying the truth. The Watch had
built nineteen great strongholds along the Wall, but only three were still occupied:
�Eastwatch on its grey windswept shore, the Shadow Tower hard by the mountains where
the Wall ended, and Castle Black between them, at the end of the kingsroad. The other
keeps, long deserted, were lonely, haunted places, where cold winds whistled through
black windows and the spirits of the dead manned the parapets.
“It’s better that I’m by myself,” Jon said stubbornly. “The rest of them are scared of
Ghost.”
“Wise boys,” Lannister said. Then he changed the subject. “The talk is, your uncle is too
long away.”
Jon remembered the wish he’d wished in his anger, the vision of Benjen Stark dead in
the snow, and he looked away quickly. The dwarf had a way of sensing things, and Jon
did not want him to see the guilt in his eyes. “He said he’d be back by my name day,” he
admitted. His name day had come and gone, unremarked, a fortnight past. “They were
looking for Ser Waymar Royce, his father is bannerman to Lord Arryn. Uncle Benjen
said they might search as far as the Shadow Tower. That’s all the way up in the
mountains.”
“I hear that a good many rangers have vanished of late,” Lannister said as they mounted
the steps to the common hall. He grinned and pulled open the door. “Perhaps the
grumkins are hungry this year.”
Inside, the hall was immense and drafty, even with a fire roaring in its great hearth.
Crows nested in the timbers of its lofty ceiling. Jon heard their cries overhead as he
accepted a bowl of stew and a heel of black bread from the day’s cooks. Grenn and Toad
and some of the others were seated at the bench nearest the warmth, laughing and
cursing each other in rough voices. Jon eyed them thoughtfully for a moment. Then he
chose a spot at the far end of the hall, well away from the other diners.
Tyrion Lannister sat across from him, sniffing at the stew suspiciously. “Barley, onion,
carrot,” he muttered. “Someone should tell the cooks that turnip isn’t a meat.”
“It’s mutton stew.” Jon pulled off his gloves and warmed his hands in the steam rising
from the bowl. The smell made his mouth water.
“Snow.”
Jon knew Alliser Thorne’s voice, but there was a curious note in it that he had not heard
before. He turned.
“The Lord Commander wants to see you. Now.”
�For a moment Jon was too frightened to move. Why would the Lord Commander want
to see him? They had heard something about Benjen, he thought wildly, he was dead, the
vision had come true. “Is it my uncle?” he blurted. “Is he returned safe?”
“The Lord Commander is not accustomed to waiting,” was Ser Alliser’s reply. “And I am
not accustomed to having my commands questioned by bastards.”
Tyrion Lannister swung off the bench and rose. “Stop it, Thorne. You’re frightening the
boy.”
“Keep out of matters that don’t concern you, Lannister. You have no place here.”
“I have a place at court, though,” the dwarf said, smiling. “A word in the right ear, and
you’ll die a sour old man before you get another boy to train. Now tell Snow why the Old
Bear needs to see him. Is there news of his uncle?”
“No,” Ser Alliser said. “This is another matter entirely. A bird arrived this morning from
Winterfell, with a message that concerns his brother.” He corrected himself. “His half
brother.”
“Bran,” Jon breathed, scrambling to his feet. “Something’s happened to Bran.”
Tyrion Lannister laid a hand on his arm. “Jon,” he said. “I am truly sorry.”
Jon scarcely heard him. He brushed off Tyrion’s hand and strode across the hall. He was
running by the time he hit the doors. He raced to the Commander’s Keep, dashing
through drifts of old snow. When the guards passed him, he took the tower steps two at
a time. By the time he burst into the presence of the Lord Commander, his boots were
soaked and Jon was wild-eyed and panting. “Bran,” he said. “What does it say about
Bran?”
Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, was a gruff old man with an
immense bald head and a shaggy grey beard. He had a raven on his arm, and he was
feeding it kernels of corn. “I am told you can read.” He shook the raven off, and it
flapped its wings and flew to the window, where it sat watching as Mormont drew a roll
of paper from his belt and handed it to Jon. “Corn,” it muttered in a raucous voice.
“Corn, corn.”
Jon’s finger traced the outline of the direwolf in the white wax of the broken seat. He
recognized Robb’s hand, but the letters seemed to blur and run as he tried to read them.
He realized he was crying. And then, through the tears, he found the sense in the words,
�and raised his head. “He woke up,” he said. “The gods gave him back.”
“Crippled,” Mormont said. “I’m sorry, boy. Read the rest of the letter.”
He looked at the words, but they didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Bran was going to
live. “My brother is going to live,” he told Mormont. The Lord Commander shook his
head, gathered up a fistful of corn, and whistled. The raven flew to his shoulder, crying,
“Live! Live!”
Jon ran down the stairs, a smile on his face and Robb’s letter in his hand. “My brother is
going to live,” he told the guards. They exchanged a look. He ran back to the common
hall, where he found Tyrion Lannister just finishing his meal. He grabbed the little man
under the arms, hoisted him up in the air, and spun him around in a circle. “Bran is
going to live!” he whooped. Lannister looked startled. Jon put him down and thrust the
paper into his hands. “Here, read it,” he said.
Others were gathering around and looking at him curiously. Jon noticed Grenn a few
feet away. A thick woolen bandage was wrapped around one hand. He looked anxious
and uncomfortable, not menacing at all. Jon went to him. Grenn edged backward and
put up his hands. “Stay away from me now, you bastard.”
Jon smiled at him. “I’m sorry about your wrist. Robb used the same move on me once,
only with a wooden blade. It hurt like seven hells, but yours must be worse. Look, if you
want, I can show you how to defend that.”
Alliser Thorne overheard him. “Lord Snow wants to take my place now.” He sneered.
“I’d have an easier time teaching a wolf to juggle than you will training this aurochs.”
“I’ll take that wager, Ser Alliser,” Jon said. “I’d love to see Ghost juggle.”
Jon heard Grenn suck in his breath, shocked. Silence fell.
Then Tyrion Lannister guffawed. Three of the black brothers joined in from a nearby
table. The laughter spread up and down the benches, until even the cooks joined in. The
birds stirred in the rafters, and finally even Grenn began to chuckle.
Ser Alliser never took his eyes from Jon. As the laughter rolled around him, his face
darkened, and his sword hand curled into a fist. “That was a grievous error, Lord Snow,”
he said at last in the acid tones of an enemy.
�previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
Eddard Stark rode through the towering bronze doors of the Red Keep sore, tired,
hungry, and irritable. He was still ahorse, dreaming of a long hot soak, a roast fowl, and
a featherbed, when the king’s steward told him that Grand Maester Pycelle had
convened an urgent meeting of the small council. The honor of the Hand’s presence was
requested as soon as it was convenient. “It will be convenient on the morrow,” Ned
snapped as he dismounted.
The steward bowed very low. “I shall give the councillors your regrets, my lord.”
“No, damn it,” Ned said. It would not do to offend the council before he had even begun.
“I will see them. Pray give me a few moments to change into something more
presentable.”
“Yes, my lord,” the steward said. “We have given you Lord Arryn’s former chambers in
the Tower of the Hand, if it please you. I shall have your things taken there.”
“My thanks,” Ned said as he ripped off his riding gloves and tucked them into his belt.
The rest of his household was coming through the gate behind him. Ned saw Vayon
Poole, his own steward, and called out. “It seems the council has urgent need of me. See
that my daughters find their bedchambers, and tell Jory to keep them there. Arya is not
to go exploring.” Poole bowed. Ned turned back to the royal steward. “My wagons are
still straggling through the city. I shall need appropriate garments.”
“It will be my great pleasure,” the steward said.
And so Ned had come striding into the council chambers, bone-tired and dressed in
borrowed clothing, to find four members of the small council waiting for him.
The chamber was richly furnished. Myrish carpets covered the floor instead of rushes,
and in one corner a hundred fabulous beasts cavorted in bright paints on a carved screen
from the Summer Isles. The walls were hung with tapestries from Norvos and Qohor and
Lys, and a pair of Valyrian sphinxes flanked the door, eyes of polished garnet smoldering
in black marble faces.
The councillor Ned liked least, the eunuch Varys, accosted him the moment he entered.
�“Lord Stark, I was grievous sad to hear about your troubles on the kingsroad. We have
all been visiting the sept to light candles for Prince Joffrey. I pray for his recovery.” His
hand left powder stains on Ned’s sleeve, and he smelled as foul and sweet as flowers on a
grave.
“Your gods have heard you,” Ned replied, cool yet polite. “The prince grows stronger
every day.” He disentangled himself from the eunuch’s grip and crossed the room to
where Lord Renly stood by the screen, talking quietly with a short man who could only
be Littlefinger. Renly had been a boy of eight when Robert won the throne, but he had
grown into a man so like his brother that Ned found it disconcerting. Whenever he saw
him, it was as if the years had slipped away and Robert stood before him, fresh from his
victory on the Trident.
“I see you have arrived safely, Lord Stark,” Renly said.
“And you as well,” Ned replied. “You must forgive me, but sometimes you look the very
image of your brother Robert.”
“A poor copy,” Renly said with a shrug.
“Though much better dressed,” Littlefinger quipped. “Lord Renly spends more on
clothing than half the ladies of the court.”
It was true enough. Lord Renly was in dark green velvet, with a dozen golden stags
embroidered on his doublet. A cloth-of-gold half cape was draped casually across one
shoulder, fastened with an emerald brooch. “There are worse crimes,” Renly said with a
laugh. “The way you dress, for one.”
Littlefinger ignored the jibe. He eyed Ned with a smile on his lips that bordered on
insolence. “I have hoped to meet you for some years, Lord Stark. No doubt Lady Catelyn
has mentioned me to you.”
“She has,” Ned replied with a chill in his voice. The sly arrogance of the comment
rankled him. “I understand you knew my brother Brandon as well.”
Renly Baratheon laughed. Varys shuffled over to listen.
“Rather too well,” Littlefinger said. “I still carry a token of his esteem. Did Brandon
speak of me too?”
“Often, and with some heat,” Ned said, hoping that would end it. He had no patience
with this game they played, this dueling with words.
�“I should have thought that heat ill suits you Starks,” Littlefinger said. “Here in the
south, they say you are all made of ice, and melt when you ride below the Neck.”
“I do not plan on melting soon, Lord Baelish. You may count on it.” Ned moved to the
council table and said, “Maester Pycelle, I trust you are well.”
The Grand Maester smiled gently from his tall chair at the foot of the table. “Well
enough for a man of my years, my lord,” he replied, “yet I do tire easily, I fear.” Wispy
strands of white hair fringed the broad bald dome of his forehead above a kindly face.
His maester’s collar was no simple metal choker such as Luwin wore, but two dozen
heavy chains wound together into a ponderous metal necklace that covered him from
throat to breast. The links were forged of every metal known to man: black iron and red
gold, bright copper and dull lead, steel and tin and pale silver, brass and bronze and
platinum. Garnets and amethysts and black pearls adorned the metalwork, and here and
there an emerald or ruby. “Perhaps we might begin soon,” the Grand Maester said,
hands knitting together atop his broad stomach. “I fear I shall fall asleep if we wait much
longer.”
“As you will.” The king’s seat sat empty at the head of the table, the crowned stag of
Baratheon embroidered in gold thread on its pillows. Ned took the chair beside it, as the
right hand of his king. “My lords,” he said formally, “I am sorry to have kept you
waiting.”
“You are the King’s Hand,” Varys said. “We serve at your pleasure, Lord Stark.”
As the others took their accustomed seats, it struck Eddard Stark forcefully that he did
not belong here, in this room, with these men. He remembered what Robert had told
him in the crypts below Winterfell. I am surrounded by flatterers and fools, the king
had insisted. Ned looked down the council table and wondered which were the flatterers
and which the fools. He thought he knew already. “We are but five,” he pointed out.
“Lord Stannis took himself to Dragonstone not long after the king went north,” Varys
said, “and our gallant Ser Barristan no doubt rides beside the king as he makes his way
through the city, as befits the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.”
“Perhaps we had best wait for Ser Barristan and the king to join us,” Ned suggested.
Renly Baratheon laughed aloud. “If we wait for my brother to grace us with his royal
presence, it could be a long sit.”
“Our good King Robert has many cares,” Varys said. “He entrusts some small matters to
�us, to lighten his load.”
“What Lord Varys means is that all this business of coin and crops and justice bores my
royal brother to tears,” Lord Renly said, “so it falls to us to govern the realm. He does
send us a command from time to time.” He drew a tightly rolled paper from his sleeve
and laid it on the table. “This morning he commanded me to ride ahead with all haste
and ask Grand Maester Pycelle to convene this council at once. He has an urgent task for
us.”
Littlefinger smiled and handed the paper to Ned. It bore the royal seal. Ned broke the
wax with his thumb and flattened the letter to consider the king’s urgent command,
reading the words with mounting disbelief. Was there no end to Robert’s folly? And to
do this in his name, that was salt in the wound. “Gods be good,” he swore.
“What Lord Eddard means to say,” Lord Renly announced, “is that His Grace instructs
us to stage a great tournament in honor of his appointment as the Hand of the King.”
“How much?” asked Littlefinger, mildly.
Ned read the answer off the letter. “Forty thousand golden dragons to the champion.
Twenty thousand to the man who comes second, another twenty to the winner of the
melee, and ten thousand to the victor of the archery competition.”
“Ninety thousand gold pieces,” Littlefinger sighed. “And we must not neglect the other
costs. Robert will want a prodigious feast. That means cooks, carpenters, serving girls,
singers, jugglers, fools . . . ”
“Fools we have in plenty,” Lord Renly said.
Grand Maester Pycelle looked to Littlefinger and asked, “Will the treasury bear the
expense?”
“What treasury is that?” Littlefinger replied with a twist of his mouth. “Spare me the
foolishness, Maester. You know as well as I that the treasury has been empty for years. I
shall have to borrow the money. No doubt the Lannisters will be accommodating. We
owe Lord Tywin some three million dragons at present, what matter another hundred
thousand?”
Ned was stunned. “Are you claiming that the Crown is three million gold pieces in debt?”
“The Crown is more than six million gold pieces in debt, Lord Stark. The Lannisters are
the biggest part of it, but we have also borrowed from Lord Tyrell, the Iron Bank of
�Braavos, and several Tyroshi trading cartels. Of late I’ve had to turn to the Faith. The
High Septon haggles worse than a Dornish fishmonger.”
Ned was aghast. “Aerys Targaryen left a treasury flowing with gold. How could you let
this happen?”
Littlefinger gave a shrug. “The master of coin finds the money. The king and the Hand
spend it.”
“I will not believe that Jon Arryn allowed Robert to beggar the realm,” Ned said hotly.
Grand Maester Pycelle shook his great bald head, his chains clinking softly. “Lord Arryn
was a prudent man, but I fear that His Grace does not always listen to wise counsel.”
“My royal brother loves tournaments and feasts,” Renly Baratheon said, “and he loathes
what he calls ‘counting coppers.’ ”
“I will speak with His Grace,” Ned said. “This tourney is an extravagance the realm
cannot afford.”
“Speak to him as you will,” Lord Renly said, “we had still best make our plans.”
“Another day,” Ned said. Perhaps too sharply, from the looks they gave him. He would
have to remember that he was no longer in Winterfell, where only the king stood higher;
here, he was but first among equals. “Forgive me, my lords,” he said in a softer tone. “I
am tired. Let us call a halt for today and resume when we are fresher.” He did not ask for
their consent, but stood abruptly, nodded at them all, and made for the door.
Outside, wagons and riders were still pouring through the castle gates, and the yard was
a chaos of mud and horseflesh and shouting men. The king had not yet arrived, he was
told. Since the ugliness on the Trident, the Starks and their household had ridden well
ahead of the main column, the better to separate themselves from the Lannisters and the
growing tension. Robert had hardly been seen; the talk was he was traveling in the huge
wheelhouse, drunk as often as not. If so, he might be hours behind, but he would still be
here too soon for Ned’s liking. He had only to look at Sansa’s face to feel the rage
twisting inside him once again. The last fortnight of their journey had been a misery.
Sansa blamed Arya and told her that it should have been Nymeria who died. And Arya
was lost after she heard what had happened to her butcher’s boy. Sansa cried herself to
sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and Eddard Stark dreamed of a frozen hell
reserved for the Starks of Winterfell.
He crossed the outer yard, passed under a portcullis into the inner bailey, and was
�walking toward what he thought was the Tower of the Hand when Littlefinger appeared
in front of him. “You’re going the wrong way, Stark. Come with me.”
Hesitantly, Ned followed. Littlefinger led him into a tower, down a stair, across a small
sunken courtyard, and along a deserted corridor where empty suits of armor stood
sentinel along the walls. They were relics of the Targaryens, black steel with dragon
scales cresting their helms, now dusty and forgotten. “This is not the way to my
chambers,” Ned said.
“Did I say it was? I’m leading you to the dungeons to slit your throat and seal your
corpse up behind a wall,” Littlefinger replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We have
no time for this, Stark. Your wife awaits.”
“What game are you playing, Littlefinger? Catelyn is at Winterfell, hundreds of leagues
from here.”
“Oh?” Littlefinger’s grey-green eyes glittered with amusement. “Then it appears
someone has managed an astonishing impersonation. For the last time, come. Or don’t
come, and I’ll keep her for myself.” He hurried down the steps.
Ned followed him warily, wondering if this day would ever end. He had no taste for these
intrigues, but he was beginning to realize that they were meat and mead to a man like
Littlefinger.
At the foot of the steps was a heavy door of oak and iron. Petyr Baelish lifted the crossbar
and gestured Ned through. They stepped out into the ruddy glow of dusk, on a rocky
bluff high above the river. “We’re outside the castle,” Ned said.
“You are a hard man to fool, Stark,” Littlefinger said with a smirk. “Was it the sun that
gave it away, or the sky? Follow me. There are niches cut in the rock. Try not to fall to
your death, Catelyn would never understand.” With that, he was over the side of the cliff,
descending as quick as a monkey.
Ned studied the rocky face of the bluff for a moment, then followed more slowly. The
niches were there, as Littlefinger had promised, shallow cuts that would be invisible
from below, unless you knew just where to look for them. The river was a long, dizzying
distance below. Ned kept his face pressed to the rock and tried not to look down any
more often than he had to.
When at last he reached the bottom, a narrow, muddy trail along the water’s edge,
Littlefinger was lazing against a rock and eating an apple. He was almost down to the
core. “You are growing old and slow, Stark,” he said, flipping the apple casually into the
�rushing water. “No matter, we ride the rest of the way.” He had two horses waiting. Ned
mounted up and trotted behind him, down the trail and into the city.
Finally Baelish drew rein in front of a ramshackle building, three stories, timbered, its
windows bright with lamplight in the gathering dusk. The sounds of music and raucous
laughter drifted out and floated over the water. Beside the door swung an ornate oil
lamp on a heavy chain, with a globe of leaded red glass.
Ned Stark dismounted in a fury. “A brothel,” he said as he seized Littlefinger by the
shoulder and spun him around. “You’ve brought me all this way to take me to a brothel.”
“Your wife is inside,” Littlefinger said.
It was the final insult. “Brandon was too kind to you,” Ned said as he slammed the small
man back against a wall and shoved his dagger up under the little pointed chin beard.
“My lord, no,” an urgent voice called out. “He speaks the truth.” There were footsteps
behind him.
Ned spun, knife in hand, as an old white-haired man hurried toward them. He was
dressed in brown roughspun, and the soft flesh under his chin wobbled as he ran. “This
is no business of yours,” Ned began; then, suddenly, the recognition came. He lowered
the dagger, astonished. “Ser Rodrik?”
Rodrik Cassel nodded. “Your lady awaits you upstairs.”
Ned was lost. “Catelyn is truly here? This is not some strange jape of Littlefinger’s?” He
sheathed his blade.
“Would that it were, Stark,” Littlefinger said. “Follow me, and try to look a shade more
lecherous and a shade less like the King’s Hand. It would not do to have you recognized.
Perhaps you could fondle a breast or two, just in passing.”
They went inside, through a crowded common room where a fat woman was singing
bawdy songs while pretty young girls in linen shifts and wisps of colored silk pressed
themselves against their lovers and dandled on their laps. No one paid Ned the least bit
of attention. Ser Rodrik waited below while Littlefinger led him up to the third floor,
along a corridor, and through a door.
Inside, Catelyn was waiting. She cried out when she saw him, ran to him, and embraced
him fiercely.
�“My lady,” Ned whispered in wonderment.
“Oh, very good,” said Littlefinger, closing the door. “You recognized her.”
“I feared you’d never come, my lord,” she whispered against his chest. “Petyr has been
bringing me reports. He told me of your troubles with Arya and the young prince. How
are my girls?”
“Both in mourning, and full of anger,” he told her. “Cat, I do not understand. What are
you doing in King’s Landing? What’s happened?” Ned asked his wife. “Is it Bran? Is
he . . . ”Dead was the word that came to his lips, but he could not say it.
“It is Bran, but not as you think,” Catelyn said.
Ned was lost. “Then how? Why are you here, my love? What is this place?”
“Just what it appears,” Littlefinger said, easing himself onto a window seat. “A brothel.
Can you think of a less likely place to find a Catelyn Tully?” He smiled. “As it chances, I
own this particular establishment, so arrangements were easily made. I am most anxious
to keep the Lannisters from learning that Cat is here in King’s Landing.”
“Why?” Ned asked. He saw her hands then, the awkward way she held them, the raw red
scars, the stiffness of the last two fingers on her left. “You’ve been hurt.” He took her
hands in his own, turned them over. “Gods. Those are deep cuts . . . a gash from a sword
or . . . how did this happen, my lady?”
Catelyn slid a dagger out from under her cloak and placed it in his hand. “This blade was
sent to open Bran’s throat and spill his life’s blood.”
Ned’s head jerked up. “But . . . who . . . why would . . . ”
She put a finger to his lips. “Let me tell it all, my love. It will go faster that way. Listen.”
So he listened, and she told it all, from the fire in the library tower to Varys and the
guardsmen and Littlefinger. And when she was done, Eddard Stark sat dazed beside the
table, the dagger in his hand. Bran’s wolf had saved the boy’s life, he thought dully. What
was it that Jon had said when they found the pups in the snow? Your children were
meant to have these pups, my lord. And he had killed Sansa’s, and for what? Was it guilt
he was feeling? Or fear? If the gods had sent these wolves, what folly had he done?
Painfully, Ned forced his thoughts back to the dagger and what it meant. “The Imp’s
�dagger,” he repeated. It made no sense. His hand curled around the smooth dragonbone
hilt, and he slammed the blade into the table, felt it bite into the wood. It stood mocking
him. “Why should Tyrion Lannister want Bran dead? The boy has never done him harm.”
“Do you Starks have nought but snow between your ears?” Littlefinger asked. “The Imp
would never have acted alone.”
Ned rose and paced the length of the room. “If the queen had a role in this or, gods
forbid, the king himself . . . no, I will not believe that.” Yet even as he said the words, he
remembered that chill morning on the barrowlands, and Robert’s talk of sending hired
knives after the Targaryen princess. He remembered Rhaegar’s infant son, the red ruin
of his skull, and the way the king had turned away, as he had turned away in Darry’s
audience hall not so long ago. He could still hear Sansa pleading, as Lyanna had pleaded
once.
“Most likely the king did not know,” Littlefinger said. “It would not be the first time. Our
good Robert is practiced at closing his eyes to things he would rather not see.”
Ned had no reply for that. The face of the butcher’s boy swam up before his eyes, cloven
almost in two, and afterward the king had said not a word. His head was pounding.
Littlefinger sauntered over to the table, wrenched the knife from the wood. “The
accusation is treason either way. Accuse the king and you will dance with Ilyn Payne
before the words are out of your mouth. The queen . . . if you can find proof, and if you
can make Robert listen, then perhaps . . . ”
“We have proof,” Ned said. “We have the dagger.”
“This?” Littlefinger flipped the knife casually end over end. “A sweet piece of steel, but it
cuts two ways, my lord. The Imp will no doubt swear the blade was lost or stolen while
he was at Winterfell, and with his hireling dead, who is there to give him the lie?” He
tossed the knife lightly to Ned. “My counsel is to drop that in the river and forget that it
was ever forged.”
Ned regarded him coldly. “Lord Baelish, I am a Stark of Winterfell. My son lies crippled,
perhaps dying. He would be dead, and Catelyn with him, but for a wolf pup we found in
the snow. If you truly believe I could forget that, you are as big a fool now as when you
took up sword against my brother.”
“A fool I may be, Stark . . . yet I’m still here, while your brother has been moldering in
his frozen grave for some fourteen years now. If you are so eager to molder beside him,
far be it from me to dissuade you, but I would rather not be included in the party, thank
�you very much.”
“You would be the last man I would willingly include in any party, Lord Baelish.”
“You wound me deeply.” Littlefinger placed a hand over his heart. “For my part, I always
found you Starks a tiresome lot, but Cat seems to have become attached to you, for
reasons I cannot comprehend. I shall try to keep you alive for her sake. A fool’s task,
admittedly, but I could never refuse your wife anything.”
“I told Petyr our suspicions about Jon Arryn’s death,” Catelyn said. “He has promised to
help you find the truth.”
That was not news that Eddard Stark welcomed, but it was true enough that they needed
help, and Littlefinger had been almost a brother to Cat once. It would not be the first
time that Ned had been forced to make common cause with a man he despised. “Very
well,” he said, thrusting the dagger into his belt. “You spoke of Varys. Does the eunuch
know all of it?”
“Not from my lips,” Catelyn said. “You did not wed a fool, Eddard Stark. But Varys has
ways of learning things that no man could know. He has some dark art, Ned, I swear it.”
“He has spies, that is well known,” Ned said, dismissive.
“It is more than that,” Catelyn insisted. “Ser Rodrik spoke to Ser Aron Santagar in all
secrecy, yet somehow the Spider knew of their conversation. I fear that man.”
Littlefinger smiled. “Leave Lord Varys to me, sweet lady. If you will permit me a small
obscenity—and where better for it—I hold the man’s balls in the palm of my hand.” He
cupped his fingers, smiling. “Or would, if he were a man, or had any balls. You see, if the
pie is opened, the birds begin to sing, and Varys would not like that. Were I you, I would
worry more about the Lannisters and less about the eunuch.”
Ned did not need Littlefinger to tell him that. He was thinking back to the day Arya had
been found, to the look on the queen’s face when she said, We have a wolf, so soft and
quiet. He was thinking of the boy Mycah, of Jon Arryn’s sudden death, of Bran’s fall, of
old mad Aerys Targaryen dying on the floor of his throne room while his life’s blood
dried on a golden blade. “My lady,” he said, turning to Catelyn, “there is nothing more
you can do here. I want you to return to Winterfell at once. If there was one assassin,
there could be others. Whoever ordered Bran’s death will learn soon enough that the boy
still lives.”
“I had hoped to see the girls . . . ” Catelyn said.
�“That would be most unwise,” Littlefinger put in. “The Red Keep is full of curious eyes,
and children talk.”
“He speaks truly, my love,” Ned told her. He embraced her. “Take Ser Rodrik and ride
for Winterfell. I will watch over the girls. Go home to our sons and keep them safe.”
“As you say, my lord.” Catelyn lifted her face, and Ned kissed her. Her maimed fingers
clutched against his back with a desperate strength, as if to hold him safe forever in the
shelter of her arms.
“Would the lord and lady like the use of a bedchamber?” asked Littlefinger. “I should
warn you, Stark, we usually charge for that sort of thing around here.”
“A moment alone, that’s all I ask,” Catelyn said.
“Very well.” Littlefinger strolled to the door. “Don’t be too long. It is past time the Hand
and I returned to the castle, before our absence is noted.”
Catelyn went to him and took his hands in her own. “I will not forget the help you gave
me, Petyr. When your men came for me, I did not know whether they were taking me to
a friend or an enemy. I have found you more than a friend. I have found a brother I’d
thought lost.”
Petyr Baelish smiled. “I am desperately sentimental, sweet lady. Best not tell anyone. I
have spent years convincing the court that I am wicked and cruel, and I should hate to
see all that hard work go for naught.”
Ned believed not a word of that, but he kept his voice polite as he said, “You have my
thanks as well, Lord Baelish.”
“Oh, now there’s a treasure,” Littlefinger said, exiting.
When the door had closed behind him, Ned turned back to his wife. “Once you are home,
send word to Helman Tallhart and Galbart Glover under my seal. They are to raise a
hundred bowmen each and fortify Moat Cailin. Two hundred determined archers can
hold the Neck against an army. Instruct Lord Manderly that he is to strengthen and
repair all his defenses at White Harbor, and see that they are well manned. And from
this day on, I want a careful watch kept over Theon Greyjoy. If there is war, we shall
have sore need of his father’s fleet.”
“War?” The fear was plain on Catelyn’s face.
�“It will not come to that,” Ned promised her, praying it was true. He took her in his arms
again. “The Lannisters are merciless in the face of weakness, as Aerys Targaryen learned
to his sorrow, but they would not dare attack the north without all the power of the
realm behind them, and that they shall not have. I must play out this fool’s masquerade
as if nothing is amiss. Remember why I came here, my love. If I find proof that the
Lannisters murdered Jon Arryn . . . ”
He felt Catelyn tremble in his arms. Her scarred hands clung to him. “If,” she said, “what
then, my love?”
That was the most dangerous part, Ned knew. “All justice flows from the king,” he told
her. “When I know the truth, I must go to Robert.” And pray that he is the man I think
he is, he finished silently, and not the man I fear he has become.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
TYRION
Are you certain that you must leave us so soon?” the Lord Commander asked him.
“Past certain, Lord Mormont,” Tyrion replied. “My brother Jaime will be wondering
what has become of me. He may decide that you have convinced me to take the black.”
“Would that I could.” Mormont picked up a crab claw and cracked it in his fist. Old as he
was, the Lord Commander still had the strength of a bear. “You’re a cunning man,
Tyrion. We have need of men of your sort on the Wall.”
Tyrion grinned. “Then I shall scour the Seven Kingdoms for dwarfs and ship them all to
you, Lord Mormont.” As they laughed, he sucked the meat from a crab leg and reached
for another. The crabs had arrived from Eastwatch only this morning, packed in a barrel
of snow, and they were succulent.
Ser Alliser Thorne was the only man at table who did not so much as crack a smile.
“Lannister mocks us.”
“Only you, Ser Alliser,” Tyrion said. This time the laughter round the table had a
nervous, uncertain quality to it.
Thorne’s black eyes fixed on Tyrion with loathing. “You have a bold tongue for someone
who is less than half a man. Perhaps you and I should visit the yard together.”
“Why?” asked Tyrion. “The crabs are here.”
The remark brought more guffaws from the others. Ser Alliser stood up, his mouth a
tight line. “Come and make your japes with steel in your hand.”
Tyrion looked pointedly at his right hand. “Why, I have steel in my hand, Ser Alliser,
although it appears to be a crab fork. Shall we duel?” He hopped up on his chair and
began poking at Thorne’s chest with the tiny fork. Roars of laughter filled the tower
room. Bits of crab flew from the Lord Commander’s mouth as he began to gasp and
choke. Even his raven joined in, cawing loudly from above the window. “Duel! Duel!
Duel!”
�Ser Alliser Thorne walked from the room so stiffly it looked as though he had a dagger
up his butt.
Mormont was still gasping for breath. Tyrion pounded him on the back. “To the victor
goes the spoils,” he called out. “I claim Thorne’s share of the crabs.”
Finally the Lord Commander recovered himself. “You are a wicked man, to provoke our
Ser Alliser so,” he scolded.
Tyrion seated himself and took a sip of wine. “If a man paints a target on his chest, he
should expect that sooner or later someone will loose an arrow at him. I have seen dead
men with more humor than your Ser Alliser.”
“Not so,” objected the Lord Steward, Bowen Marsh, a man as round and red as a
pomegranate. “You ought to hear the droll names he gives the lads he trains.”
Tyrion had heard a few of those droll names. “I’ll wager the lads have a few names for
him as well,” he said. “Chip the ice off your eyes, my good lords. Ser Alliser Thorne
should be mucking out your stables, not drilling your young warriors.”
“The Watch has no shortage of stableboys,” Lord Mormont grumbled. “That seems to be
all they send us these days. Stableboys and sneak thieves and rapers. Ser Alliser is an
anointed knight, one of the few to take the black since I have been Lord Commander. He
fought bravely at King’s Landing.”
“On the wrong side,” Ser Jaremy Rykker commented dryly. “I ought to know, I was there
on the battlements beside him. Tywin Lannister gave us a splendid choice. Take the
black, or see our heads on spikes before evenfall. No offense intended, Tyrion.”
“None taken, Ser Jaremy. My father is very fond of spiked heads, especially those of
people who have annoyed him in some fashion. And a face as noble as yours, well, no
doubt he saw you decorating the city wall above the King’s Gate. I think you would have
looked very striking up there.”
“Thank you,” Ser Jaremy replied with a sardonic smile.
Lord Commander Mormont cleared his throat. “Sometimes I fear Ser Alliser saw you
true, Tyrion. You do mock us and our noble purpose here.”
Tyrion shrugged. “We all need to be mocked from time to time, Lord Mormont, lest we
start to take ourselves too seriously. More wine, please.” He held out his cup.
�As Rykker filled it for him, Bowen Marsh said, “You have a great thirst for a small man.”
“Oh, I think that Lord Tyrion is quite a large man,” Maester Aemon said from the far end
of the table. He spoke softly, yet the high officers of the Night’s Watch all fell quiet, the
better to hear what the ancient had to say. “I think he is a giant come among us, here at
the end of the world.”
Tyrion answered gently, “I’ve been called many things, my lord, but giant is seldom one
of them.”
“Nonetheless,” Maester Aemon said as his clouded, milk-white eyes moved to Tyrion’s
face, “I think it is true.”
For once, Tyrion Lannister found himself at a loss for words. He could only bow his head
politely and say, “You are too kind, Maester Aemon.”
The blind man smiled. He was a tiny thing, wrinkled and hairless, shrunken beneath the
weight of a hundred years so his maester’s collar with its links of many metals hung
loose about his throat. “I have been called many things, my lord,” he said, “but kind is
seldom one of them.” This time Tyrion himself led the laughter.
Much later, when the serious business of eating was done and the others had left,
Mormont offered Tyrion a chair beside the fire and a cup of mulled spirits so strong they
brought tears to his eyes. “The kingsroad can be perilous this far north,” the Lord
Commander told him as they drank.
“I have Jyck and Morrec,” Tyrion said, “and Yoren is riding south again.”
“Yoren is only one man. The Watch shall escort you as far as Winterfell,” Mormont
announced in a tone that brooked no argument. “Three men should be sufficient.”
“If you insist, my lord,” Tyrion said. “You might send young Snow. He would be glad for
a chance to see his brothers.”
Mormont frowned through his thick grey beard. “Snow? Oh, the Stark bastard. I think
not. The young ones need to forget the lives they left behind them, the brothers and
mothers and all that. A visit home would only stir up feelings best left alone. I know
these things. My own blood kin . . . my sister Maege rules Bear Island now, since my
son’s dishonor. I have nieces I have never seen.” He took a swallow. “Besides, Jon Snow
is only a boy. You shall have three strong swords, to keep you safe.”
�“I am touched by your concern, Lord Mormont.” The strong drink was making Tyrion
light-headed, but not so drunk that he did not realize that the Old Bear wanted
something from him. “I hope I can repay your kindness.”
“You can,” Mormont said bluntly. “Your sister sits beside the king. Your brother is a
great knight, and your father the most powerful lord in the Seven Kingdoms. Speak to
them for us. Tell them of our need here. You have seen for yourself, my lord. The Night’s
Watch is dying. Our strength is less than a thousand now. Six hundred here, two
hundred in the Shadow Tower, even fewer at Eastwatch, and a scant third of those
fighting men. The Wall is a hundred leagues long. Think on that. Should an attack come,
I have three men to defend each mile of wall.”
“Three and a third,” Tyrion said with a yawn.
Mormont scarcely seemed to hear him. The old man warmed his hands before the fire. “I
sent Benjen Stark to search after Yohn Royce’s son, lost on his first ranging. The Royce
boy was green as summer grass, yet he insisted on the honor of his own command,
saying it was his due as a knight. I did not wish to offend his lord father, so I yielded. I
sent him out with two men I deemed as good as any in the Watch. More fool I.”
“Fool,” the raven agreed. Tyrion glanced up. The bird peered down at him with those
beady black eyes, ruffling its wings. “Fool,” it called again. Doubtless old Mormont
would take it amiss if he throttled the creature. A pity.
The Lord Commander took no notice of the irritating bird. “Gared was near as old as I
am and longer on the Wall,” he went on, “yet it would seem he forswore himself and fled.
I should never have believed it, not of him, but Lord Eddard sent me his head from
Winterfell. Of Royce, there is no word. One deserter and two men lost, and now Ben
Stark too has gone missing.” He sighed deeply. “Who am I to send searching after him?
In two years I will be seventy. Too old and too weary for the burden I bear, yet if I set it
down, who will pick it up? Alliser Thorne? Bowen Marsh? I would have to be as blind as
Maester Aemon not to see what they are. The Night’s Watch has become an army of
sullen boys and tired old men. Apart from the men at my table tonight, I have perhaps
twenty who can read, and even fewer who can think, or plan, or lead. Once the Watch
spent its summers building, and each Lord Commander raised the Wall higher than he
found it. Now it is all we can do to stay alive.”
He was in deadly earnest, Tyrion realized. He felt faintly embarrassed for the old man.
Lord Mormont had spent a good part of his life on the Wall, and he needed to believe if
those years were to have any meaning. “I promise, the king will hear of your need,”
Tyrion said gravely, “and I will speak to my father and my brother Jaime as well.” And
he would. Tyrion Lannister was as good as his word. He left the rest unsaid; that King
�Robert would ignore him, Lord Tywin would ask if he had taken leave of his senses, and
Jaime would only laugh.
“You are a young man, Tyrion,” Mormont said. “How many winters have you seen?”
He shrugged. “Eight, nine. I misremember.”
“And all of them short.”
“As you say, my lord.” He had been born in the dead of winter, a terrible cruel one that
the maesters said had lasted near three years, but Tyrion’s earliest memories were of
spring.
“When I was a boy, it was said that a long summer always meant a long winter to come.
This summer has lasted nine years, Tyrion, and a tenth will soon be upon us. Think on
that.”
“When I was a boy,” Tyrion replied, “my wet nurse told me that one day, if men were
good, the gods would give the world a summer without ending. Perhaps we’ve been
better than we thought, and the Great Summer is finally at hand.” He grinned.
The Lord Commander did not seem amused. “You are not fool enough to believe that,
my lord. Already the days grow shorter. There can be no mistake, Aemon has had letters
from the Citadel, findings in accord with his own. The end of summer stares us in the
face.” Mormont reached out and clutched Tyrion tightly by the hand. “You must make
them understand. I tell you, my lord, the darkness is coming. There are wild things in
the woods, direwolves and mammoths and snow bears the size of aurochs, and I have
seen darker shapes in my dreams.”
“In your dreams,” Tyrion echoed, thinking how badly he needed another strong drink.
Mormont was deaf to the edge in his voice. “The fisherfolk near Eastwatch have
glimpsed white walkers on the shore.”
This time Tyrion could not hold his tongue. “The fisherfolk of Lannisport often glimpse
merlings.”
“Denys Mallister writes that the mountain people are moving south, slipping past the
Shadow Tower in numbers greater than ever before. They are running, my lord . . . but
running from what?” Lord Mormont moved to the window and stared out into the night.
“These are old bones, Lannister, but they have never felt a chill like this. Tell the king
what I say, I pray you. Winter is coming, and when the Long Night falls, only the Night’s
�Watch will stand between the realm and the darkness that sweeps from the north. The
gods help us all if we are not ready.”
“The gods help me if I do not get some sleep tonight. Yoren is determined to ride at first
light.” Tyrion got to his feet, sleepy from wine and tired of doom. “I thank you for all the
courtesies you have done me, Lord Mormont.”
“Tell them, Tyrion. Tell them and make them believe. That is all the thanks I need.” He
whistled, and his raven flew to him and perched on his shoulder. Mormont smiled and
gave the bird some corn from his pocket, and that was how Tyrion left him.
It was bitter cold outside. Bundled thickly in his furs, Tyrion Lannister pulled on his
gloves and nodded to the poor frozen wretches standing sentry outside the
Commander’s Keep. He set off across the yard for his own chambers in the King’s Tower,
walking as briskly as his legs could manage. Patches of snow crunched beneath his feet
as his boots broke the night’s crust, and his breath steamed before him like a banner. He
shoved his hands into his armpits and walked faster, praying that Morrec had
remembered to warm his bed with hot bricks from the fire.
Behind the King’s Tower, the Wall glimmered in the light of the moon, immense and
mysterious. Tyrion stopped for a moment to look up at it. His legs ached of cold and
haste.
Suddenly a strange madness took hold of him, a yearning to look once more off the end
of the world. It would be his last chance, he thought; tomorrow he would ride south, and
he could not imagine why he would ever want to return to this frozen desolation. The
King’s Tower was before him, with its promise of warmth and a soft bed, yet Tyrion
found himself walking past it, toward the vast pale palisade of the Wall.
A wooden stair ascended the south face, anchored on huge rough-hewn beams sunk
deep into the ice and frozen in place. Back and forth it switched, clawing its way upward
as crooked as a bolt of lightning. The black brothers assured him that it was much
stronger than it looked, but Tyrion’s legs were cramping too badly for him to even
contemplate the ascent. He went instead to the iron cage beside the well, clambered
inside, and yanked hard on the bell rope, three quick pulls.
He had to wait what seemed an eternity, standing there inside the bars with the Wall to
his back. Long enough for Tyrion to begin to wonder why he was doing this. He had just
about decided to forget his sudden whim and go to bed when the cage gave a jerk and
began to ascend.
He moved upward slowly, by fits and starts at first, then more smoothly. The ground fell
�away beneath him, the cage swung, and Tyrion wrapped his hands around the iron bars.
He could feel the cold of the metal even through his gloves. Morrec had a fire burning in
his room, he noted with approval, but the Lord Commander’s tower was dark. The Old
Bear had more sense than he did, it seemed.
Then he was above the towers, still inching his way upward. Castle Black lay below him,
etched in moonlight. You could see how stark and empty it was from up here;
windowless keeps, crumbling walls, courtyards choked with broken stone. Farther off, he
could see the lights of Mole’s Town, the little village half a league south along the
kingsroad, and here and there the bright glitter of moonlight on water where icy streams
descended from the mountain heights to cut across the plains. The rest of the world was
a bleak emptiness of windswept hills and rocky fields spotted with snow.
Finally a thick voice behind him said, “Seven hells, it’s the dwarf,” and the cage jerked to
a sudden stop and hung there, swinging slowly back and forth, the ropes creaking.
“Bring him in, damn it.” There was a grunt and a loud groaning of wood as the cage slid
sideways and then the Wall was beneath him. Tyrion waited until the swinging had
stopped before he pushed open the cage door and hopped down onto the ice. A heavy
figure in black was leaning on the winch, while a second held the cage with a gloved
hand. Their faces were muffled in woolen scarves so only their eyes showed, and they
were plump with layers of wool and leather, black on black. “And what will you be
wanting, this time of night?” the one by the winch asked.
“A last look.”
The men exchanged sour glances. “Look all you want,” the other one said. “Just have a
care you don’t fall off, little man. The Old Bear would have our hides.” A small wooden
shack stood under the great crane, and Tyrion saw the dull glow of a brazier and felt a
brief gust of warmth when the winch men opened the door and went back inside. And
then he was alone.
It was bitingly cold up here, and the wind pulled at his clothes like an insistent lover. The
top of the Wall was wider than the kingsroad often was, so Tyrion had no fear of falling,
although the footing was slicker than he would have liked. The brothers spread crushed
stone across the walkways, but the weight of countless footsteps would melt the Wall
beneath, so the ice would seem to grow around the gravel, swallowing it, until the path
was bare again and it was time to crush more stone.
Still, it was nothing that Tyrion could not manage. He looked off to the east and west, at
the Wall stretching before him, a vast white road with no beginning and no end and a
dark abyss on either side. West, he decided, for no special reason, and he began to walk
�that way, following the pathway nearest the north edge, where the gravel looked freshest.
His bare cheeks were ruddy with the cold, and his legs complained more loudly with
every step, but Tyrion ignored them. The wind swirled around him, gravel crunched
beneath his boots, while ahead the white ribbon followed the lines of the hills, rising
higher and higher, until it was lost beyond the western horizon. He passed a massive
catapult, as tall as a city wall, its base sunk deep into the Wall. The throwing arm had
been taken off for repairs and then forgotten; it lay there like a broken toy, halfembedded in the ice.
On the far side of the catapult, a muffled voice called out a challenge. “Who goes there?
Halt!”
Tyrion stopped. “If I halt too long I’ll freeze in place, Jon,” he said as a shaggy pale shape
slid toward him silently and sniffed at his furs. “Hello, Ghost.”
Jon Snow moved closer. He looked bigger and heavier in his layers of fur and leather,
the hood of his cloak pulled down over his face. “Lannister,” he said, yanking loose the
scarf to uncover his mouth. “This is the last place I would have expected to see you.” He
carried a heavy spear tipped in iron, taller than he was, and a sword hung at his side in a
leather sheath. Across his chest was a gleaming black warhorn, banded with silver.
“This is the last place I would have expected to be seen,” Tyrion admitted. “I was
captured by a whim. If I touch Ghost, will he chew my hand off?”
“Not with me here,” Jon promised.
Tyrion scratched the white wolf behind the ears. The red eyes watched him impassively.
The beast came up as high as his chest now. Another year, and Tyrion had the gloomy
feeling he’d be looking up at him. “What are you doing up here tonight?” he asked.
“Besides freezing your manhood off . . . ”
“I have drawn night guard,” Jon said. “Again. Ser Alliser has kindly arranged for the
watch commander to take a special interest in me. He seems to think that if they keep
me awake half the night, I’ll fall asleep during morning drill. So far I have disappointed
him.”
Tyrion grinned. “And has Ghost learned to juggle yet?”
“No,” said Jon, smiling, “but Grenn held his own against Halder this morning, and Pyp
is no longer dropping his sword quite so often as he did.”
�“Pyp?”
“Pypar is his real name. The small boy with the large ears. He saw me working with
Grenn and asked for help. Thorne had never even shown him the proper way to grip a
sword.” He turned to look north. “I have a mile of Wall to guard. Will you walk with me?”
“If you walk slowly,” Tyrion said.
“The watch commander tells me I must walk, to keep my blood from freezing, but he
never said how fast.”
They walked, with Ghost pacing along beside Jon like a white shadow. “I leave on the
morrow,” Tyrion said.
“I know.” Jon sounded strangely sad.
“I plan to stop at Winterfell on the way south. If there is any message that you would like
me to deliver . . . ”
“Tell Robb that I’m going to command the Night’s Watch and keep him safe, so he might
as well take up needlework with the girls and have Mikken melt down his sword for
horseshoes.”
“Your brother is bigger than me,” Tyrion said with a laugh. “I decline to deliver any
message that might get me killed.”
“Rickon will ask when I’m coming home. Try to explain where I’ve gone, if you can. Tell
him he can have all my things while I’m away, he’ll like that.”
People seemed to be asking a great deal of him today, Tyrion Lannister thought. “You
could put all this in a letter, you know.”
“Rickon can’t read yet. Bran . . . ” He stopped suddenly. “I don’t know what message to
send to Bran. Help him, Tyrion.”
“What help could I give him? I am no maester, to ease his pain. I have no spells to give
him back his legs.”
“You gave me help when I needed it,” Jon Snow said.
“I gave you nothing,” Tyrion said. “Words.”
�“Then give your words to Bran too.”
“You’re asking a lame man to teach a cripple how to dance,” Tyrion said. “However
sincere the lesson, the result is likely to be grotesque. Still, I know what it is to love a
brother, Lord Snow. I will give Bran whatever small help is in my power.”
“Thank you, my lord of Lannister.” He pulled off his glove and offered his bare hand.
“Friend.”
Tyrion found himself oddly touched. “Most of my kin are bastards,” he said with a wry
smile, “but you’re the first I’ve had to friend.” He pulled a glove off with his teeth and
clasped Snow by the hand, flesh against flesh. The boy’s grip was firm and strong.
When he had donned his glove again, Jon Snow turned abruptly and walked to the low,
icy northern parapet. Beyond him the Wall fell away sharply; beyond him there was only
the darkness and the wild. Tyrion followed him, and side by side they stood upon the
edge of the world.
The Night’s Watch permitted the forest to come no closer than half a mile of the north
face of the Wall. The thickets of ironwood and sentinel and oak that had once grown
there had been harvested centuries ago, to create a broad swath of open ground through
which no enemy could hope to pass unseen. Tyrion had heard that elsewhere along the
Wall, between the three fortresses, the wildwood had come creeping back over the
decades, that there were places where grey-green sentinels and pale white weirwoods
had taken root in the shadow of the Wall itself, but Castle Black had a prodigious
appetite for firewood, and here the forest was still kept at bay by the axes of the black
brothers.
It was never far, though. From up here Tyrion could see it, the dark trees looming
beyond the stretch of open ground, like a second wall built parallel to the first, a wall of
night. Few axes had ever swung in that black wood, where even the moonlight could not
penetrate the ancient tangle of root and thorn and grasping limb. Out there the trees
grew huge, and the rangers said they seemed to brood and knew not men. It was small
wonder the Night’s Watch named it the haunted forest.
As he stood there and looked at all that darkness with no fires burning anywhere, with
the wind blowing and the cold like a spear in his guts, Tyrion Lannister felt as though he
could almost believe the talk of the Others, the enemy in the night. His jokes of
grumkins and snarks no longer seemed quite so droll.
“My uncle is out there,” Jon Snow said softly, leaning on his spear as he stared off into
the darkness. “The first night they sent me up here, I thought, Uncle Benjen will ride
�back tonight, and I’ll see him first and blow the horn. He never came, though. Not that
night and not any night.”
“Give him time,” Tyrion said.
Far off to the north, a wolf began to howl. Another voice picked up the call, then another.
Ghost cocked his head and listened. “If he doesn’t come back,” Jon Snow promised,
“Ghost and I will go find him.” He put his hand on the direwolf’s head.
“I believe you,” Tyrion said, but what he thought was, And who will go find you? He
shivered.
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ARYA
Her father had been fighting with the council again. Arya could see it on his face when
he came to table, late again, as he had been so often. The first course, a thick sweet soup
made with pumpkins, had already been taken away when Ned Stark strode into the
Small Hall. They called it that to set it apart from the Great Hall, where the king could
feast a thousand, but it was a long room with a high vaulted ceiling and bench space for
two hundred at its trestle tables.
“My lord,” Jory said when Father entered. He rose to his feet, and the rest of the guard
rose with him. Each man wore a new cloak, heavy grey wool with a white satin border. A
hand of beaten silver clutched the woolen folds of each cloak and marked their wearers
as men of the Hand’s household guard. There were only fifty of them, so most of the
benches were empty.
“Be seated,” Eddard Stark said. “I see you have started without me. I am pleased to know
there are still some men of sense in this city.” He signaled for the meal to resume. The
servants began bringing out platters of ribs, roasted in a crust of garlic and herbs.
“The talk in the yard is we shall have a tourney, my lord,” Jory said as he resumed his
seat. “They say that knights will come from all over the realm to joust and feast in honor
of your appointment as Hand of the King.”
Arya could see that her father was not very happy about that. “Do they also say this is the
last thing in the world I would have wished?”
Sansa’s eyes had grown wide as the plates. “A tourney,” she breathed. She was seated
between Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole, as far from Arya as she could get without
drawing a reproach from Father. “Will we be permitted to go, Father?”
“You know my feelings, Sansa. It seems I must arrange Robert’s games and pretend to
be honored for his sake. That does not mean I must subject my daughters to this folly.”
“Oh, please,” Sansa said. “I want to see.”
Septa Mordane spoke up. “Princess Myrcella will be there, my lord, and her younger
than Lady Sansa. All the ladies of the court will be expected at a grand event like this,
�and as the tourney is in your honor, it would look queer if your family did not attend.”
Father looked pained. “I suppose so. Very well, I shall arrange a place for you, Sansa.”
He saw Arya. “For both of you.”
“I don’t care about their stupid tourney,” Arya said. She knew Prince Joffrey would be
there, and she hated Prince Joffrey.
Sansa lifted her head. “It will be a splendid event. You shan’t be wanted.”
Anger flashed across Father’s face. “Enough, Sansa. More of that and you will change my
mind. I am weary unto death of this endless war you two are fighting. You are sisters. I
expect you to behave like sisters, is that understood?”
Sansa bit her lip and nodded. Arya lowered her face to stare sullenly at her plate. She
could feel tears stinging her eyes. She rubbed them away angrily, determined not to cry.
The only sound was the clatter of knives and forks. “Pray excuse me,” her father
announced to the table. “I find I have small appetite tonight.” He walked from the hall.
After he was gone, Sansa exchanged excited whispers with Jeyne Poole. Down the table
Jory laughed at a joke, and Hullen started in about horseflesh. “Your warhorse, now, he
may not be the best one for the joust. Not the same thing, oh, no, not the same at all.”
The men had heard it all before; Desmond, Jacks, and Hullen’s son Harwin shouted him
down together, and Porther called for more wine.
No one talked to Arya. She didn’t care. She liked it that way. She would have eaten her
meals alone in her bedchamber if they let her. Sometimes they did, when Father had to
dine with the king or some lord or the envoys from this place or that place. The rest of
the time, they ate in his solar, just him and her and Sansa. That was when Arya missed
her brothers most. She wanted to tease Bran and play with baby Rickon and have Robb
smile at her. She wanted Jon to muss up her hair and call her “little sister” and finish her
sentences with her. But all of them were gone. She had no one left but Sansa, and Sansa
wouldn’t even talk to her unless Father made her.
Back at Winterfell, they had eaten in the Great Hall almost half the time. Her father used
to say that a lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. “Know the men
who follow you,” she heard him tell Robb once, “and let them know you. Don’t ask your
men to die for a stranger.” At Winterfell, he always had an extra seat set at his own table,
and every day a different man would be asked to join him. One night it would be Vayon
Poole, and the talk would be coppers and bread stores and servants. The next time it
would be Mikken, and her father would listen to him go on about armor and swords and
�how hot a forge should be and the best way to temper steel. Another day it might be
Hullen with his endless horse talk, or Septon Chayle from the library, or Jory, or Ser
Rodrik, or even Old Nan with her stories.
Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father’s table and listen to them talk. She
had loved listening to the men on the benches too; to freeriders tough as leather, courtly
knights and bold young squires, grizzled old men-at-arms. She used to throw snowballs
at them and help them steal pies from the kitchen. Their wives gave her scones and she
invented names for their babies and played monsters-and-maidens and hide-thetreasure and come-into-my-castle with their children. Fat Tom used to call her “Arya
Underfoot,” because he said that was where she always was. She’d liked that a lot better
than “Arya Horseface.”
Only that was Winterfell, a world away, and now everything was changed. This was the
first time they had supped with the men since arriving in King’s Landing. Arya hated it.
She hated the sounds of their voices now, the way they laughed, the stories they told.
They’d been her friends, she’d felt safe around them, but now she knew that was a lie.
They’d let the queen kill Lady, that was horrible enough, but then the Hound found
Mycah. Jeyne Poole had told Arya that he’d cut him up in so many pieces that they’d
given him back to the butcher in a bag, and at first the poor man had thought it was a pig
they’d slaughtered. And no one had raised a voice or drawn a blade or anything, not
Harwin who always talked so bold, or Alyn who was going to be a knight, or Jory who
was captain of the guard. Not even her father.
“He was my friend,” Arya whispered into her plate, so low that no one could hear. Her
ribs sat there untouched, grown cold now, a thin film of grease congealing beneath them
on the plate. Arya looked at them and felt ill. She pushed away from the table.
“Pray, where do you think you are going, young lady?” Septa Mordane asked.
“I’m not hungry.” Arya found it an effort to remember her courtesies. “May I be excused,
please?” she recited stiffly.
“You may not,” the septa said. “You have scarcely touched your food. You will sit down
and clean your plate.”
“You clean it!” Before anyone could stop her, Arya bolted for the door as the men
laughed and Septa Mordane called loudly after her, her voice rising higher and higher.
Fat Tom was at his post, guarding the door to the Tower of the Hand. He blinked when
he saw Arya rushing toward him and heard the septa’s shouts. “Here now, little one,
hold on,” he started to say, reaching, but Arya slid between his legs and then she was
�running up the winding tower steps, her feet hammering on the stone while Fat Tom
huffed and puffed behind her.
Her bedchamber was the only place that Arya liked in all of King’s Landing, and the
thing she liked best about it was the door, a massive slab of dark oak with black iron
bands. When she slammed that door and dropped the heavy crossbar, nobody could get
into her room, not Septa Mordane or Fat Tom or Sansa or Jory or the Hound, nobody!
She slammed it now.
When the bar was down, Arya finally felt safe enough to cry.
She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and herself most of
all. It was all her fault, everything bad that had happened. Sansa said so, and Jeyne too.
Fat Tom was knocking on her door. “Arya girl, what’s wrong?” he called out. “You in
there?”
“No!” she shouted. The knocking stopped. A moment later she heard him going away.
Fat Tom was always easy to fool.
Arya went to the chest at the foot of her bed. She knelt, opened the lid, and began pulling
her clothes out with both hands, grabbing handfuls of silk and satin and velvet and wool
and tossing them on the floor. It was there at the bottom of the chest, where she’d
hidden it. Arya lifted it out almost tenderly and drew the slender blade from its sheath.
Needle.
She thought of Mycah again and her eyes filled with tears. Her fault, her fault, her fault.
If she had never asked him to play at swords with her . . .
There was a pounding at her door, louder than before. “Arya Stark, you open this door
at once, do you hear me?”
Arya spun around, with Needle in her hand. “You better not come in here!” she warned.
She slashed at the air savagely.
“The Hand will hear of this!” Septa Mordane raged.
“I don’t care,” Arya screamed. “Go away.”
“You will rue this insolent behavior, young lady, I promise you that.” Arya listened at
�the door until she heard the sound of the septa’s receding footsteps.
She went back to the window, Needle in hand, and looked down into the courtyard
below. If only she could climb like Bran, she thought; she would go out the window and
down the tower, run away from this horrible place, away from Sansa and Septa Mordane
and Prince Joffrey, from all of them. Steal some food from the kitchens, take Needle and
her good boots and a warm cloak. She could find Nymeria in the wild woods below the
Trident, and together they’d return to Winterfell, or run to Jon on the Wall. She found
herself wishing that Jon was here with her now. Then maybe she wouldn’t feel so alone.
A soft knock at the door behind her turned Arya away from the window and her dreams
of escape. “Arya,” her father’s voice called out. “Open the door. We need to talk.”
Arya crossed the room and lifted the crossbar. Father was alone. He seemed more sad
than angry. That made Arya feel even worse. “May I come in?” Arya nodded, then
dropped her eyes, ashamed. Father closed the door. “Whose sword is that?”
“Mine.” Arya had almost forgotten Needle, in her hand.
“Give it to me.”
Reluctantly Arya surrendered her sword, wondering if she would ever hold it again. Her
father turned it in the light, examining both sides of the blade. He tested the point with
his thumb. “A bravo’s blade,” he said. “Yet it seems to me that I know this maker’s mark.
This is Mikken’s work.”
Arya could not lie to him. She lowered her eyes.
Lord Eddard Stark sighed. “My nine-year-old daughter is being armed from my own
forge, and I know nothing of it. The Hand of the King is expected to rule the Seven
Kingdoms, yet it seems I cannot even rule my own household. How is it that you come to
own a sword, Arya? Where did you get this?”
Arya chewed her lip and said nothing. She would not betray Jon, not even to their father.
After a while, Father said, “I don’t suppose it matters, truly.” He looked down gravely at
the sword in his hands. “This is no toy for children, least of all for a girl. What would
Septa Mordane say if she knew you were playing with swords?”
“I wasn’t playing,” Arya insisted. “I hate Septa Mordane.”
“That’s enough.” Her father’s voice was curt and hard. “The septa is doing no more than
�is her duty, though gods know you have made it a struggle for the poor woman. Your
mother and I have charged her with the impossible task of making you a lady.”
“I don’t want to be a lady!” Arya flared.
“I ought to snap this toy across my knee here and now, and put an end to this nonsense.”
“Needle wouldn’t break,” Arya said defiantly, but her voice betrayed her words.
“It has a name, does it?” Her father sighed. “Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child.
‘The wolf blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother
Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave.” Arya heard sadness
in his voice; he did not often speak of his father, or of the brother and sister who had
died before she was born. “Lyanna might have carried a sword, if my lord father had
allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her.”
“Lyanna was beautiful,” Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that
was ever said of Arya.
“She was,” Eddard Stark agreed, “beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time.” He
lifted the sword, held it out between them. “Arya, what did you think to do with
this . . . Needle? Who did you hope to skewer? Your sister? Septa Mordane? Do you
know the first thing about sword fighting?”
All she could think of was the lesson Jon had given her. “Stick them with the pointy
end,” she blurted out.
Her father snorted back laughter. “That is the essence of it, I suppose.”
Arya desperately wanted to explain, to make him see. “I was trying to learn, but . . . ” Her
eyes filled with tears. “I asked Mycah to practice with me.” The grief came on her all at
once. She turned away, shaking. “I asked him,” she cried. “It was my fault, it was me . . . ”
Suddenly her father’s arms were around her. He held her gently as she turned to him
and sobbed against his chest. “No, sweet one,” he murmured. “Grieve for your friend,
but never blame yourself. You did not kill the butcher’s boy. That murder lies at the
Hound’s door, him and the cruel woman he serves.”
“I hate them,” Arya confided, red-faced, sniffling. “The Hound and the queen and the
king and Prince Joffrey. I hate all of them. Joffrey lied, it wasn’t the way he said. I hate
Sansa too. She did remember, she just lied so Joffrey would like her.”
�“We all lie,” her father said. “Or did you truly think I’d believe that Nymeria ran off?”
Arya blushed guiltily. “Jory promised not to tell.”
“Jory kept his word,” her father said with a smile. “There are some things I do not need
to be told. Even a blind man could see that wolf would never have left you willingly.”
“We had to throw rocks,” she said miserably. “I told her to run, to go be free, that I didn’t
want her anymore. There were other wolves for her to play with, we heard them howling,
and Jory said the woods were full of game, so she’d have deer to hunt. Only she kept
following, and finally we had to throw rocks. I hit her twice. She whined and looked at
me and I felt so ’shamed, but it was right, wasn’t it? The queen would have killed her.”
“It was right,” her father said. “And even the lie was . . . not without honor.” He’d put
Needle aside when he went to Arya to embrace her. Now he took the blade up again and
walked to the window, where he stood for a moment, looking out across the courtyard.
When he turned back, his eyes were thoughtful. He seated himself on the window seat,
Needle across his lap. “Arya, sit down. I need to try and explain some things to you.”
She perched anxiously on the edge of her bed. “You are too young to be burdened with
all my cares,” he told her, “but you are also a Stark of Winterfell. You know our words.”
“Winter is coming,” Arya whispered.
“The hard cruel times,” her father said. “We tasted them on the Trident, child, and when
Bran fell. You were born in the long summer, sweet one, you’ve never known anything
else, but now the winter is truly coming. Remember the sigil of our House, Arya.”
“The direwolf,” she said, thinking of Nymeria. She hugged her knees against her chest,
suddenly afraid.
“Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds
blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In
winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So if
you must hate, Arya, hate those who would truly do us harm. Septa Mordane is a good
woman, and Sansa . . . Sansa is your sister. You may be as different as the sun and the
moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs
you . . . and I need both of you, gods help me.”
He sounded so tired that it made Arya sad. “I don’t hate Sansa,” she told him. “Not
truly.” It was only half a lie.
�“I do not mean to frighten you, but neither will I lie to you. We have come to a dark
dangerous place, child. This is not Winterfell. We have enemies who mean us ill. We
cannot fight a war among ourselves. This willfulness of yours, the running off, the angry
words, the disobedience . . . at home, these were only the summer games of a child. Here
and now, with winter soon upon us, that is a different matter. It is time to begin growing
up.”
“I will,” Arya vowed. She had never loved him so much as she did in that instant. “I can
be strong too. I can be as strong as Robb.”
He held Needle out to her, hilt first. “Here.”
She looked at the sword with wonder in her eyes. For a moment she was afraid to touch
it, afraid that if she reached for it it would be snatched away again, but then her father
said, “Go on, it’s yours,” and she took it in her hand.
“I can keep it?” she said. “For true?”
“For true.” He smiled. “If I took it away, no doubt I’d find a morningstar hidden under
your pillow within the fortnight. Try not to stab your sister, whatever the provocation.”
“I won’t. I promise.” Arya clutched Needle tightly to her chest as her father took his leave.
The next morning, as they broke their fast, she apologized to Septa Mordane and asked
for her pardon. The septa peered at her suspiciously, but Father nodded.
Three days later, at midday, her father’s steward Vayon Poole sent Arya to the Small
Hall. The trestle tables had been dismantled and the benches shoved against the walls.
The hall seemed empty, until an unfamiliar voice said, “You are late, boy.” A slight man
with a bald head and a great beak of a nose stepped out of the shadows, holding a pair of
slender wooden swords. “Tomorrow you will be here at midday.” He had an accent, the
lilt of the Free Cities, Braavos perhaps, or Myr.
“Who are you?” Arya asked.
“I am your dancing master.” He tossed her one of the wooden blades. She grabbed for it,
missed, and heard it clatter to the floor. “Tomorrow you will catch it. Now pick it up.”
It was not just a stick, but a true wooden sword complete with grip and guard and
pommel. Arya picked it up and clutched it nervously with both hands, holding it out in
front of her. It was heavier than it looked, much heavier than Needle.
�The bald man clicked his teeth together. “That is not the way, boy. This is not a
greatsword that is needing two hands to swing it. You will take the blade in one hand.”
“It’s too heavy,” Arya said.
“It is heavy as it needs to be to make you strong, and for the balancing. A hollow inside is
filled with lead, just so. One hand now is all that is needing.”
Arya took her right hand off the grip and wiped her sweaty palm on her pants. She held
the sword in her left hand. He seemed to approve. “The left is good. All is reversed, it will
make your enemies more awkward. Now you are standing wrong. Turn your body
sideface, yes, so. You are skinny as the shaft of a spear, do you know. That is good too,
the target is smaller. Now the grip. Let me see.” He moved closer and peered at her
hand, prying her fingers apart, rearranging them. “Just so, yes. Do not squeeze it so
tight, no, the grip must be deft, delicate.”
“What if I drop it?” Arya said.
“The steel must be part of your arm,” the bald man told her. “Can you drop part of your
arm? No. Nine years Syrio Forel was first sword to the Sealord of Braavos, he knows
these things. Listen to him, boy.”
It was the third time he had called her “boy.” “I’m a girl,” Arya objected.
“Boy, girl,” Syrio Forel said. “You are a sword, that is all.” He clicked his teeth together.
“Just so, that is the grip. You are not holding a battle-axe, you are holding a—”
“—needle,” Arya finished for him, fiercely.
“Just so. Now we will begin the dance. Remember, child, this is not the iron dance of
Westeros we are learning, the knight’s dance, hacking and hammering, no. This is the
bravo’s dance, the water dance, swift and sudden. All men are made of water, do you
know this? When you pierce them, the water leaks out and they die.” He took a step
backward, raised his own wooden blade. “Now you will try to strike me.”
Arya tried to strike him. She tried for four hours, until every muscle in her body was sore
and aching, while Syrio Forel clicked his teeth together and told her what to do.
The next day their real work began.
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DAENERYS
The Dothraki sea,” Ser Jorah Mormont said as he reined to a halt beside her on the top
of the ridge. beneath them, the plain stretched out immense and empty, a vast flat
expanse that reached to the distant horizon and beyond. It was a sea, Dany thought.
Past here, there were no hills, no mountains, no trees nor cities nor roads, only the
endless grasses, the tall blades rippling like waves when the winds blew. “It’s so green,”
she said.
“Here and now,” Ser Jorah agreed. “You ought to see it when it blooms, all dark red
flowers from horizon to horizon, like a sea of blood. Come the dry season, and the world
turns the color of old bronze. And this is only hranna, child. There are a hundred kinds
of grass out there, grasses as yellow as lemon and as dark as indigo, blue grasses and
orange grasses and grasses like rainbows. Down in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai,
they say there are oceans of ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback with stalks as
pale as milkglass. It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the
damned. The Dothraki claim that someday ghost grass will cover the entire world, and
then all life will end.”
That thought gave Dany the shivers. “I don’t want to talk about that now,” she said. “It’s
so beautiful here, I don’t want to think about everything dying.”
“As you will, Khaleesi,” Ser Jorah said respectfully.
She heard the sound of voices and turned to look behind her. She and Mormont had
outdistanced the rest of their party, and now the others were climbing the ridge below
them. Her handmaid Irri and the young archers of her khas were fluid as centaurs, but
Viserys still struggled with the short stirrups and the flat saddle. Her brother was
miserable out here. He ought never have come. Magister Illyrio had urged him to wait in
Pentos, had offered him the hospitality of his manse, but Viserys would have none of it.
He would stay with Drogo until the debt had been paid, until he had the crown he had
been promised. “And if he tries to cheat me, he will learn to his sorrow what it means to
wake the dragon,” Viserys had vowed, laying a hand on his borrowed sword. Illyrio had
blinked at that and wished him good fortune.
Dany realized that she did not want to listen to any of her brother’s complaints right
now. The day was too perfect. The sky was a deep blue, and high above them a hunting
�hawk circled. The grass sea swayed and sighed with each breath of wind, the air was
warm on her face, and Dany felt at peace. She would not let Viserys spoil it.
“Wait here,” Dany told Ser Jorah. “Tell them all to stay. Tell them I command it.”
The knight smiled. Ser Jorah was not a handsome man. He had a neck and shoulders
like a bull, and coarse black hair covered his arms and chest so thickly that there was
none left for his head. Yet his smiles gave Dany comfort. “You are learning to talk like a
queen, Daenerys.”
“Not a queen,” said Dany. “A khaleesi.” She wheeled her horse about and galloped down
the ridge alone.
The descent was steep and rocky, but Dany rode fearlessly, and the joy and the danger of
it were a song in her heart. All her life Viserys had told her she was a princess, but not
until she rode her silver had Daenerys Targaryen ever felt like one.
At first it had not come easy. The khalasar had broken camp the morning after her
wedding, moving east toward Vaes Dothrak, and by the third day Dany thought she was
going to die. Saddle sores opened on her bottom, hideous and bloody. Her thighs were
chafed raw, her hands blistered from the reins, the muscles of her legs and back so
wracked with pain that she could scarcely sit. By the time dusk fell, her handmaids
would need to help her down from her mount.
Even the nights brought no relief. Khal Drogo ignored her when they rode, even as he
had ignored her during their wedding, and spent his evenings drinking with his warriors
and bloodriders, racing his prize horses, watching women dance and men die. Dany had
no place in these parts of his life. She was left to sup alone, or with Ser Jorah and her
brother, and afterward to cry herself to sleep. Yet every night, some time before the
dawn, Drogo would come to her tent and wake her in the dark, to ride her as relentlessly
as he rode his stallion. He always took her from behind, Dothraki fashion, for which
Dany was grateful; that way her lord husband could not see the tears that wet her face,
and she could use her pillow to muffle her cries of pain. When he was done, he would
close his eyes and begin to snore softly and Dany would lie beside him, her body bruised
and sore, hurting too much for sleep.
Day followed day, and night followed night, until Dany knew she could not endure a
moment longer. She would kill herself rather than go on, she decided one night . . .
Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it
this time. There was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and
slick with blood. Her blood, Dany sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and
�when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out in a hot jet. She could hear it
singing to her, She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow her whole, let
it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and
blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was
no pain. She felt strong and new and fierce.
And the next day, strangely, she did not seem to hurt quite so much. It was as if the gods
had heard her and taken pity. Even her handmaids noticed the change. “Khaleesi,”
Jhiqui said, “what is wrong? Are you sick?”
“I was,” she answered, standing over the dragon’s eggs that Illyrio had given her when
she wed. She touched one, the largest of the three, running her hand lightly over the
shelf. Black-and-scarlet, she thought, like the dragon in my dream. The stone felt
strangely warm beneath her fingers . . . or was she still dreaming? She pulled her hand
back nervously.
From that hour onward, each day was easier than the one before it. Her legs grew
stronger; her blisters burst and her hands grew callused; her soft thighs toughened,
supple as leather.
The khal had commanded the handmaid Irri to teach Dany to ride in the Dothraki
fashion, but it was the filly who was her real teacher. The horse seemed to know her
moods, as if they shared a single mind. With every passing day, Dany felt surer in her
seat. The Dothraki were a hard and unsentimental people, and it was not their custom to
name their animals, so Dany thought of her only as the silver. She had never loved
anything so much.
As the riding became less an ordeal, Dany began to notice the beauties of the land
around her. She rode at the head of the khalasar with Drogo and his bloodriders, so she
came to each country fresh and unspoiled. Behind them the great horde might tear the
earth and muddy the rivers and send up clouds of choking dust, but the fields ahead of
them were always green and verdant.
They crossed the rolling hills of Norvos, past terraced farms and small villages where the
townsfolk watched anxiously from atop white stucco walls. They forded three wide
placid rivers and a fourth that was swift and narrow and treacherous, camped beside a
high blue waterfall, skirted the tumbled ruins of a vast dead city where ghosts were said
to moan among blackened marble columns. They raced down Valyrian roads a thousand
years old and straight as a Dothraki arrow. For half a moon, they rode through the
Forest of Qohor, where the leaves made a golden canopy high above them, and the
trunks of the trees were as wide as city gates. There were great elk in that wood, and
spotted tigers, and lemurs with silver fur and huge purple eyes, but all fled before the
�approach of the khalasar and Dany got no glimpse of them.
By then her agony was a fading memory. She still ached after a long day’s riding, yet
somehow the pain had a sweetness to it now, and each morning she came willingly to
her saddle, eager to know what wonders waited for her in the lands ahead. She began to
find pleasure even in her nights, and if she still cried out when Drogo took her, it was not
always in pain.
At the bottom of the ridge, the grasses rose around her, tall and supple. Dany slowed to a
trot and rode out onto the plain, losing herself in the green, blessedly alone. In the
khalasar she was never alone. Khal Drogo came to her only after the sun went down, but
her handmaids fed her and bathed her and slept by the door of her tent, Drogo’s
bloodriders and the men of her khas were never far, and her brother was an unwelcome
shadow, day and night. Dany could hear him on the top of the ridge, his voice shrill with
anger as he shouted at Ser Jorah. She rode on, submerging herself deeper in the
Dothraki sea.
The green swallowed her up. The air was rich with the scents of earth and grass, mixed
with the smell of horseflesh and Dany’s sweat and the oil in her hair. Dothraki smells.
They seemed to belong here. Dany breathed it all in, laughing. She had a sudden urge to
feel the ground beneath her, to curl her toes in that thick black soil. Swinging down from
her saddle, she let the silver graze while she pulled off her high boots.
Viserys came upon her as sudden as a summer storm, his horse rearing beneath him as
he reined up too hard. “You dare!” he screamed at her. “You give commands to me? To
me?” He vaulted off the horse, stumbling as he landed. His face was flushed as he
struggled back to his feet. He grabbed her, shook her. “Have you forgotten who you are?
Look at you. Look at you!”
Dany did not need to look. She was barefoot, with oiled hair, wearing Dothraki riding
leathers and a painted vest given her as a bride gift. She looked as though she belonged
here. Viserys was soiled and stained in city silks and ringmail.
He was still screaming. “You do not command the dragon. Do you understand? I am the
Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, I will not hear orders from some horselord’s slut, do you
hear me?” His hand went under her vest, his fingers digging painfully into her breast.
“Do you hear me?”
Dany shoved him away, hard.
Viserys stared at her, his lilac eyes incredulous. She had never defied him. Never fought
back. Rage twisted his features. He would hurt her now, and badly, she knew that.
�Crack.
The whip made a sound like thunder. The coil took Viserys around the throat and
yanked him backward. He went sprawling in the grass, stunned and choking. The
Dothraki riders hooted at him as he struggled to free himself. The one with the whip,
young Jhogo, rasped a question. Dany did not understand his words, but by then Irri
was there, and Ser Jorah, and the rest of her khas. “Jhogo asks if you would have him
dead, Khaleesi, “ Irri said.
“No,” Dany replied. “No.”
Jhogo understood that. One of the others barked out a comment, and the Dothraki
laughed. Irri told her, “Quaro thinks you should take an ear to teach him respect.”
Her brother was on his knees, his fingers digging under the leather coils, crying
incoherently, struggling for breath. The whip was tight around his windpipe.
“Tell them I do not wish him harmed,” Dany said.
Irri repeated her words in Dothraki. Jhogo gave a pull on the whip, yanking Viserys
around like a puppet on a string. He went sprawling again, freed from the leather
embrace, a thin line of blood under his chin where the whip had cut deep.
“I warned him what would happen, my lady,” Ser Jorah Mormont said. “I told him to
stay on the ridge, as you commanded.”
“I know you did,” Dany replied, watching Viserys. He lay on the ground, sucking in air
noisily, red-faced and sobbing. He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing.
Why had she never seen that before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear
had been.
“Take his horse,” Dany commanded Ser Jorah. Viserys gaped at her. He could not
believe what he was hearing; nor could Dany quite believe what she was saying. Yet the
words came. “Let my brother walk behind us back to the khalasar.” Among the
Dothraki, the man who does not ride was no man at all, the lowest of the low, without
honor or pride. “Let everyone see him as he is.”
“No!” Viserys screamed. He turned to Ser Jorah, pleading in the Common Tongue with
words the horsemen would not understand. “Hit her, Mormont. Hurt her. Your king
commands it. Kill these Dothraki dogs and teach her.”
�The exile knight looked from Dany to her brother; she barefoot, with dirt between her
toes and oil in her hair, he with his silks and steel. Dany could see the decision on his
face. “He shall walk, Khaleesi,” he said. He took her brother’s horse in hand while Dany
remounted her silver.
Viserys gaped at him, and sat down in the dirt. He kept his silence, but he would not
move, and his eyes were full of poison as they rode away. Soon he was lost in the tall
grass. When they could not see him anymore, Dany grew afraid. “Will he find his way
back?” she asked Ser Jorah as they rode.
“Even a man as blind as your brother should be able to follow our trail,” he replied.
“He is proud. He may be too shamed to come back.”
Jorah laughed. “Where else should he go? If he cannot find the khalasar, the khalasar
will most surely find him. It is hard to drown in the Dothraki sea, child.”
Dany saw the truth of that. The khalasar was like a city on the march, but it did not
march blindly. Always scouts ranged far ahead of the main column, alert for any sign of
game or prey or enemies, while outriders guarded their flanks. They missed nothing, not
here, in this land, the place where they had come from. These plains were a part of
them . . . and of her, now.
“I hit him,” she said, wonder in her voice. Now that it was over, it seemed like some
strange dream that she had dreamed. “Ser Jorah, do you think . . . he’ll be so angry when
he gets back . . . She shivered. “I woke the dragon, didn’t I?”
Ser Jorah snorted. “Can you wake the dead, girl? Your brother Rhaegar was the last
dragon, and he died on the Trident. Viserys is less than the shadow of a snake.”
His blunt words startled her. It seemed as though all the things she had always believed
were suddenly called into question. “You . . . you swore him your sword . . . ”
“That I did, girl,” Ser Jorah said. “And if your brother is the shadow of a snake, what
does that make his servants?” His voice was bitter.
“He is still the true king. He is . . . ”
Jorah pulled up his horse and looked at her. “Truth now. Would you want to see Viserys
sit a throne?”
Dany thought about that. “He would not be a very good king, would he?”
�“There have been worse . . . but not many.” The knight gave his heels to his mount and
started off again.
Dany rode close beside him. “Still,” she said, “the common people are waiting for him.
Magister Illyrio says they are sewing dragon banners and praying for Viserys to return
from across the narrow sea to free them.”
“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,”
Ser Jorah told her. “It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones,
so long as they are left in peace.” He gave a shrug. “They never are.”
Dany rode along quietly for a time, working his words like a puzzle box. It went against
everything that Viserys had ever told her to think that the people could care so little
whether a true king or a usurper reigned over them. Yet the more she thought on Jorah’s
words, the more they rang of truth.
“What do you pray for, Ser Jorah?” she asked him.
“Home,” he said. His voice was thick with longing.
“I pray for home too,” she told him, believing it.
Ser Jorah laughed. “Look around you then, Khaleesi.”
But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King’s Landing and the great Red Keep
that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In
her mind’s eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her
mind’s eye, all the doors were red.
“My brother will never take back the Seven Kingdoms,” Dany said. She had known that
for a long time, she realized. She had known it all her life. Only she had never let herself
say the words, even in a whisper, but now she said them for Jorah Mormont and all the
world to hear.
Ser Jorah gave her a measuring look. “You think not.”
“He could not lead an army even if my lord husband gave him one,” Dany said. “He has
no coin and the only knight who follows him reviles him as less than a snake. The
Dothraki make mock of his weakness. He will never take us home.”
�“Wise child.” The knight smiled.
“I am no child,” she told him fiercely. Her heels pressed into the sides of her mount,
rousing the silver to a gallop. Faster and faster she raced, leaving Jorah and Irri and the
others far behind, the warm wind in her hair and the setting sun red on her face. By the
time she reached the khalasar, it was dusk.
The slaves had erected her tent by the shore of a spring-fed pool. She could hear rough
voices from the woven grass palace on the hill. Soon there would be laughter, when the
men of her khas told the story of what had happened in the grasses today. By the time
Viserys came limping back among them, every man, woman, and child in the camp
would know him for a walker. There were no secrets in the khalasar.
Dany gave the silver over to the slaves for grooming and entered her tent. It was cool and
dim beneath the silk. As she let the door flap close behind her, Dany saw a finger of
dusty red light reach out to touch her dragon’s eggs across the tent. For an instant a
thousand droplets of scarlet flame swam before her eyes. She blinked, and they were
gone.
Stone, she told herself. They are only stone, even Illyrio said so, the dragons are all
dead. She put her palm against the black egg, fingers spread gently across the curve of
the shell. The stone was warm. Almost hot. “The sun,” Dany whispered. “The sun
warmed them as they rode.”
She commanded her handmaids to prepare her a bath. Doreah built a fire outside the
tent, while Irri and Jhiqui fetched the big copper tub—another bride gift—from the
packhorses and carried water from the pool. When the bath was steaming, Irri helped
her into it and climbed in after her.
“Have you ever seen a dragon?” she asked as Irri scrubbed her back and Jhiqui sluiced
sand from her hair. She had heard that the first dragons had come from the east, from
the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai and the islands of the Jade Sea. Perhaps some were
still living there, in realms strange and wild.
“Dragons are gone, Khaleesi,” Irri said.
“Dead,” agreed Jhiqui. “Long and long ago.”
Viserys had told her that the last Targaryen dragons had died no more than a century
and a half ago, during the reign of Aegon III, who was called the Dragonbane. That did
not seem so long ago to Dany. “Everywhere?” she said, disappointed. “Even in the east?”
Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the Lands of the Long
�Summer, and neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it back,
but Dany had always heard that the east was different. It was said that manticores
prowled the islands of the Jade Sea, that basilisks infested the jungles of Yi Ti, that
spellsingers, warlocks, and aeromancers practiced their arts openly in Asshai, while
shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible sorceries in the black of night. Why
shouldn’t there be dragons too?
“No dragon,” Irri said. “Brave men kill them, for dragon terrible evil beasts. It is known.”
“It is known,” agreed Jhiqui.
“A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons came from the moon,” blond Doreah
said as she warmed a towel over the fire. Jhiqui and Irri were of an age with Dany,
Dothraki girls taken as slaves when Drogo destroyed their father’s khalasar. Doreah was
older, almost twenty. Magister Illyrio had found her in a pleasure house in Lys.
Silvery-wet hair tumbled across her eyes as Dany turned her head, curious. “The moon?”
“He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi,” the Lysene girl said. “Once there were two
moons in the sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A
thousand thousand dragons poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why
dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon will kiss the sun too, and then it will
crack and the dragons will return.”
The two Dothraki girls giggled and laughed. “You are foolish strawhead slave,” Irri said.
“Moon is no egg. Moon is god, woman wife of sun. It is known.”
“It is known,” Jhiqui agreed.
Dany’s skin was flushed and pink when she climbed from the tub. Jhiqui laid her down
to oil her body and scrape the dirt from her pores. Afterward Irri sprinkled her with
spiceflower and cinnamon. While Doreah brushed her hair until it shone like spun silver,
she thought about the moon, and eggs, and dragons.
Her supper was a simple meal of fruit and cheese and fry bread, with a jug of honeyed
wine to wash it down. “Doreah, stay and eat with me,” Dany commanded when she sent
her other handmaids away. The Lysene girl had hair the color of honey, and eyes like the
summer sky.
She lowered those eyes when they were alone. “You honor me, Khaleesi,” she said, but it
was no honor, only service. Long after the moon had risen, they sat together, talking.
�That night, when Khal Drogo came, Dany was waiting for him. He stood in the door of
her tent and looked at her with surprise. She rose slowly and opened her sleeping silks
and let them fall to the ground. “This night we must go outside, my lord,” she told him,
for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man’s life must be done
beneath the open sky.
Khal Drogo followed her out into the moonlight, the bells in his hair tinkling softly. A
few yards from her tent was a bed of soft grass, and it was there that Dany drew him
down. When he tried to turn her over, she put a hand on his chest. “No,” she said. “This
night I would look on your face.”
There is no privacy in the heart of the khalasar. Dany felt the eyes on her as she
undressed him, heard the soft voices as she did the things that Doreah had told her to
do. It was nothing to her. Was she not khaleesi? His were the only eyes that mattered,
and when she mounted him she saw something there that she had never seen before.
She rode him as fiercely as ever she had ridden her silver, and when the moment of his
pleasure came, Khal Drogo called out her name.
They were on the far side of the Dothraki sea when Jhiqui brushed the soft swell of
Dany’s stomach with her fingers and said, “Khaleesi, you are with child.”
“I know,” Dany told her.
It was her fourteenth name day.
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BRAN
In the yard below, Rickon ran with the wolves.
Bran watched from his window seat. Wherever the boy went, Grey Wind was there first,
loping ahead to cut him off, until Rickon saw him, screamed in delight, and went pelting
off in another direction. Shaggydog ran at his heels, spinning and snapping if the other
wolves came too close. His fur had darkened until he was all black, and his eyes were
green fire. Bran’s Summer came last. He was silver and smoke, with eyes of yellow gold
that saw all there was to see. Smaller than Grey Wind, and more wary. Bran thought he
was the smartest of the litter. He could hear his brother’s breathless laughter as Rickon
dashed across the hard-packed earth on little baby legs.
His eyes stung. He wanted to be down there, laughing and running. Angry at the
thought, Bran knuckled away the tears before they could fall. His eighth name day had
come and gone. He was almost a man grown now, too old to cry.
“It was just a lie,” he said bitterly, remembering the crow from his dream. “I can’t fly. I
can’t even run.”
“Crows are all liars,” Old Nan agreed, from the chair where she sat doing her
needlework. “I know a story about a crow.”
“I don’t want any more stories,” Bran snapped, his voice petulant. He had liked Old Nan
and her stories once. Before. But it was different now. They left her with him all day
now, to watch over him and clean him and keep him from being lonely, but she just
made it worse. “I hate your stupid stories.”
The old woman smiled at him toothlessly. “My stories? No, my little lord, not mine. The
stories are, before me and after me, before you too.”
She was a very ugly old woman, Bran thought spitefully; shrunken and wrinkled, almost
blind, too weak to climb stairs, with only a few wisps of white hair left to cover a mottled
pink scalp. No one really knew how old she was, but his father said she’d been called Old
Nan even when he was a boy. She was the oldest person in Winterfell for certain, maybe
the oldest person in the Seven Kingdoms. Nan had come to the castle as a wet nurse for a
Brandon Stark whose mother had died birthing him. He had been an older brother of
�Lord Rickard, Bran’s grandfather, or perhaps a younger brother, or a brother to Lord
Rickard’s father. Sometimes Old Nan told it one way and sometimes another. In all the
stories the little boy died at three of a summer chill, but Old Nan stayed on at Winterfell
with her own children. She had lost both her sons to the war when King Robert won the
throne, and her grandson was killed on the walls of Pyke during Balon Greyjoy’s
rebellion. Her daughters had long ago married and moved away and died. All that was
left of her own blood was Hodor, the simpleminded giant who worked in the stables, but
Old Nan just lived on and on, doing her needlework and telling her stories.
“I don’t care whose stories they are,” Bran told her, “I hate them.” He didn’t want stories
and he didn’t want Old Nan. He wanted his mother and father. He wanted to go running
with Summer loping beside him. He wanted to climb the broken tower and feed corn to
the crows. He wanted to ride his pony again with his brothers. He wanted it to be the
way it had been before.
“I know a story about a boy who hated stories,” Old Nan said with her stupid little smile,
her needles moving all the while, click click click, until Bran was ready to scream at her.
It would never be the way it had been, he knew. The crow had tricked him into flying,
but when he woke up he was broken and the world was changed. They had all left him,
his father and his mother and his sisters and even his bastard brother Jon. His father
had promised he would ride a real horse to King’s Landing, but they’d gone without him.
Maester Luwin had sent a bird after Lord Eddard with a message, and another to Mother
and a third to Jon on the Wall, but there had been no answers. “Ofttimes the birds are
lost, child,” the maester had told him. “There’s many a mile and many a hawk between
here and King’s Landing, the message may not have reached them.” Yet to Bran it felt as
if they had all died while he had slept . . . or perhaps Bran had died, and they had
forgotten him. Jory and Ser Rodrik and Vayon Poole had gone too, and Hullen and
Harwin and Fat Tom and a quarter of the guard.
Only Robb and baby Rickon were still here, and Robb was changed. He was Robb the
Lord now, or trying to be. He wore a real sword and never smiled. His days were spent
drilling the guard and practicing his swordplay, making the yard ring with the sound of
steel as Bran watched forlornly from his window. At night he closeted himself with
Maester Luwin, talking or going over account books. Sometimes he would ride out with
Hallis Mollen and be gone for days at a time, visiting distant holdfasts. Whenever he was
away more than a day, Rickon would cry and ask Bran if Robb was ever coming back.
Even when he was home at Winterfell, Robb the Lord seemed to have more time for
Hallis Mollen and Theon Greyjoy than he ever did for his brothers.
“I could tell you the story about Brandon the Builder,” Old Nan said. “That was always
your favorite.”
�Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the Builder had raised Winterfell, and
some said the Wall. Bran knew the story, but it had never been his favorite. Maybe one
of the other Brandons had liked that story. Sometimes Nan would talk to him as if he
were her Brandon, the baby she had nursed all those years ago, and sometimes she
confused him with his uncle Brandon, who was killed by the Mad King before Bran was
even born. She had lived so long, Mother had told him once, that all the Brandon Starks
had become one person in her head.
“That’s not my favorite,” he said. “My favorites were the scary ones.” He heard some sort
of commotion outside and turned back to the window. Rickon was running across the
yard toward the gatehouse, the wolves following him, but the tower faced the wrong way
for Bran to see what was happening. He smashed a fist on his thigh in frustration and
felt nothing.
“Oh, my sweet summer child,” Old Nan said quietly, “what do you know of fear? Fear is
for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind
comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for
years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the
direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods.”
“You mean the Others,” Bran said querulously.
“The Others,” Old Nan agreed. “Thousands and thousands of years ago, a winter fell that
was cold and hard and endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that
lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles even as the swineherds
in their hovels. Women smothered their children rather than see them starve, and cried,
and felt their tears freeze on their cheeks.” Her voice and her needles fell silent, and she
glanced up at Bran with pale, filmy eyes and asked, “So, child. This is the sort of story
you like?”
“Well,” Bran said reluctantly, “yes, only . . . ”
Old Nan nodded. “In that darkness, the Others came for the first time,” she said as her
needles went click click click. “They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and
fire and the touch of the sun, and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They swept
over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled heroes and armies by the score, riding
their pale dead horses and leading hosts of the slain. All the swords of men could not
stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. They
hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the flesh of
human children.”
Her voice had dropped very low, almost to a whisper, and Bran found himself leaning
�forward to listen.
“Now these were the days before the Andals came, and long before the women fled
across the narrow sea from the cities of the Rhoyne, and the hundred kingdoms of those
times were the kingdoms of the First Men, who had taken these lands from the children
of the forest. Yet here and there in the fastness of the woods the children still lived in
their wooden cities and hollow hills, and the faces in the trees kept watch. So as cold and
death filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the hopes that
their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had lost. He set out into the
dead lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched,
until he despaired of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by
one his friends died, and his horse, and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard
the blade snapped when he tried to use it. And the Others smelled the hot blood in him,
and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white spiders big as hounds
—”
The door opened with a bang, and Bran’s heart leapt up into his mouth in sudden fear,
but it was only Maester Luwin, with Hodor looming in the stairway behind him.
“Hodor!” the stableboy announced, as was his custom, smiling hugely at them all.
Maester Luwin was not smiling. “We have visitors,” he announced, “and your presence is
required, Bran.”
“I’m listening to a story now,” Bran complained.
“Stories wait, my little lord, and when you come back to them, why, there they are,” Old
Nan said. “Visitors are not so patient, and ofttimes they bring stories of their own.”
“Who is it?” Bran asked Maester Luwin.
“Tyrion Lannister, and some men of the Night’s Watch, with word from your brother
Jon. Robb is meeting with them now. Hodor, will you help Bran down to the hall?”
“Hodor!” Hodor agreed happily. He ducked to get his great shaggy head under the door.
Hodor was nearly seven feet tall. It was hard to believe that he was the same blood as
Old Nan. Bran wondered if he would shrivel up as small as his great-grandmother when
he was old. It did not seem likely, even if Hodor lived to be a thousand.
Hodor lifted Bran as easy as if he were a bale of hay, and cradled him against his massive
chest. He always smelled faintly of horses, but it was not a bad smell. His arms were
thick with muscle and matted with brown hair. “Hodor,” he said again. Theon Greyjoy
had once commented that Hodor did not know much, but no one could doubt that he
�knew his name. Old Nan had cackled like a hen when Bran told her that, and confessed
that Hodor’s real name was Walder. No one knew where “Hodor” had come from, she
said, but when he started saying it, they started calling him by it. It was the only word he
had.
They left Old Nan in the tower room with her needles and her memories. Hodor
hummed tunelessly as he carried Bran down the steps and through the gallery, with
Maester Luwin following behind, hurrying to keep up with the stableboy’s long strides.
Robb was seated in Father’s high seat, wearing ringmail and boiled leather and the stern
face of Robb the Lord. Theon Greyjoy and Hallis Mollen stood behind him. A dozen
guardsmen lined the grey stone walls beneath tall narrow windows. In the center of the
room the dwarf stood with his servants, and four strangers in the black of the Night’s
Watch. Bran could sense the anger in the hall the moment that Hodor carried him
through the doors.
“Any man of the Night’s Watch is welcome here at Winterfell for as long as he wishes to
stay,” Robb was saying with the voice of Robb the Lord. His sword was across his knees,
the steel bare for all the world to see. Even Bran knew what it meant to greet a guest with
an unsheathed sword.
“Any man of the Night’s Watch,” the dwarf repeated, “but not me, do I take your
meaning, boy?”
Robb stood and pointed at the little man with his sword. “I am the lord here while my
mother and father are away, Lannister. I am not your boy.”
“If you are a lord, you might learn a lord’s courtesy,” the little man replied, ignoring the
sword point in his face. “Your bastard brother has all your father’s graces, it would
seem.”
“Jon,” Bran gasped out from Hodor’s arms.
The dwarf turned to look at him. “So it is true, the boy lives. I could scarce believe it. You
Starks are hard to kill.”
“You Lannisters had best remember that,” Robb said, lowering his sword. “Hodor, bring
my brother here.”
“Hodor,” Hodor said, and he trotted forward smiling and set Bran in the high seat of the
Starks, where the Lords of Winterfell had sat since the days when they called themselves
the Kings in the North. The seat was cold stone, polished smooth by countless bottoms;
�the carved heads of direwolves snarled on the ends of its massive arms. Bran clasped
them as he sat, his useless legs dangling. The great seat made him feel half a baby.
Robb put a hand on his shoulder. “You said you had business with Bran. Well, here he is,
Lannister.”
Bran was uncomfortably aware of Tyrion Lannister’s eyes. One was black and one was
green, and both were looking at him, studying him, weighing him. “I am told you were
quite the climber, Bran,” the little man said at last. “Tell me, how is it you happened to
fall that day?”
“I never,” Bran insisted. He never fell, never never never.
“The child does not remember anything of the fall, or the climb that came before it,” said
Maester Luwin gently.
“Curious,” said Tyrion Lannister.
“My brother is not here to answer questions, Lannister,” Robb said curtly. “Do your
business and be on your way.”
“I have a gift for you,” the dwarf said to Bran. “Do you like to ride, boy?”
Maester Luwin came forward. “My lord, the child has lost the use of his legs. He cannot
sit a horse.”
“Nonsense,” said Lannister. “With the right horse and the right saddle, even a cripple
can ride.”
The word was a knife through Bran’s heart. He felt tears come unbidden to his eyes. “I’m
not a cripple!”
“Then I am not a dwarf,” the dwarf said with a twist of his mouth. “My father will rejoice
to hear it.” Greyjoy laughed.
“What sort of horse and saddle are you suggesting?” Maester Luwin asked.
“A smart horse,” Lannister replied. “The boy cannot use his legs to command the animal,
so you must shape the horse to the rider, teach it to respond to the reins, to the voice. I
would begin with an unbroken yearling, with no old training to be unlearned.” He drew a
rolled paper from his belt. “Give this to your saddler. He will provide the rest.”
�Maester Luwin took the paper from the dwarfs hand, curious as a small grey squirrel. He
unrolled it, studied it. “I see. You draw nicely, my lord. Yes, this ought to work. I should
have thought of this myself.”
“It came easier to me, Maester. It is not terribly unlike my own saddles.”
“Will I truly be able to ride?” Bran asked. He wanted to believe them, but he was afraid.
Perhaps it was just another lie. The crow had promised him that he could fly.
“You will,” the dwarf told him. “And I swear to you, boy, on horseback you will be as tall
as any of them.”
Robb Stark seemed puzzled. “Is this some trap, Lannister? What’s Bran to you? Why
should you want to help him?”
“Your brother Jon asked it of me. And I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples and
bastards and broken things.” Tyrion Lannister placed a hand over his heart and grinned.
The door to the yard flew open. Sunlight came streaming across the hall as Rickon burst
in, breathless. The direwolves were with him. The boy stopped by the door, wide-eyed,
but the wolves came on. Their eyes found Lannister, or perhaps they caught his scent.
Summer began to growl first. Grey Wind picked it up. They padded toward the little
man, one from the right and one from the left.
“The wolves do not like your smell, Lannister,” Theon Greyioy commented.
“Perhaps it’s time I took my leave,” Tyrion said. He took a step backward . . . and
Shaggydog came out of the shadows behind him, snarling. Lannister recoiled, and
Summer lunged at him from the other side. He reeled away, unsteady on his feet, and
Grey Wind snapped at his arm, teeth ripping at his sleeve and tearing loose a scrap of
cloth.
“No!” Bran shouted from the high seat as Lannister’s men reached for their steel.
“Summer, here. Summer, to me!”
The direwolf heard the voice, glanced at Bran, and again at Lannister. He crept
backward, away from the little man, and settled down below Bran’s dangling feet.
Robb had been holding his breath. He let it out with a sigh and called, “Grey Wind.” His
direwolf moved to him, swift and silent. Now there was only Shaggydog, rumbling at the
small man, his eyes burning like green fire.
�“Rickon, call him,” Bran shouted to his baby brother, and Rickon remembered himself
and screamed, “Home, Shaggy, home now.” The black wolf gave Lannister one final
snarl and bounded off to Rickon, who hugged him tightly around the neck.
Tyrion Lannister undid his scarf, mopped at his brow, and said in a flat voice, “How
interesting.”
“Are you well, my lord?” asked one of his men, his sword in hand. He glanced nervously
at the direwolves as he spoke.
“My sleeve is torn and my breeches are unaccountably damp, but nothing was harmed
save my dignity.”
Even Robb looked shaken. “The wolves . . . I don’t know why they did that . . . ”
“No doubt they mistook me for dinner.” Lannister bowed stiffly to Bran. “I thank you for
calling them off, young ser. I promise you, they would have found me quite indigestible.
And now I will be leaving, truly.”
“A moment, my lord,” Maester Luwin said. He moved to Robb and they huddled close
together, whispering. Bran tried to hear what they were saying, but their voices were too
low.
Robb Stark finally sheathed his sword. “I . . . I may have been hasty with you,” he said.
“You’ve done Bran a kindness, and, well . . . ” Robb composed himself with an effort.
“The hospitality of Winterfell is yours if you wish it, Lannister.”
“Spare me your false courtesies, boy. You do not love me and you do not want me here. I
saw an inn outside your walls, in the winter town. I’ll find a bed there, and both of us will
sleep easier. For a few coppers I may even find a comely wench to warm the sheets for
me.” He spoke to one of the black brothers, an old man with a twisted back and a tangled
beard. “Yoren, we go south at daybreak. You will find me on the road, no doubt.” With
that he made his exit, struggling across the hall on his short legs, past Rickon and out
the door. His men followed.
The four of the Night’s Watch remained. Robb turned to them uncertainly. “I have had
rooms prepared, and you’ll find no lack of hot water to wash off the dust of the road. I
hope you will honor us at table tonight.” He spoke the words so awkwardly that even
Bran took note; it was a speech he had learned, not words from the heart, but the black
brothers thanked him all the same.
�Summer followed them up the tower steps as Hodor carried Bran back to his bed. Old
Nan was asleep in her chair. Hodor said “Hodor,” gathered up his great-grandmother,
and carried her off, snoring softly, while Bran lay thinking. Robb had promised that he
could feast with the Night’s Watch in the Great Hall. “Summer,” he called. The wolf
bounded up on the bed. Bran hugged him so hard he could feel the hot breath on his
cheek. “I can ride now,” he whispered to his friend. “We can go hunting in the woods
soon, wait and see.” After a time he slept.
In his dream he was climbing again, pulling himself up an ancient windowless tower, his
fingers forcing themselves between blackened stones, his feet scrabbling for purchase.
Higher and higher he climbed, through the clouds and into the night sky, and still the
tower rose before him. When he paused to look down, his head swam dizzily and he felt
his fingers slipping. Bran cried out and clung for dear life. The earth was a thousand
miles beneath him and he could not fly. He could not fly. He waited until his heart had
stopped pounding, until he could breathe, and he began to climb again. There was no
way to go but up. Far above him, outlined against a vast pale moon, he thought he could
see the shapes of gargoyles. His arms were sore and aching, but he dared not rest. He
forced himself to climb faster. The gargoyles watched him ascend. Their eyes glowed red
as hot coals in a brazier. Perhaps once they had been lions, but now they were twisted
and grotesque. Bran could hear them whispering to each other in soft stone voices
terrible to hear. He must not listen, he told himself, he must not hear, so long as he did
not hear them he was safe. But when the gargoyles pulled themselves loose from the
stone and padded down the side of the tower to where Bran clung, he knew he was not
safe after all. “I didn’t hear,” he wept as they came closer and closer, “I didn’t, I didn’t.”
He woke gasping, lost in darkness, and saw a vast shadow looming over him. “I didn’t
hear,” he whispered, trembling in fear, but then the shadow said “Hodor,” and lit the
candle by the bedside, and Bran sighed with relief.
Hodor washed the sweat from him with a warm, damp cloth and dressed him with deft
and gentle hands. When it was time, he carried him down to the Great Hall, where a long
trestle table had been set up near the fire. The lord’s seat at the head of the table had
been left empty, but Robb sat to the right of it, with Bran across from him. They ate
suckling pig that night, and pigeon pie, and turnips soaking in butter, and afterward the
cook had promised honeycombs. Summer snatched table scraps from Bran’s hand, while
Grey Wind and Shaggydog fought over a bone in the corner. Winterfell’s dogs would not
come near the hall now. Bran had found that strange at first, but he was growing used to
it.
Yoren was senior among the black brothers, so the steward had seated him between
Robb and Maester Luwin. The old man had a sour smell, as if he had not washed in a
long time. He ripped at the meat with his teeth, cracked the ribs to suck out the marrow
from the bones, and shrugged at the mention of Jon Snow. “Ser Alliser’s bane,” he
�grunted, and two of his companions shared a laugh that Bran did not understand. But
when Robb asked for news of their uncle Benjen, the black brothers grew ominously
quiet.
“What is it?” Bran asked.
Yoren wiped his fingers on his vest. “There’s hard news, m’lords, and a cruel way to pay
you for your meat and mead, but the man as asks the question must bear the answer.
Stark’s gone.”
One of the other men said, “The Old Bear sent him out to look for Waymar Royce, and
he’s late returning, my lord.”
“Too long,” Yoren said. “Most like he’s dead.”
“My uncle is not dead,” Robb Stark said loudly, anger in his tones. He rose from the
bench and laid his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Do you hear me? My uncle is not
dead!” His voice rang against the stone walls, and Bran was suddenly afraid.
Old sour-smelling Yoren looked up at Robb, unimpressed. “Whatever you say, m’lord,”
he said. He sucked at a piece of meat between his teeth.
The youngest of the black brothers shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “There’s not a man
on the Wall knows the haunted forest better than Benjen Stark. He’ll find his way back.”
“Well,” said Yoren, “maybe he will and maybe he won’t. Good men have gone into those
woods before, and never come out.”
All Bran could think of was Old Nan’s story of the Others and the last hero, hounded
through the white woods by dead men and spiders big as hounds. He was afraid for a
moment, until he remembered how that story ended. “The children will help him,” he
blurted, “the children of the forest!”
Theon Greyjoy sniggered, and Maester Luwin said, “Bran, the children of the forest have
been dead and gone for thousands of years. All that is left of them are the faces in the
trees.”
“Down here, might be that’s true, Maester,” Yoren said, “but up past the Wall, who’s to
say? Up there, a man can’t always tell what’s alive and what’s dead.”
That night, after the plates had been cleared, Robb carried Bran up to bed himself. Grey
�Wind led the way, and Summer came close behind. His brother was strong for his age,
and Bran was as light as a bundle of rags, but the stairs were steep and dark, and Robb
was breathing hard by the time they reached the top.
He put Bran into bed, covered him with blankets, and blew out the candle. For a time
Robb sat beside him in the dark. Bran wanted to talk to him, but he did not know what
to say. “We’ll find a horse for you, I promise,” Robb whispered at last.
“Are they ever coming back?” Bran asked him.
“Yes,” Robb said with such hope in his voice that Bran knew he was hearing his brother
and not just Robb the Lord. “Mother will be home soon. Maybe we can ride out to meet
her when she comes. Wouldn’t that surprise her, to see you ahorse?” Even in the dark
room, Bran could feel his brother’s smile. “And afterward, we’ll ride north to see the
Wall. We won’t even tell Jon we’re coming, we’ll just be there one day, you and me. It
will be an adventure.”
“An adventure,” Bran repeated wistfully. He heard his brother sob. The room was so
dark he could not see the tears on Robb’s face, so he reached out and found his hand.
Their fingers twined together.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
Lord Arryn’s death was a great sadness for all of us, my lord,” Grand Maester Pycelle
said. “I would be more than happy to tell you what I can of the manner of his passing. Do
be seated. Would you care for refreshments? Some dates, perhaps? I have some very fine
persimmons as well. Wine no longer agrees with my digestion, I fear, but I can offer you
a cup of iced milk, sweetened with honey. I find it most refreshing in this heat.”
There was no denying the heat; Ned could feel the silk tunic clinging to his chest. Thick,
moist air covered the city like a damp woolen blanket, and the riverside had grown
unruly as the poor fled their hot, airless warrens to jostle for sleeping places near the
water, where the only breath of wind was to be found. “That would be most kind,” Ned
said, seating himself.
Pycelle lifted a tiny silver bell with thumb and forefinger and tinkled it gently. A slender
young serving girl hurried into the solar. “Iced milk for the King’s Hand and myself, if
you would be so kind, child. Well sweetened.”
As the girl went to fetch their drinks, the Grand Maester knotted his fingers together and
rested his hands on his stomach. “The smallfolk say that the last year of summer is
always the hottest. It is not so, yet ofttimes it feels that way, does it not? On days like
this, I envy you northerners your summer snows.” The heavy jeweled chain around the
old man’s neck chinked softly as he shifted in his seat. “To be sure, King Maekar’s
summer was hotter than this one, and near as long. There were fools, even in the Citadel,
who took that to mean that the Great Summer had come at last, the summer that never
ends, but in the seventh year it broke suddenly, and we had a short autumn and a
terrible long winter. Still, the heat was fierce while it lasted. Oldtown steamed and
sweltered by day and came alive only by night. We would walk in the gardens by the
river and argue about the gods. I remember the smells of those nights, my lord—perfume
and sweat, melons ripe to bursting, peaches and pomegranates, nightshade and
moonbloom. I was a young man then, still forging my chain. The heat did not exhaust
me as it does now.” Pycelle’s eyes were so heavily lidded he looked half-asleep. “My
pardons, Lord Eddard. You did not come to hear foolish meanderings of a summer
forgotten before your father was born. Forgive an old man his wanderings, if you would.
Minds are like swords, I do fear. The old ones go to rust. Ah, and here is our milk.” The
serving girl placed the tray between them, and Pycelle gave her a smile. “Sweet child.”
He lifted a cup, tasted, nodded. “Thank you. You may go.”
�When the girl had taken her leave, Pycelle peered at Ned through pale, rheumy eyes.
“Now where were we? Oh, yes. You asked about Lord Arryn . . . ”
“I did.” Ned sipped politely at the iced milk. It was pleasantly cold, but oversweet to his
taste.
“If truth be told, the Hand had not seemed quite himself for some time,” Pycelle said.
“We had sat together on council many a year, he and I, and the signs were there to read,
but I put them down to the great burdens he had borne so faithfully for so long. Those
broad shoulders were weighed down by all the cares of the realm, and more besides. His
son was ever sickly, and his lady wife so anxious that she would scarcely let the boy out
of her sight. It was enough to weary even a strong man, and the Lord Jon was not young.
Small wonder if he seemed melancholy and tired. Or so I thought at the time. Yet now I
am less certain.” He gave a ponderous shake of his head.
“What can you tell me of his final illness?”
The Grand Maester spread his hands in a gesture of helpless sorrow. “He came to me
one day asking after a certain book, as hale and healthy as ever, though it did seem to me
that something was troubling him deeply. The next morning he was twisted over in pain,
too sick to rise from bed. Maester Colemon thought it was a chill on the stomach. The
weather had been hot, and the Hand often iced his wine, which can upset the digestion.
When Lord Jon continued to weaken, I went to him myself, but the gods did not grant
me the power to save him.”
“I have heard that you sent Maester Colemon away.”
The Grand Maester’s nod was as slow and deliberate as a glacier. “I did, and I fear the
Lady Lysa will never forgive me that. Maybe I was wrong, but at the time I thought it
best. Maester Colemon is like a son to me, and I yield to none in my esteem for his
abilities, but he is young, and the young ofttimes do not comprehend the frailty of an
older body. He was purging Lord Arryn with wasting potions and pepper juice, and I
feared he might kill him.”
“Did Lord Arryn say anything to you during his final hours?”
Pycelle wrinkled his brow. “In the last stage of his fever, the Hand called out the name
Robert several times, but whether he was asking for his son or for the king I could not
say. Lady Lysa would not permit the boy to enter the sickroom, for fear that he too might
be taken ill. The king did come, and he sat beside the bed for hours, talking and joking of
times long past in hopes of raising Lord Jon’s spirits. His love was fierce to see.”
�“Was there nothing else? No final words?”
“When I saw that all hope had fled, I gave the Hand the milk of the poppy, so he should
not suffer. Just before he closed his eyes for the last time, he whispered something to the
king and his lady wife, a blessing for his son. The seed is strong, he said. At the end, his
speech was too slurred to comprehend. Death did not come until the next morning, but
Lord Jon was at peace after that. He never spoke again.”
Ned took another swallow of milk, trying not to gag on the sweetness of it. “Did it seem
to you that there was anything unnatural about Lord Arryn’s death?”
“Unnatural?” The aged maester’s voice was thin as a whisper. “No, I could not say so.
Sad, for a certainty. Yet in its own way, death is the most natural thing of all, Lord
Eddard. Jon Arryn rests easy now, his burdens lifted at last.”
“This illness that took him,” said Ned. “Had you ever seen its like before, in other men?”
“Near forty years I have been Grand Maester of the Seven Kingdoms,” Pycelle replied.
“Under our good King Robert, and Aerys Targaryen before him, and his father Jaehaerys
the Second before him, and even for a few short months under Jaehaerys’s father, Aegon
the Fortunate, the Fifth of His Name. I have seen more of illness than I care to
remember, my lord. I will tell you this: Every case is different, and every case is alike.
Lord Jon’s death was no stranger than any other.”
“His wife thought otherwise.”
The Grand Maester nodded. “I recall now, the widow is sister to your own noble wife. If
an old man may be forgiven his blunt speech, let me say that grief can derange even the
strongest and most disciplined of minds, and the Lady Lysa was never that. Since her
last stillbirth, she has seen enemies in every shadow, and the death of her lord husband
left her shattered and lost.”
“So you are quite certain that Jon Arryn died of a sudden illness?”
“I am,” Pycelle replied gravely. “If not illness, my good lord, what else could it be?”
“Poison,” Ned suggested quietly.
Pycelle’s sleepy eyes flicked open. The aged maester shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “A
disturbing thought. We are not the Free Cities, where such things are common. Grand
Maester Aethelmure wrote that all men carry murder in their hearts, yet even so, the
poisoner is beneath contempt.” He fell silent for a moment, his eyes lost in thought.
�“What you suggest is possible, my lord, yet I do not think it likely. Every hedge maester
knows the common poisons, and Lord Arryn displayed none of the signs. And the Hand
was loved by all. What sort of monster in man’s flesh would dare to murder such a noble
lord?”
“I have heard it said that poison is a woman’s weapon.”
Pycelle stroked his beard thoughtfully. “It is said. Women, cravens . . . and eunuchs.” He
cleared his throat and spat a thick glob of phelm onto the rushes. Above them, a raven
cawed loudly in the rookery. “The Lord Varys was born a slave in Lys, did you know? Put
not your trust in spiders, my lord.”
That was scarcely anything Ned needed to be told; there was something about Varys that
made his flesh crawl. “I will remember that, Maester. And I thank you for your help. I
have taken enough of your time.” He stood.
Grand Maester Pycelle pushed himself up from his chair slowly and escorted Ned to the
door. “I hope I have helped in some small way to put your mind at ease. If there is any
other service I might perform, you need only ask.”
“One thing,” Ned told him. “I should be curious to examine the book that you lent Jon
the day before he fell ill.”
“I fear you would find it of little interest,” Pycelle said. “It was a ponderous tome by
Grand Maester Malleon on the lineages of the great houses.”
“Still, I should like to see it.”
The old man opened the door. “As you wish. I have it here somewhere. When I find it, I
shall have it sent to your chambers straightaway.”
“You have been most courteous,” Ned told him. Then, almost as an afterthought, he said,
“One last question, if you would be so kind. You mentioned that the king was at Lord
Arryn’s bedside when he died. I wonder, was the queen with him?”
“Why, no,” Pycelle said. “She and the children were making the journey to Casterly Rock,
in company with her father. Lord Tywin had brought a retinue to the city for the tourney
on Prince Joffrey’s name day, no doubt hoping to see his son Jaime win the champion’s
crown. In that he was sadly disappointed. It fell to me to send the queen word of Lord
Arryn’s sudden death. Never have I sent off a bird with a heavier heart.”
“Dark wings, dark words,” Ned murmured. It was a proverb Old Nan had taught him as
�a boy.
“So the fishwives say,” Grand Maester Pycelle agreed, “but we know it is not always so.
When Maester Luwin’s bird brought the word about your Bran, the message lifted every
true heart in the castle, did it not?”
“As you say, Maester.”
“The gods are merciful.” Pycelle bowed his head. “Come to me as often as you like, Lord
Eddard. I am here to serve.”
Yes, Ned thought as the door swung shut, but whom?
On the way back to his chambers, he came upon his daughter Arya on the winding steps
of the Tower of the Hand, windmilling her arms as she struggled to balance on one leg.
The rough stone had scuffed her bare feet. Ned stopped and looked at her. “Arya, what
are you doing?”
“Syrio says a water dancer can stand on one toe for hours.” Her hands flailed at the air to
steady herself.
Ned had to smile. “Which toe?” he teased.
“Any toe,” Arya said, exasperated with the question. She hopped from her right leg to
her left, swaying dangerously before she regained her balance.
“Must you do your standing here?” he asked. “It’s a long hard fall down these steps.”
“Syrio says a water dancer never falls.” She lowered her leg to stand on two feet. “Father,
will Bran come and live with us now?”
“Not for a long time, sweet one,” he told her. “He needs to win his strength back.”
Arya bit her lip. “What will Bran do when he’s of age?”
Ned knelt beside her. “He has years to find that answer, Arya. For now, it is enough to
know that he will live.” The night the bird had come from Winterfell, Eddard Stark had
taken the girls to the castle godswood, an acre of elm and alder and black cottonwood
overlooking the river. The heart tree there was a great oak, its ancient limbs overgrown
with smokeberry vines; they knelt before it to offer their thanksgiving, as if it had been a
weirwood. Sansa drifted to sleep as the moon rose, Arya several hours later, curling up
�in the grass under Ned’s cloak. All through the dark hours he kept his vigil alone. When
dawn broke over the city, the dark red blooms of dragon’s breath surrounded the girls
where they lay. “I dreamed of Bran,” Sansa had whispered to him. “I saw him smiling.”
“He was going to be a knight,” Arya was saying now. “A knight of the Kingsguard. Can he
still be a knight?”
“No,” Ned said. He saw no use in lying to her. “Yet someday he may be the lord of a great
holdfast and sit on the king’s council. He might raise castles like Brandon the Builder, or
sail a ship across the Sunset Sea, or enter your mother’s Faith and become the High
Septon.” But he will never run beside his wolf again, he thought with a sadness too deep
for words, or lie with a woman, or hold his own son in his arms.
Arya cocked her head to one side. “Can I be a king’s councillor and build castles and
become the High Septon?”
“You,” Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, “will marry a king and rule his castle,
and your sons will be knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High
Septon.”
Arya screwed up her face. “No,” she said, “that’s Sansa.” She folded up her right leg and
resumed her balancing. Ned sighed and left her there.
Inside his chambers, he stripped off his sweat-stained silks and sluiced cold water over
his head from the basin beside the bed. Alyn entered as he was drying his face. “My
lord,” he said, “Lord Baelish is without and begs audience.”
“Escort him to my solar,” Ned said, reaching for a fresh tunic, the lightest linen he could
find. “I’ll see him at once.”
Littlefinger was perched on the window seat when Ned entered, watching the knights of
the Kingsguard practice at swords in the yard below. “If only old Selmy’s mind were as
nimble as his blade,” he said wistfully, “our council meetings would be a good deal
livelier.”
“Ser Barristan is as valiant and honorable as any man in King’s Landing.” Ned had come
to have a deep respect for the aged, white-haired Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.
“And as tiresome,” Littlefinger added, “though I daresay he should do well in the
tourney. Last year he unhorsed the Hound, and it was only four years ago that he was
champion.”
�The question of who might win the tourney interested Eddard Stark not in the least. “Is
there a reason for this visit, Lord Petyr, or are you here simply to enjoy the view from my
window?”
Littlefinger smiled. “I promised Cat I would help you in your inquiries, and so I have.”
That took Ned aback. Promise or no promise, he could not find it in him to trust Lord
Petyr Baelish, who struck him as too clever by half. “You have something for me?”
“Someone,” Littlefinger corrected. “Four someones, if truth be told. Had you thought to
question the Hand’s servants?”
Ned frowned. “Would that I could. Lady Arryn took her household back to the Eyrie.”
Lysa had done him no favor in that regard. All those who had stood closest to her
husband had gone with her when she fled: Jon’s maester, his steward, the captain of his
guard, his knights and retainers.
“Most of her household,” Littlefinger said, “not all. A few remain. A pregnant kitchen girl
hastily wed to one of Lord Renly’s grooms, a stablehand who joined the City Watch, a
potboy discharged from service for theft, and Lord Arryn’s squire.”
“His squire?” Ned was pleasantly surprised. A man’s squire often knew a great deal of
his comings and goings.
“Ser Hugh of the Vale,” Littlefinger named him. “The king knighted the boy after Lord
Arryn’s death.”
“I shall send for him,” Ned said. “And the others.”
Littlefinger winced. “My lord, step over here to the window, if you would be so kind.”
“Why?”
“Come, and I’ll show you, my lord.”
Frowning, Ned crossed to the window. Petyr Baelish made a casual gesture. “There,
across the yard, at the door of the armory, do you see the boy squatting by the steps
honing a sword with an oilstone?”
“What of him?”
�“He reports to Varys. The Spider has taken a great interest in you and all your doings.”
He shifted in the window seat. “Now glance at the wall. Farther west, above the stables.
The guardsman leaning on the ramparts?”
Ned saw the man. “Another of the eunuch’s whisperers?”
“No, this one belongs to the queen. Notice that he enjoys a fine view of the door to this
tower, the better to note who calls on you. There are others, many unknown even to me.
The Red Keep is full of eyes. Why do you think I hid Cat in a brothel?”
Eddard Stark had no taste for these intrigues. “Seven hells,” he swore. It did seem as
though the man on the walls was watching him. Suddenly uncomfortable, Ned moved
away from the window. “Is everyone someone’s informer in this cursed city?”
“Scarcely,” said Littlefinger. He counted on the fingers on his hand. “Why, there’s me,
you, the king . . . although, come to think on it, the king tells the queen much too much,
and I’m less than certain about you.” He stood up. “Is there a man in your service that
you trust utterly and completely?”
“Yes,” said Ned.
“In that case, I have a delightful palace in Valyria that I would dearly love to sell you,”
Littlefinger said with a mocking smile. “The wiser answer was no, my lord, but be that as
it may. Send this paragon of yours to Ser Hugh and the others. Your own comings and
goings will be noted, but even Varys the Spider cannot watch every man in your service
every hour of the day.” He started for the door.
“Lord Petyr,” Ned called after him. “I . . . am grateful for your help. Perhaps I was wrong
to distrust you.”
Littlefinger fingered his small pointed beard. “You are slow to learn, Lord Eddard.
Distrusting me was the wisest thing you’ve done since you climbed down off your horse.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
JON
Jon was showing Dareon how best to deliver a sidestroke when the new recruit entered
the practice yard. “Your feet should be farther apart,” he urged. “You don’t want to lose
your balance. That’s good. Now pivot as you deliver the stroke, get all your weight
behind the blade.”
Dareon broke off and lifted his visor. “Seven gods,” he murmured. “Would you look at
this, Jon.”
Jon turned. Through the eye slit of his helm, he beheld the fattest boy he had ever seen
standing in the door of the armory. By the look of him, he must have weighed twenty
stone. The fur collar of his embroidered surcoat was lost beneath his chins. Pale eyes
moved nervously in a great round moon of a face, and plump sweaty fingers wiped
themselves on the velvet of his doublet. “They . . . they told me I was to come here
for . . . for training,” he said to no one in particular.
“A lordling,” Pyp observed to Jon. “Southron, most like near Highgarden.” Pyp had
traveled the Seven Kingdoms with a mummers’ troupe, and bragged that he could tell
what you were and where you’d been born just from the sound of your voice.
A striding huntsman had been worked in scarlet thread upon the breast of the fat boy’s
fur-trimmed surcoat. Jon did not recognize the sigil. Ser Alliser Thorne looked over his
new charge and said, “It would seem they have run short of poachers and thieves down
south. Now they send us pigs to man the Wall. Is fur and velvet your notion of armor, my
Lord of Ham?”
It was soon revealed that the new recruit had brought his own armor with him; padded
doublet, boiled leather, mail and plate and helm, even a great wood-and-leather shield
blazoned with the same striding huntsman he wore on his surcoat. As none of it was
black, however, Ser Alliser insisted that he reequip himself from the armory. That took
half the morning. His girth required Donal Noye to take apart a mail hauberk and refit it
with leather panels at the sides. To get a helm over his head the armorer had to detach
the visor. His leathers bound so tightly around his legs and under his arms that he could
scarcely move. Dressed for battle, the new boy looked like an overcooked sausage about
to burst its skin. “Let us hope you are not as inept as you look,” Ser Alliser said. “Halder,
see what Ser Piggy can do.”
�Jon Snow winced. Halder had been born in a quarry and apprenticed as a stonemason.
He was sixteen, tall and muscular, and his blows were as hard as any Jon had ever felt.
“This will be uglier than a whore’s ass,” Pyp muttered, and it was.
The fight lasted less than a minute before the fat boy was on the ground, his whole body
shaking as blood leaked through his shattered helm and between his pudgy fingers. “I
yield,” he shrilled. “No more, I yield, don’t hit me.” Rast and some of the other boys were
laughing.
Even then, Ser Alliser would not call an end. “On your feet, Ser Piggy,” he called. “Pick
up your sword.” When the boy continued to cling to the ground, Thorne gestured to
Halder. “Hit him with the flat of your blade until he finds his feet.” Halder delivered a
tentative smack to his foe’s upraised cheeks. “You can hit harder than that,” Thorne
taunted. Halder took hold of his longsword with both hands and brought it down so hard
the blow split leather, even on the flat. The new boy screeched in pain.
Jon Snow took a step forward. Pyp laid a mailed hand on his arm. “Jon, no,” the small
boy whispered with an anxious glance at Ser Alliser Thorne.
“On your feet,” Thorne repeated. The fat boy struggled to rise, slipped, and fell heavily
again. “Ser Piggy is starting to grasp the notion,” Ser Alliser observed. “Again.”
Halder lifted the sword for another blow. “Cut us off a ham!” Rast urged, laughing.
Jon shook off Pyp’s hand. “Halder, enough.”
Halder looked to Ser Alliser.
“The Bastard speaks and the peasants tremble,” the master-at-arms said in that sharp,
cold voice of his. “I remind you that I am the master-at-arms here, Lord Snow.”
“Look at him, Halder,” Jon urged, ignoring Thorne as best he could. “There’s no honor
in beating a fallen foe. He yielded.” He knelt beside the fat boy.
Halder lowered his sword. “He yielded,” he echoed.
Ser Alliser’s onyx eyes were fixed on Jon Snow. “It would seem our Bastard is in love,” he
said as Jon helped the fat boy to his feet. “Show me your steel, Lord Snow.”
Jon drew his longsword. He dared defy Ser Alliser only to a point, and he feared he was
well beyond it now.
�Thorne smiled. “The Bastard wishes to defend his lady love, so we shall make an exercise
of it. Rat, Pimple, help our Stone Head here.” Rast and Albett moved to join Halder.
“Three of you ought to be sufficient to make Lady Piggy squeal. All you need do is get
past the Bastard.”
“Stay behind me,” Jon said to the fat boy. Ser Alliser had often sent two foes against him,
but never three. He knew he would likely go to sleep bruised and bloody tonight. He
braced himself for the assault.
Suddenly Pyp was beside him. “Three to two will make for better sport,” the small boy
said cheerfully. He dropped his visor and slid out his sword. Before Jon could even think
to protest, Grenn had stepped up to make a third.
The yard had grown deathly quiet. Jon could feel Ser Alliser’s eyes. “Why are you
waiting?” he asked Rast and the others in a voice gone deceptively soft, but it was Jon
who moved first. Halder barely got his sword up in time.
Jon drove him backward, attacking with every blow, keeping the older boy on the heels.
Know your foe, Ser Rodrik had taught him once; Jon knew Halder, brutally strong but
short of patience, with no taste for defense. Frustrate him, and he would leave himself
open, as certain as sunset.
The clang of steel echoed through the yard as the others joined battle around him. Jon
blocked a savage cut at his head, the shock of impact running up his arm as the swords
crashed together. He slammed a sidestroke into Halder’s ribs, and was rewarded with a
muffled grunt of pain. The counterstroke caught Jon on the shoulder. Chainmail
crunched, and pain flared up his neck, but for an instant Halder was unbalanced. Jon
cut his left leg from under him, and he fell with a curse and a crash.
Grenn was standing his ground as Jon had taught him, giving Albett more than he cared
for, but Pyp was hard-pressed. Rast had two years and forty pounds on him. Jon stepped
up behind him and rang the raper’s helm like a bell. As Rast went reeling, Pyp slid in
under his guard, knocked him down, and leveled a blade at his throat. By then Jon had
moved on. Facing two swords, Albett backed away. “I yield,” he shouted.
Ser Alliser Thorne surveyed the scene with disgust. “The mummer’s farce has gone on
long enough for today.” He walked away. The session was at an end.
Dareon helped Halder to his feet. The quarryman’s son wrenched off his helm and threw
it across the yard. “For an instant, I thought I finally had you, Snow.”
�“For an instant, you did,” Jon replied. Under his mail and leather, his shoulder was
throbbing. He sheathed his sword and tried to remove his helm, but when he raised his
arm, the pain made him grit his teeth.
“Let me,” a voice said. Thick-fingered hands unfastened helm from gorget and lifted it
off gently. “Did he hurt you?”
“I’ve been bruised before.” He touched his shoulder and winced. The yard was emptying
around them.
Blood matted the fat boy’s hair where Halder had split his helm asunder. “My name is
Samwell Tarly, of Horn . . . ” He stopped and licked his lips. “I mean, I was of Horn Hill,
until I . . . left. I’ve come to take the black. My father is Lord Randyll, a bannerman to the
Tyrells of Highgarden. I used to be his heir, only . . . ” His voice trailed off.
“I’m Jon Snow, Ned Stark’s bastard, of Winterfell.”
Samwell Tarly nodded. “I . . . if you want, you can call me Sam. My mother calls me
Sam.”
“You can call him Lord Snow,” Pyp said as he came up to join them. “You don’t want to
know what his mother calls him.”
“These two are Grenn and Pypar,” Jon said.
“Grenn’s the ugly one,” Pyp said.
Grenn scowled. “You’re uglier than me. At least I don’t have ears like a bat.”
“My thanks to all of you,” the fat boy said gravely.
“Why didn’t you get up and fight?” Grenn demanded.
“I wanted to, truly. I just . . . I couldn’t. I didn’t want him to hit me anymore.” He looked
at the ground. “I . . . I fear I’m a coward. My lord father always said so.”
Grenn looked thunderstruck. Even Pyp had no words to say to that, and Pyp had words
for everything. What sort of man would proclaim himself a coward?
Samwell Tarly must have read their thoughts on their faces. His eyes met Jon’s and
darted away, quick as frightened animals. “I . . . I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean
�to . . . to be like I am.” He walked heavily toward the armory.
Jon called after him. “You were hurt,” he said. “Tomorrow you’ll do better.”
Sam looked mournfully back over one shoulder. “No I won’t,” he said, blinking back
tears. “I never do better.”
When he was gone, Grenn frowned. “Nobody likes cravens,” he said uncomfortably. “I
wish we hadn’t helped him. What if they think we’re craven too?”
“You’re too stupid to be craven,” Pyp told him.
“I am not,” Grenn said.
“Yes you are. If a bear attacked you in the woods, you’d be too stupid to run away.”
“I would not,” Grenn insisted. “I’d run away faster than you.” He stopped suddenly,
scowling when he saw Pyp’s grin and realized what he’d just said. His thick neck flushed
a dark red. Jon left them there arguing as he returned to the armory, hung up his sword,
and stripped off his battered armor.
Life at Castle Black followed certain patterns; the mornings were for swordplay, the
afternoons for work. The black brothers set new recruits to many different tasks, to learn
where their skills lay. Jon cherished the rare afternoons when he was sent out with
Ghost ranging at his side to bring back game for the Lord Commander’s table, but for
every day spent hunting, he gave a dozen to Donal Noye in the armory, spinning the
whetstone while the one-armed smith sharpened axes grown dull from use, or pumping
the bellows as Noye hammered out a new sword. Other times he ran messages, stood at
guard, mucked out stables, fletched arrows, assisted Maester Aemon with his birds or
Bowen Marsh with his counts and inventories.
That afternoon, the watch commander sent him to the winch cage with four barrels of
fresh-crushed stone, to scatter gravel over the icy footpaths atop the Wall. It was lonely
and boring work, even with Ghost along for company, but Jon found he did not mind.
On a clear day you could see half the world from the top of the Wall, and the air was
always cold and bracing. He could think here, and he found himself thinking of Samwell
Tarly . . . and, oddly, of Tyrion Lannister. He wondered what Tyrion would have made of
the fat boy. Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it, the dwarf had told
him, grinning. The world was full of cravens who pretended to be heroes; it took a queer
sort of courage to admit to cowardice as Samwell Tarly had.
His sore shoulder made the work go slowly. It was late afternoon before Jon finished
�graveling the paths. He lingered on high to watch the sun go down, turning the western
sky the color of blood. Finally, as dusk was settling over the north, Jon rolled the empty
barrels back into the cage and signaled the winch men to lower him.
The evening meal was almost done by the time he and Ghost reached the common hall.
A group of the black brothers were dicing over mulled wine near the fire. His friends
were at the bench nearest the west wall, laughing. Pyp was in the middle of a story. The
mummer’s boy with the big ears was a born liar with a hundred different voices, and he
did not tell his tales so much as live them, playing all the parts as needed, a king one
moment and a swineherd the next. When he turned into an alehouse girl or a virgin
princess, he used a high falsetto voice that reduced them all to tears of helpless laughter,
and his eunuchs were always eerily accurate caricatures of Ser Alliser. Jon took as much
pleasure from Pyp’s antics as anyone . . . yet that night he turned away and went instead
to the end of the bench, where Samwell Tarly sat alone, as far from the others as he
could get.
He was finishing the last of the pork pie the cooks had served up for supper when Jon
sat down across from him. The fat boy’s eyes widened at the sight of Ghost. “Is that a
wolf?”
“A direwolf,” Jon said. “His name is Ghost. The direwolf is the sigil of my father’s
House.”
“Ours is a striding huntsman,” Samwell Tarly said.
“Do you like to hunt?”
The fat boy shuddered. “I hate it.” He looked as though he was going to cry again.
“What’s wrong now?” Jon asked him. “Why are you always so frightened?”
Sam stared at the last of his pork pie and gave a feeble shake of his head, too scared even
to talk. A burst of laughter filled the hall. Jon heard Pyp squeaking in a high voice. He
stood. “Let’s go outside.”
The round fat face looked up at him, suspicious. “Why? What will we do outside?”
“Talk,” Jon said. “Have you seen the Wall?”
“I’m fat, not blind,” Samwell Tarly said. “Of course I saw it, it’s seven hundred feet high.”
Yet he stood up all the same, wrapped a fur-lined cloak over his shoulders, and followed
Jon from the common hall, still wary, as if he suspected some cruel trick was waiting for
�him in the night. Ghost padded along beside them. “I never thought it would be like
this,” Sam said as they walked, his words steaming in the cold air. Already he was
huffing and puffing as he tried to keep up. “All the buildings are falling down, and it’s
so . . . so . . . ”
“Cold?” A hard frost was settling over the castle, and Jon could hear the soft crunch of
grey weeds beneath his boots.
Sam nodded miserably. “I hate the cold,” he said. “Last night I woke up in the dark and
the fire had gone out and I was certain I was going to freeze to death by morning.”
“It must have been warmer where you come from.”
“I never saw snow until last month. We were crossing the barrowlands, me and the men
my father sent to see me north, and this white stuff began to fall, like a soft rain. At first I
thought it was so beautiful, like feathers drifting from the sky, but it kept on and on,
until I was frozen to the bone. The men had crusts of snow in their beards and more on
their shoulders, and still it kept coming. I was afraid it would never end.”
Jon smiled.
The Wall loomed before them, glimmering palely in the light of the half moon. In the sky
above, the stars burned clear and sharp. “Are they going to make me go up there?” Sam
asked. His face curdled like old milk as he looked at the great wooden stairs. “I’ll die if I
have to climb that.”
“There’s a winch,” Jon said, pointing. “They can draw you up in a cage.”
Samwell Tarly sniffled. “I don’t like high places.”
It was too much. Jon frowned, incredulous. “Are you afraid of everything?” he asked. “I
don’t understand. If you are truly so craven, why are you here? Why would a coward
want to join the Night’s Watch?”
Samwell Tarly looked at him for a long moment, and his round face seemed to cave in on
itself. He sat down on the frost-covered ground and began to cry, huge choking sobs that
made his whole body shake. Jon Snow could only stand and watch. Like the snowfall on
the barrowlands, it seemed the tears would never end.
It was Ghost who knew what to do. Silent as shadow, the pale direwolf moved closer and
began to lick the warm tears off Samwell Tarly’s face. The fat boy cried out,
startled . . . and somehow, in a heartbeat, his sobs turned to laughter.
�Jon Snow laughed with him. Afterward they sat on the frozen ground, huddled in their
cloaks with Ghost between them. Jon told the story of how he and Robb had found the
pups newborn in the late summer snows. It seemed a thousand years ago now. Before
long he found himself talking of Winterfell.
“Sometimes I dream about it,” he said. “I’m walking down this long empty hall. My voice
echoes all around, but no one answers, so I walk faster, opening doors, shouting names.
I don’t even know who I’m looking for. Most nights it’s my father, but sometimes it’s
Robb instead, or my little sister Arya, or my uncle.” The thought of Benjen Stark
saddened him; his uncle was still missing. The Old Bear had sent out rangers in search
of him. Ser Jaremy Rykker had led two sweeps, and Quorin Halfhand had gone forth
from the Shadow Tower, but they’d found nothing aside from a few blazes in the trees
that his uncle had left to mark his way. In the stony highlands to the northwest, the
marks stopped abruptly and all trace of Ben Stark vanished.
“Do you ever find anyone in your dream?” Sam asked.
Jon shook his head. “No one. The castle is always empty.” He had never told anyone of
the dream, and he did not understand why he was telling Sam now, yet somehow it felt
good to talk of it. “Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of
bones. That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the
tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself
in front of the door to the crypts. It’s black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down.
Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don’t want to. I’m afraid of what might
be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with
stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it’s not them I’m afraid
of. I scream that I’m not a Stark, that this isn’t my place, but it’s no good, I have to go
anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It
gets darker and darker, until I want to scream.” He stopped, frowning, embarrassed.
“That’s when I always wake.” His skin cold and clammy, shivering in the darkness of his
cell. Ghost would leap up beside him, his warmth as comforting as daybreak. He would
go back to sleep with his face pressed into the direwolf s shaggy white fur. “Do you
dream of Horn Hill?” Jon asked.
“No.” Sam’s mouth grew tight and hard. “I hated it there.” He scratched Ghost behind
the ear, brooding, and Jon let the silence breathe. After a long while Samwell Tarly
began to talk, and Jon Snow listened quietly, and learned how it was that a selfconfessed coward found himself on the Wall.
The Tarlys were a family old in honor, bannermen to Mace Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden
and Warden of the South. The eldest son of Lord Randyll Tarly, Samwell was born heir
�to rich lands, a strong keep, and a storied two-handed greatsword named Heartsbane,
forged of Valyrian steel and passed down from father to son near five hundred years.
Whatever pride his lord father might have felt at Samwell’s birth vanished as the boy
grew up plump, soft, and awkward. Sam loved to listen to music and make his own
songs, to wear soft velvets, to play in the castle kitchen beside the cooks, drinking in the
rich smells as he snitched lemon cakes and blueberry tarts. His passions were books and
kittens and dancing, clumsy as he was. But he grew ill at the sight of blood, and wept to
see even a chicken slaughtered. A dozen masters-at-arms came and went at Horn Hill,
trying to turn Samwell into the knight his father wanted. The boy was cursed and caned,
slapped and starved. One man had him sleep in his chainmail to make him more
martial. Another dressed him in his mother’s clothing and paraded him through the
bailey to shame him into valor. He only grew fatter and more frightened, until Lord
Randyll’s disappointment turned to anger and then to loathing. “One time,” Sam
confided, his voice dropping from a whisper, “two men came to the castle, warlocks from
Qarth with white skin and blue lips. They slaughtered a bull aurochs and made me bathe
in the hot blood, but it didn’t make me brave as they’d promised. I got sick and retched.
Father had them scourged.”
Finally, after three girls in as many years, Lady Tarly gave her lord husband a second
son. From that day, Lord Randyll ignored Sam, devoting all his time to the younger boy,
a fierce, robust child more to his liking. Samwell had known several years of sweet peace
with his music and his books.
Until the dawn of his fifteenth name day, when he had been awakened to find his horse
saddled and ready. Three men-at-arms had escorted him into a wood near Horn Hill,
where his father was skinning a deer. “You are almost a man grown now, and my heir,”
Lord Randyll Tarly had told his eldest son, his long knife laying bare the carcass as he
spoke. “You have given me no cause to disown you, but neither will I allow you to inherit
the land and title that should be Dickon’s. Heartsbane must go to a man strong enough
to wield her, and you are not worthy to touch her hilt. So I have decided that you shall
this day announce that you wish to take the black. You will forsake all claim to your
brother’s inheritance and start north before evenfall.
“If you do not, then on the morrow we shall have a hunt, and somewhere in these woods
your horse will stumble, and you will be thrown from the saddle to die . . . or so I will tell
your mother. She has a woman’s heart and finds it in her to cherish even you, and I have
no wish to cause her pain. Please do not imagine that it will truly be that easy, should
you think to defy me. Nothing would please me more than to hunt you down like the pig
you are.” His arms were red to the elbow as he laid the skinning knife aside. “So. There is
your choice. The Night’s Watch”—he reached inside the deer, ripped out its heart, and
held it in his fist, red and dripping—“or this.”
�Sam told the tale in a calm, dead voice, as if it were something that had happened to
someone else, not to him. And strangely, Jon thought, he did not weep, not even once.
When he was done, they sat together and listened to the wind for a time. There was no
other sound in all the world.
Finally Jon said, “We should go back to the common hall.”
“Why?” Sam asked.
Jon shrugged. “There’s hot cider to drink, or mulled wine if you prefer. Some nights
Dareon sings for us, if the mood is on him. He was a singer, before . . . well, not truly, but
almost, an apprentice singer.”
“How did he come here?” Sam asked.
“Lord Rowan of Goldengrove found him in bed with his daughter. The girl was two years
older, and Dareon swears she helped him through her window, but under her father’s
eye she named it rape, so here he is. When Maester Aemon heard him sing, he said his
voice was honey poured over thunder.” Jon smiled. “Toad sometimes sings too, if you
call it singing. Drinking songs he learned in his father’s winesink. Pyp says his voice is
piss poured over a fart.” They laughed at that together.
“I should like to hear them both,” Sam admitted, “but they would not want me there.”
His face was troubled. “He’s going to make me fight again on the morrow, isn’t he?”
“He is,” Jon was forced to say.
Sam got awkwardly to his feet. “I had better try to sleep.” He huddled down in his cloak
and plodded off.
The others were still in the common room when Jon returned, alone but for Ghost.
“Where have you been?” Pyp asked.
“Talking with Sam,” he said.
“He truly is craven,” said Grenn. “At supper, there were still places on the bench when he
got his pie, but he was too scared to come sit with us.”
“The Lord of Ham thinks he’s too good to eat with the likes of us,” suggested Jeren.
“I saw him eat a pork pie,” Toad said, smirking. “Do you think it was a brother?” He
�began to make oinking noises.
“Stop it!” Jon snapped angrily.
The other boys fell silent, taken aback by his sudden fury. “Listen to me,” Jon said into
the quiet, and he told them how it was going to be. Pyp backed him, as he’d known he
would, but when Halder spoke up, it was a pleasant surprise. Grenn was anxious at the
first, but Jon knew the words to move him. One by one the rest fell in line. Jon
persuaded some, cajoled some, shamed the others, made threats where threats were
required. At the end they had all agreed . . . all but Rast.
“You girls do as you please,” Rast said, “but if Thorne sends me against Lady Piggy, I’m
going to slice me off a rasher of bacon.” He laughed in Jon’s face and left them there.
Hours later, as the castle slept, three of them paid a call on his cell. Grenn held his arms
while Pyp sat on his legs. Jon could hear Rast’s rapid breathing as Ghost leapt onto his
chest. The direwolf’s eyes burned red as embers as his teeth nipped lightly at the soft
skin of the boy’s throat, just enough to draw blood. “Remember, we know where you
sleep,” Jon said softly.
The next morning Jon heard Rast tell Albett and Toad how his razor had slipped while
he shaved.
From that day forth, neither Rast nor any of the others would hurt Samwell Tarly. When
Ser Alliser matched them against him, they would stand their ground and swat aside his
slow, clumsy strokes. If the master-at-arms screamed for an attack, they would dance in
and tap Sam lightly on breastplate or helm or leg. Ser Alliser raged and threatened and
called them all cravens and women and worse, yet Sam remained unhurt. A few nights
later, at Jon’s urging, he joined them for the evening meal, taking a place on the bench
beside Halder. It was another fortnight before he found the nerve to join their talk, but
in time he was laughing at Pyp’s faces and teasing Grenn with the best of them.
Fat and awkward and frightened he might be, but Samwell Tarly was no fool. One night
he visited Jon in his cell. “I don’t know what you did,” he said, “but I know you did it.”
He looked away shyly. “I’ve never had a friend before.”
“We’re not friends,” Jon said. He put a hand on Sam’s broad shoulder. “We’re brothers.”
And so they were, he thought to himself after Sam had taken his leave. Robb and Bran
and Rickon were his father’s sons, and he loved them still, yet Jon knew that he had
never truly been one of them. Catelyn Stark had seen to that. The grey walls of Winterfell
might still haunt his dreams, but Castle Black was his life now, and his brothers were
�Sam and Grenn and Halder and Pyp and the other cast-outs who wore the black of the
Night’s Watch.
“My uncle spoke truly,” he whispered to Ghost. He wondered if he would ever see Benjen
Stark again, to tell him.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
It’s the Hand’s tourney that’s the cause of all the trouble, my lords,” the Commander of
the City Watch complained to the king’s council.
“The king’s tourney,” Ned corrected, wincing. “I assure you, the Hand wants no part of
it.”
“Call it what you will, my lord. Knights have been arriving from all over the realm, and
for every knight we get two freeriders, three craftsmen, six men-at-arms, a dozen
merchants, two dozen whores, and more thieves than I dare guess. This cursed heat had
half the city in a fever to start, and now with all these visitors . . . last night we had a
drowning, a tavern riot, three knife fights, a rape, two fires, robberies beyond count, and
a drunken horse race down the Street of the Sisters. The night before a woman’s head
was found in the Great Sept, floating in the rainbow pool. No one seems to know how it
got there or who it belongs to.”
“How dreadful,” Varys said with a shudder.
Lord Renly Baratheon was less sympathetic. “If you cannot keep the king’s peace, Janos,
perhaps the City Watch should be commanded by someone who can.”
Stout, jowly Janos Slynt puffed himself up like an angry frog, his bald pate reddening.
“Aegon the Dragon himself could not keep the peace, Lord Renly. I need more men.”
“How many?” Ned asked, leaning forward. As ever, Robert had not troubled himself to
attend the council session, so it fell to his Hand to speak for him.
“As many as can be gotten, Lord Hand.”
“Hire fifty new men,” Ned told him. “Lord Baelish will see that you get the coin.”
“I will?” Littlefinger said.
“You will. You found forty thousand golden dragons for a champion’s purse, surely you
can scrape together a few coppers to keep the king’s peace.” Ned turned back to Janos
Slynt. “I will also give you twenty good swords from my own household guard, to serve
�with the Watch until the crowds have left.”
“All thanks, Lord Hand,” Slynt said, bowing. “I promise you, they shall be put to good
use.”
When the Commander had taken his leave, Eddard Stark turned to the rest of the
council. “The sooner this folly is done with, the better I shall like it.” As if the expense
and trouble were not irksome enough, all and sundry insisted on salting Ned’s wound by
calling it “the Hand’s tourney,” as if he were the cause of it. And Robert honestly seemed
to think he should feel honored!
“The realm prospers from such events, my lord,” Grand Maester Pycelle said. “They
bring the great the chance of glory, and the lowly a respite from their woes.”
“And put coins in many a pocket,” Littlefinger added. “Every inn in the city is full, and
the whores are walking bowlegged and jingling with each step.”
Lord Renly laughed. “We’re fortunate my brother Stannis is not with us. Remember the
time he proposed to outlaw brothels? The king asked him if perhaps he’d like to outlaw
eating, shitting, and breathing while he was at it. If truth be told, I ofttimes wonder how
Stannis ever got that ugly daughter of his. He goes to his marriage bed like a man
marching to a battlefield, with a grim look in his eyes and a determination to do his
duty.”
Ned had not joined the laughter. “I wonder about your brother Stannis as well. I wonder
when he intends to end his visit to Dragonstone and resume his seat on this council.”
“No doubt as soon as we’ve scourged all those whores into the sea,” Littlefinger replied,
provoking more laughter.
“I have heard quite enough about whores for one day,” Ned said, rising. “Until the
morrow.”
Harwin had the door when Ned returned to the Tower of the Hand. “Summon Jory to
my chambers and tell your father to saddle my horse,” Ned told him, too brusquely.
“As you say, my lord.”
The Red Keep and the “Hand’s tourney” were chafing him raw, Ned reflected as he
climbed. He yearned for the comfort of Catelyn’s arms, for the sounds of Robb and Jon
crossing swords in the practice yard, for the cool days and cold nights of the north.
�In his chambers he stripped off his council silks and sat for a moment with the book
while he waited for Jory to arrive. The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the
Seven Kingdoms, With Descliptions of Many High Lords and Noble Ladies and Their
Children, by Grand Maester Malleon. Pycelle had spoken truly; it made for ponderous
reading. Yet Jon Arryn had asked for it, and Ned felt certain he had reasons. There was
something here, some truth buried in these brittle yellow pages, if only he could see it.
But what? The tome was over a century old. Scarcely a man now alive had yet been born
when Malleon had compiled his dusty lists of weddings, births, and deaths.
He opened to the section on House Lannister once more, and turned the pages slowly,
hoping against hope that something would leap out at him. The Lannisters were an old
family, tracing their descent back to Lann the Clever, a trickster from the Age of Heroes
who was no doubt as legendary as Bran the Builder, though far more beloved of singers
and taletellers. In the songs, Lann was the fellow who winkled the Casterlys out of
Casterly Rock with no weapon but his wits, and stole gold from the sun to brighten his
curly hair. Ned wished he were here now, to winkle the truth out of this damnable book.
A sharp rap on the door heralded Jory Cassel. Ned closed Malleon’s tome and bid him
enter. “I’ve promised the City Watch twenty of my guard until the tourney is done,” he
told him. “I rely on you to make the choice. Give Alyn the command, and make certain
the men understand that they are needed to stop fights, not start them.” Rising, Ned
opened a cedar chest and removed a light linen undertunic. “Did you find the stableboy?”
“The watchman, my lord,” Jory said. “He vows he’ll never touch another horse.”
“What did he have to say?”
“He claims he knew Lord Arryn well. Fast friends, they were.” Jory snorted. “The Hand
always gave the lads a copper on their name days, he says. Had a way with horses. Never
rode his mounts too hard, and brought them carrots and apples, so they were always
pleased to see him.”
“Carrots and apples,” Ned repeated. It sounded as if this boy would be even less use than
the others. And he was the last of the four Littlefinger had turned up. Jory had spoken to
each of them in turn. Ser Hugh had been brusque and uninformative, and arrogant as
only a new-made knight can be. If the Hand wished to talk to him, he should be pleased
to receive him, but he would not be questioned by a mere captain of guards . . . even if
said captain was ten years older and a hundred times the swordsman. The serving girl
had at least been pleasant. She said Lord Jon had been reading more than was good for
him, that he was troubled and melancholy over his young son’s frailty, and gruff with his
lady wife. The potboy, now cordwainer, had never exchanged so much as a word with
Lord Jon, but he was full of oddments of kitchen gossip: the lord had been quarreling
�with the king, the lord only picked at his food, the lord was sending his boy to be
fostered on Dragonstone, the lord had taken a great interest in the breeding of hunting
hounds, the lord had visited a master armorer to commission a new suit of plate,
wrought all in pale silver with a blue jasper falcon and a mother-of-pearl moon on the
breast. The king’s own brother had gone with him to help choose the design, the potboy
said. No, not Lord Renly, the other one, Lord Stannis.
“Did our watchman recall anything else of note?”
“The lad swears Lord Jon was as strong as a man half his age. Often went riding with
Lord Stannis, he says.”
Stannis again, Ned thought. He found that curious. Jon Arryn and he had been cordial,
but never friendly. And while Robert had been riding north to Winterfell, Stannis had
removed himself to Dragonstone, the Targaryen island fastness he had conquered in his
brother’s name. He had given no word as to when he might return. “Where did they go
on these rides?” Ned asked.
“The boy says that they visited a brothel.”
“A brothel?” Ned said. “The Lord of the Eyrie and Hand of the King visited a brothel with
Stannis Baratheon?” He shook his head, incredulous, wondering what Lord Renly
would make of this tidbit. Robert’s lusts were the subject of ribald drinking songs
throughout the realm, but Stannis was a different sort of man; a bare year younger than
the king, yet utterly unlike him, stern, humorless, unforgiving, grim in his sense of duty.
“The boy insists it’s true. The Hand took three guardsmen with him, and the boy says
they were joking of it when he took their horses afterward.”
“Which brothel?” Ned asked.
“The boy did not know. The guards would.”
“A pity Lysa carried them off to the Vale,” Ned said dryly. “The gods are doing their best
to vex us. Lady Lysa, Maester Colemon, Lord Stannis . . . everyone who might actually
know the truth of what happened to Jon Arryn is a thousand leagues away.”
“Will you summon Lord Stannis back from Dragonstone?”
“Not yet,” Ned said. “Not until I have a better notion of what this is all about and where
he stands.” The matter nagged at him. Why did Stannis leave? Had he played some part
in Jon Arryn’s murder? Or was he afraid? Ned found it hard to imagine what could
�frighten Stannis Baratheon, who had once held Storm’s End through a year of siege,
surviving on rats and boot leather while the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne sat outside with
their hosts, banqueting in sight of his walls.
“Bring me my doublet, if you would. The grey, with the direwolf sigil. I want this armorer
to know who I am. It might make him more forthcoming.”
Jory went to the wardrobe. “Lord Renly is brother to Lord Stannis as well as the king.”
“Yet it seems that he was not invited on these rides.” Ned was not sure what to make of
Renly, with all his friendly ways and easy smiles. A few days past, he had taken Ned
aside to show him an exquisite rose gold locklet. Inside was a miniature painted in the
vivid Myrish style, of a lovely young girl with doe’s eyes and a cascade of soft brown hair.
Renly had seemed anxious to know if the girl reminded him of anyone, and when Ned
had no answer but a shrug, he had seemed disappointed. The maid was Loras Tyrell’s
sister Margaery, he’d confessed, but there were those who said she looked like Lyanna.
“No,” Ned had told him, bemused. Could it be that Lord Renly, who looked so like a
young Robert, had conceived a passion for a girl he fancied to be a young Lyanna? That
struck him as more than passing queer.
Jory held out the doublet, and Ned slid his hands through the armholes. “Perhaps Lord
Stannis will return for Robert’s tourney,” he said as Jory laced the garment up the back.
“That would be a stroke of fortune, my lord,” Jory said.
Ned buckled on a longsword. “In other words, not bloody likely.” His smile was grim.
Jory draped Ned’s cloak across his shoulders and clasped it at the throat with the Hand’s
badge of office. “The armorer lives above his shop, in a large house at the top of the
Street of Steel. Alyn knows the way, my lord.”
Ned nodded. “The gods help this potboy if he’s sent me off haring after shadows.” It was
a slim enough staff to lean on, but the Jon Arryn that Ned Stark had known was not one
to wear jeweled and silvered plate. Steel was steel; it was meant for protection, not
ornament. He might have changed his views, to be sure. He would scarcely have been
the first man who came to look on things differently after a few years at court . . . but the
change was marked enough to make Ned wonder.
“Is there any other service I might perform?”
“I suppose you’d best begin visiting whorehouses.”
�“Hard duty, my lord.” Jory grinned. “The men will be glad to help. Porther has made a
fair start already.”
Ned’s favorite horse was saddled and waiting in the yard. Varly and Jacks fell in beside
him as he rode through the yard. Their steel caps and shirts of mail must have been
sweltering, yet they said no word of complaint. As Lord Eddard passed beneath the
King’s Gate into the stink of the city, his grey and white cloak streaming from his
shoulders, he saw eyes everywhere and kicked his mount into a trot. His guard followed.
He looked behind him frequently as they made their way through the crowded city
streets. Tomard and Desmond had left the castle early this morning to take up positions
on the route they must take, and watch for anyone following them, but even so, Ned was
uncertain. The shadow of the King’s Spider and his little birds had him fretting like a
maiden on her wedding night.
The Street of Steel began at the market square beside the River Gate, as it was named on
maps, or the Mud Gate, as it was commonly called. A mummer on stilts was striding
through the throngs like some great insect, with a horde of barefoot children trailing
behind him, hooting. Elsewhere, two ragged boys no older than Bran were dueling with
sticks, to the loud encouragement of some and the furious curses of others. An old
woman ended the contest by leaning out of her window and emptying a bucket of slops
on the heads of the combatants. In the shadow of the wall, farmers stood beside their
wagons, bellowing out, “Apples, the best apples, cheap at twice the price,” and “Blood
melons, sweet as honey,” and “Turnips, onions, roots, here you go here, here you go,
turnips, onions, roots, here you go here.”
The Mud Gate was open, and a squad of City Watchmen stood under the portcullis in
their golden cloaks, leaning on spears. When a column of riders appeared from the west,
the guardsmen sprang into action, shouting commands and moving the carts and foot
traffic aside to let the knight enter with his escort. The first rider through the gate
carried a long black banner. The silk rippled in the wind like a living thing; across the
fabric was blazoned a night sky slashed with purple lightning. “Make way for Lord
Beric!” the rider shouted. “Make way for Lord Beric!” And close behind came the young
lord himself, a dashing figure on a black courser, with red-gold hair and a black satin
cloak dusted with stars. “Here to fight in the Hand’s tourney, my lord?” a guardsman
called out to him. “Here to win the Hand’s tourney,” Lord Beric shouted back as the
crowd cheered.
Ned turned off the square where the Street of Steel began and followed its winding path
up a long hill, past blacksmiths working at open forges, freeriders haggling over mail
shirts, and grizzled ironmongers selling old blades and razors from their wagons. The
farther they climbed, the larger the buildings grew. The man they wanted was all the way
�at the top of the hill, in a huge house of timber and plaster whose upper stories loomed
over the narrow street. The double doors showed a hunting scene carved in ebony and
weirwood. A pair of stone knights stood sentry at the entrance, armored in fanciful suits
of polished red steel that transformed them into griffin and unicorn. Ned left his horse
with Jacks and shouldered his way inside.
The slim young serving girl took quick note of Ned’s badge and the sigil on his doublet,
and the master came hurrying out, all smiles and bows. “Wine for the King’s Hand,” he
told the girl, gesturing Ned to a couch. “I am Tobho Mott, my lord, please, please, put
yourself at ease.” He wore a black velvet coat with hammers embroidered on the sleeves
in silver thread, Around his neck was a heavy silver chain and a sapphire as large as a
pigeon’s egg. “If you are in need of new arms for the Hand’s tourney, you have come to
the right shop.” Ned did not bother to correct him. “My work is costly, and I make no
apologies for that, my lord,” he said as he filled two matching silver goblets. “You will
not find craftsmanship equal to mine anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms, I promise you.
Visit every forge in King’s Landing if you like, and compare for yourself. Any village
smith can hammer out a shirt of mail; my work is art.”
Ned sipped his wine and let the man go on. The Knight of Flowers bought all his armor
here, Tobho boasted, and many high lords, the ones who knew fine steel, and even Lord
Renly, the king’s own brother. Perhaps the Hand had seen Lord Renly’s new armor, the
green plate with the golden antlers? No other armorer in the city could get that deep a
green; he knew the secret of putting color in the steel itself, paint and enamel were the
crutches of a journeyman. Or mayhaps the Hand wanted a blade? Tobho had learned to
work Valyrian steel at the forges of Qohor as a boy. Only a man who knew the spells
could take old weapons and forge them anew. “The direwolf is the sigil of House Stark, is
it not? I could fashion a direwolf helm so real that children will run from you in the
street,” he vowed.
Ned smiled. “Did you make a falcon helm for Lord Arryn?”
Tobho Mott paused a long moment and set aside his wine. “The Hand did call upon me,
with Lord Stannis, the king’s brother. I regret to say, they did not honor me with their
patronage.”
Ned looked at the man evenly, saying nothing, waiting. He had found over the years that
silence sometimes yielded more than questions. And so it was this time.
“They asked to see the boy,” the armorer said, “so I took them back to the forge.”
“The boy,” Ned echoed. He had no notion who the boy might be. “I should like to see the
boy as well.”
�Tobho Mott gave him a cool, careful look. “As you wish, my lord,” he said with no trace
of his former friendliness. He led Ned out a rear door and across a narrow yard, back to
the cavernous stone barn where the work was done. When the armorer opened the door,
the blast of hot air that came through made Ned feel as though he were walking into a
dragon’s mouth. Inside, a forge blazed in each corner, and the air stank of smoke and
sulfur. Journeymen armorers glanced up from their hammers and tongs just long
enough to wipe the sweat from their brows, while bare-chested apprentice boys worked
the bellows.
The master called over a tall lad about Robb’s age, his arms and chest corded with
muscle. “This is Lord Stark, the new Hand of the King,” he told him as the boy looked at
Ned through sullen blue eyes and pushed back sweat-soaked hair with his fingers. Thick
hair, shaggy and unkempt and black as ink. The shadow of a new beard darkened his
jaw. “This is Gendry. Strong for his age, and he works hard. Show the Hand that helmet
you made, lad.” Almost shyly, the boy led them to his bench, and a steel helm shaped
like a bull’s head, with two great curving horns.
Ned turned the helm over in his hands. It was raw steel, unpolished but expertly shaped.
“This is fine work. I would be pleased if you would let me buy it.”
The boy snatched it out of his hands. “It’s not for sale.”
Tobho Mott looked horror-struck. “Boy, this is the King’s Hand. If his lordship wants
this helm, make him a gift of it. He honors you by asking.”
“I made it for me,” the boy said stubbornly.
“A hundred pardons, my lord,” his master said hurriedly to Ned. “The boy is crude as
new steel, and like new steel would profit from some beating. That helm is journeyman’s
work at best. Forgive him and I promise I will craft you a helm like none you have ever
seen.”
“He’s done nothing that requires my forgiveness. Gendry, when Lord Arryn came to see
you, what did you talk about?”
“He asked me questions is all, m’lord.”
“What sort of questions?”
The boy shrugged. “How was I, and was I well treated, and if I liked the work, and stuff
about my mother. Who she was and what she looked like and all.”
�“What did you tell him?” Ned asked.
The boy shoved a fresh fall of black hair off his forehead. “She died when I was little. She
had yellow hair, and sometimes she used to sing to me, I remember. She worked in an
alehouse.”
“Did Lord Stannis question you as well?”
“The bald one? No, not him. He never said no word, just glared at me, like I was some
raper who done for his daughter.”
“Mind your filthy tongue,” the master said. “This is the King’s own Hand.” The boy
lowered his eyes. “A smart boy, but stubborn. That helm . . . the others call him
bullheaded, so he threw it in their teeth.”
Ned touched the boy’s head, fingering the thick black hair. “Look at me, Gendry.” The
apprentice lifted his face. Ned studied the shape of his jaw, the eyes like blue ice. Yes, he
thought, I see it. “Go back to your work, lad. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” He walked
back to the house with the master. “Who paid the boy’s apprentice fee?” he asked lightly.
Mott looked fretful. “You saw the boy. Such a strong boy. Those hands of his, those
hands were made for hammers. He had such promise, I took him on without a fee.”
“The truth now,” Ned urged. “The streets are full of strong boys. The day you take on an
apprentice without a fee will be the day the Wall comes down. Who paid for him?”
“A lord,” the master said reluctantly. “He gave no name, and wore no sigil on his coat.
He paid in gold, twice the customary sum, and said he was paying once for the boy, and
once for my silence.”
“Describe him.”
“He was stout, round of shoulder, not so tall as you. Brown beard, but there was a bit of
red in it, I’ll swear. He wore a rich cloak, that I do remember, heavy purple velvet
worked with silver threads, but the hood shadowed his face and I never did see him
clear.” He hesitated a moment. “My lord, I want no trouble.”
“None of us wants trouble, but I fear these are troubled times, Master Mott,” Ned said.
“You know who the boy is.”
“I am only an armorer, my lord. I know what I’m told.”
�“You know who the boy is,” Ned repeated patiently. “That is not a question.”
“The boy is my apprentice,” the master said. He looked Ned in the eye, stubborn as old
iron. “Who he was before he came to me, that’s none of my concern.”
Ned nodded. He decided that he liked Tobho Mott, master armorer. “If the day ever
comes when Gendry would rather wield a sword than forge one, send him to me. He has
the look of a warrior. Until then, you have my thanks, Master Mott, and my promise.
Should I ever want a helm to frighten children, this will be the first place I visit.”
His guard was waiting outside with the horses. “Did you find anything, my lord?” Jacks
asked as Ned mounted up.
“I did,” Ned told him, wondering. What had Jon Arryn wanted with a king’s bastard, and
why was it worth his life?
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
CATELYN
My lady, you ought cover your head,” Ser Rodrik told her as their horses plodded north.
“You will take a chill.”
“It is only water, Ser Rodrik,” Catelyn replied. Her hair hung wet and heavy, a loose
strand stuck to her forehead, and she could imagine how ragged and wild she must look,
but for once she did not care. The southern rain was soft and warm. Catelyn liked the
feel of it on her face, gentle as a mother’s kisses. It took her back to her childhood, to
long grey days at Riverrun. She remembered the godswood, drooping branches heavy
with moisture, and the sound of her brother’s laughter as he chased her through piles of
damp leaves. She remembered making mud pies with Lysa, the weight of them, the mud
slick and brown between her fingers. They had served them to Littlefinger, giggling, and
he’d eaten so much mud he was sick for a week. How young they all had been.
Catelyn had almost forgotten. In the north, the rain fell cold and hard, and sometimes at
night it turned to ice. It was as likely to kill a crop as nurture it, and it sent grown men
running for the nearest shelter. That was no rain for little girls to play in.
“I am soaked through,” Ser Rodrik complained. “Even my bones are wet.” The woods
pressed close around them, and the steady pattering of rain on leaves was accompanied
by the small sucking sounds their horses made as their hooves pulled free of the mud.
“We will want a fire tonight, my lady, and a hot meal would serve us both.”
“There is an inn at the crossroads up ahead,” Catelyn told him. She had slept many a
night there in her youth, traveling with her father. Lord Hoster Tully had been a restless
man in his prime, always riding somewhere. She still remembered the innkeep, a fat
woman named Masha Heddle who chewed sourleaf night and day and seemed to have
an endless supply of smiles and sweet cakes for the children. The sweet cakes had been
soaked with honey, rich and heavy on the tongue, but how Catelyn had dreaded those
smiles. The sourleaf had stained Masha’s teeth a dark red, and made her smile a bloody
horror.
“An inn,” Ser Rodrik repeated wistfully. “If only . . . but we dare not risk it. If we wish to
remain unknown, I think it best we seek out some small holdfast . . . ” He broke off as
they heard sounds up the road; splashing water, the clink of mail, a horse’s whinny.
“Riders,” he warned, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword. Even on the kingsroad, it
�never hurt to be wary.
They followed the sounds around a lazy bend of the road and saw them; a column of
armed men noisily fording a swollen stream. Catelyn reined up to let them pass. The
banner in the hand of the foremost rider hung sodden and limp, but the guardsmen
wore indigo cloaks and on their shoulders flew the silver eagle of Seagard. “Mallisters,”
Ser Rodrik whispered to her, as if she had not known. “My lady, best pull up your hood.”
Catelyn made no move. Lord Jason Mallister himself rode with them, surrounded by his
knights, his son Patrek by his side and their squires close behind. They were riding for
King’s Landing and the Hand’s tourney, she knew. For the past week, the travelers had
been thick as flies upon the kingsroad; knights and freeriders, singers with their harps
and drums, heavy wagons laden with hops or corn or casks of honey, traders and
craftsmen and whores, and all of them moving south.
She studied Lord Jason boldly. The last time she had seen him he had been jesting with
her uncle at her wedding feast; the Mallisters stood bannermen to the Tullys, and his
gifts had been lavish. His brown hair was salted with white now, his face chiseled gaunt
by time, yet the years had not touched his pride. He rode like a man who feared nothing.
Catelyn envied him that; she had come to fear so much. As the riders passed, Lord Jason
nodded a curt greeting, but it was only a high lord’s courtesy to strangers chance met on
the road. There was no recognition in those fierce eyes, and his son did not even waste a
look.
“He did not know you,” Ser Rodrik said after, wondering.
“He saw a pair of mud-spattered travelers by the side of the road, wet and tired. It would
never occur to him to suspect that one of them was the daughter of his liege lord. I think
we shall be safe enough at the inn, Ser Rodrik.”
It was near dark when they reached it, at the crossroads north of the great confluence of
the Trident. Masha Heddle was fatter and greyer than Catelyn remembered, still
chewing her sourleaf, but she gave them only the most cursory of looks, with nary a hint
of her ghastly red smile. “Two rooms at the top of the stair, that’s all there is,” she said,
chewing all the while. “They’re under the bell tower, you won’t be missing meals, though
there’s some thinks it too noisy. Can’t be helped. We’re full up, or near as makes no
matter. It’s those rooms or the road.”
It was those rooms, low, dusty garrets at the top of a cramped narrow staircase. “Leave
your boots down here,” Masha told them after she’d taken their coin. “The boy will clean
them. I won’t have you tracking mud up my stairs. Mind the bell. Those who come late to
meals don’t eat.” There were no smiles, and no mention of sweet cakes.
�When the supper bell rang, the sound was deafening. Catelyn had changed into dry
clothes. She sat by the window, watching rain run down the pane. The glass was milky
and full of bubbles, and a wet dusk was falling outside. Catelyn could just make out the
muddy crossing where the two great roads met.
The crossroads gave her pause. If they turned west from here, it was an easy ride down
to Riverrun. Her father had always given her wise counsel when she needed it most, and
she yearned to talk to him, to warn him of the gathering storm. If Winterfell needed to
brace for war, how much more so Riverrun, so much closer to King’s Landing, with the
power of Casterly Rock looming to the west like a shadow. If only her father had been
stronger, she might have chanced it, but Hoster Tully had been bedridden these past two
years, and Catelyn was loath to tax him now.
The eastern road was wilder and more dangerous, climbing through rocky foothills and
thick forests into the Mountains of the Moon, past high passes and deep chasms to the
Vale of Arryn and the stony Fingers beyond. Above the Vale, the Eyrie stood high and
impregnable, its towers reaching for the sky. There she would find her sister . . . and,
perhaps, some of the answers Ned sought. Surely Lysa knew more than she had dared to
put in her letter. She might have the very proof that Ned needed to bring the Lannisters
to ruin, and if it came to war, they would need the Arryns and the eastern lords who
owed them service.
Yet the mountain road was perilous. Shadowcats prowled those passes, rock slides were
common, and the mountain clans were lawless brigands, descending from the heights to
rob and kill and melting away like snow whenever the knights rode out from the Vale in
search of them. Even Jon Arryn, as great a lord as any the Eyrie had ever known, had
always traveled in strength when he crossed the mountains. Catelyn’s only strength was
one elderly knight, armored in loyalty.
No, she thought, Riverrun and the Eyrie would have to wait. Her path ran north to
Winterfell, where her sons and her duty were waiting for her. As soon as they were safely
past the Neck, she could declare herself to one of Ned’s bannermen, and send riders
racing ahead with orders to mount a watch on the kingsroad.
The rain obscured the fields beyond the crossroads, but Catelyn saw the land clear
enough in her memory. The marketplace was just across the way, and the village a mile
farther on, half a hundred white cottages surrounding a small stone sept. There would be
more now; the summer had been long and peaceful. North of here the kingsroad ran
along the Green Fork of the Trident, through fertile valleys and green woodlands, past
thriving towns and stout holdfasts and the castles of the river lords.
Catelyn knew them all: the Blackwoods and the Brackens, ever enemies, whose quarrels
�her father was obliged to settle; Lady Whent, last of her line, who dwelt with her ghosts
in the cavernous vaults of Harrenhal; irascible Lord Frey, who had outlived seven wives
and filled his twin castles with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and
bastards and grandbastards as well. All of them were bannermen to the Tullys, their
swords sworn to the service of Riverrun. Catelyn wondered if that would be enough, if it
came to war. Her father was the staunchest man who’d ever lived, and she had no doubt
that he would call his banners . . . but would the banners come? The Darrys and Rygers
and Mootons had sworn oaths to Riverrun as well, yet they had fought with Rhaegar
Targaryen on the Trident, while Lord Frey had arrived with his levies well after the
battle was over, leaving some doubt as to which army he had planned to join (theirs, he
had assured the victors solemnly in the aftermath, but ever after her father had called
him the Late Lord Frey). It must not come to war, Catelyn thought fervently. They must
not let it.
Ser Rodrik came for her just as the bell ceased its clangor. “We had best make haste if we
hope to eat tonight, my lady.”
“It might be safer if we were not knight and lady until we pass the Neck,” she told him.
“Common travelers attract less notice. A father and daughter taken to the road on some
family business, say.”
“As you say, my lady,” Ser Rodrik agreed. It was only when she laughed that he realized
what he’d done. “The old courtesies die hard, my—my daughter.” He tried to tug on his
missing whiskers, and sighed with exasperation.
Catelyn took his arm. “Come, Father,” she said. “You’ll find that Masha Heddle sets a
good table, I think, but try not to praise her. You truly don’t want to see her smile.”
The common room was long and drafty, with a row of huge wooden kegs at one end and
a fireplace at the other. A serving boy ran back and forth with skewers of meat while
Masha drew beer from the kegs, chewing her sourleaf all the while.
The benches were crowded, townsfolk and farmers mingling freely with all manner of
travelers. The crossroads made for odd companions; dyers with black and purple hands
shared a bench with rivermen reeking of fish, an ironsmith thick with muscle squeezed
in beside a wizened old septon, hard-bitten sellswords and soft plump merchants
swapped news like boon companions.
The company included more swords than Catelyn would have liked. Three by the fire
wore the red stallion badge of the Brackens, and there was a large party in blue steel
ringmail and capes of a silvery grey. On their shoulder was another familiar sigil, the
twin towers of House Frey. She studied their faces, but they were all too young to have
�known her. The senior among them would have been no older than Bran when she went
north.
Ser Rodrik found them an empty place on the bench near the kitchen. Across the table a
handsome youth was fingering a woodharp. “Seven blessings to you, goodfolk,” he said
as they sat. An empty wine cup stood on the table before him.
“And to you, singer,” Catelyn returned. Ser Rodrik called for bread and meat and beer in
a tone that meant now. The singer, a youth of some eighteen years, eyed them boldly
and asked where they were going, and from whence they had come, and what news they
had, letting the questions fly as quick as arrows and never pausing for an answer. “We
left King’s Landing a fortnight ago,” Catelyn replied, answering the safest of his
questions.
“That’s where I’m bound,” the youth said. As she had suspected, he was more interested
in telling his own story than in hearing theirs. Singers loved nothing half so well as the
sound of their own voices. “The Hand’s tourney means rich lords with fat purses. The
last time I came away with more silver than I could carry . . . or would have, if I hadn’t
lost it all betting on the Kingslayer to win the day.”
“The gods frown on the gambler,” Ser Rodrik said sternly. He was of the north, and
shared the Stark views on tournaments.
“They frowned on me, for certain,” the singer said. “Your cruel gods and the Knight of
Flowers altogether did me in.”
“No doubt that was a lesson for you,” Ser Rodrik said.
“It was. This time my coin will champion Ser Loras.”
Ser Rodrik tried to tug at whiskers that were not there, but before he could frame a
rebuke the serving boy came scurrying up. He laid trenchers of bread before them and
filled them with chunks of browned meat off a skewer, dripping with hot juice. Another
skewer held tiny onions, fire peppers, and fat mushrooms. Ser Rodrik set to lustily as the
lad ran back to fetch them beer.
“My name is Marillion,” the singer said, plucking a string on his woodharp. “Doubtless
you’ve heard me play somewhere?”
His manner made Catelyn smile. Few wandering singers ever ventured as far north as
Winterfell, but she knew his like from her girlhood in Riverrun. “I fear not,” she told him.
�He drew a plaintive chord from the woodharp. “That is your loss,” he said. “Who was the
finest singer you’ve ever heard?”
“Alia of Braavos,” Ser Rodrik answered at once.
“Oh, I’m much better than that old stick,” Marillion said. “If you have the silver for a
song, I’ll gladly show you.”
“I might have a copper or two, but I’d sooner toss it down a well than pay for your
howling,” Ser Rodrik groused. His opinion of singers was well known; music was a lovely
thing for girls, but he could not comprehend why any healthy boy would fill his hand
with a harp when he might have had a sword.
“Your grandfather has a sour nature,” Marillion said to Catelyn. “I meant to do you
honor. An homage to your beauty. In truth, I was made to sing for kings and high lords.”
“Oh, I can see that,” Catelyn said. “Lord Tully is fond of song, I hear. No doubt you’ve
been to Riverrun.”
“A hundred times,” the singer said airily. “They keep a chamber for me, and the young
lord is like a brother.”
Catelyn smiled, wondering what Edmure would think of that. Another singer had once
bedded a girl her brother fancied; he had hated the breed ever since. “And Winterfell?”
she asked him. “Have you traveled north?”
“Why would I?’ Marillion asked. “It’s all blizzards and bearskins up there, and the Starks
know no music but the howling of wolves.” Distantly, she was aware of the door banging
open at the far end of the room.
“Innkeep,” a servant’s voice called out behind her, “we have horses that want stabling,
and my lord of Lannister requires a room and a hot bath.”
“Oh, gods,” Ser Rodrik said before Catelyn reached out to silence him, her fingers
tightening hard around his forearm.
Masha Heddle was bowing and smiling her hideous red smile. “I’m sorry, m’lord, truly,
we’re full up, every room.”
There were four of them, Catelyn saw. An old man in the black of the Night’s Watch, two
servants . . . and him, standing there small and bold as life. “My men will steep in your
stable, and as for myself, well, I do not require a large room, as you can plainly see.” He
�flashed a mocking grin. “So long as the fire’s warm and the straw reasonably free of fleas,
I am a happy man.”
Masha Heddle was beside herself. “M’lord, there’s nothing, it’s the tourney, there’s no
help for it, oh . . . ”
Tyrion Lannister pulled a coin from his purse and flicked it up over his head, caught it,
tossed it again. Even across the room, where Catelyn sat, the wink of gold was
unmistakable.
A freerider in a faded blue cloak lurched to his feet. “You’re welcome to my room,
m’lord.”
“Now there’s a clever man,” Lannister said as he sent the coin spinning across the room.
The freerider snatched it from the air. “And a nimble one to boot.” The dwarf turned
back to Masha Heddle. “You will be able to manage food, I trust?”
“Anything you like, m’lord, anything at all,” the innkeep promised. And may he choke on
it, Catelyn thought, but it was Bran she saw choking, drowning on his own blood.
Lannister glanced at the nearest tables. “My men will have whatever you’re serving these
people. Double portions, we’ve had a long hard ride. I’ll take a roast fowl—chicken, duck,
pigeon, it makes no matter. And send up a flagon of your best wine. Yoren, will you sup
with me?”
“Aye, m’lord, I will,” the black brother replied.
The dwarf had not so much as glanced toward the far end of the room, and Catelyn was
thinking how grateful she was for the crowded benches between them when suddenly
Marillion bounded to his feet. “My lord of Lannister!” he called out. “I would be pleased
to entertain you while you eat. Let me sing you the lay of your father’s great victory at
King’s Landing!”
“Nothing would be more likely to ruin my supper,” the dwarf said dryly. His mismatched
eyes considered the singer briefly, started to move away . . . and found Catelyn. He
looked at her for a moment, puzzled. She turned her face away, but too late. The dwarf
was smiling. “Lady Stark, what an unexpected pleasure,” he said. “I was sorry to miss
you at Winterfell.”
Marillion gaped at her, confusion giving way to chagrin as Catelyn rose slowly to her
feet. She heard Ser Rodrik curse. If only the man had lingered at the Wall, she thought, if
only . . .
�“Lady . . . Stark?” Masha Heddle said thickly.
“I was still Catelyn Tully the last time I bedded here,” she told the innkeep. She could
hear the muttering, feel the eyes upon her. Catelyn glanced around the room, at the faces
of the knights and sworn swords, and took a deep breath to slow the frantic beating of
her heart. Did she dare take the risk? There was no time to think it through, only the
moment and the sound of her own voice ringing in her ears. “You in the corner,” she said
to an older man she had not noticed until now. “Is that the black bat of Harrenhal I see
embroidered on your surcoat, ser?”
The man got to his feet. “It is, my lady.”
“And is Lady Whent a true and honest friend to my father, Lord Hoster Tully of
Riverrun?”
“She is,” the man replied stoutly.
Ser Rodrik rose quietly and loosened his sword in its scabbard. The dwarf was blinking
at them, blank-faced, with puzzlement in his mismatched eyes.
“The red stallion was ever a welcome sight in Riverrun,” she said to the trio by the fire.
“My father counts Jonos Bracken among his oldest and most loyal bannermen.”
The three men-at-arms exchanged uncertain looks. “Our lord is honored by his trust,”
one of them said hesitantly.
“I envy your father all these fine friends,” Lannister quipped, “but I do not quite see the
purpose of this, Lady Stark.”
She ignored him, turning to the large party in blue and grey. They were the heart of the
matter; there were more than twenty of them. “I know your sigil as well: the twin towers
of Frey. How fares your good lord, sers?”
Their captain rose. “Lord Walder is well, my lady. He plans to take a new wife on his
ninetieth name day, and has asked your lord father to honor the wedding with his
presence.”
Tyrion Lannister sniggered. That was when Catelyn knew he was hers. “This man came a
guest into my house, and there conspired to murder my son, a boy of seven,” she
proclaimed to the room at large, pointing. Ser Rodrik moved to her side, his sword in
hand. “In the name of King Robert and the good lords you serve, I call upon you to seize
�him and help me return him to Winterfell to await the king’s justice.”
She did not know what was more satisfying: the sound of a dozen swords drawn as one
or the look on Tyrion Lannister’s face.
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SANSA
Sansa rode to the Hand’s tourney with Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole, in a litter with
curtains of yellow silk so fine she could see right through them. They turned the whole
world gold. Beyond the city walls, a hundred pavilions had been raised beside the river,
and the common folk came out in the thousands to watch the games. The splendor of it
all took Sansa’s breath away; the shining armor, the great chargers caparisoned in silver
and gold, the shouts of the crowd, the banners snapping in the wind . . . and the knights
themselves, the knights most of all.
“It is better than the songs,” she whispered when they found the places that her father
had promised her, among the high lords and ladies. Sansa was dressed beautifully that
day, in a green gown that brought out the auburn of her hair, and she knew they were
looking at her and smiling.
They watched the heroes of a hundred songs ride forth, each more fabulous than the last.
The seven knights of the Kingsguard took the field, all but Jaime Lannister in scaled
armor the color of milk, their cloaks as white as freshfallen snow. Ser Jaime wore the
white cloak as well, but beneath it he was shining gold from head to foot, with a lion’shead helm and a golden sword. Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain That Rides,
thundered past them like an avalanche. Sansa remembered Lord Yohn Royce, who had
guested at Winterfell two years before. “His armor is bronze, thousands and thousands
of years old, engraved with magic runes that ward him against harm,” she whispered to
Jeyne. Septa Mordane pointed out Lord Jason Mallister, in indigo chased with silver, the
wings of an eagle on his helm. He had cut down three of Rhaegar’s bannermen on the
Trident. The girls giggled over the warrior priest Thoros of Myr, with his flapping red
robes and shaven head, until the septa told them that he had once scaled the walls of
Pyke with a flaming sword in hand.
Other riders Sansa did not know; hedge knights from the Fingers and Highgarden and
the mountains of Dorne, unsung freeriders and new-made squires, the younger sons of
high lords and the heirs of lesser houses. Younger men, most had done no great deeds as
yet, but Sansa and Jeyne agreed that one day the Seven Kingdoms would resound to the
sound of their names. Ser Balon Swann. Lord Bryce Caron of the Marches. Bronze
Yohn’s heir, Ser Andar Royce, and his younger brother Ser Robar, their silvered steel
plate filigreed in bronze with the same ancient runes that warded their father. The twins
Ser Horas and Ser Hobber, whose shields displayed the grape cluster sigil of the
Redwynes, burgundy on blue. Patrek Mallister, Lord Jason’s son. Six Freys of the
�Crossing: Ser Jared, Ser Hosteen, Ser Danwell, Ser Emmon, Ser Theo, Ser Perwyn, sons
and grandsons of old Lord Walder Frey, and his bastard son Martyn Rivers as well.
Jeyne Poole confessed herself frightened by the look of Jalabhar Xho, an exile prince
from the Summer Isles who wore a cape of green and scarlet feathers over skin as dark
as night, but when she saw young Lord Beric Dondarrion, with his hair like red gold and
his black shield slashed by lightning, she pronounced herself willing to marry him on the
instant.
The Hound entered the lists as well, and so too the king’s brother, handsome Lord Renly
of Storm’s End. Jory, Alyn, and Harwin rode for Winterfell and the north. “Jory looks a
beggar among these others,” Septa Mordane sniffed when he appeared. Sansa could only
agree. Jory’s armor was blue-grey plate without device or ornament, and a thin grey
cloak hung from his shoulders like a soiled rag. Yet he acquitted himself well, unhorsing
Horas Redwyne in his first joust and one of the Freys in his second. In his third match,
he rode three passes at a freerider named Lothor Brune whose armor was as drab as his
own. Neither man lost his seat, but Brune’s lance was steadier and his blows better
placed, and the king gave him the victory. Alyn and Harwin fared less well; Harwin was
unhorsed in his first tilt by Ser Meryn of the Kingsguard, while Alyn fell to Ser Balon
Swann.
The jousting went all day and into the dusk, the hooves of the great warhorses pounding
down the lists until the field was a ragged wasteland of torn earth. A dozen times Jeyne
and Sansa cried out in unison as riders crashed together, lances exploding into splinters
while the commons screamed for their favorites. Jeyne covered her eyes whenever a man
fell, like a frightened little girl, but Sansa was made of sterner stuff. A great lady knew
how to behave at tournaments. Even Septa Mordane noted her composure and nodded
in approval.
The Kingslayer rode brilliantly. He overthrew Ser Andar Royce and the Marcher Lord
Bryce Caron as easily as if he were riding at rings, and then took a hard-fought match
from white-haired Barristan Selmy, who had won his first two tilts against men thirty
and forty years his junior.
Sandor Clegane and his immense brother, Ser Gregor the Mountain, seemed
unstoppable as well, riding down one foe after the next in ferocious style. The most
terrifying moment of the day came during Ser Gregor’s second joust, when his lance
rode up and struck a young knight from the Vale under the gorget with such force that it
drove through his throat, killing him instantly. The youth fell not ten feet from where
Sansa was seated. The point of Ser Gregor’s lance had snapped off in his neck, and his
life’s blood flowed out in slow pulses, each weaker than the one before. His armor was
shiny new; a bright streak of fire ran down his outstretched arm, as the steel caught the
�light. Then the sun went behind a cloud, and it was gone. His cloak was blue, the color of
the sky on a clear summer’s day, trimmed with a border of crescent moons, but as his
blood seeped into it, the cloth darkened and the moons turned red, one by one.
Jeyne Poole wept so hysterically that Septa Mordane finally took her off to regain her
composure, but Sansa sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching with a strange
fascination. She had never seen a man die before. She ought to be crying too, she
thought, but the tears would not come. Perhaps she had used up all her tears for Lady
and Bran. It would be different if it had been Jory or Ser Rodrik or Father, she told
herself. The young knight in the blue cloak was nothing to her, some stranger from the
Vale of Arryn whose name she had forgotten as soon as she heard it. And now the world
would forget his name too, Sansa realized; there would be no songs sung for him. That
was sad.
After they carried off the body, a boy with a spade ran onto the field and shoveled dirt
over the spot where he had fallen, to cover up the blood. Then the jousts resumed.
Ser Balon Swann also fell to Gregor, and Lord Renly to the Hound. Renly was unhorsed
so violently that he seemed to fly backward off his charger, legs in the air. His head hit
the ground with an audible crack that made the crowd gasp, but it was just the golden
antler on his helm. One of the tines had snapped off beneath him. When Lord Renly
climbed to his feet, the commons cheered wildly, for King Robert’s handsome young
brother was a great favorite. He handed the broken tine to his conqueror with a gracious
bow. The Hound snorted and tossed the broken antler into the crowd, where the
commons began to punch and claw over the little bit of gold, until Lord Renly walked out
among them and restored the peace. By then Septa Mordane had returned, alone. Jeyne
had been feeling ill, she explained; she had helped her back to the castle. Sansa had
almost forgotten about Jeyne.
Later a hedge knight in a checkered cloak disgraced himself by killing Beric
Dondarrion’s horse, and was declared forfeit. Lord Beric shifted his saddle to a new
mount, only to be knocked right off it by Thoros of Myr. Ser Aron Santagar and Lothor
Brune tilted thrice without result; Ser Aron fell afterward to Lord Jason Mallister, and
Brune to Yohn Royce’s younger son, Robar.
In the end it came down to four; the Hound and his monstrous brother Gregor, Jaime
Lannister the Kingslayer, and Ser Loras Tyrell, the youth they called the Knight of
Flowers.
Ser Loras was the youngest son of Mace Tyrell, the Lord of Highgarden and Warden of
the South. At sixteen, he was the youngest rider on the field, yet he had unhorsed three
knights of the Kingsguard that morning in his first three jousts. Sansa had never seen
�anyone so beautiful. His plate was intricately fashioned and enameled as a bouquet of a
thousand different flowers, and his snow-white stallion was draped in a blanket of red
and white roses. After each victory, Ser Loras would remove his helm and ride slowly
round the fence, and finally pluck a single white rose from the blanket and toss it to
some fair maiden in the crowd.
His last match of the day was against the younger Royce. Ser Robar’s ancestral runes
proved small protection as Ser Loras split his shield and drove him from his saddle to
crash with an awful clangor in the dirt. Robar lay moaning as the victor made his circuit
of the field. Finally they called for a litter and carried him off to his tent, dazed and
unmoving. Sansa never saw it. Her eyes were only for Ser Loras. When the white horse
stopped in front of her, she thought her heart would burst.
To the other maidens he had given white roses, but the one he plucked for her was red.
“Sweet lady,” he said, “no victory is half so beautiful as you.” Sansa took the flower
timidly, struck dumb by his gallantry. His hair was a mass of lazy brown curls, his eyes
like liquid gold. She inhaled the sweet fragrance of the rose and sat clutching it long after
Ser Loras had ridden off.
When Sansa finally looked up, a man was standing over her, staring. He was short, with
a pointed beard and a silver streak in his hair, almost as old as her father. “You must be
one of her daughters,” he said to her. He had grey-green eyes that did not smile when his
mouth did. “You have the Tully look.”
“I’m Sansa Stark,” she said, ill at ease. The man wore a heavy cloak with a fur collar,
fastened with a silver mockingbird, and he had the effortless manner of a high lord, but
she did not know him. “I have not had the honor, my lord.”
Septa Mordane quickly took a hand. “Sweet child, this is Lord Petyr Baelish, of the king’s
small council.”
“Your mother was my queen of beauty once,” the man said quietly. His breath smelled of
mint. “You have her hair.” His fingers brushed against her cheek as he stroked one
auburn lock. Quite abruptly he turned and walked away.
By then, the moon was well up and the crowd was tired, so the king decreed that the last
three matches would be fought the next morning, before the melee. While the commons
began their walk home, talking of the day’s jousts and the matches to come on the
morrow, the court moved to the riverside to begin the feast. Six monstrous huge aurochs
had been roasting for hours, turning slowly on wooden spits while kitchen boys basted
them with butter and herbs until the meat crackled and spit. Tables and benches had
been raised outside the pavilions, piled high with sweetgrass and strawberries and fresh-
�baked bread.
Sansa and Septa Mordane were given places of high honor, to the left of the raised dais
where the king himself sat beside his queen. When Prince Joffrey seated himself to her
right, she felt her throat tighten. He had not spoken a word to her since the awful thing
had happened, and she had not dared to speak to him. At first she thought she hated him
for what they’d done to Lady, but after Sansa had wept her eyes dry, she told herself that
it had not been Joffrey’s doing, not truly. The queen had done it; she was the one to hate,
her and Arya. Nothing bad would have happened except for Arya.
She could not hate Joffrey tonight. He was too beautiful to hate. He wore a deep blue
doublet studded with a double row of golden lion’s heads, and around his brow a slim
coronet made of gold and sapphires. His hair was as bright as the metal. Sansa looked at
him and trembled, afraid that he might ignore her or, worse, turn hateful again and send
her weeping from the table.
Instead Joffrey smiled and kissed her hand, handsome and gallant as any prince in the
songs, and said, “Ser Loras has a keen eye for beauty, sweet lady.”
“He was too kind,” she demurred, trying to remain modest and calm, though her heart
was singing. “Ser Loras is a true knight. Do you think he will win tomorrow, my lord?”
“No,” Joffrey said. “My dog will do for him, or perhaps my uncle Jaime. And in a few
years, when I am old enough to enter the lists, I shall do for them all.” He raised his
hand to summon a servant with a flagon of iced summerwine, and poured her a cup. She
looked anxiously at Septa Mordane, until Joffrey leaned over and filled the septa’s cup as
well, so she nodded and thanked him graciously and said not another word.
The servants kept the cups filled all night, yet afterward Sansa could not recall ever
tasting the wine. She needed no wine. She was drunk on the magic of the night, giddy
with glamour, swept away by beauties she had dreamt of all her life and never dared
hope to know. Singers sat before the king’s pavilion, filling the dusk with music. A
juggler kept a cascade of burning clubs spinning through the air. The king’s own fool, the
pie-faced simpleton called Moon Boy, danced about on stilts, all in motley, making mock
of everyone with such deft cruelty that Sansa wondered if he was simple after all. Even
Septa Mordane was helpless before him; when he sang his little song about the High
Septon, she laughed so hard she spilled wine on herself.
And Joffrey was the soul of courtesy. He talked to Sansa all night, showering her with
compliments, making her laugh, sharing little bits of court gossip, explaining Moon
Boy’s japes. Sansa was so captivated that she quite forgot all her courtesies and ignored
Septa Mordane, seated to her left.
�All the while the courses came and went. A thick soup of barley and venison. Salads of
sweetgrass and spinach and plums, sprinkled with crushed nuts. Snails in honey and
garlic. Sansa had never eaten snails before; Joffrey showed her how to get the snail out
of the shell, and fed her the first sweet morsel himself. Then came trout fresh from the
river, baked in clay; her prince helped her crack open the hard casing to expose the flaky
white flesh within. And when the meat course was brought out, he served her himself,
slicing a queen’s portion from the joint, smiling as he laid it on her plate. She could see
from the way he moved that his right arm was still troubling him, yet he uttered not a
word of complaint.
Later came sweetbreads and pigeon pie and baked apples fragrant with cinnamon and
lemon cakes frosted in sugar, but by then Sansa was so stuffed that she could not
manage more than two little lemon cakes, as much as she loved them. She was
wondering whether she might attempt a third when the king began to shout.
King Robert had grown louder with each course. From time to time Sansa could hear
him laughing or roaring a command over the music and the clangor of plates and
cutlery, but they were too far away for her to make out his words.
Now everybody heard him. “No,” he thundered in a voice that drowned out all other
speech. Sansa was shocked to see the king on his feet, red of face, reeling. He had a
goblet of wine in one hand, and he was drunk as a man could be. “You do not tell me
what to do, woman,” he screamed at Queen Cersei. “I am king here, do you understand?
I rule here, and if I say that I will fight tomorrow, I will fight!”
Everyone was staring. Sansa saw Ser Barristan, and the king’s brother Renly, and the
short man who had talked to her so oddly and touched her hair, but no one made a move
to interfere. The queen’s face was a mask, so bloodless that it might have been sculpted
from snow. She rose from the table, gathered her skirts around her, and stormed off in
silence, servants trailing behind.
Jaime Lannister put a hand on the king’s shoulder, but the king shoved him away hard.
Lannister stumbled and fell. The king guffawed. “The great knight. I can still knock you
in the dirt. Remember that, Kingslayer.” He slapped his chest with the jeweled goblet,
splashing wine all over his satin tunic. “Give me my hammer and not a man in the realm
can stand before me!”
Jaime Lannister rose and brushed himself off. “As you say, Your Grace.” His voice was
stiff.
Lord Renly came forward, smiling. “You’ve spilled your wine, Robert. Let me bring you a
fresh goblet.”
�Sansa started as Joffrey laid his hand on her arm. “It grows late,” the prince said. He had
a queer look on his face, as if he were not seeing her at all. “Do you need an escort back
to the castle?”
“No,” Sansa began. She looked for Septa Mordane, and was startled to find her with her
head on the table, snoring soft and ladylike snores. “I mean to say . . . yes, thank you,
that would be most kind. I am tired, and the way is so dark. I should be glad for some
protection.”
Joffrey called out, “Dog!”
Sandor Clegane seemed to take form out of the night, so quickly did he appear. He had
exchanged his armor for a red woolen tunic with a leather dog’s head sewn on the front.
The light of the torches made his burned face shine a dull red. “Yes, Your Grace?” he said.
“Take my betrothed back to the castle, and see that no harm befalls her,” the prince told
him brusquely. And without even a word of farewell, Joffrey strode off, leaving her there.
Sansa could feel the Hound watching her. “Did you think Joff was going to take you
himself?” He laughed. He had a laugh like the snarling of dogs in a pit. “Small chance of
that.” He pulled her unresisting to her feet. “Come, you’re not the only one needs sleep.
I’ve drunk too much, and I may need to kill my brother tomorrow.” He laughed again.
Suddenly terrified, Sansa pushed at Septa Mordane’s shoulder, hoping to wake her, but
she only snored the louder. King Robert had stumbled off and half the benches were
suddenly empty. The feast was over, and the beautiful dream had ended with it.
The Hound snatched up a torch to light their way. Sansa followed close beside him. The
ground was rocky and uneven; the flickering light made it seem to shift and move
beneath her. She kept her eyes lowered, watching where she placed her feet. They
walked among the pavilions, each with its banner and its armor hung outside, the silence
weighing heavier with every step. Sansa could not bear the sight of him, he frightened
her so, yet she had been raised in all the ways of courtesy. A true lady would not notice
his face, she told herself. “You rode gallantly today, Ser Sandor,” she made herself say.
Sandor Clegane snarled at her. “Spare me your empty little compliments, girl . . . and
your ser’s. I am no knight. I spit on them and their vows. My brother is a knight. Did you
see him ride today?”
“Yes,” Sansa whispered, trembling. “He was . . .
�“Gallant?” the Hound finished.
He was mocking her, she realized. “No one could withstand him,” she managed at last,
proud of herself. It was no lie.
Sandor Clegane stopped suddenly in the middle of a dark and empty field. She had no
choice but to stop beside him. “Some septa trained you well. You’re like one of those
birds from the Summer Isles, aren’t you? A pretty little talking bird, repeating all the
pretty little words they taught you to recite.”
“That’s unkind.” Sansa could feel her heart fluttering in her chest. “You’re frightening
me. I want to go now.”
“No one could withstand him,” the Hound rasped. “That’s truth enough. No one could
ever withstand Gregor. That boy today, his second joust, oh, that was a pretty bit of
business. You saw that, did you? Fool boy, he had no business riding in this company.
No money, no squire, no one to help him with that armor. That gorget wasn’t fastened
proper. You think Gregor didn’t notice that? You think Ser Gregor’s lance rode up by
chance, do you? Pretty little talking girl, you believe that, you’re empty-headed as a bird
for true. Gregor’s lance goes where Gregor wants it to go. Look at me. Look at me!”
Sandor Clegane put a huge hand under her chin and forced her face up. He squatted in
front of her, and moved the torch close. “There’s a pretty for you. Take a good long stare.
You know you want to. I’ve watched you turning away all the way down the kingsroad.
Piss on that. Take your look.”
His fingers held her jaw as hard as an iron trap. His eyes watched hers. Drunken eyes,
sullen with anger. She had to look.
The right side of his face was gaunt, with sharp cheekbones and a grey eye beneath a
heavy brow. His nose was large and hooked, his hair thin, dark. He wore it long and
brushed it sideways, because no hair grew on the other side of that face.
The left side of his face was a ruin. His ear had been burned away; there was nothing left
but a hole. His eye was still good, but all around it was a twisted mass of scar, slick black
flesh hard as leather, pocked with craters and fissured by deep cracks that gleamed red
and wet when he moved. Down by his jaw, you could see a hint of bone where the flesh
had been seared away.
Sansa began to cry. He let go of her then, and snuffed out the torch in the dirt. “No
pretty words for that, girl? No little compliment the septa taught you?” When there was
no answer, he continued. “Most of them, they think it was some battle. A siege, a
burning tower, an enemy with a torch. One fool asked if it was dragonsbreath.” His laugh
�was softer this time, but just as bitter. “I’ll tell you what it was, girl,” he said, a voice from
the night, a shadow leaning so close now that she could smell the sour stench of wine on
his breath. “I was younger than you, six, maybe seven. A woodcarver set up shop in the
village under my father’s keep, and to buy favor he sent us gifts. The old man made
marvelous toys. I don’t remember what I got, but it was Gregor’s gift I wanted. A wooden
knight, all painted up, every joint pegged separate and fixed with strings, so you could
make him fight. Gregor is five years older than me, the toy was nothing to him, he was
already a squire, near six foot tall and muscled like an ox. So I took his knight, but there
was no joy to it, I tell you. I was scared all the while, and true enough, he found me.
There was a brazier in the room. Gregor never said a word, just picked me up under his
arm and shoved the side of my face down in the burning coals and held me there while I
screamed and screamed. You saw how strong he is. Even then, it took three grown men
to drag him off me. The septons preach about the seven hells. What do they know? Only
a man who’s been burned knows what hell is truly like.
“My father told everyone my bedding had caught fire, and our maester gave me
ointments. Ointments! Gregor got his ointments too. Four years later, they anointed him
with the seven oils and he recited his knightly vows and Rhaegar Targaryen tapped him
on the shoulder and said, ‘Arise, Ser Gregor.’ ”
The rasping voice trailed off. He squatted silently before her, a hulking black shape
shrouded in the night, hidden from her eyes. Sansa could hear his ragged breathing. She
was sad for him, she realized. Somehow, the fear had gone away.
The silence went on and on, so long that she began to grow afraid once more, but she
was afraid for him now, not for herself. She found his massive shoulder with her hand.
“He was no true knight,” she whispered to him.
The Hound threw back his head and roared. Sansa stumbled back, away from him, but
he caught her arm. “No,” he growled at her, “no, little bird, he was no true knight.”
The rest of the way into the city, Sandor Clegane said not a word. He led her to where the
carts were waiting, told a driver to take them back to the Red Keep, and climbed in after
her. They rode in silence through the King’s Gate and up torchlit city streets. He opened
the postern door and led her into the castle, his burned face twitching and his eyes
brooding, and he was one step behind her as they climbed the tower stairs. He took her
safe all the way to the corridor outside her bedchamber.
“Thank you, my lord,” Sansa said meekly.
The Hound caught her by the arm and leaned close. “The things I told you tonight,” he
said, his voice sounding even rougher than usual. “If you ever tell Joffrey . . . your sister,
�your father . . . any of them . . . ”
“I won’t,” Sansa whispered. “I promise.”
It was not enough. “If you ever tell anyone,” he finished, “I’ll kill you.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
I stood last vigil for him myself,” Ser Barristan Selmy said as they looked down at the
body in the back of the cart. “He had no one else. A mother in the Vale, I am told.”
In the pale dawn light, the young knight looked as though he were sleeping. He had not
been handsome, but death had smoothed his rough-hewn features and the silent sisters
had dressed him in his best velvet tunic, with a high collar to cover the ruin the lance
had made of his throat. Eddard Stark looked at his face, and wondered if it had been for
his sake that the boy had died. Slain by a Lannister bannerman before Ned could speak
to him; could that be mere happenstance? He supposed he would never know.
“Hugh was Jon Arryn’s squire for four years,” Selmy went on. “The king knighted him
before he rode north, in Jon’s memory. The lad wanted it desperately, yet I fear he was
not ready.”
Ned had slept badly last night and he felt tired beyond his years. “None of us is ever
ready,” he said.
“For knighthood?”
“For death.” Gently Ned covered the boy with his cloak, a bloodstained bit of blue
bordered in crescent moons. When his mother asked why her son was dead, he reflected
bitterly, they would tell her he had fought to honor the King’s Hand, Eddard Stark. “This
was needless. War should not be a game.” Ned turned to the woman beside the cart,
shrouded in grey, face hidden but for her eyes. The silent sisters prepared men for the
grave, and it was ill fortune to look on the face of death. “Send his armor home to the
Vale. The mother will want to have it.”
“It is worth a fair piece of silver,” Ser Barristan said. “The boy had it forged special for
the tourney. Plain work, but good. I do not know if he had finished paying the smith.”
“He paid yesterday, my lord, and he paid dearly,” Ned replied. And to the silent sister he
said, “Send the mother the armor. I will deal with this smith.” She bowed her head.
Afterward Ser Barristan walked with Ned to the king’s pavilion. The camp was beginning
to stir. Fat sausages sizzled and spit over firepits, spicing the air with the scents of garlic
�and pepper. Young squires hurried about on errands as their masters woke, yawning and
stretching, to meet the day. A serving man with a goose under his arm bent his knee
when he caught sight of them. “M’lords,” he muttered as the goose honked and pecked at
his fingers. The shields displayed outside each tent heralded its occupant: the silver
eagle of Seagard, Bryce Caron’s field of nightingales, a cluster of grapes for the
Redwynes, brindled boar, red ox, burning tree, white ram, triple spiral, purple unicorn,
dancing maiden, blackadder, twin towers, horned owl, and last the pure white blazons of
the Kingsguard, shining like the dawn.
“The king means to fight in the melee today,” Ser Barristan said as they were passing Ser
Meryn’s shield, its paint sullied by a deep gash where Loras Tyrell’s lance had scarred
the wood as he drove him from his saddle.
“Yes,” Ned said grimly. Jory had woken him last night to bring him that news. Small
wonder he had slept so badly.
Ser Barristan’s look was troubled. “They say night’s beauties fade at dawn, and the
children of wine are oft disowned in the morning light.”
“They say so,” Ned agreed, “but not of Robert.” Other men might reconsider words
spoken in drunken bravado, but Robert Baratheon would remember and, remembering,
would never back down.
The king’s pavilion was close by the water, and the morning mists off the river had
wreathed it in wisps of grey. It was all of golden silk, the largest and grandest structure
in the camp. Outside the entrance, Robert’s warhammer was displayed beside an
immense iron shield blazoned with the crowned stag of House Baratheon.
Ned had hoped to discover the king still abed in a wine-soaked sleep, but luck was not
with him. They found Robert drinking beer from a polished horn and roaring his
displeasure at two young squires who were trying to buckle him into his armor. “Your
Grace,” one was saying, almost in tears, “it’s made too small, it won’t go.” He fumbled,
and the gorget he was trying to fit around Robert’s thick neck tumbled to the ground.
“Seven hells!” Robert swore. “Do I have to do it myself? Piss on the both of you. Pick it
up. Don’t just stand there gaping, Lancel, pick it up!” The lad jumped, and the king
noticed his company. “Look at these oafs, Ned. My wife insisted I take these two to
squire for me, and they’re worse than useless. Can’t even put a man’s armor on him
properly. Squires, they say. I say they’re swineherds dressed up in silk.”
Ned only needed a glance to understand the difficulty. “The boys are not at fault,” he told
the king. “You’re too fat for your armor, Robert.”
�Robert Baratheon took a long swallow of beer, tossed the empty horn onto his sleeping
furs, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said darkly, “Fat? Fat, is it? Is that
how you speak to your king?” He let go his laughter, sudden as a storm. “Ah, damn you,
Ned, why are you always right?”
The squires smiled nervously until the king turned on them. “You. Yes, both of you. You
heard the Hand. The king is too fat for his armor. Go find Ser Aron Santagar. Tell him I
need the breastplate stretcher. Now! What are you waiting for?”
The boys tripped over each other in their haste to be quit of the tent. Robert managed to
keep a stern face until they were gone. Then he dropped back into a chair, shaking with
laughter.
Ser Barristan Selmy chuckled with him. Even Eddard Stark managed a smile. Always,
though, the graver thoughts crept in. He could not help taking note of the two squires:
handsome boys, fair and well made. One was Sansa’s age, with long golden curls; the
other perhaps fifteen, sandy-haired, with a wisp of a mustache and the emerald-green
eyes of the queen.
“Ah, I wish I could be there to see Santagar’s face,” Robert said. “I hope he’ll have the wit
to send them to someone else. We ought to keep them running all day!”
“Those boys,” Ned asked him. “Lannisters?”
Robert nodded, wiping tears from his eyes. “Cousins. Sons of Lord Tywin’s brother. One
of the dead ones. Or perhaps the live one, now that I come to think on it. I don’t recall.
My wife comes from a very large family, Ned.”
A very ambitious family, Ned thought. He had nothing against the squires, but it
troubled him to see Robert surrounded by the queen’s kin, waking and sleeping. The
Lannister appetite for offices and honors seemed to know no bounds. “The talk is you
and the queen had angry words last night.”
The mirth curdled on Robert’s face. “The woman tried to forbid me to fight in the melee.
She’s sulking in the castle now, damn her. Your sister would never have shamed me like
that.”
“You never knew Lyanna as I did, Robert,” Ned told him. “You saw her beauty, but not
the iron underneath. She would have told you that you have no business in the melee.”
“You too?” The king frowned. “You are a sour man, Stark. Too long in the north, all the
�juices have frozen inside you. Well, mine are still running.” He slapped his chest to prove
it.
“You are the king,” Ned reminded him.
“I sit on the damn iron seat when I must. Does that mean I don’t have the same hungers
as other men? A bit of wine now and again, a girl squealing in bed, the feel of a horse
between my legs? Seven hells, Ned, I want to hit someone.”
Ser Barristan Selmy spoke up. “Your Grace,” he said, “it is not seemly that the king
should ride into the melee. It would not be a fair contest. Who would dare strike you?”
Robert seemed honestly taken aback. “Why, all of them, damn it. If they can. And the
last man left standing . . . ”
“ . . . will be you,” Ned finished. He saw at once that Selmy had hit the mark. The dangers
of the melee were only a savor to Robert, but this touched on his pride. “Ser Barristan is
right. There’s not a man in the Seven Kingdoms who would dare risk your displeasure by
hurting you.”
The king rose to his feet, his face flushed. “Are you telling me those prancing cravens will
let me win?”
“For a certainty,” Ned said, and Ser Barristan Selmy bowed his head in silent accord.
For a moment Robert was so angry he could not speak. He strode across the tent,
whirled, strode back, his face dark and angry. He snatched up his breastplate from the
ground and threw it at Barristan Selmy in a wordless fury. Selmy dodged. “Get out,” the
king said then, coldly. “Get out before I kill you.”
Ser Barristan left quickly. Ned was about to follow when the king called out again. “Not
you, Ned.”
Ned turned back. Robert took up his horn again, filled it with beer from a barrel in the
corner, and thrust it at Ned. “Drink,” he said brusquely.
“I’ve no thirst—”
“Drink. Your king commands it.”
Ned took the horn and drank. The beer was black and thick, so strong it stung the eyes.
�Robert sat down again. “Damn you, Ned Stark. You and Jon Arryn, I loved you both.
What have you done to me? You were the one should have been king, you or Jon.”
“You had the better claim, Your Grace.”
“I told you to drink, not to argue. You made me king, you could at least have the courtesy
to listen when I talk, damn you. Look at me, Ned. Look at what kinging has done to me.
Gods, too fat for my armor, how did it ever come to this?”
“Robert . . . ”
“Drink and stay quiet, the king is talking. I swear to you, I was never so alive as when I
was winning this throne, or so dead as now that I’ve won it. And Cersei . . . I have Jon
Arryn to thank for her. I had no wish to marry after Lyanna was taken from me, but Jon
said the realm needed an heir. Cersei Lannister would be a good match, he told me, she
would bind Lord Tywin to me should Viserys Targaryen ever try to win back his father’s
throne.” The king shook his head. “I loved that old man, I swear it, but now I think he
was a bigger fool than Moon Boy. Oh, Cersei is lovely to look at, truly, but cold . . . the
way she guards her cunt, you’d think she had all the gold of Casterly Rock between her
legs. Here, give me that beer if you won’t drink it.” He took the horn, upended it,
belched, wiped his mouth. “I am sorry for your girl, Ned. Truly. About the wolf, I mean.
My son was lying, I’d stake my soul on it. My son . . . you love your children, don’t you?”
“With all my heart,” Ned said.
“Let me tell you a secret, Ned. More than once, I have dreamed of giving up the crown.
Take ship for the Free Cities with my horse and my hammer, spend my time warring and
whoring, that’s what I was made for. The sellsword king, how the singers would love me.
You know what stops me? The thought of Joffrey on the throne, with Cersei standing
behind him whispering in his ear. My son. How could I have made a son like that, Ned?”
“He’s only a boy,” Ned said awkwardly. He had small liking for Prince Joffrey, but he
could hear the pain in Robert’s voice. “Have you forgotten how wild you were at his age?”
“It would not trouble me if the boy was wild, Ned. You don’t know him as I do.” He
sighed and shook his head. “Ah, perhaps you are right. Jon despaired of me often
enough, yet I grew into a good king.” Robert looked at Ned and scowled at his silence.
“You might speak up and agree now, you know.”
“Your Grace . . . ” Ned began, carefully.
�Robert slapped Ned on the back. “Ah, say that I’m a better king than Aerys and be done
with it. You never could lie for love nor honor, Ned Stark. I’m still young, and now that
you’re here with me, things will be different. We’ll make this a reign to sing of, and damn
the Lannisters to seven hells. I smell bacon. Who do you think our champion will be
today? Have you seen Mace Tyrell’s boy? The Knight of Flowers, they call him. Now
there’s a son any man would be proud to own to. Last tourney, he dumped the
Kingslayer on his golden rump, you ought to have seen the look on Cersei’s face. I
laughed till my sides hurt. Renly says he has this sister, a maid of fourteen, lovely as a
dawn . . . ”
They broke their fast on black bread and boiled goose eggs and fish fried up with onions
and bacon, at a trestle table by the river’s edge. The king’s melancholy melted away with
the morning mist, and before long Robert was eating an orange and waxing fond about a
morning at the Eyrie when they had been boys. “ . . . had given Jon a barrel of oranges,
remember? Only the things had gone rotten, so I flung mine across the table and hit
Dacks right in the nose. You remember, Redfort’s pock-faced squire? He tossed one back
at me, and before Jon could so much as fart, there were oranges flying across the High
Hall in every direction.” He laughed uproariously, and even Ned smiled, remembering.
This was the boy he had grown up with, he thought; this was the Robert Baratheon he’d
known and loved. If he could prove that the Lannisters were behind the attack on Bran,
prove that they had murdered Jon Arryn, this man would listen. Then Cersei would fall,
and the Kingslayer with her, and if Lord Tywin dared to rouse the west, Robert would
smash him as he had smashed Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident. He could see it all so
clearly.
That breakfast tasted better than anything Eddard Stark had eaten in a long time, and
afterward his smiles came easier and more often, until it was time for the tournament to
resume.
Ned walked with the king to the jousting field. He had promised to watch the final tilts
with Sansa; Septa Mordane was ill today, and his daughter was determined not to miss
the end of the jousting. As he saw Robert to his place, he noted that Cersei Lannister had
chosen not to appear; the place beside the king was empty. That too gave Ned cause to
hope.
He shouldered his way to where his daughter was seated and found her as the horns
blew for the day’s first joust. Sansa was so engrossed she scarcely seemed to notice his
arrival.
Sandor Clegane was the first rider to appear. He wore an olive- green cloak over his sootgrey armor. That, and his hound’s-head helm, were his only concession to ornament.
�“A hundred golden dragons on the Kingslayer,” Littlefinger announced loudly as Jaime
Lannister entered the lists, riding an elegant blood bay destrier. The horse wore a
blanket of gilded ringmail, and Jaime glittered from head to heel. Even his lance was
fashioned from the golden wood of the Summer Isles.
“Done,” Lord Renly shouted back. “The Hound has a hungry look about him this
morning.”
“Even hungry dogs know better than to bite the hand that feeds them,” Littlefinger called
dryly.
Sandor Clegane dropped his visor with an audible clang and took up his position. Ser
Jaime tossed a kiss to some woman in the commons, gently lowered his visor, and rode
to the end of the lists. Both men couched their lances.
Ned Stark would have loved nothing so well as to see them both lose, but Sansa was
watching it all moist-eyed and eager. The hastily erected gallery trembled as the horses
broke into a gallop. The Hound leaned forward as he rode, his lance rock steady, but
Jaime shifted his seat deftly in the instant before impact. Clegane’s point was turned
harmlessly against the golden shield with the lion blazon, while his own hit square.
Wood shattered, and the Hound reeled, fighting to keep his seat. Sansa gasped. A ragged
cheer went up from the commons.
“I wonder how I ought spend your money,” Littlefinger called down to Lord Renly.
The Hound just managed to stay in his saddle. He jerked his mount around hard and
rode back to the lists for the second pass. Jaime Lannister tossed down his broken lance
and snatched up a fresh one, jesting with his squire. The Hound spurred forward at a
hard gallop. Lannister rode to meet him. This time, when Jaime shifted his seat, Sandor
Clegane shifted with him. Both lances exploded, and by the time the splinters had
settled, a riderless blood bay was trotting off in search of grass while Ser Jaime Lannister
rolled in the dirt, golden and dented.
Sansa said, “I knew the Hound would win.”
Littlefinger overheard. “If you know who’s going to win the second match, speak up now
before Lord Renly plucks me clean,” he called to her. Ned smiled.
“A pity the Imp is not here with us,” Lord Renly said. “I should have won twice as much.”
Jaime Lannister was back on his feet, but his ornate lion helmet had been twisted
�around and dented in his fall, and now he could not get it off. The commons were
hooting and pointing, the lords and ladies were trying to stifle their chuckles, and failing,
and over it all Ned could hear King Robert laughing, louder than anyone. Finally they
had to lead the Lion of Lannister off to a blacksmith, blind and stumbling.
By then Ser Gregor Clegane was in position at the head of the lists. He was huge, the
biggest man that Eddard Stark had ever seen. Robert Baratheon and his brothers were
all big men, as was the Hound, and back at Winterfell there was a simpleminded
stableboy named Hodor who dwarfed them all, but the knight they called the Mountain
That Rides would have towered over Hodor. He was well over seven feet tall, closer to
eight, with massive shoulders and arms thick as the trunks of small trees. His destrier
seemed a pony in between his armored legs, and the lance he carried looked as small as a
broom handle.
Unlike his brother, Ser Gregor did not live at court. He was a solitary man who seldom
left his own lands, but for wars and tourneys. He had been with Lord Tywin when King’s
Landing fell, a new-made knight of seventeen years, even then distinguished by his size
and his implacable ferocity. Some said it had been Gregor who’d dashed the skull of the
infant prince Aegon Targaryen against a wall, and whispered that afterward he had
raped the mother, the Dornish princess Elia, before putting her to the sword. These
things were not said in Gregor’s hearing.
Ned Stark could not recall ever speaking to the man, though Gregor had ridden with
them during Balon Greyjoy’s rebellion, one knight among thousands. He watched him
with disquiet. Ned seldom put much stock in gossip, but the things said of Ser Gregor
were more than ominous. He was soon to be married for the third time, and one heard
dark whisperings about the deaths of his first two wives. It was said that his keep was a
grim place where servants disappeared unaccountably and even the dogs were afraid to
enter the hall. And there had been a sister who had died young under queer
circumstances, and the fire that had disfigured his brother, and the hunting accident
that had killed their father. Gregor had inherited the keep, the gold, and the family
estates. His younger brother Sandor had left the same day to take service with the
Lannisters as a sworn sword, and it was said that he had never returned, not even to visit.
When the Knight of Flowers made his entrance, a murmur ran through the crowd, and
he heard Sansa’s fervent whisper, “Oh, he’s so beautiful.” Ser Loras Tyrell was slender as
a reed, dressed in a suit of fabulous silver armor polished to a blinding sheen and
filigreed with twining black vines and tiny blue forget-me-nots. The commons realized in
the same instant as Ned that the blue of the flowers came from sapphires; a gasp went
up from a thousand throats. Across the boy’s shoulders his cloak hung heavy. It was
woven of forget-me-nots, real ones, hundreds of fresh blooms sewn to a heavy woolen
cape.
�His courser was as slim as her rider, a beautiful grey mare, built for speed. Ser Gregor’s
huge stallion trumpeted as he caught her scent. The boy from Highgarden did something
with his legs, and his horse pranced sideways, nimble as a dancer. Sansa clutched at his
arm. “Father, don’t let Ser Gregor hurt him,” she said. Ned saw she was wearing the rose
that Ser Loras had given her yesterday. Jory had told him about that as well.
“These are tourney lances,” he told his daughter. “They make them to splinter on impact,
so no one is hurt.” Yet he remembered the dead boy in the cart with his cloak of crescent
moons, and the words were raw in his throat.
Ser Gregor was having trouble controlling his horse. The stallion was screaming and
pawing the ground, shaking his head. The Mountain kicked at the animal savagely with
an armored boot. The horse reared and almost threw him.
The Knight of Flowers saluted the king, rode to the far end of the list, and couched his
lance, ready. Ser Gregor brought his animal to the line, fighting with the reins. And
suddenly it began. The Mountain’s stallion broke in a hard gallop, plunging forward
wildly, while the mare charged as smooth as a flow of silk. Ser Gregor wrenched his
shield into position, juggled with his lance, and all the while fought to hold his unruly
mount on a straight line, and suddenly Loras Tyrell was on him, placing the point of his
lance just there, and in an eye blink the Mountain was failing. He was so huge that he
took his horse down with him in a tangle of steel and flesh.
Ned heard applause, cheers, whistles, shocked gasps, excited muttering, and over it all
the rasping, raucous laughter of the Hound. The Knight of Flowers reined up at the end
of the lists. His lance was not even broken. His sapphires winked in the sun as he raised
his visor, smiling. The commons went mad for him.
In the middle of the field, Ser Gregor Clegane disentangled himself and came boiling to
his feet. He wrenched off his helm and slammed it down onto the ground. His face was
dark with fury and his hair fell down into his eyes. “My sword,” he shouted to his squire,
and the boy ran it out to him. By then his stallion was back on its feet as well.
Gregor Clegane killed the horse with a single blow of such ferocity that it half severed the
animal’s neck. Cheers turned to shrieks in a heartbeat. The stallion went to its knees,
screaming as it died. By then Gregor was striding down the lists toward Ser Loras Tyrell,
his bloody sword clutched in his fist. “Stop him!” Ned shouted, but his words were lost in
the roar. Everyone else was yelling as well, and Sansa was crying.
It all happened so fast. The Knight of Flowers was shouting for his own sword as Ser
Gregor knocked his squire aside and made a grab for the reins of his horse. The mare
scented blood and reared. Loras Tyrell kept his seat, but barely. Ser Gregor swung his
�sword, a savage two-handed blow that took the boy in the chest and knocked him from
the saddle. The courser dashed away in panic as Ser Loras lay stunned in the dirt. But as
Gregor lifted his sword for the killing blow, a rasping voice warned, “Leave him be,” and
a steel-clad hand wrenched him away from the boy.
The Mountain pivoted in wordless fury, swinging his longsword in a killing arc with all
his massive strength behind it, but the Hound caught the blow and turned it, and for
what seemed an eternity the two brothers stood hammering at each other as a dazed
Loras Tyrell was helped to safety. Thrice Ned saw Ser Gregor aim savage blows at the
hound’s-head helmet, yet not once did Sandor send a cut at his brother’s unprotected
face.
It was the king’s voice that put an end to it . . . the king’s voice and twenty swords. Jon
Arryn had told them that a commander needs a good battlefield voice, and Robert had
proved the truth of that on the Trident. He used that voice now. “STOP THIS
MADNESS,” he boomed, “IN THE NAME OF YOUR KING!”
The Hound went to one knee. Ser Gregor’s blow cut air, and at last he came to his senses.
He dropped his sword and glared at Robert, surrounded by his Kingsguard and a dozen
other knights and guardsmen. Wordlessly, he turned and strode off, shoving past
Barristan Selmy. “Let him go,” Robert said, and as quickly as that, it was over.
“Is the Hound the champion now?” Sansa asked Ned.
“No,” he told her. “There will be one final joust, between the Hound and the Knight of
Flowers.”
But Sansa had the right of it after all. A few moments later Ser Loras Tyrell walked back
onto the field in a simple linen doublet and said to Sandor Clegane, “I owe you my life.
The day is yours, ser.”
“I am no ser,” the Hound replied, but he took the victory, and the champion’s purse,
and, for perhaps the first time in his life, the love of the commons. They cheered him as
he left the lists to return to his pavilion.
As Ned walked with Sansa to the archery field, Littlefinger and Lord Renly and some of
the others fell in with them. “Tyrell had to know the mare was in heat,” Littlefinger was
saying. “I swear the boy planned the whole thing. Gregor has always favored huge, illtempered stallions with more spirit than sense.” The notion seemed to amuse him.
It did not amuse Ser Barristan Selmy. “There is small honor in tricks,” the old man said
stiffly.
�“Small honor and twenty thousand golds.” Lord Renly smiled.
That afternoon a boy named Anguy, an unheralded commoner from the Dornish
Marches, won the archery competition, outshooting Ser Balon Swann and Jalabhar Xho
at a hundred paces after all the other bowmen had been eliminated at the shorter
distances. Ned sent Alyn to seek him out and offer him a position with the Hand’s guard,
but the boy was flush with wine and victory and riches undreamed of, and he refused.
The melee went on for three hours. Near forty men took part, freeriders and hedge
knights and new-made squires in search of a reputation. They fought with blunted
weapons in a chaos of mud and blood, small troops fighting together and then turning
on each other as alliances formed and fractured, until only one man was left standing.
The victor was the red priest, Thoros of Myr, a madman who shaved his head and fought
with a flaming sword. He had won melees before; the fire sword frightened the mounts
of the other riders, and nothing frightened Thoros. The final tally was three broken
limbs, a shattered collarbone, a dozen smashed fingers, two horses that had to be put
down, and more cuts, sprains, and bruises than anyone cared to count. Ned was
desperately pleased that Robert had not taken part.
That night at the feast, Eddard Stark was more hopeful than he had been in a great
while. Robert was in high good humor, the Lannisters were nowhere to be seen, and
even his daughters were behaving. Jory brought Arya down to join them, and Sansa
spoke to her sister pleasantly. “The tournament was magnificent,” she sighed. “You
should have come. How was your dancing?”
“I’m sore all over,” Arya reported happily, proudly displaying a huge purple bruise on
her leg.
“You must be a terrible dancer,” Sansa said doubtfully.
Later, while Sansa was off listening to a troupe of singers perform the complex round of
interwoven ballads called the “Dance of the Dragons,” Ned inspected the bruise himself.
“I hope Forel is not being too hard on you,” he said.
Arya stood on one leg. She was getting much better at that of late. “Syrio says that every
hurt is a lesson, and every lesson makes you better.”
Ned frowned. The man Syrio Forel had come with an excellent reputation, and his
flamboyant Braavosi style was well suited to Arya’s slender blade, yet still . . . a few days
ago, she had been wandering around with a swatch of black silk tied over her eyes. Syrio
was teaching her to see with her ears and her nose and her skin, she told him. Before
�that, he had her doing spins and back flips. “Arya, are you certain you want to persist in
this?”
She nodded. “Tomorrow we’re going to catch cats.”
“Cats.” Ned sighed. “Perhaps it was a mistake to hire this Braavosi. If you like, I will ask
Jory to take over your lessons. Or I might have a quiet word with Ser Barristan. He was
the finest sword in the Seven Kingdoms in his youth.”
“I don’t want them,” Arya said. “I want Syrio.”
Ned ran his fingers through his hair. Any decent master-at-arms could give Arya the
rudiments of slash-and-parry without this nonsense of blindfolds, cartwheels, and
hopping about on one leg, but he knew his youngest daughter well enough to know there
was no arguing with that stubborn jut of jaw. “As you wish,” he said. Surely she would
grow tired of this soon. “Try to be careful.”
“I will,” she promised solemnly as she hopped smoothly from her right leg to her left.
Much later, after he had taken the girls back through the city and seen them both safe in
bed, Sansa with her dreams and Arya with her bruises, Ned ascended to his own
chambers atop the Tower of the Hand. The day had been warm and the room was close
and stuffy. Ned went to the window and unfastened the heavy shutters to let in the cool
night air. Across the Great Yard, he noticed the flickering glow of candlelight from
Littlefinger’s windows. The hour was well past midnight. Down by the river, the revels
were only now beginning to dwindle and die.
He took out the dagger and studied it. Littlefinger’s blade, won by Tyrion Lannister in a
tourney wager, sent to slay Bran in his sleep. Why? Why would the dwarf want Bran
dead? Why would anyone want Bran dead?
The dagger, Bran’s fall, all of it was linked somehow to the murder of Jon Arryn, he
could feel it in his gut, but the truth of Jon’s death remained as clouded to him as when
he had started. Lord Stannis had not returned to King’s Landing for the tourney. Lysa
Arryn held her silence behind the high walls of the Eyrie. The squire was dead, and Jory
was still searching the whorehouses. What did he have but Robert’s bastard?
That the armorer’s sullen apprentice was the king’s son, Ned had no doubt. The
Baratheon look was stamped on his face, in his jaw, his eyes, that black hair. Renly was
too young to have fathered a boy of that age, Stannis too cold and proud in his honor.
Gendry had to be Robert’s.
�Yet knowing all that, what had he learned? The king had other baseborn children
scattered throughout the Seven Kingdoms. He had openly acknowledged one of his
bastards, a boy of Bran’s age whose mother was highborn. The lad was being fostered by
Lord Renly’s castellan at Storm’s End.
Ned remembered Robert’s first child as well, a daughter born in the Vale when Robert
was scarcely more than a boy himself. A sweet little girl; the young lord of Storm’s End
had doted on her. He used to make daily visits to play with the babe, long after he had
lost interest in the mother. Ned was often dragged along for company, whether he willed
it or not. The girl would be seventeen or eighteen now, he realized; older than Robert
had been when he fathered her. A strange thought.
Cersei could not have been pleased by her lord husband’s by-blows, yet in the end it
mattered little whether the king had one bastard or a hundred. Law and custom gave the
baseborn few rights. Gendry, the girl in the Vale, the boy at Storm’s End, none of them
could threaten Robert’s trueborn children . . .
His musings were ended by a soft rap on his door. “A man to see you, my lord,” Harwin
called. “He will not give his name.”
“Send him in,” Ned said, wondering.
The visitor was a stout man in cracked, mud-caked boots and a heavy brown robe of the
coarsest roughspun, his features hidden by a cowl, his hands drawn up into voluminous
sleeves.
“Who are you?” Ned asked.
“A friend,” the cowled man said in a strange, low voice. “We must speak alone, Lord
Stark.”
Curiosity was stronger than caution. “Harwin, leave us,” he commanded. Not until they
were alone behind closed doors did his visitor draw back his cowl.
“Lord Varys?” Ned said in astonishment.
“Lord Stark,” Varys said politely, seating himself. “I wonder if I might trouble you for a
drink?”
Ned filled two cups with summerwine and handed one to Varys. “I might have passed
within a foot of you and never recognized you,” he said, incredulous. He had never seen
the eunuch dress in anything but silk and velvet and the richest damasks, and this man
�smelled of sweat instead of lilacs.
“That was my dearest hope,” Varys said. “It would not do if certain people learned that
we had spoken in private. The queen watches you closely. This wine is very choice.
Thank you.”
“How did you get past my other guards?” Ned asked. Porther and Cayn had been posted
outside the tower, and Alyn on the stairs.
“The Red Keep has ways known only to ghosts and spiders.” Varys smiled apologetically.
“I will not keep you long, my lord. There are things you must know. You are the King’s
Hand, and the king is a fool.” The eunuch’s cloying tones were gone; now his voice was
thin and sharp as a whip. “Your friend, I know, yet a fool nonetheless . . . and doomed,
unless you save him. Today was a near thing. They had hoped to kill him during the
melee.”
For a moment Ned was speechless with shock. “Who?”
Varys sipped his wine. “If I truly need to tell you that, you are a bigger fool than Robert
and I am on the wrong side.”
“The Lannisters,” Ned said. “The queen . . . no, I will not believe that, not even of Cersei.
She asked him not to fight!”
“She forbade him to fight, in front of his brother, his knights, and half the court. Tell me
truly, do you know any surer way to force King Robert into the melee? I ask you.”
Ned had a sick feeling in his gut. The eunuch had hit upon a truth; tell Robert Baratheon
he could not, should not, or must not do a thing, and it was as good as done. “Even if
he’d fought, who would have dared to strike the king?”
Varys shrugged. “There were forty riders in the melee. The Lannisters have many
friends. Amidst all that chaos, with horses screaming and bones breaking and Thoros of
Myr waving that absurd firesword of his, who could name it murder if some chance blow
felled His Grace?” He went to the flagon and refilled his cup. “After the deed was done,
the slayer would be beside himself with grief. I can almost hear him weeping. So sad. Yet
no doubt the gracious and compassionate widow would take pity, lift the poor
unfortunate to his feet, and bless him with a gentle kiss of forgiveness. Good King
Joffrey would have no choice but to pardon him.” The eunuch stroked his cheek. “Or
perhaps Cersei would let Ser Ilyn strike off his head. Less risk for the Lannisters that
way, though quite an unpleasant surprise for their little friend.”
�Ned felt his anger rise. “You knew of this plot, and yet you did nothing.”
“I command whisperers, not warriors.”
“You might have come to me earlier.”
“Oh, yes, I confess it. And you would have rushed straight to the king, yes? And when
Robert heard of his peril, what would he have done? I wonder.”
Ned considered that. “He would have damned them all, and fought anyway, to show he
did not fear them.”
Varys spread his hands. “I will make another confession, Lord Eddard. I was curious to
see what you would do. Why not come to me? you ask, and I must answer, Why, because
I did not trust you, my lord.”
“You did not trust me?” Ned was frankly astonished.
“The Red Keep shelters two sorts of people, Lord Eddard,” Varys said. “Those who are
loyal to the realm, and those who are loyal only to themselves. Until this morning, I
could not say which you might be . . . so I waited to see . . . and now I know, for a
certainty.” He smiled a plump tight little smile, and for a moment his private face and
public mask were one. “I begin to comprehend why the queen fears you so much. Oh, yes
I do.”
“You are the one she ought to fear,” Ned said.
“No. I am what I am. The king makes use of me, but it shames him. A most puissant
warrior is our Robert, and such a manly man has little love for sneaks and spies and
eunuchs. If a day should come when Cersei whispers, ‘Kill that man,’ Ilyn Payne will
snick my head off in a twinkling, and who will mourn poor Varys then? North or south,
they sing no songs for spiders.” He reached out and touched Ned with a soft hand. “But
you, Lord Stark . . . I think . . . no, I know . . . he would not kill you, not even for his
queen, and there may lie our salvation.”
It was all too much. For a moment Eddard Stark wanted nothing so much as to return to
Winterfell, to the clean simplicity of the north, where the enemies were winter and the
wildlings beyond the Wall. “Surely Robert has other loyal friends,” he protested. “His
brothers, his—”
“—wife?” Varys finished, with a smile that cut. “His brothers hate the Lannisters, true
enough, but hating the queen and loving the king are not quite the same thing, are they?
�Ser Barristan loves his honor, Grand Maester Pycelle loves his office, and Littlefinger
loves Littlefinger.”
“The Kingsguard—”
“A paper shield,” the eunuch said. “Try not to look so shocked, Lord Stark. Jaime
Lannister is himself a Sworn Brother of the White Swords, and we all know what his
oath is worth. The days when men like Ryam Redwyne and Prince Aemon the
Dragonknight wore the white cloak are gone to dust and song. Of these seven, only Ser
Barristan Selmy is made of the true steel, and Selmy is old. Ser Boros and Ser Meryn are
the queen’s creatures to the bone, and I have deep suspicions of the others. No, my lord,
when the swords come out in earnest, you will be the only true friend Robert Baratheon
will have.”
“Robert must be told,” Ned said. “If what you say is true, if even a part of it is true, the
king must hear it for himself.”
“And what proof shall we lay before him? My words against theirs? My little birds
against the queen and the Kingslayer, against his brothers and his council, against the
Wardens of East and West, against all the might of Casterly Rock? Pray, send for Ser Ilyn
directly, it will save us all some time. I know where that road ends.”
“Yet if what you say is true, they will only bide their time and make another attempt.”
“Indeed they will,” said Varys, “and sooner rather than later, I do fear. You are making
them most anxious, Lord Eddard. But my little birds will be listening, and together we
may be able to forestall them, you and I.” He rose and pulled up his cowl so his face was
hidden once more. “Thank you for the wine. We will speak again. When you see me next
at council, be certain to treat me with your accustomed contempt. You should not find it
difficult.”
He was at the door when Ned called, “Varys.” The eunuch turned back. “How did Jon
Arryn die?”
“I wondered when you would get around to that.”
“Tell me.”
“The tears of Lys, they call it. A rare and costly thing, clear and sweet as water, and it
leaves no trace. I begged Lord Arryn to use a taster, in this very room I begged him, but
he would not hear of it. Only one who was less than a man would even think of such a
thing, he told me.”
�Ned had to know the rest. “Who gave him the poison?”
“Some dear sweet friend who often shared meat and mead with him, no doubt. Oh, but
which one? There were many such. Lord Arryn was a kindly, trusting man.” The eunuch
sighed. “There was one boy. All he was, he owed Jon Arryn, but when the widow fled to
the Eyrie with her household, he stayed in King’s Landing and prospered. It always
gladdens my heart to see the young rise in the world.” The whip was in his voice again,
every word a stroke. “He must have cut a gallant figure in the tourney, him in his bright
new armor, with those crescent moons on his cloak. A pity he died so untimely, before
you could talk to him . . . ”
Ned felt half-poisoned himself. “The squire,” he said. “Ser Hugh.” Wheels within wheels
within wheels. Ned’s head was pounding. “Why? Why now? Jon Arryn had been Hand
for fourteen years. What was he doing that they had to kill him?”
“Asking questions,” Varys said, slipping out the door.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
TYRION
As he stood in the predawn chill watching Chiggen butcher his horse, Tyrion Lannister
chalked up one more debt owed the Starks. Steam rose from inside the carcass when the
squat sellsword opened the belly with his skinning knife. His hands moved deftly, with
never a wasted cut; the work had to be done quickly, before the stink of blood brought
shadowcats down from the heights.
“None of us will go hungry tonight,” Bronn said. He was near a shadow himself; bone
thin and bone hard, with black eyes and black hair and a stubble of beard.
“Some of us may,” Tyrion told him. “I am not fond of eating horse. Particularly my
horse.”
“Meat is meat,” Bronn said with a shrug. “The Dothraki like horse more than beef or
pork.”
“Do you take me for a Dothraki?” Tyrion asked sourly. The Dothraki ate horse, in truth;
they also left deformed children out for the feral dogs who ran behind their khalasars.
Dothraki customs had scant appeal for him.
Chiggen sliced a thin strip of bloody meat off the carcass and held it up for inspection.
“Want a taste, dwarf?”
“My brother Jaime gave me that mare for my twenty-third name day,” Tyrion said in a
flat voice.
“Thank him for us, then. If you ever see him again.” Chiggen grinned, showing yellow
teeth, and swallowed the raw meat in two bites. “Tastes well bred.”
“Better if you fry it up with onions,” Bronn put in.
Wordlessly, Tyrion limped away. The cold had settled deep in his bones, and his legs
were so sore he could scarcely walk. Perhaps his dead mare was the lucky one. He had
hours more riding ahead of him, followed by a few mouthfuls of food and a short, cold
sleep on hard ground, and then another night of the same, and another, and another,
and the gods only knew how it would end. “Damn her,” he muttered as he struggled up
�the road to rejoin his captors, remembering, “damn her and all the Starks.”
The memory was still bitter. One moment he’d been ordering supper, and an eye blink
later he was facing a room of armed men, with Jyck reaching for a sword and the fat
innkeep shrieking, “No swords, not here, please, m’lords.”
Tyrion wrenched down Jyck’s arm hurriedly, before he got them both hacked to pieces.
“Where are your courtesies, Jyck? Our good hostess said no swords. Do as she asks.” He
forced a smile that must have looked as queasy as it felt. “You’re making a sad mistake,
Lady Stark. I had no part in any attack on your son. On my honor—”
“Lannister honor,” was all she said. She held up her hands for all the room to see. “His
dagger left these scars. The blade he sent to open my son’s throat.”
Tyrion felt the anger all around him, thick and smoky, fed by the deep cuts in the Stark
woman’s hands. “Kill him,” hissed some drunken slattern from the back, and other
voices took up the call, faster than he would have believed. Strangers all, friendly enough
only a moment ago, and yet now they cried for his blood like hounds on a trail.
Tyrion spoke up loudly, trying to keep the quaver from his voice. “If Lady Stark believes
I have some crime to answer for, I will go with her and answer for it.”
It was the only possible course. Trying to cut their way out of this was a sure invitation to
an early grave. A good dozen swords had responded to the Stark woman’s plea for help:
the Harrenhal man, the three Brackens, a pair of unsavory sellswords who looked as
though they’d kill him as soon as spit, and some fool field hands who doubtless had no
idea what they were doing. Against that, what did Tyrion have? A dagger at his belt, and
two men. Jyck swung a fair enough sword, but Morrec scarcely counted; he was part
groom, part cook, part body servant, and no soldier. As for Yoren, whatever his feelings
might have been, the black brothers were sworn to take no part in the quarrels of the
realm. Yoren would do nothing.
And indeed, the black brother stepped aside silently when the old knight by Catelyn
Stark’s side said, “Take their weapons,” and the sellsword Bronn stepped forward to pull
the sword from Jyck’s fingers and relieve them all of their daggers. “Good,” the old man
said as the tension in the common room ebbed palpably, “excellent.” Tyrion recognized
the gruff voice; Winterfell’s master-at-arms, shorn of his whiskers.
Scarlet-tinged spittle flew from the fat innkeep’s mouth as she begged of Catelyn Stark,
“Don’t kill him here!”
“Don’t kill him anywhere,” Tyrion urged.
�“Take him somewheres else, no blood here, m’lady, I wants no high lordlin’s quarrels.”
“We are taking him back to Winterfell,” she said, and Tyrion thought, Well,
perhaps . . . By then he’d had a moment to glance over the room and get a better idea of
the situation. He was not altogether displeased by what he saw. Oh, the Stark woman
had been clever, no doubt of it. Force them to make a public affirmation of the oaths
sworn her father by the lords they served, and then call on them for succor, and her a
woman, yes, that was sweet. Yet her success was not as complete as she might have
liked. There were close to fifty in the common room by his rough count. Catelyn Stark’s
plea had roused a bare dozen; the others looked confused, or frightened, or sullen. Only
two of the Freys had stirred, Tyrion noted, and they’d sat back down quick enough when
their captain failed to move. He might have smiled if he’d dared.
“Winterfell it is, then,” he said instead. That was a long ride, as he could well attest,
having just ridden it the other way. So many things could happen along the way. “My
father will wonder what has become of me,” he added, catching the eye of the
swordsman who’d offered to yield up his room. “He’ll pay a handsome reward to any
man who brings him word of what happened here today.” Lord Tywin would do no such
thing, of course, but Tyrion would make up for it if he won free.
Ser Rodrik glanced at his lady, his look worried, as well it might be. “His men come with
him,” the old knight announced. “And we’ll thank the rest of you to stay quiet about
what you’ve seen here.”
It was all Tyrion could do not to laugh. Quiet? The old fool. Unless he took the whole
inn, the word would begin to spread the instant they were gone. The freerider with the
gold coin in his pocket would fly to Casterly Rock like an arrow. If not him, then
someone else. Yoren would carry the story south. That fool singer might make a lay of it.
The Freys would report back to their lord, and the gods only knew what he might do.
Lord Walder Frey might be sworn to Riverrun, but he was a cautious man who had lived
a long time by making certain he was always on the winning side. At the very least he
would send his birds winging south to King’s Landing, and he might well dare more than
that.
Catelyn Stark wasted no time. “We must ride at once. We’ll want fresh mounts, and
provisions for the road. You men, know that you have the eternal gratitude of House
Stark. If any of you choose to help us guard our captives and get them safe to Winterfell,
I promise you shall be well rewarded.” That was all it took; the fools came rushing
forward. Tyrion studied their faces; they would indeed be well rewarded, he vowed to
himself, but perhaps not quite as they imagined.
�Yet even as they were bundling him outside, saddling the horses in the rain, and tying
his hands with a length of coarse rope, Tyrion Lannister was not truly afraid. They would
never get him to Winterfell, he would have given odds on that. Riders would be after
them within the day, birds would take wing, and surely one of the river lords would want
to curry favor with his father enough to take a hand. Tyrion was congratulating himself
on his subtlety when someone pulled a hood down over his eyes and lifted him up onto a
saddle.
They set out through the rain at a hard gallop, and before long Tyrion’s thighs were
cramped and aching and his butt throbbed with pain. Even when they were safely away
from the inn, and Catelyn Stark slowed them to a trot, it was a miserable pounding
journey over rough ground, made worse by his blindness. Every twist and turn put him
in danger of falling off his horse. The hood muffled sound, so he could not make out
what was being said around him, and the rain soaked through the cloth and made it
cling to his face, until even breathing was a struggle. The rope chafed his wrists raw and
seemed to grow tighter as the night wore on. I was about to settle down to a warm fire
and a roast fowl, and that wretched singer had to open his mouth, he thought
mournfully. The wretched singer had come along with them. “There is a great song to be
made from this, and I’m the one to make it,” he told Catelyn Stark when he announced
his intention of riding with them to see how the “splendid adventure” turned out. Tyrion
wondered whether the boy would think the adventure quite so splendid once the
Lannister riders caught up with them.
The rain had finally stopped and dawn light was seeping through the wet cloth over his
eyes when Catelyn Stark gave the command to dismount. Rough hands pulled him down
from his horse, untied his wrists, and yanked the hood off his head. When he saw the
narrow stony road, the foothills rising high and wild all around them, and the jagged
snowcapped peaks on the distant horizon, all the hope went out of him in a rush. “This is
the high road,” he gasped, looking at Lady Stark with accusation. “The eastern road. You
said we were riding for Winterfell!”
Catelyn Stark favored him with the faintest of smiles. “Often and loudly,” she agreed.
“No doubt your friends will ride that way when they come after us. I wish them good
speed.”
Even now, long days later, the memory filled him with a bitter rage. All his life Tyrion
had prided himself on his cunning, the only gift the gods had seen fit to give him, and yet
this seven-times-damned she-wolf Catelyn Stark had outwitted him at every turn. The
knowledge was more galling than the bare fact of his abduction.
They stopped only as long as it took to feed and water the horses, and then they were off
again. This time Tyrion was spared the hood. After the second night they no longer
�bound his hands, and once they had gained the heights they scarcely bothered to guard
him at all. It seemed they did not fear his escape. And why should they? Up here the land
was harsh and wild, and the high road little more than a stony track. If he did run, how
far could he hope to go, alone and without provisions? The shadowcats would make a
morsel of him, and the clans that dwelt in the mountain fastnesses were brigands and
murderers who bowed to no law but the sword.
Yet still the Stark woman drove them forward relentlessly. He knew where they were
bound. He had known it since the moment they pulled off his hood. These mountains
were the domain of House Arryn, and the late Hand’s widow was a Tully, Catelyn Stark’s
sister . . . and no friend to the Lannisters. Tyrion had known the Lady Lysa slightly
during her years at King’s Landing, and did not look forward to renewing the
acquaintance.
His captors were clustered around a stream a short ways down the high road. The horses
had drunk their fill of the icy cold water, and were grazing on clumps of brown grass that
grew from clefts in the rock. Jyck and Morrec huddled close, sullen and miserable.
Mohor stood over them, leaning on his spear and wearing a rounded iron cap that made
him look as if he had a bowl on his head. Nearby, Marillion the singer sat oiling his
woodharp, complaining of what the damp was doing to his strings.
“We must have some rest, my lady,” the hedge knight Ser Willis Wode was saying to
Catelyn Stark as Tyrion approached. He was Lady Whent’s man, stiff-necked and stolid,
and the first to rise to aid Catelyn Stark back at the inn.
“Ser Willis speaks truly, my lady,” Ser Rodrik said. “This is the third horse we have lost
—”
“We will lose more than horses if we’re overtaken by the Lannisters,” she reminded
them. Her face was windburnt and gaunt, but it had lost none of its determination.
“Small chance of that here,” Tyrion put in.
“The lady did not ask your views, dwarf,” snapped Kurleket, a great fat oaf with shortcropped hair and a pig’s face. He was one of the Brackens, a man-at-arms in the service
of Lord Jonos. Tyrion had made a special effort to learn all their names, so he might
thank them later for their tender treatment of him. A Lannister always paid his debts.
Kurleket would learn that someday, as would his friends Lharys and Mohor, and the
good Ser Willis, and the sellswords Bronn and Chiggen. He planned an especially sharp
lesson for Marillion, him of the woodharp and the sweet tenor voice, who was struggling
so manfully to rhyme imp with gimp and limp so he could make a song of this outrage.
�“Let him speak,” Lady Stark commanded.
Tyrion Lannister seated himself on a rock. “By now our pursuit is likely racing across the
Neck, chasing your lie up the kingsroad . . . assuming there is a pursuit, which is by no
means certain. Oh, no doubt the word has reached my father . . . but my father does not
love me overmuch, and I am not at all sure that he will bother to bestir himself.” It was
only half a lie; Lord Tywin Lannister cared not a fig for his deformed son, but he
tolerated no slights on the honor of his House. “This is a cruel land, Lady Stark. You’ll
find no succor until you reach the Vale, and each mount you lose burdens the others all
the more. Worse, you risk losing me. I am small, and not strong, and if I die, then what’s
the point?” That was no lie at all; Tyrion did not know how much longer he could endure
this pace.
“It might be said that your death is the point, Lannister,” Catelyn Stark replied.
“I think not,” Tyrion said. “If you wanted me dead, you had only to say the word, and one
of these staunch friends of yours would gladly have given me a red smile.” He looked at
Kurleket, but the man was too dim to taste the mockery.
“The Starks do not murder men in their beds.”
“Nor do I,” he said. “I tell you again, I had no part in the attempt to kill your son.”
“The assassin was armed with your dagger.”
Tyrion felt the heat rise in him. “It was not my dagger,” he insisted. “How many times
must I swear to that? Lady Stark, whatever you may believe of me, I am not a stupid
man. Only a fool would arm a common footpad with his own blade.”
Just for a moment, he thought he saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes, but what she said
was, “Why would Petyr lie to me?”
“Why does a bear shit in the woods?” he demanded. “Because it is his nature. Lying
comes as easily as breathing to a man like Littlefinger. You ought to know that, you of all
people.”
She took a step toward him, her face tight. “And what does that mean, Lannister?”
Tyrion cocked his head. “Why, every man at court has heard him tell how he took your
maidenhead, my lady.”
“That is a lie!” Catelyn Stark said.
�“Oh, wicked little imp,” Marillion said, shocked.
Kurleket drew his dirk, a vicious piece of black iron. “At your word, m’lady, I’ll toss his
lying tongue at your feet.” His pig eyes were wet with excitement at the prospect.
Catelyn Stark stared at Tyrion with a coldness on her face such as he had never seen.
“Petyr Baelish loved me once. He was only a boy. His passion was a tragedy for all of us,
but it was real, and pure, and nothing to be made mock of. He wanted my hand. That is
the truth of the matter. You are truly an evil man, Lannister.”
“And you are truly a fool, Lady Stark. Littlefinger has never loved anyone but
Littlefinger, and I promise you that it is not your hand that he boasts of, it’s those ripe
breasts of yours, and that sweet mouth, and the heat between your legs.”
Kurleket grabbed a handful of hair and yanked his head back in a hard jerk, baring his
throat. Tyrion felt the cold kiss of steel beneath his chin. “Shall I bleed him, my lady?”
“Kill me and the truth dies with me,” Tyrion gasped.
“Let him talk,” Catelyn Stark commanded.
Kurleket let go of Tyrion’s hair, reluctantly.
Tyrion took a deep breath. “How did Littlefinger tell you I came by this dagger of his?
Answer me that.”
“You won it from him in a wager, during the tourney on Prince Joffrey’s name day.”
“When my brother Jaime was unhorsed by the Knight of Flowers, that was his story, no?”
“It was,” she admitted. A line creased her brow.
“Riders!”
The shriek came from the wind-carved ridge above them. Ser Rodrik had sent Lharys
scrambling up the rock face to watch the road while they took their rest.
For a long second, no one moved. Catelyn Stark was the first to react. “Ser Rodrik, Ser
Willis, to horse,” she shouted. “Get the other mounts behind us. Mohor, guard the
prisoners—”
�“Arm us!” Tyrion sprang to his feet and seized her by the arm. “You will need every
sword.”
She knew he was right, Tyrion could see it. The mountain clans cared nothing for the
enmities of the great houses; they would slaughter Stark and Lannister with equal
fervor, as they slaughtered each other. They might spare Catelyn herself; she was still
young enough to bear sons. Still, she hesitated.
“I hear them!” Ser Rodrik called out. Tyrion turned his head to listen, and there it was:
hoofbeats, a dozen horses or more, coming nearer. Suddenly everyone was moving,
reaching for weapons, running to their mounts.
Pebbles rained down around them as Lharys came springing and sliding down the ridge.
He landed breathless in front of Catelyn Stark, an ungainly-looking man with wild tufts
of rust-colored hair sticking out from under a conical steel cap. “Twenty men, maybe
twenty-five,” he said, breathless. “Milk Snakes or Moon Brothers, by my guess. They
must have eyes out, m’lady . . . hidden watchers . . . they know we’re here.”
Ser Rodrik Cassel was already ahorse, a longsword in hand. Mohor crouched behind a
boulder, both hands on his iron-tipped spear, a dagger between his teeth. “You, singer,”
Ser Willis Wode called out. “Help me with this breastplate.” Marillion sat frozen,
clutching his woodharp, his face as pale as milk, but Tyrion’s man Morrec bounded
quickly to his feet and moved to help the knight with his armor.
Tyrion kept his grip on Catelyn Stark. “You have no choice,” he told her. “Three of us,
and a fourth man wasted guarding us . . . four men can be the difference between life and
death up here.”
“Give me your word that you will put down your swords again after the fight is done.”
“My word?” The hoofbeats were louder now. Tyrion grinned crookedly. “Oh, that you
have, my lady . . . on my honor as a Lannister.”
For a moment he thought she would spit at him, but instead she snapped, “Arm them,”
and as quick as that she was pulling away. Ser Rodrik tossed Jyck his sword and
scabbard, and wheeled to meet the foe. Morrec helped himself to a bow and quiver, and
went to one knee beside the road. He was a better archer than swordsman. And Bronn
rode up to offer Tyrion a double-bladed axe.
“I have never fought with an axe.” The weapon felt awkward and unfamiliar in his hands.
It had a short haft, a heavy head, a nasty spike on top.
�“Pretend you’re splitting logs,” Bronn said, drawing his longsword from the scabbard
across his back. He spat, and trotted off to form up beside Chiggen and Ser Rodrik. Ser
Willis mounted up to join them, fumbling with his helmet, a metal pot with a thin slit for
his eyes and a long black silk plume.
“Logs don’t bleed,” Tyrion said to no one in particular. He felt naked without armor. He
looked around for a rock and ran over to where Marillion was hiding. “Move over.”
“Go away!” the boy screamed back at him. “I’m a singer, I want no part of this fight!”
“What, lost your taste for adventure?” Tyrion kicked at the youth until he slid over, and
not a moment too soon. A heartbeat later, the riders were on them.
There were no heralds, no banners, no horns nor drums, only the twang of bowstrings as
Morrec and Lharys let fly, and suddenly the clansmen came thundering out of the dawn,
lean dark men in boiled leather and mismatched armor, faces hidden behind barred
halfhelms. In gloved hands were clutched all manner of weapons: longswords and lances
and sharpened scythes, spiked clubs and daggers and heavy iron mauls. At their head
rode a big man in a striped shadowskin cloak, armed with a two-handed greatsword.
Ser Rodrik shouted “Winterfell!” and rode to meet him, with Bronn and Chiggen beside
him, screaming some wordless battle cry. Ser Willis Wode followed, swinging a spiked
morningstar around his head. “Harrenhal! Harrenhal!” he sang. Tyrion felt a sudden
urge to leap up, brandish his axe, and boom out, “Casterly Rock!” but the insanity passed
quickly and he crouched down lower.
He heard the screams of frightened horses and the crash of metal on metal. Chiggen’s
sword raked across the naked face of a mailed rider, and Bronn plunged through the
clansmen like a whirlwind, cutting down foes right and left. Ser Rodrik hammered at the
big man in the shadowskin cloak, their horses dancing round each other as they traded
blow for blow. Jyck vaulted onto a horse and galloped bareback into the fray. Tyrion saw
an arrow sprout from the throat of the man in the shadowskin cloak. When he opened
his mouth to scream, only blood came out. By the time he fell, Ser Rodrik was fighting
someone else.
Suddenly Marillion shrieked, covering his head with his woodharp as a horse leapt over
their rock. Tyrion scrambled to his feet as the rider turned to come back at them, hefting
a spiked maul. Tyrion swung his axe with both hands. The blade caught the charging
horse in the throat with a meaty thunk, angling upward, and Tyrion almost lost his grip
as the animal screamed and collapsed. He managed to wrench the axe free and lurch
clumsily out of the way. Marillion was less fortunate. Horse and rider crashed to the
ground in a tangle on top of the singer. Tyrion danced back in while the brigand’s leg
�was still pinned beneath his fallen mount, and buried the axe in the man’s neck, just
above the shoulder blades.
As he struggled to yank the blade loose, he heard Marillion moaning under the bodies.
“Someone help me,” the singer gasped. “Gods have mercy, I’m bleeding.”
“I believe that’s horse blood,” Tyrion said. The singer’s hand came crawling out from
beneath the dead animal, scrabbling in the dirt like a spider with five legs. Tyrion put his
heel on the grasping fingers and felt a satisfying crunch. “Close your eyes and pretend
you’re dead,” he advised the singer before he hefted the axe and turned away.
After that, things ran together. The dawn was full of shouts and screams and heavy with
the scent of blood, and the world had turned to chaos. Arrows hissed past his ear and
clattered off the rocks. He saw Bronn unhorsed, fighting with a sword in each hand.
Tyrion kept on the fringes of the fight, sliding from rock to rock and darting out of the
shadows to hew at the legs of passing horses. He found a wounded clansman and left
him dead, helping himself to the man’s halfhelm. It fit too snugly, but Tyrion was glad of
any protection at all. Jyck was cut down from behind while he sliced at a man in front of
him, and later Tyrion stumbled over Kurleket’s body. The pig face had been smashed in
with a mace, but Tyrion recognized the dirk as he plucked it from the man’s dead
fingers. He was sliding it through his belt when he heard a woman’s scream.
Catelyn Stark was trapped against the stone face of the mountain with three men around
her, one still mounted and the other two on foot. She had a dagger clutched awkwardly
in her maimed hands, but her back was to the rock now and they had penned her on
three sides. Let them have the bitch, Tyrion thought, and welcome to her, yet somehow
he was moving. He caught the first man in the back of the knee before they even knew he
was there, and the heavy axehead split flesh and bone like rotten wood. Logs that bleed,
Tyrion thought inanely as the second man came for him. Tyrion ducked under his sword,
lashed out with the axe, the man reeled backward . . . and Catelyn Stark stepped up
behind him and opened his throat. The horseman remembered an urgent engagement
elsewhere and galloped off suddenly.
Tyrion looked around. The enemy were all vanquished or vanished. Somehow the
fighting had ended when he wasn’t looking. Dying horses and wounded men lay all
around, screaming or moaning. To his vast astonishment, he was not one of them. He
opened his fingers and let the axe thunk to the ground. His hands were sticky with
blood. He could have sworn they had been fighting for half a day, but the sun seemed
scarcely to have moved at all.
“Your first battle?” Bronn asked later as he bent over Jyck’s body, pulling off his boots.
They were good boots, as befit one of Lord Tywin’s men; heavy leather, oiled and supple,
�much finer than what Bronn was wearing.
Tyrion nodded. “My father will be so proud,” he said. His legs were cramping so badly he
could scarcely stand. Odd, he had never once noticed the pain during the battle.
“You need a woman now,” Bronn said with a glint in his black eyes. He shoved the boots
into his saddlebag. “Nothing like a woman after a man’s been blooded, take my word.”
Chiggen stopped looting the corpses of the brigands long enough to snort and lick his
lips.
Tyrion glanced over to where Lady Stark was dressing Ser Rodrik’s wounds. “I’m willing
if she is,” he said. The freeriders broke into laughter, and Tyrion grinned and thought,
There’s a start.
Afterward he knelt by the stream and washed the blood off his face in water cold as ice.
As he limped back to the others, he glanced again at the slain. The dead clansmen were
thin, ragged men, their horses scrawny and undersized, with every rib showing. What
weapons Bronn and Chiggen had left them were none too impressive. Mauls, clubs, a
scythe . . . He remembered the big man in the shadowskin cloak who had dueled Ser
Rodrik with a two-handed greatsword, but when he found his corpse sprawled on the
stony ground, the man was not so big after all, the cloak was gone, and Tyrion saw that
the blade was badly notched, its cheap steel spotted with rust. Small wonder the
clansmen had left nine bodies on the ground.
They had only three dead; two of Lord Bracken’s men-at-arms, Kurleket and Mohor, and
his own man Jyck, who had made such a bold show with his bareback charge. A fool to
the end, Tyrion thought.
“Lady Stark, I urge you to press on, with all haste,” Ser Willis Wode said, his eyes
scanning the ridgetops warily through the slit in his helm. “We drove them off for the
moment, but they will not have gone far.”
“We must bury our dead, Ser Willis,” she said. “These were brave men. I will not leave
them to the crows and shadowcats.”
“This soil is too stony for digging,” Ser Willis said.
“Then we shall gather stones for cairns.”
“Gather all the stones you want,” Bronn told her, “but do it without me or Chiggen. I’ve
better things to do than pile rocks on dead men . . . breathing, for one.” He looked over
�the rest of the survivors. “Any of you who hope to be alive come nightfall, ride with us.”
“My lady, I fear he speaks the truth,” Ser Rodrik said wearily. The old knight had been
wounded in the fight, a deep gash in his left arm and a spear thrust that grazed his neck,
and he sounded his age. “If we linger here, they will be on us again for a certainty, and
we may not live through a second attack.”
Tyrion could see the anger in Catelyn’s face, but she had no choice. “May the gods
forgive us, then. We will ride at once.”
There was no shortage of horses now. Tyrion moved his saddle to Jyck’s spotted gelding,
who looked strong enough to last another three or four days at least. He was about to
mount when Lharys stepped up and said, “I’ll take that dirk now, dwarf.”
“Let him keep it.” Catelyn Stark looked down from her horse. “And see that he has his
axe back as well. We may have need of it if we are attacked again.”
“You have my thanks, lady,” Tyrion said, mounting up.
“Save them,” she said curtly. “I trust you no more than I did before.” She was gone
before he could frame a reply.
Tyrion adjusted his stolen helm and took the axe from Bronn. He remembered how he
had begun the journey, with his wrists bound and a hood pulled down over his head, and
decided that this was a definite improvement. Lady Stark could keep her trust; so long as
he could keep the axe, he would count himself ahead in the game.
Ser Willis Wode led them out. Bronn took the rear, with Lady Stark safely in the middle,
Ser Rodrik a shadow beside her. Marillion kept throwing sullen looks back at Tyrion as
they rode. The singer had broken several ribs, his woodharp, and all four fingers on his
playing hand, yet the day had not been an utter loss to him; somewhere he had acquired
a magnificent shadowskin cloak, thick black fur slashed by stripes of white. He huddled
beneath its folds silently, and for once had nothing to say.
They heard the deep growls of shadowcats behind them before they had gone half a mile,
and later the wild snarling of the beasts fighting over the corpses they had left behind.
Marillion grew visibly pale. Tyrion trotted up beside him. “Craven,” he said, “rhymes
nicely with raven.” He kicked his horse and moved past the singer, up to Ser Rodrik and
Catelyn Stark.
She looked at him, lips pressed tightly together.
�“As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted,” Tyrion began, “there is a serious
flaw in Littlefinger’s fable. Whatever you may believe of me, Lady Stark, I promise you
this—I never bet against my family.”
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ARYA
The one-eared black tom arched his back and hissed at her.
Arya padded down the alley, balanced lightly on the balls of her bare feet, listening to the
flutter of her heart, breathing slow deep breaths. Quiet as a shadow, she told herself,
light as a feather. The tomcat watched her come, his eyes wary.
Catching cats was hard. Her hands were covered with half-healed scratches, and both
knees were scabbed over where she had scraped them raw in tumbles. At first even the
cook’s huge fat kitchen cat had been able to elude her, but Syrio had kept her at it day
and night. When she’d run to him with her hands bleeding, he had said, “So slow? Be
quicker, girl. Your enemies will give you more than scratches.” He had dabbed her
wounds with Myrish fire, which burned so bad she had had to bite her lip to keep from
screaming. Then he sent her out after more cats.
The Red Keep was full of cats: lazy old cats dozing in the sun, cold-eyed mousers
twitching their tails, quick little kittens with claws like needles, ladies’ cats all combed
and trusting, ragged shadows prowling the midden heaps. One by one Arya had chased
them down and snatched them up and brought them proudly to Syrio Forel . . . all but
this one, this one-eared black devil of a tomcat. “That’s the real king of this castle right
there,” one of the gold cloaks had told her. “Older than sin and twice as mean. One time,
the king was feasting the queen’s father, and that black bastard hopped up on the table
and snatched a roast quail right out of Lord Tywin’s fingers. Robert laughed so hard he
like to burst. You stay away from that one, child.”
He had run her halfway across the castle; twice around the Tower of the Hand, across
the inner bailey, through the stables, down the serpentine steps, past the small kitchen
and the pig yard and the barracks of the gold cloaks, along the base of the river wall and
up more steps and back and forth over Traitor’s Walk, and then down again and through
a gate and around a well and in and out of strange buildings until Arya didn’t know
where she was.
Now at last she had him. High walls pressed close on either side, and ahead was a blank
windowless mass of stone. Quiet as a shadow, she repeated, sliding forward, light as a
feather.
�When she was three steps away from him, the tomcat bolted. Left, then right, he went;
and right, then left, went Arya, cutting off his escape. He hissed again and tried to dart
between her legs. Quick as a snake, she thought. Her hands closed around him. She
hugged him to her chest, whirling and laughing aloud as his claws raked at the front of
her leather jerkin. Ever so fast, she kissed him right between the eyes, and jerked her
head back an instant before his claws would have found her face. The tomcat yowled and
spit.
“What’s he doing to that cat?”
Startled, Arya dropped the cat and whirled toward the voice. The tom bounded off in the
blink of an eye. At the end of the alley stood a girl with a mass of golden curls, dressed as
pretty as a doll in blue satin. Beside her was a plump little blond boy with a prancing
stag sewn in pearls across the front of his doublet and a miniature sword at his belt.
Princess Myrcella and Prince Tommen, Arya thought. A septa as large as a draft horse
hovered over them, and behind her two big men in crimson cloaks, Lannister house
guards.
“What were you doing to that cat, boy?” Myrcella asked again, sternly. To her brother
she said, “He’s a ragged boy, isn’t he? Look at him.” She giggled.
“A ragged dirty smelly boy,” Tommen agreed.
They don’t know me, Arya realized. They don’t even know I’m a girl. Small wonder; she
was barefoot and dirty, her hair tangled from the long run through the castle, clad in a
jerkin ripped by cat claws and brown roughspun pants hacked off above her scabby
knees. You don’t wear skirts and silks when you’re catching cats. Quickly she lowered
her head and dropped to one knee. Maybe they wouldn’t recognize her. If they did, she
would never hear the end of it. Septa Mordane would be mortified, and Sansa would
never speak to her again from the shame.
The old fat septa moved forward. “Boy, how did you come here? You have no business in
this part of the castle.”
“You can’t keep this sort out,” one of the red cloaks said. “Like trying to keep out rats.”
“Who do you belong to, boy?” the septa demanded. “Answer me. What’s wrong with you,
are you mute?”
Arya’s voice caught in her throat. If she answered, Tommen and Myrcella would know
her for certain.
�“Godwyn, bring him here,” the septa said. The taller of the guardsmen started down the
alley.
Panic gripped her throat like a giant’s hand. Arya could not have spoken if her life had
hung on it. Calm as still water, she mouthed silently.
As Godwyn reached for her, Arya moved. Quick as a snake. She leaned to her left, letting
his fingers brush her arm, spinning around him. Smooth as summer silk. By the time he
got himself turned, she was sprinting down the alley. Swift as a deer. The septa was
screeching at her. Arya slid between legs as thick and white as marble columns, bounded
to her feet, bowled into Prince Tommen and hopped over him when he sat down hard
and said “Oof,” spun away from the second guard, and then she was past them all,
running full out.
She heard shouts, then pounding footsteps, closing behind her. She dropped and rolled.
The red cloak went careening past her, stumbling. Arya sprang back to her feet. She saw
a window above her, high and narrow, scarcely more than an arrow slit. Arya leapt,
caught the sill, pulled herself up. She held her breath as she wriggled through. Slippery
as an eel. Dropping to the floor in front of a startled scrubwoman, she hopped up,
brushed the rushes off her clothes, and was off again, out the door and along a long hall,
down a stair, across a hidden courtyard, around a corner and over a wall and through a
low narrow window into a pitch-dark cellar. The sounds grew more and more distant
behind her.
Arya was out of breath and quite thoroughly lost. She was in for it now if they had
recognized her, but she didn’t think they had. She’d moved too fast. Swift as a deer.
She hunkered down in the dark against a damp stone wall and listened for the pursuit,
but the only sound was the beating of her own heart and a distant drip of water. Quiet as
a shadow, she told herself. She wondered where she was. When they had first come to
King’s Landing, she used to have bad dreams about getting lost in the castle. Father said
the Red Keep was smaller than Winterfell, but in her dreams it had been immense, an
endless stone maze with walls that seemed to shift and change behind her. She would
find herself wandering down gloomy halls past faded tapestries, descending endless
circular stairs, darting through courtyards or over bridges, her shouts echoing
unanswered. In some of the rooms the red stone walls would seem to drip blood, and
nowhere could she find a window. Sometimes she would hear her father’s voice, but
always from a long way off, and no matter how hard she ran after it, it would grow
fainter and fainter, until it faded to nothing and Arya was alone in the dark.
It was very dark right now, she realized. She hugged her bare knees tight against her
chest and shivered. She would wait quietly and count to ten thousand. By then it would
�be safe for her to come creeping back out and find her way home.
By the time she had reached eighty-seven, the room had begun to lighten as her eyes
adjusted to the blackness. Slowly the shapes around her took on form. Huge empty eyes
stared at her hungrily through the gloom, and dimly she saw the jagged shadows of long
teeth. She had lost the count. She closed her eyes and bit her lip and sent the fear away.
When she looked again, the monsters would be gone. Would never have been. She
pretended that Syrio was beside her in the dark, whispering in her ear. Calm as still
water, she told herself. Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. She opened her eyes
again.
The monsters were still there, but the fear was gone.
Arya got to her feet, moving warily. The heads were all around her. She touched one,
curious, wondering if it was real. Her fingertips brushed a massive jaw. It felt real
enough. The bone was smooth beneath her hand, cold and hard to the touch. She ran her
fingers down a tooth, black and sharp, a dagger made of darkness. It made her shiver.
“It’s dead,” she said aloud. “It’s just a skull, it can’t hurt me.” Yet somehow the monster
seemed to know she was there. She could feel its empty eyes watching her through the
gloom, and there was something in that dim, cavernous room that did not love her. She
edged away from the skull and backed into a second, larger than the first. For an instant
she could feel its teeth digging into her shoulder, as if it wanted a bite of her flesh. Arya
whirled, felt leather catch and tear as a huge fang nipped at her jerkin, and then she was
running. Another skull loomed ahead, the biggest monster of all, but Arya did not even
slow. She leapt over a ridge of black teeth as tall as swords, dashed through hungry jaws,
and threw herself against the door.
Her hands found a heavy iron ring set in the wood, and she yanked at it. The door
resisted a moment, before it slowly began to swing inward, with a creak so loud Arya
was certain it could be heard all through the city. She opened the door just far enough to
slip through, into the hallway beyond.
If the room with the monsters had been dark, the hall was the blackest pit in the seven
hells. Calm as still water, Arya told herself, but even when she gave her eyes a moment
to adjust, there was nothing to see but the vague grey outline of the door she had come
through. She wiggled her fingers in front of her face, felt the air move, saw nothing. She
was blind. A water dancer sees with all her senses, she reminded herself. She closed her
eyes and steadied her breathing one two three, drank in the quiet, reached out with her
hands.
Her fingers brushed against rough unfinished stone to her left. She followed the wall, her
�hand skimming along the surface, taking small gliding steps through the darkness. All
halls lead somewhere. Where there is a way in, there is a way out. Fear cuts deeper
than swords. Arya would not be afraid. It seemed as if she had been walking a long ways
when the wall ended abruptly and a draft of cold air blew past her cheek. Loose hairs
stirred faintly against her skin.
From somewhere far below her, she heard noises. The scrape of boots, the distant sound
of voices. A flickering light brushed the wall ever so faintly, and she saw that she stood at
the top of a great black well, a shaft twenty feet across plunging deep into the earth.
Huge stones had been set into the curving walls as steps, circling down and down, dark
as the steps to hell that Old Nan used to tell them of. And something was coming up out
of the darkness, out of the bowels of the earth . . .
Arya peered over the edge and felt the cold black breath on her face. Far below, she saw
the light of a single torch, small as the flame of a candle. Two men, she made out. Their
shadows writhed against the sides of the well, tall as giants. She could hear their voices,
echoing up the shaft.
“ . . . found one bastard,” one said. “The rest will come soon. A day, two days, a
fortnight . . . ”
“And when he learns the truth, what will he do?” a second voice asked in the liquid
accents of the Free Cities.
“The gods alone know,” the first voice said. Arya could see a wisp of grey smoke drifting
up off the torch, writhing like a snake as it rose. “The fools tried to kill his son, and
what’s worse, they made a mummer’s farce of it. He’s not a man to put that aside. I warn
you, the wolf and lion will soon be at each other’s throats, whether we will it or no.”
“Too soon, too soon,” the voice with the accent complained. “What good is war now? We
are not ready. Delay.”
“As well bid me stop time. Do you take me for a wizard?”
The other chuckled. “No less.” Flames licked at the cold air. The tall shadows were
almost on top of her. An instant later the man holding the torch climbed into her sight,
his companion beside him. Arya crept back away from the well, dropped to her stomach,
and flattened herself against the wall. She held her breath as the men reached the top of
the steps.
“What would you have me do?” asked the torchbearer, a stout man in a leather half cape.
Even in heavy boots, his feet seemed to glide soundlessly over the ground. A round
�scarred face and a stubble of dark beard showed under his steel cap, and he wore mail
over boiled leather, and a dirk and shortsword at his belt. It seemed to Arya there was
something oddly familiar about him.
“If one Hand can die, why not a second?” replied the man with the accent and the forked
yellow beard. “You have danced the dance before, my friend.” He was no one Arya had
ever seen before, she was certain of it. Grossly fat, yet he seemed to walk lightly, carrying
his weight on the balls of his feet as a water dancer might. His rings glimmered in the
torchlight, red-gold and pale silver, crusted with rubies, sapphires, slitted yellow tiger
eyes. Every finger wore a ring; some had two.
“Before is not now, and this Hand is not the other,” the scarred man said as they stepped
out into the hall. Still as stone, Arya told herself, quiet as a shadow. Blinded by the blaze
of their own torch, they did not see her pressed flat against the stone, only a few feet
away.
“Perhaps so,” the forked beard replied, pausing to catch his breath after the long climb.
“Nonetheless, we must have time. The princess is with child. The khal will not bestir
himself until his son is born. You know how they are, these savages.”
The man with the torch pushed at something. Arya heard a deep rumbling. A huge slab
of rock, red in the torchlight, slid down out of the ceiling with a resounding crash that
almost made her cry out. Where the entry to the well had been was nothing but stone,
solid and unbroken.
“If he does not bestir himself soon, it may be too late,” the stout man in the steel cap
said. “This is no longer a game for two players, if ever it was. Stannis Baratheon and
Lysa Arryn have fled beyond my reach, and the whispers say they are gathering swords
around them. The Knight of Flowers writes Highgarden, urging his lord father to send
his sister to court. The girl is a maid of fourteen, sweet and beautiful and tractable, and
Lord Renly and Ser Loras intend that Robert should bed her, wed her, and make a new
queen. Littlefinger . . . the gods only know what game Littlefinger is playing. Yet Lord
Stark’s the one who troubles my sleep. He has the bastard, he has the book, and soon
enough he’ll have the truth. And now his wife has abducted Tyrion Lannister, thanks to
Littlefinger’s meddling. Lord Tywin will take that for an outrage, and Jaime has a queer
affection for the Imp. If the Lannisters move north, that will bring the Tullys in as well.
Delay, you say. Make haste, I reply. Even the finest of jugglers cannot keep a hundred
balls in the air forever.”
“You are more than a juggler, old friend. You are a true sorcerer. All I ask is that you
work your magic awhile longer.” They started down the hall in the direction Arya had
come, past the room with the monsters.
�“What I can do, I will,” the one with the torch said softly. “I must have gold, and another
fifty birds.”
She let them get a long way ahead, then went creeping after them. Quiet as a shadow.
“So many?” The voices were fainter as the light dwindled ahead of her. “The ones you
need are hard to find . . . so young, to know their letters . . . perhaps older . . . not die so
easy . . . ”
“No. The younger are safer . . . treat them gently . . . ”
“ . . . .if they kept their tongues . . . ”
“ . . . the risk . . . ”
Long after their voices had faded away, Arya could still see the light of the torch, a
smoking star that bid her follow. Twice it seemed to disappear, but she kept on straight,
and both times she found herself at the top of steep, narrow stairs, the torch glimmering
far below her. She hurried after it, down and down. Once she stumbled over a rock and
fell against the wall, and her hand found raw earth supported by timbers, whereas before
the tunnel had been dressed stone.
She must have crept after them for miles. Finally they were gone, but there was no place
to go but forward. She found the wall again and followed, blind and lost, pretending that
Nymeria was padding along beside her in the darkness. At the end she was knee-deep in
foul-smelling water, wishing she could dance upon it as Syrio might have, and
wondering if she’d ever see light again. It was full dark when finally Arya emerged into
the night air.
She found herself standing at the mouth of a sewer where it emptied into the river. She
stank so badly that she stripped right there, dropping her soiled clothing on the
riverbank as she dove into the deep black waters. She swam until she felt clean, and
crawled out shivering. Some riders went past along the river road as Arya was washing
her clothes, but if they saw the scrawny naked girl scrubbing her rags in the moonlight,
they took no notice.
She was miles from the castle, but from anywhere in King’s Landing you needed only to
look up to see the Red Keep high on Aegon’s Hill, so there was no danger of losing her
way. Her clothes were almost dry by the time she reached the gatehouse. The portcullis
was down and the gates barred, so she turned aside to a postern door. The gold cloaks
who had the watch sneered when she told them to let her in. “Off with you,” one said.
�“The kitchen scraps are gone, and we’ll have no begging after dark.”
“I’m not a beggar,” she said. “I live here.”
“I said, off with you. Do you need a clout on the ear to help your hearing?”
“I want to see my father.”
The guards exchanged a glance. “I want to fuck the queen myself, for all the good it does
me,” the younger one said.
The older scowled. “Who’s this father of yours, boy, the city ratcatcher?”
“The Hand of the King,” Arya told him.
Both men laughed, but then the older one swung his fist at her, casually, as a man would
swat a dog. Arya saw the blow coming even before it began. She danced back out of the
way, untouched. “I’m not a boy,” she spat at them. “I’m Arya Stark of Winterfell, and if
you lay a hand on me my lord father will have both your heads on spikes. If you don’t
believe me, fetch Jory Cassel or Vayon Poole from the Tower of the Hand.” She put her
hands on her hips. “Now are you going to open the gate, or do you need a clout on the
ear to help your hearing?”
Her father was alone in the solar when Harwin and Fat Tom marched her in, an oil lamp
glowing softly at his elbow. He was bent over the biggest book Arya had ever seen, a
great thick tome with cracked yellow pages of crabbed script, bound between faded
leather covers, but he closed it to listen to Harwin’s report. His face was stern as he sent
the men away with thanks.
“You realize I had half my guard out searching for you?” Eddard Stark said when they
were alone. “Septa Mordane is beside herself with fear. She’s in the sept praying for your
safe return. Arya, you know you are never to go beyond the castle gates without my
leave.”
“I didn’t go out the gates,” she blurted. “Well, I didn’t mean to. I was down in the
dungeons, only they turned into this tunnel. It was all dark, and I didn’t have a torch or a
candle to see by, so I had to follow. I couldn’t go back the way I came on account of the
monsters. Father, they were talking about killing you! Not the monsters, the two men.
They didn’t see me, I was being still as stone and quiet as a shadow, but I heard them.
They said you had a book and a bastard and if one Hand could die, why not a second? Is
that the book? Jon’s the bastard, I bet.”
�“Jon? Arya, what are you talking about? Who said this?”
“They did,” she told him. “There was a fat one with rings and a forked yellow beard, and
another in mail and a steel cap, and the fat one said they had to delay but the other one
told him he couldn’t keep juggling and the wolf and the lion were going to eat each other
and it was a mummer’s farce.” She tried to remember the rest. She hadn’t quite
understood everything she’d heard, and now it was all mixed up in her head. “The fat
one said the princess was with child. The one in the steel cap, he had the torch, he said
that they had to hurry. I think he was a wizard.”
“A wizard,” said Ned, unsmiling. “Did he have a long white beard and tall pointed hat
speckled with stars?”
“No! It wasn’t like Old Nan’s stories. He didn’t look like a wizard, but the fat one said he
was.”
“I warn you, Arya, if you’re spinning this thread of air—”
“No, I told you, it was in the dungeons, by the place with the secret wall. I was chasing
cats, and well . . . ” She screwed up her face. If she admitted knocking over Prince
Tommen, he would be really angry with her. “ . . . well, I went in this window. That’s
where I found the monsters.”
“Monsters and wizards,” her father said. “It would seem you’ve had quite an adventure.
These men you heard, you say they spoke of juggling and mummery?”
“Yes,” Arya admitted, “only—”
“Arya, they were mummers,” her father told her. “There must be a dozen troupes in
King’s Landing right now, come to make some coin off the tourney crowds. I’m not
certain what these two were doing in the castle, but perhaps the king has asked for a
show.”
“No.” She shook her head stubbornly. “They weren’t—”
“You shouldn’t be following people about and spying on them in any case. Nor do I
cherish the notion of my daughter climbing in strange windows after stray cats. Look at
you, sweetling. Your arms are covered with scratches. This has gone on long enough. Tell
Syrio Forel that I want a word with hirn—”
He was interrupted by a short, sudden knock. “Lord Eddard, pardons,” Desmond called
out, opening the door a crack, “but there’s a black brother here begging audience. He
�says the matter is urgent. I thought you would want to know.”
“My door is always open to the Night’s Watch,” Father said.
Desmond ushered the man inside. He was stooped and ugly, with an unkempt beard and
unwashed clothes, yet Father greeted him pleasantly and asked his name.
“Yoren, as it please m’lord. My pardons for the hour.” He bowed to Arya. “And this must
be your son. He has your look.”
“I’m a girl,” Arya said, exasperated. If the old man was down from the Wall, he must
have come by way of Winterfell. “Do you know my brothers?” she asked excitedly. “Robb
and Bran are at Winterfell, and Jon’s on the Wall. Jon Snow, he’s in the Night’s Watch
too, you must know him, he has a direwolf, a white one with red eyes. Is Jon a ranger
yet? I’m Arya Stark.” The old man in his smelly black clothes was looking at her oddly,
but Arya could not seem to stop talking. “When you ride back to the Wall, would you
bring Jon a letter if I wrote one?” She wished Jon were here right now. He’d believe her
about the dungeons and the fat man with the forked beard and the wizard in the steel
cap.
“My daughter often forgets her courtesies,” Eddard Stark said with a faint smile that
softened his words. “I beg your forgiveness, Yoren. Did my brother Benjen send you?”
“No one sent me, m’lord, saving old Mormont. I’m here to find men for the Wall, and
when Robert next holds court, I’ll bend the knee and cry our need, see if the king and his
Hand have some scum in the dungeons they’d be well rid of. You might say as Benjen
Stark is why we’re talking, though. His blood ran black. Made him my brother as much
as yours. It’s for his sake I’m come. Rode hard, I did, near killed my horse the way I
drove her, but I left the others well behind.”
“The others?”
Yoren spat. “Sellswords and freeriders and like trash. That inn was full o’ them, and I
saw them take the scent. The scent of blood or the scent of gold, they smell the same in
the end. Not all o’ them made for King’s Landing, either. Some went galloping for
Casterly Rock, and the Rock lies closer. Lord Tywin will have gotten the word by now,
you can count on it.”
Father frowned. “What word is this?”
Yoren eyed Arya. “One best spoken in private, m’lord, begging your pardons.”
�“As you say. Desmond, see my daughter to her chambers.” He kissed her on the brow.
“We’ll finish our talk on the morrow.”
Arya stood rooted to the spot. “Nothing bad’s happened to Jon, has it?” she asked Yoren.
“Or Uncle Benjen?”
“Well, as to Stark, I can’t say. The Snow boy was well enough when I left the Wall. It’s
not them as concerns me.”
Desmond took her hand. “Come along, milady. You heard your lord father.”
Arya had no choice but to go with him, wishing it had been Fat Tom. With Tom, she
might have been able to linger at the door on some excuse and hear what Yoren was
saying, but Desmond was too single-minded to trick. “How many guards does my father
have?” she asked him as they descended to her bedchamber.
“Here at King’s Landing? Fifty.”
“You wouldn’t let anyone kill him, would you?” she asked.
Desmond laughed. “No fear on that count, little lady. Lord Eddard’s guarded night and
day. He’ll come to no harm.”
“The Lannisters have more than fifty men,” Arya pointed out.
“So they do, but every northerner is worth ten of these southron swords, so you can sleep
easy.”
“What if a wizard was sent to kill him?”
“Well, as to that,” Desmond replied, drawing his longsword, “wizards die the same as
other men, once you cut their heads off.”
previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
Robert, I beg of you,” Ned pleaded, “hear what you are saying. You are talking of
murdering a child.”
“The whore is pregnant!” The king’s fist slammed down on the council table loud as a
thunderclap. “I warned you this would happen, Ned. Back in the barrowlands, I warned
you, but you did not care to hear it. Well, you’ll hear it now. I want them dead, mother
and child both, and that fool Viserys as well. Is that plain enough for you? I want them
dead.”
The other councillors were all doing their best to pretend that they were somewhere else.
No doubt they were wiser than he was. Eddard Stark had seldom felt quite so alone.
“You will dishonor yourself forever if you do this.”
“Then let it be on my head, so long as it is done. I am not so blind that I cannot see the
shadow of the axe when it is hanging over my own neck.”
“There is no axe,” Ned told his king. “Only the shadow of a shadow, twenty years
removed . . . if it exists at all.”
“If?” Varys asked softly, wringing powdered hands together. “My lord, you wrong me.
Would I bring ties to king and council?”
Ned looked at the eunuch coldly. “You would bring us the whisperings of a traitor half a
world away, my lord. Perhaps Mormont is wrong. Perhaps he is lying.”
“Ser Jorah would not dare deceive me,” Varys said with a sly smile. “Rely on it, my lord.
The princess is with child.”
“So you say. If you are wrong, we need not fear. If the girl miscarries, we need not fear. If
she births a daughter in place of a son, we need not fear. If the babe dies in infancy, we
need not fear.”
“But if it is a boy?” Robert insisted. “If he lives?”
“The narrow sea would still lie between us. I shall fear the Dothraki the day they teach
�their horses to run on water.”
The king took a swallow of wine and glowered at Ned across the council table. “So you
would counsel me to do nothing until the dragonspawn has landed his army on my
shores, is that it?”
“This ‘dragonspawn’ is in his mother’s belly,” Ned said. “Even Aegon did no conquering
until after he was weaned.”
“Gods! You are stubborn as an aurochs, Stark.” The king looked around the council
table. “Have the rest of you mislaid your tongues? Will no one talk sense to this frozenfaced fool?”
Varys gave the king an unctuous smile and laid a soft hand on Ned’s sleeve. “I
understand your qualms, Lord Eddard, truly I do. It gave me no joy to bring this
grievous news to council. It is a terrible thing we contemplate, a vile thing. Yet we who
presume to rule must do vile things for the good of the realm, howevermuch it pains us.”
Lord Renly shrugged. “The matter seems simple enough to me. We ought to have had
Viserys and his sister killed years ago, but His Grace my brother made the mistake of
listening to Jon Arryn.”
“Mercy is never a mistake, Lord Renly,” Ned replied. “On the Trident, Ser Barristan here
cut down a dozen good men, Robert’s friends and mine. When they brought him to us,
grievously wounded and near death, Roose Bolton urged us to cut his throat, but your
brother said, ‘I will not kill a man for loyalty, nor for fighting well,’ and sent his own
maester to tend Ser Barristan’s wounds.” He gave the king a long cool look. “Would that
man were here today.”
Robert had shame enough to blush. “It was not the same,” he complained. “Ser Barristan
was a knight of the Kingsguard.”
“Whereas Daenerys is a fourteen-year-old girl.” Ned knew he was pushing this well past
the point of wisdom, yet he could not keep silent. “Robert, I ask you, what did we rise
against Aerys Targaryen for, if not to put an end to the murder of children?”
“To put an end to Targaryens!” the king growled.
“Your Grace, I never knew you to fear Rhaegar.” Ned fought to keep the scorn out of his
voice, and failed. “Have the years so unmanned you that you tremble at the shadow of an
unborn child?”
�Robert purpled. “No more, Ned,” he warned, pointing. “Not another word. Have you
forgotten who is king here?”
“No, Your Grace,” Ned replied. “Have you?”
“Enough!” the king bellowed. “I am sick of talk. I’ll be done with this, or be damned.
What say you all?”
“She must be killed,” Lord Renly declared.
“We have no choice,” murmured Varys. “Sadly, sadly . . . ”
Ser Barristan Selmy raised his pale blue eyes from the table and said, “Your Grace, there
is honor in facing an enemy on the battlefield, but none in killing him in his mother’s
womb. Forgive me, but I must stand with Lord Eddard.”
Grand Maester Pycelle cleared his throat, a process that seemed to take some minutes.
“My order serves the realm, not the ruler. Once I counseled King Aerys as loyally as I
counsel King Robert now, so I bear this girl child of his no ill will. Yet I ask you this—
should war come again, how many soldiers will die? How many towns will burn? How
many children will be ripped from their mothers to perish on the end of a spear?” He
stroked his luxuriant white beard, infinitely sad, infinitely weary. “Is it not wiser, even
kinder, that Daenerys Targaryen should die now so that tens of thousands might live?”
“Kinder,” Varys said. “Oh, well and truly spoken, Grand Maester. It is so true. Should the
gods in their caprice grant Daenerys Targaryen a son, the realm must bleed.”
Littlefinger was the last. As Ned looked to him, Lord Petyr stifled a yawn. “When you
find yourself in bed with an ugly woman, the best thing to do is close your eyes and get
on with it,” he declared. “Waiting won’t make the maid any prettier. Kiss her and be
done with it.”
“Kiss her?” Ser Barristan repeated, aghast.
“A steel kiss,” said Littlefinger.
Robert turned to face his Hand. “Well, there it is, Ned. You and Selmy stand alone on
this matter. The only question that remains is, who can we find to kill her?”
“Mormont craves a royal pardon,” Lord Renly reminded them.
�“Desperately,” Varys said, “yet he craves life even more. By now, the princess nears Vaes
Dothrak, where it is death to draw a blade. If I told you what the Dothraki would do to
the poor man who used one on a khaleesi, none of you would sleep tonight.” He stroked
a powdered cheek. “Now, poison . . . the tears of Lys, let us say. Khal Drogo need never
know it was not a natural death.”
Grand Maester Pycelle’s sleepy eyes flicked open. He squinted suspiciously at the
eunuch.
“Poison is a coward’s weapon,” the king complained.
Ned had heard enough. “You send hired knives to kill a fourteen-year-old girl and still
quibble about honor?” He pushed back his chair and stood. “Do it yourself, Robert. The
man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. Look her in the eyes before you
kill her. See her tears, hear her last words. You owe her that much at least.”
“Gods,” the king swore, the word exploding out of him as if he could barely contain his
fury. “You mean it, damn you.” He reached for the flagon of wine at his elbow, found it
empty, and flung it away to shatter against the wall. “I am out of wine and out of
patience. Enough of this. Just have it done.”
“I will not be part of murder, Robert. Do as you will, but do not ask me to fix my seal to
it.”
For a moment Robert did not seem to understand what Ned was saying. Defiance was
not a dish he tasted often. Slowly his face changed as comprehension came. His eyes
narrowed and a flush crept up his neck past the velvet collar. He pointed an angry finger
at Ned. “You are the King’s Hand, Lord Stark. You will do as I command you, or I’ll find
me a Hand who will.”
“I wish him every success.” Ned unfastened the heavy clasp that clutched at the folds of
his cloak, the ornate silver hand that was his badge of office. He laid it on the table in
front of the king, saddened by the memory of the man who had pinned it on him, the
friend he had loved. “I thought you a better man than this, Robert. I thought we had
made a nobler king.”
Robert’s face was purple. “Out,” he croaked, choking on his rage. “Out, damn you, I’m
done with you. What are you waiting for? Go, run back to Winterfell. And make certain I
never look on your face again, or I swear, I’ll have your head on a spike!”
Ned bowed, and turned on his heel without another word. He could feel Robert’s eyes on
his back. As he strode from the council chambers, the discussion resumed with scarcely
�a pause. “On Braavos there is a society called the Faceless Men,” Grand Maester Pycelle
offered.
“Do you have any idea how costly they are?” Littlefinger complained. “You could hire an
army of common sellswords for half the price, and that’s for a merchant. I don’t dare
think what they might ask for a princess.”
The closing of the door behind him silenced the voices. Ser Boros Blount was stationed
outside the chamber, wearing the long white cloak and armor of the Kingsguard. He
gave Ned a quick, curious glance from the corner of his eye, but asked no questions.
The day felt heavy and oppressive as he crossed the bailey back to the Tower of the
Hand. He could feel the threat of rain in the air. Ned would have welcomed it. It might
have made him feel a trifle less unclean. When he reached his solar, he summoned
Vayon Poole. The steward came at once. “You sent for me, my lord Hand?”
“Hand no longer,” Ned told him. “The king and I have quarreled. We shall be returning
to Winterfell.”
“I shall begin making arrangements at once, my lord. We will need a fortnight to ready
everything for the journey.”
“We may not have a fortnight. We may not have a day. The king mentioned something
about seeing my head on a spike.” Ned frowned. He did not truly believe the king would
harm him, not Robert. He was angry now, but once Ned was safely out of sight, his rage
would cool as it always did.
Always? Suddenly, uncomfortably, he found himself recalling Rhaegar Targaryen.
Fifteen years dead, yet Robert hates him as much as ever. It was a disturbing
notion . . . and there was the other matter, the business with Catelyn and the dwarf that
Yoren had warned him of last night. That would come to light soon, as sure as sunrise,
and with the king in such a black fury . . . Robert might not care a fig for Tyrion
Lannister, but it would touch on his pride, and there was no telling what the queen
might do.
“It might be safest if I went on ahead,” he told Poole. “I will take my daughters and a few
guardsmen. The rest of you can follow when you are ready. Inform Jory, but tell no one
else, and do nothing until the girls and I have gone. The castle is full of eyes and ears,
and I would rather my plans were not known.”
“As you command, my lord.”
�When he had gone, Eddard Stark went to the window and sat brooding. Robert had left
him no choice that he could see. He ought to thank him. It would be good to return to
Winterfell. He ought never have left. His sons were waiting there. Perhaps he and
Catelyn would make a new son together when he returned, they were not so old yet. And
of late he had often found himself dreaming of snow, of the deep quiet of the wolfswood
at night.
And yet, the thought of leaving angered him as well. So much was still undone. Robert
and his council of cravens and flatterers would beggar the realm if left unchecked . . . or,
worse, sell it to the Lannisters in payment of their loans. And the truth of Jon Arryn’s
death still eluded him. Oh, he had found a few pieces, enough to convince him that Jon
had indeed been murdered, but that was no more than the spoor of an animal on the
forest floor. He had not sighted the beast itself yet, though he sensed it was there,
lurking, hidden, treacherous.
It struck him suddenly that he might return to Winterfell by sea. Ned was no sailor, and
ordinarily would have preferred the kingsroad, but if he took ship he could stop at
Dragonstone and speak with Stannis Baratheon. Pycelle had sent a raven off across the
water, with a polite letter from Ned requesting Lord Stannis to return to his seat on the
small council. As yet, there had been no reply, but the silence only deepened his
suspicions. Lord Stannis shared the secret Jon Arryn had died for, he was certain of it.
The truth he sought might very well be waiting for him on the ancient island fortress of
House Targaryen.
And when you have it, what then? Some secrets are safer kept hidden. Some secrets are
too dangerous to share, even with those you love and trust. Ned slid the dagger that
Catelyn had brought him out of the sheath on his belt. The Imp’s knife. Why would the
dwarf want Bran dead? To silence him, surely. Another secret, or only a different strand
of the same web?
Could Robert be part of it? He would not have thought so, but once he would not have
thought Robert could command the murder of women and children either. Catelyn had
tried to warn him. You knew the man, she had said. The king is a stranger to you. The
sooner he was quit of King’s Landing, the better. If there was a ship sailing north on the
morrow, it would be well to be on it.
He summoned Vayon Poole again and sent him to the docks to make inquiries, quietly
but quickly. “Find me a fast ship with a skilled captain,” he told the steward. “I care
nothing for the size of its cabins or the quality of its appointments, so long as it is swift
and safe. I wish to leave at once.”
Poole had no sooner taken his leave than Tomard announced a visitor. “Lord Baelish to
�see you, m’lord.”
Ned was half-tempted to turn him away, but thought better of it. He was not free yet;
until he was, he must play their games. “Show him in, Tom.”
Lord Petyr sauntered into the solar as if nothing had gone amiss that morning. He wore
a slashed velvet doublet in cream-and-silver, a grey silk cloak trimmed with black fox,
and his customary mocking smile.
Ned greeted him coldly. “Might I ask the reason for this visit, Lord Baelish?”
“I won’t detain you long, I’m on my way to dine with Lady Tanda. Lamprey pie and roast
suckling pig. She has some thought to wed me to her younger daughter, so her table is
always astonishing. If truth be told, I’d sooner marry the pig, but don’t tell her. I do love
lamprey pie.”
“Don’t let me keep you from your eels, my lord,” Ned said with icy disdain. “At the
moment, I cannot think of anyone whose company I desire less than yours.”
“Oh, I’m certain if you put your mind to it, you could come up with a few names. Varys,
say. Cersei. Or Robert. His Grace is most wroth with you. He went on about you at some
length after you took your leave of us this morning. The words insolence and ingratitude
came into it frequently, I seem to recall.”
Ned did not honor that with a reply. Nor did he offer his guest a seat, but Littlefinger
took one anyway. “After you stormed out, it was left to me to convince them not to hire
the Faceless Men,” he continued blithely. “Instead Varys will quietly let it be known that
we’ll make a lord of whoever does in the Targaryen girl.”
Ned was disgusted. “So now we grant titles to assassins.”
Littlefinger shrugged. “Titles are cheap. The Faceless Men are expensive. If truth be told,
I did the Targaryen girl more good than you with all your talk of honor. Let some
sellsword drunk on visions of lordship try to kill her. Likely he’ll make a botch of it, and
afterward the Dothraki will be on their guard. If we’d sent a Faceless Man after her,
she’d be as good as buried.”
Ned frowned. “You sit in council and talk of ugly women and steel kisses, and now you
expect me to believe that you tried to protect the girl? How big a fool do you take me
for?”
“Well, quite an enormous one, actually,” said Littlefinger, laughing.
�“Do you always find murder so amusing, Lord Baelish?”
“It’s not murder I find amusing, Lord Stark, it’s you. You rule like a man dancing on
rotten ice. I daresay you will make a noble splash. I believe I heard the first crack this
morning.”
“The first and last,” said Ned. “I’ve had my fill.”
“When do you mean to return to Winterfell, my lord?”
“As soon as I can. What concern is that of yours?”
“None . . . but if perchance you’re still here come evenfall, I’d be pleased to take you to
this brothel your man Jory has been searching for so ineffectually.” Littlefinger smiled.
“And I won’t even tell the Lady Catelyn.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
CATELYN
My lady, you should have sent word of your coming,” Ser Donnel Waynwood told her as
their horses climbed the pass. “We would have sent an escort. The high road is not as
safe as it once was, for a party as small as yours.”
“We learned that to our sorrow, Ser Donnel,” Catelyn said. Sometimes she felt as though
her heart had turned to stone; six brave men had died to bring her this far, and she could
not even find it in her to weep for them. Even their names were fading. “The clansmen
harried us day and night. We lost three men in the first attack, and two more in the
second, and Lannister’s serving man died of a fever when his wounds festered. When we
heard your men approaching, I thought us doomed for certain.” They had drawn up for a
last desperate fight, blades in hand and backs to the rock. The dwarf had been whetting
the edge of his axe and making some mordant jest when Bronn spotted the banner the
riders carried before them, the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn, sky-blue and white.
Catelyn had never seen a more welcome sight.
“The clans have grown bolder since Lord Jon died,” Ser Donnel said. He was a stocky
youth of twenty years, earnest and homely, with a wide nose and a shock of thick brown
hair. “If it were up to me, I would take a hundred men into the mountains, root them out
of their fastnesses, and teach them some sharp lessons, but your sister has forbidden it.
She would not even permit her knights to fight in the Hand’s tourney. She wants all our
swords kept close to home, to defend the Vale . . . against what, no one is certain.
Shadows, some say.” He looked at her anxiously, as if he had suddenly remembered who
she was. “I hope I have not spoken out of turn, my lady. I meant no offense.”
“Frank talk does not offend me, Ser Donnel.” Catelyn knew what her sister feared. Not
shadows, Lannisters, she thought to herself, glancing back to where the dwarf rode
beside Bronn. The two of them had grown thick as thieves since Chiggen had died. The
little man was more cunning than she liked. When they had entered the mountains, he
had been her captive, bound and helpless. What was he now? Her captive still, yet he
rode along with a dirk through his belt and an axe strapped to his saddle, wearing the
shadowskin cloak he’d won dicing with the singer and the chainmail hauberk he’d taken
off Chiggen’s corpse. Two score men flanked the dwarf and the rest of her ragged band,
knights and men-at-arms in service to her sister Lysa and Jon Arryn’s young son, and
yet Tyrion betrayed no hint of fear. Could I be wrong? Catelyn wondered, not for the
first time. Could he be innocent after all, of Bran and Jon Arryn and all the rest? And if
he was, what did that make her? Six men had died to bring him here.
�Resolute, she pushed her doubts away. “When we reach your keep, I would take it kindly
if you could send for Maester Colemon at once. Ser Rodrik is feverish from his wounds.”
More than once she had feared the gallant old knight would not survive the journey.
Toward the end he could scarcely sit his horse, and Bronn had urged her to leave him to
his fate, but Catelyn would not hear of it. They had tied him in the saddle instead, and
she had commanded Marillion the singer to watch over him.
Ser Donnel hesitated before he answered. “The Lady Lysa has commanded the maester
to remain at the Eyrie at all times, to care for Lord Robert,” he said. “We have a septon at
the gate who tends to our wounded. He can see to your man’s hurts.”
Catelyn had more faith in a maester’s learning than a septon’s prayers. She was about to
say as much when she saw the battlements ahead, long parapets built into the very stone
of the mountains on either side of them. Where the pass shrank to a narrow defile scarce
wide enough for four men to ride abreast, twin watchtowers clung to the rocky slopes,
joined by a covered bridge of weathered grey stone that arched above the road. Silent
faces watched from arrow slits in tower, battlements, and bridge. When they had
climbed almost to the top, a knight rode out to meet them. His horse and his armor were
grey, but his cloak was the rippling blue-and-red of Riverrun, and a shiny black fish,
wrought in gold and obsidian, pinned its folds against his shoulder. “Who would pass
the Bloody Gate?” he called.
“Ser Donnel Waynwood, with the Lady Catelyn Stark and her companions,” the young
knight answered.
The Knight of the Gate lifted his visor. “I thought the lady looked familiar. You are far
from home, little Cat.”
“And you, Uncle,” she said, smiling despite all she had been through. Hearing that
hoarse, smoky voice again took her back twenty years, to the days of her childhood.
“My home is at my back,” he said gruffly.
“Your home is in my heart,” Catelyn told him. “Take off your helm. I would look on your
face again.”
“The years have not improved it, I fear,” Brynden Tully said, but when he lifted off the
helm, Catelyn saw that he lied. His features were lined and weathered, and time had
stolen the auburn from his hair and left him only grey, but the smile was the same, and
the bushy eyebrows fat as caterpillars, and the laughter in his deep blue eyes. “Did Lysa
know you were coming?”
�“There was no time to send word ahead,” Catelyn told him. The others were coming up
behind her. “I fear we ride before the storm, Uncle.”
“May we enter the Vale?” Ser Donnel asked. The Waynwoods were ever ones for
ceremony.
“In the name of Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, True Warden of
the East, I bid you enter freely, and charge you to keep his peace,” Ser Brynden replied.
“Come.”
And so she rode behind him, beneath the shadow of the Bloody Gate where a dozen
armies had dashed themselves to pieces in the Age of Heroes. On the far side of the
stoneworks, the mountains opened up suddenly upon a vista of green fields, blue sky,
and snowcapped mountains that took her breath away. The Vale of Arryn bathed in the
morning light.
It stretched before them to the misty cast, a tranquil land of rich black soil, wide slowmoving rivers, and hundreds of small lakes that shone like mirrors in the sun, protected
on all sides by its sheltering peaks. Wheat and corn and barley grew high in its fields,
and even in Highgarden the pumpkins were no larger nor the fruit any sweeter than
here. They stood at the western end of the valley, where the high road crested the last
pass and began its winding descent to the bottomlands two miles below. The Vale was
narrow here, no more than a half day’s ride across, and the northern mountains seemed
so close that Catelyn could almost reach out and touch them. Looming over them all was
the jagged peak called the Giant’s Lance, a mountain that even mountains looked up to,
its head lost in icy mists three and a half miles above the valley floor. Over its massive
western shoulder flowed the ghost torrent of Alyssa’s Tears. Even from this distance,
Catelyn could make out the shining silver thread, bright against the dark stone.
When her uncle saw that she had stopped, he moved his horse closer and pointed. “It’s
there, beside Alyssa’s Tears. All you can see from here is a flash of white every now and
then, if you look hard and the sun hits the walls just right.”
Seven towers, Ned had told her, like white daggers thrust into the belly of the sky, so
high you can stand on the parapets and look down on the clouds. “How long a ride?”
she asked.
“We can be at the mountain by evenfall,” Uncle Brynden said, “but the climb will take
another day.”
Ser Rodrik Cassel spoke up from behind. “My lady,” he said, “I fear I can go no farther
�today.” His face sagged beneath his ragged, newgrown whiskers, and he looked so weary
Catelyn feared he might fall off his horse.
“Nor should you,” she said. “You have done all I could have asked of you, and a hundred
times more. My uncle will see me the rest of the way to the Eyrie. Lannister must come
with me, but there is no reason that you and the others should not rest here and recover
your strength.”
“We should be honored to have them to guest,” Ser Donnel said with the grave courtesy
of the young. Beside Ser Rodrik, only Bronn, Ser Willis Wode, and Marillion the singer
remained of the party that had ridden with her from the inn by the crossroads.
“My lady,” Marillion said, riding forward. “I beg you allow me to accompany you to the
Eyrie, to see the end of the tale as I saw its beginnings.” The boy sounded haggard, yet
strangely determined; he had a fevered shine to his eyes.
Catelyn had never asked the singer to ride with them; that choice he had made himself,
and how he had come to survive the journey when so many braver men lay dead and
unburied behind them, she could never say. Yet here he was, with a scruff of beard that
made him look almost a man. Perhaps she owed him something for having come this far.
“Very well,” she told him.
“I’ll come as well,” Bronn announced.
She liked that less well. Without Bronn she would never have reached the Vale, she
knew; the sellsword was as fierce a fighter as she had ever seen, and his sword had
helped cut them through to safety. Yet for all that, Catelyn misliked the man. Courage he
had, and strength, but there was no kindness in him, and little loyalty. And she had seen
him riding beside Lannister far too often, talking in low voices and laughing at some
private joke. She would have preferred to separate him from the dwarf here and now,
but having agreed that Marillion might continue to the Eyrie, she could see no gracious
way to deny that same right to Bronn. “As you wish,” she said, although she noted that
he had not actually asked her permission.
Ser Willis Wode remained with Ser Rodrik, a soft-spoken septon fussing over their
wounds. Their horses were left behind as well, poor ragged things. Ser Donnel promised
to send birds ahead to the Eyrie and the Gates of the Moon with the word of their
coming. Fresh mounts were brought forth from the stables, surefooted mountain stock
with shaggy coats, and within the hour they set forth once again. Catelyn rode beside her
uncle as they began the descent to the valley floor. Behind came Bronn, Tyrion
Lannister, Marillion, and six of Brynden’s men.
�Not until they were a third of the way down the mountain path, well out of earshot of the
others, did Brynden Tully turn to her and say, “So, child. Tell me about this storm of
yours.”
“I have not been a child in many years, Uncle,” Catelyn said, but she told him
nonetheless. It took longer than she would have believed to tell it all, Lysa’s letter and
Bran’s fall, the assassin’s dagger and Littlefinger and her chance meeting with Tyrion
Lannister in the crossroads inn.
Her uncle listened silently, heavy brows shadowing his eyes as his frown grew deeper.
Brynden Tully had always known how to listen . . . to anyone but her father. He was Lord
Hoster’s brother, younger by five years, but the two of them had been at war as far back
as Catelyn could remember. During one of their louder quarrels, when Catelyn was
eight, Lord Hoster had called Brynden “the black goat of the Tully flock.” Laughing,
Brynden had pointed out that the sigil of their house was a leaping trout, so he ought to
be a black fish rather than a black goat, and from that day forward he had taken it as his
personal emblem.
The war had not ended until the day she and Lysa had been wed. It was at their wedding
feast that Brynden told his brother he was leaving Riverrun to serve Lysa and her new
husband, the Lord of the Eyrie. Lord Hoster had not spoken his brother’s name since,
from what Edmure told her in his infrequent letters.
Nonetheless, during all those years of Catelyn’s girlhood, it had been Brynden the
Blackfish to whom Lord Hoster’s children had run with their tears and their tales, when
Father was too busy and Mother too ill. Catelyn, Lysa, Edmure . . . and yes, even Petyr
Baelish, their father’s ward . . . he had listened to them all patiently, as he listened now,
laughing at their triumphs and sympathizing with their childish misfortunes.
When she was done, her uncle remained silent for a long time, as his horse negotiated
the steep, rocky trail. “Your father must be told,” he said at last. “If the Lannisters should
march, Winterfell is remote and the Vale walled up behind its mountains, but Riverrun
lies right in their path.”
“I’d had the same fear,” Catelyn admitted. “I shall ask Maester Colemon to send a bird
when we reach the Eyrie.” She had other messages to send as well; the commands that
Ned had given her for his bannermen, to ready the defenses of the north. “What is the
mood in the Vale?” she asked.
“Angry,” Brynden Tully admitted. “Lord Jon was much loved, and the insult was keenly
felt when the king named Jaime Lannister to an office the Arryns had held for near three
hundred years. Lysa has commanded us to call her son the True Warden of the East, but
�no one is fooled. Nor is your sister alone in wondering at the manner of the Hand’s
death. None dare say Jon was murdered, not openly, but suspicion casts a long shadow.”
He gave Catelyn a look, his mouth tight. “And there is the boy.”
“The boy? What of him?” She ducked her head as they passed under a low overhang of
rock, and around a sharp turn.
Her uncle’s voice was troubled. “Lord Robert,” he sighed. “Six years old, sickly, and
prone to weep if you take his dolls away. Jon Arryn’s trueborn heir, by all the gods, yet
there are some who say he is too weak to sit his father’s seat, Nestor Royce has been high
steward these past fourteen years, while Lord Jon served in King’s Landing, and many
whisper that he should rule until the boy comes of age. Others believe that Lysa must
marry again, and soon. Already the suitors gather like crows on a battlefield. The Eyrie is
full of them.”
“I might have expected that,” Catelyn said. Small wonder there; Lysa was still young, and
the kingdom of Mountain and Vale made a handsome wedding gift. “Will Lysa take
another husband?”
“She says yes, provided she finds a man who suits her,” Brynden Tully said, “but she has
already rejected Lord Nestor and a dozen other suitable men. She swears that this time
she will choose her lord husband.”
“You of all people can scarce fault her for that.”
Ser Brynden snorted. “Nor do I, but . . . it seems to me Lysa is only playing at courtship.
She enjoys the sport, but I believe your sister intends to rule herself until her boy is old
enough to be Lord of the Eyrie in truth as well as name.”
“A woman can rule as wisely as a man,” Catelyn said.
“The right woman can,” her uncle said with a sideways glance. “Make no mistake, Cat.
Lysa is not you.” He hesitated a moment. “If truth be told, I fear you may not find your
sister as helpful as you would like.”
She was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“The Lysa who came back from King’s Landing is not the same girl who went south when
her husband was named Hand. Those years were hard for her. You must know. Lord
Arryn was a dutiful husband, but their marriage was made from politics, not passion.”
“As was my own.”
�“They began the same, but your ending has been happier than your sister’s. Two babes
stillborn, twice as many miscarriages, Lord Arryn’s death . . . Catelyn, the gods gave Lysa
only the one child, and he is all your sister lives for now, poor boy. Small wonder she fled
rather than see him handed over to the Lannisters. Your sister is afraid, child, and the
Lannisters are what she fears most. She ran to the Vale, stealing away from the Red Keep
like a thief in the night, and all to snatch her son out of the lion’s mouth . . . and now you
have brought the lion to her door.”
“In chains,” Catelyn said. A crevasse yawned on her right, falling away into darkness.
She reined up her horse and picked her way along step by careful step.
“Oh?” Her uncle glanced back, to where Tyrion Lannister was making his slow descent
behind them. “I see an axe on his saddle, a dirk at his belt, and a sellsword that trails
after him like a hungry shadow. Where are the chains, sweet one?”
Catelyn shifted uneasily in her seat. “The dwarf is here, and not by choice. Chains or no,
he is my prisoner. Lysa will want him to answer for his crimes no less than I. It was her
own lord husband the Lannisters murdered, and her own letter that first warned us
against them.”
Brynden Blackfish gave her a weary smile. “I hope you are right, child,” he sighed, in
tones that said she was wrong.
The sun was well to the west by the time the slope began to flatten beneath the hooves of
their horses. The road widened and grew straight, and for the first time Catelyn noticed
wildflowers and grasses growing. Once they reached the valley floor, the going was faster
and they made good time, cantering through verdant greenwoods and sleepy little
hamlets, past orchards and golden wheat fields, splashing across a dozen sunlit streams.
Her uncle sent a standard-bearer ahead of them, a double banner flying from his staff;
the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn on high, and below it his own black fish. Farm
wagons and merchants’ carts and riders from lesser houses moved aside to let them pass.
Even so, it was full dark before they reached the stout castle that stood at the foot of the
Giant’s Lance. Torches flickered atop its ramparts, and the horned moon danced upon
the dark waters of its moat. The drawbridge was up and the portcullis down, but Catelyn
saw lights burning in the gatehouse and spilling from the windows of the square towers
beyond.
“The Gates of the Moon,” her uncle said as the party drew rein. His standard-bearer rode
to the edge of the moat to hail the men in the gatehouse. “Lord Nestor’s seat. He should
be expecting us. Look up.”
�Catelyn raised her eyes, up and up and up. At first all she saw was stone and trees, the
looming mass of the great mountain shrouded in night, as black as a starless sky. Then
she noticed the glow of distant fires well above them; a tower keep, built upon the steep
side of the mountain, its lights like orange eyes staring down from above. Above that was
another, higher and more distant, and still higher a third, no more than a flickering
spark in the sky. And finally, up where the falcons soared, a flash of white in the
moonlight. Vertigo washed over her as she stared upward at the pale towers, so far
above.
“The Eyrie,” she heard Marillion murmur, awed.
The sharp voice of Tyrion Lannister broke in. “The Arryns must not be overfond of
company. If you’re planning to make us climb that mountain in the dark, I’d rather you
kill me here.”
“We’ll spend the night here and make the ascent on the morrow,” Brynden told him.
“I can scarcely wait,” the dwarf replied. “How do we get up there? I’ve no experience at
riding goats.”
“Mules,” Brynden said, smiling.
“There are steps carved into the mountain,” Catelyn said. Ned had told her about them
when he talked of his youth here with Robert Baratheon and Jon Arryn.
Her uncle nodded. “It is too dark to see them, but the steps are there. Too steep and
narrow for horses, but mules can manage them most of the way. The path is guarded by
three waycastles, Stone and Snow and Sky. The mules will take us as far up as Sky.”
Tyrion Lannister glanced up doubtfully. “And beyond that?”
Brynden smiled. “Beyond that, the path is too steep even for mules. We ascend on foot
the rest of the way. Or perchance you’d prefer to ride a basket. The Eyrie clings to the
mountain directly above Sky, and in its cellars are six great winches with long iron
chains to draw supplies up from below. If you prefer, my lord of Lannister, I can arrange
for you to ride up with the bread and beer and apples.”
The dwarf gave a bark of laughter. “Would that I were a pumpkin,” he said. “Alas, my
lord father would no doubt be most chagrined if his son of Lannister went to his fate like
a load of turnips. If you ascend on foot, I fear I must do the same. We Lannisters do have
a certain pride.”
�“Pride?” Catelyn snapped. His mocking tone and easy manner made her angry.
“Arrogance, some might call it. Arrogance and avarice and lust for power.”
“My brother is undoubtedly arrogant,” Tyrion Lannister replied. “My father is the soul of
avarice, and my sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every waking breath. I, however,
am innocent as a little lamb. Shall I bleat for you?” He grinned.
The drawbridge came creaking down before she could reply, and they heard the sound of
oiled chains as the portcullis was drawn up. Men-at-arms carried burning brands out to
light their way, and her uncle led them across the moat. Lord Nestor Royce, High
Steward of the Vale and Keeper of the Gates of the Moon, was waiting in the yard to
greet them, surrounded by his knights. “Lady Stark,” he said, bowing. He was a massive,
barrel-chested man, and his bow was clumsy.
Catelyn dismounted to stand before him. “Lord Nestor,” she said. She knew the man
only by reputation; Bronze Yohn’s cousin, from a lesser branch of House Royce, yet still
a formidable lord in his own right. “We have had a long and tiring journey. I would beg
the hospitality of your roof tonight, if I might.”
“My roof is yours, my lady,” Lord Nestor returned gruffly, “but your sister the Lady Lysa
has sent down word from the Eyrie. She wishes to see you at once. The rest of your party
will be housed here and sent up at first light.”
Her uncle swung off his horse. “What madness is this?” he said bluntly. Brynden Tully
had never been a man to blunt the edge of his words. “A night ascent, with the moon not
even full? Even Lysa should know that’s an invitation to a broken neck.”
“The mules know the way, Ser Brynden.” A wiry girl of seventeen or eighteen years
stepped up beside Lord Nestor. Her dark hair was cropped short and straight around her
head, and she wore riding leathers and a light shirt of silvered ringmail. She bowed to
Catelyn, more gracefully than her lord. “I promise you, my lady, no harm will come to
you. It would be my honor to take you up. I’ve made the dark climb a hundred times.
Mychel says my father must have been a goat.”
She sounded so cocky that Catelyn had to smile. “Do you have a name, child?”
“Mya Stone, if it please you, my lady,” the girl said.
It did not please her; it was an effort for Catelyn to keep the smile on her face. Stone was
a bastard’s name in the Vale, as Snow was in the north, and Flowers in Highgarden; in
each of the Seven Kingdoms, custom had fashioned a surname for children born with no
�names of their own. Catelyn had nothing against this girl, but suddenly she could not
help but think of Ned’s bastard on the Wall, and the thought made her angry and guilty,
both at once. She struggled to find words for a reply.
Lord Nestor filled the silence. “Mya’s a clever girl, and if she vows she will bring you
safely to the Lady Lysa, I believe her. She has not failed me yet.”
“Then I put myself in your hands, Mya Stone,” Catelyn said. “Lord Nestor, I charge you
to keep a close guard on my prisoner.”
“And I charge you to bring the prisoner a cup of wine and a nicely crisped capon, before
he dies of hunger,” Lannister said. “A girl would be pleasant as well, but I suppose that’s
too much to ask of you.” The sellsword Bronn laughed aloud.
Lord Nestor ignored the banter. “As you say, my lady, so it will be done.” Only then did
he look at the dwarf. “See our lord of Lannister to a tower cell, and bring him meat and
mead.”
Catelyn took her leave of her uncle and the others as Tyrion Lannister was led off, then
followed the bastard girl through the castle. Two mules were waiting in the upper bailey,
saddled and ready. Mya helped her mount one while a guardsman in a sky-blue cloak
opened the narrow postern gate. Beyond was dense forest of pine and spruce, and the
mountain like a black wall, but the steps were there, chiseled deep into the rock,
ascending into the sky. “Some people find it easier if they close their eyes,” Mya said as
she led the mules through the gate into the dark wood. “When they get frightened or
dizzy, sometimes they hold on to the mule too tight. They don’t like that.”
“I was born a Tully and wed to a Stark,” Catelyn said. “I do not frighten easily. Do you
plan to light a torch?” The steps were black as pitch.
The girl made a face. “Torches just blind you. On a clear night like this, the moon and
the stars are enough. Mychel says I have the eyes of the owl.” She mounted and urged
her mule up the first step. Catelyn’s animal followed of its own accord.
“You mentioned Mychel before,” Catelyn said. The mules set the pace, slow but steady.
She was perfectly content with that.
“Mychel’s my love,” Mya explained. “Mychel Redfort. He’s squire to Ser Lyn Corbray.
We’re to wed as soon as he becomes a knight, next year or the year after.”
She sounded so like Sansa, so happy and innocent with her dreams. Catelyn smiled, but
the smile was tinged with sadness. The Redforts were an old name in the Vale, she knew,
�with the blood of the First Men in their veins. His love she might be, but no Redfort
would ever wed a bastard. His family would arrange a more suitable match for him, to a
Corbray or a Waynwood or a Royce, or perhaps a daughter of some greater house
outside the Vale. If Mychel Redfort laid with this girl at all, it would be on the wrong side
of the sheet.
The ascent was easier than Catelyn had dared hope. The trees pressed close, leaning over
the path to make a rustling green roof that shut out even the moon, so it seemed as
though they were moving up a long black tunnel. But the mules were surefooted and
tireless, and Mya Stone did indeed seem blessed with night-eyes. They plodded upward,
winding their way back and forth across the face of the mountain as the steps twisted
and turned. A thick layer of fallen needles carpeted the path, so the shoes of their mules
made only the softest sound on the rock. The quiet soothed her, and the gentle rocking
motion set Catelyn to swaying in her saddle. Before long she was fighting sleep.
Perhaps she did doze for a moment, for suddenly a massive ironbound gate was looming
before them. “Stone,” Mya announced cheerily, dismounting. Iron spikes were set along
the tops of formidable stone walls, and two fat round towers overtopped the keep. The
gate swung open at Mya’s shout. Inside, the portly knight who commanded the
waycastle greeted Mya by name and offered them skewers of charred meat and onions
still hot from the spit. Catelyn had not realized how hungry she was. She ate standing in
the yard, as stablehands moved their saddles to fresh mules. The hot juices ran down her
chin and dripped onto her cloak, but she was too famished to care.
Then it was up onto a new mule and out again into the starlight. The second part of the
ascent seemed more treacherous to Catelyn. The trail was steeper, the steps more worn,
and here and there littered with pebbles and broken stone. Mya had to dismount a halfdozen times to move fallen rocks from their path. “You don’t want your mule to break a
leg up here,” she said. Catelyn was forced to agree. She could feel the altitude more now.
The trees were sparser up here, and the wind blew more vigorously, sharp gusts that
tugged at her clothing and pushed her hair into her eyes. From time to time the steps
doubled back on themselves, and she could see Stone below them, and the Gates of the
Moon farther down, its torches no brighter than candles.
Snow was smaller than Stone, a single fortified tower and a timber keep and stable
hidden behind a low wall of unmortared rock. Yet it nestled against the Giant’s Lance in
such a way as to command the entire stone stair above the lower waycastle. An enemy
intent on the Eyrie would have to fight his way from Stone step by step, while rocks and
arrows rained down from Snow above. The commander, an anxious young knight with a
pockmarked face, offered bread and cheese and the chance to warm themselves before
his fire, but Mya declined. “We ought to keep going, my lady,” she said. “If it please you.”
Catelyn nodded.
�Again they were given fresh mules. Hers was white. Mya smiled when she saw him.
“Whitey’s a good one, my lady. Sure of foot, even on ice, but you need to be careful. He’ll
kick if he doesn’t like you.”
The white mule seemed to like Catelyn; there was no kicking, thank the gods. There was
no ice either, and she was grateful for that as well. “My mother says that hundreds of
years ago, this was where the snow began,” Mya told her. “It was always white above
here, and the ice never melted.” She shrugged. “I can’t remember ever seeing snow this
far down the mountain, but maybe it was that way once, in the olden times.”
So young, Catelyn thought, trying to remember if she had ever been like that. The girl
had lived half her life in summer, and that was all she knew. Winter is coming, child, she
wanted to tell her. The words were on her lips; she almost said them. Perhaps she was
becoming a Stark at last.
Above Snow, the wind was a living thing, howling around them like a wolf in the waste,
then falling off to nothing as if to lure them into complacency. The stars seemed brighter
up here, so close that she could almost touch them, and the horned moon was huge in
the clear black sky. As they climbed, Catelyn found it was better to look up than down.
The steps were cracked and broken from centuries of freeze and thaw and the tread of
countless mules, and even in the dark the heights put her heart in her throat. When they
came to a high saddle between two spires of rock, Mya dismounted. “It’s best to lead the
mules over,” she said. “The wind can be a little scary here, my lady.”
Catelyn climbed stiffly from the shadows and looked at the path ahead; twenty feet long
and close to three feet wide, but with a precipitous drop to either side. She could hear
the wind shrieking. Mya stepped lightly out, her mule following as calmly as if they were
crossing a bailey. It was her turn. Yet no sooner had she taken her first step than fear
caught Catelyn in its jaws. She could feel the emptiness, the vast black gulfs of air that
yawned around her. She stopped, trembling, afraid to move. The wind screamed at her
and wrenched at her cloak, trying to pull her over the edge. Catelyn edged her foot
backward, the most timid of steps, but the mule was behind her, and she could not
retreat. I am going to die here, she thought. She could feel cold sweat trickling down her
back.
“Lady Stark,” Mya called across the gulf. The girl sounded a thousand leagues away. “Are
you well?”
Catelyn Tully Stark swallowed what remained of her pride. “I . . . I cannot do this, child,”
she called out.
“Yes you can,” the bastard girl said. “I know you can. Look how wide the path is.”
�“I don’t want to look.” The world seemed to be spinning around her, mountain and sky
and mules, whirling like a child’s top. Catelyn closed her eyes to steady her ragged
breathing.
“I’ll come back for you,” Mya said. “Don’t move, my lady.”
Moving was about the last thing Catelyn was about to do. She listened to the skirling of
the wind and the scuffling sound of leather on stone. Then Mya was there, taking her
gently by the arm. “Keep your eyes closed if you like. Let go of the rope now, Whitey will
take care of himself. Very good, my lady. I’ll lead you over, it’s easy, you’ll see. Give me a
step now. That’s it, move your foot, just slide it forward. See. Now another. Easy. You
could run across. Another one, go on. Yes.” And so, foot by foot, step by step, the bastard
girl led Catelyn across, blind and trembling, while the white mule followed placidly
behind them.
The waycastle called Sky was no more than a high, crescent-shaped wall of unmortared
stone raised against the side of the mountain, but even the topless towers of Valyria
could not have looked more beautiful to Catelyn Stark. Here at last the snow crown
began; Sky’s weathered stones were rimed with frost, and long spears of ice hung from
the slopes above.
Dawn was breaking in the east as Mya Stone hallooed for the guards, and the gates
opened before them. Inside the walls there was only a series of ramps and a great tumble
of boulders and stones of all sizes. No doubt it would be the easiest thing in the world to
begin an avalanche from here. A mouth yawned in the rock face in front of them. “The
stables and barracks are in there,” Mya said. “The last part is inside the mountain. It can
be a little dark, but at least you’re out of the wind. This is as far as the mules can go. Past
here, well, it’s a sort of chimney, more like a stone ladder than proper steps, but it’s not
too bad. Another hour and we’ll be there.”
Catelyn looked up. Directly overhead, pale in the dawn light, she could see the
foundations of the Eyrie. It could not be more than six hundred feet above them. From
below it looked like a small white honeycomb. She remembered what her uncle had said
of baskets and winches. “The Lannisters may have their pride,” she told Mya, “but the
Tullys are born with better sense. I have ridden all day and the best part of a night. Tell
them to lower a basket. I shall ride with the turnips.”
The sun was well above the mountains by the time Catelyn Stark finally reached the
Eyrie. A stocky, silver-haired man in a sky-blue cloak and hammered moon-and-falcon
breastplate helped her from the basket; Ser Vardis Egen, captain of Jon Arryn’s
household guard. Beside him stood Maester Colemon, thin and nervous, with too little
hair and too much neck. “Lady Stark,” Ser Vardis said, “the pleasure is as great as it is
�unanticipated.” Maester Colemon bobbed his head in agreement. “Indeed it is, my lady,
indeed it is. I have sent word to your sister. She left orders to be awakened the instant
you arrived.”
“I hope she had a good night’s rest,” Catelyn said with a certain bite in her tone that
seemed to go unnoticed.
The men escorted her from the winch room up a spiral stair. The Eyrie was a small castle
by the standards of the great houses; seven slender white towers bunched as tightly as
arrows in a quiver on a shoulder of the great mountain. It had no need of stables nor
smithys nor kennels, but Ned said its granary was as large as Winterfell’s, and its towers
could house five hundred men. Yet it seemed strangely deserted to Catelyn as she passed
through it, its pale stone halls echoing and empty.
Lysa was waiting alone in her solar, still clad in her bed robes. Her long auburn hair
tumbled unbound across bare white shoulders and down her back. A maid stood behind
her, brushing out the night’s tangles, but when Catelyn entered, her sister rose to her
feet, smiling. “Cat,” she said. “Oh, Cat, how good it is to see you. My sweet sister.” She
ran across the chamber and wrapped her sister in her arms. “How long it has been,” Lysa
murmured against her. “Oh, how very very long.”
It had been five years, in truth; five cruel years, for Lysa. They had taken their toll. Her
sister was two years the younger, yet she looked older now. Shorter than Catelyn, Lysa
had grown thick of body, pale and puffy of face. She had the blue eyes of the Tullys, but
hers were pale and watery, never still. Her small mouth had turned petulant. As Catelyn
held her, she remembered the slender, high-breasted girl who’d waited beside her that
day in the sept at Riverrun. How lovely and full of hope she had been. All that remained
of her sister’s beauty was the great fall of thick auburn hair that cascaded to her waist.
“You look well,” Catelyn lied, “but . . . tired.”
Her sister broke the embrace. “Tired. Yes. Oh, yes.” She seemed to notice the others
then; her maid, Maester Colemon, Ser Vardis. “Leave us,” she told them. “I wish to speak
to my sister alone.” She held Catelyn’s hand as they withdrew . . .
. . . and dropped it the instant the door closed. Catelyn saw her face change. It was as if
the sun had gone behind a cloud. “Have you taken leave of your senses?” Lysa snapped
at her. “To bring him here, without a word of permission, without so much as a warning,
to drag us into your quarrels with the Lannisters . . . ”
“My quarrels?” Catelyn could scarce believe what she was hearing. A great fire burned in
the hearth, but there was no trace of warmth in Lysa’s voice. “They were your quarrels
�first, sister. It was you who sent me that cursed letter, you who wrote that the Lannisters
had murdered your husband.”
“To warn you, so you could stay away from them! I never meant to fight them! Gods,
Cat, do you know what you’ve done?”
“Mother?” a small voice said. Lysa whirled, her heavy robe swirling around her. Robert
Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, stood in the doorway, clutching a ragged cloth doll and looking
at them with large eyes. He was a painfully thin child, small for his age and sickly all his
days, and from time to time he trembled. The shaking sickness, the maesters called it. “I
heard voices.”
Small wonder, Catelyn thought; Lysa had almost been shouting. Still, her sister looked
daggers at her. “This is your aunt Catelyn, baby. My sister, Lady Stark. Do you
remember?”
The boy glanced at her blankly. “I think so,” he said, blinking, though he had been less
than a year old the last time Catelyn had seen him.
Lysa seated herself near the fire and said, “Come to Mother, my sweet one.” She
straightened his bedclothes and fussed with his fine brown hair. “Isn’t he beautiful? And
strong too, don’t you believe the things you hear. Jon knew. The seed is strong, he told
me. His last words. He kept saying Robert’s name, and he grabbed my arm so hard he
left marks. Tell them, the seed is strong. His seed. He wanted everyone to know what a
good strong boy my baby was going to be.”
“Lysa,” Catelyn said, “if you’re right about the Lannisters, all the more reason we must
act quickly. We—”
“Not in front of the baby,” Lysa said. “He has a delicate temper, don’t you, sweet one?”
“The boy is Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale,” Catelyn reminded her, “and
these are no times for delicacy. Ned thinks it may come to war.”
“Quiet!” Lysa snapped at her. “You’re scaring the boy.” Little Robert took a quick peek
over his shoulder at Catelyn and began to tremble. His doll fell to the rushes, and he
pressed himself against his mother. “Don’t be afraid, my sweet baby,” Lysa whispered.
“Mother’s here, nothing will hurt you.” She opened her robe and drew out a pale, heavy
breast, tipped with red. The boy grabbed for it eagerly, buried his face against her chest,
and began to suck. Lysa stroked his hair.
Catelyn was at a loss for words. Jon Arryn’s son, she thought incredulously. She
�remembered her own baby, three-year-old Rickon, half the age of this boy and five times
as fierce. Small wonder the lords of the Vale were restive. For the first time she
understood why the king had tried to take the child away from his mother to foster with
the Lannisters . . .
“We’re safe here,” Lysa was saying. Whether to her or to the boy, Catelyn was not sure.
“Don’t be a fool,” Catelyn said, the anger rising in her. “No one is safe. If you think
hiding here will make the Lannisters forget you, you are sadly mistaken.”
Lysa covered her boy’s ear with her hand. “Even if they could bring an army through the
mountains and past the Bloody Gate, the Eyrie is impregnable. You saw for yourself. No
enemy could ever reach us up here.”
Catelyn wanted to slap her. Uncle Brynden had tried to warn her, she realized. “No castle
is impregnable.”
“This one is,” Lysa insisted. “Everyone says so. The only thing is, what am I to do with
this Imp you have brought me?”
“Is he a bad man?” the Lord of the Eyrie asked, his mother’s breast popping from his
mouth, the nipple wet and red.
“A very bad man,” Lysa told him as she covered herself, “but Mother won’t let him harm
my little baby.”
“Make him fly,” Robert said eagerly.
Lysa stroked her son’s hair. “Perhaps we will,” she murmured. “Perhaps that is just what
we will do.”
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EDDARD
He found Littlefinger in the brothel’s common room, chatting amiably with a tall,
elegant woman who wore a feathered gown over skin as black as ink. By the hearth,
Heward and a buxom wench were playing at forfeits. From the look of it, he’d lost his
belt, his cloak, his mail shirt, and his right boot so far, while the girl had been forced to
unbutton her shift to the waist. Jory Cassel stood beside a rain-streaked window with a
wry smile on his face, watching Heward turn over tiles and enjoying the view.
Ned paused at the foot of the stair and pulled on his gloves. “It’s time we took our leave.
My business here is done.”
Heward lurched to his feet, hurriedly gathering up his things. “As you will, my lord,”
Jory said. “I’ll help Wyl bring round the horses.” He strode to the door.
Littlefinger took his time saying his farewells. He kissed the black woman’s hand,
whispered some joke that made her laugh aloud, and sauntered over to Ned. “Your
business,” he said lightly, “or Robert’s? They say the Hand dreams the king’s dreams,
speaks with the king’s voice, and rules with the king’s sword. Does that also mean you
fuck with the king’s—”
“Lord Baelish,” Ned interrupted, “you presume too much. I am not ungrateful for your
help. It might have taken us years to find this brothel without you. That does not mean I
intend to endure your mockery. And I am no longer the King’s Hand.”
“The direwolf must be a prickly beast,” said Littlefinger with a sharp twist of his mouth.
A warm rain was pelting down from a starless black sky as they walked to the stables.
Ned drew up the hood of his cloak. Jory brought out his horse. Young Wyl came right
behind him, leading Littlefinger’s mare with one hand while the other fumbled with his
belt and the lacings of his trousers. A barefoot whore leaned out of the stable door,
giggling at him.
“Will we be going back to the castle now, my lord?” Jory asked. Ned nodded and swung
into the saddle. Littlefinger mounted up beside him. Jory and the others followed.
“Chataya runs a choice establishment,” Littlefinger said as they rode. “I’ve half a mind to
�buy it. Brothels are a much sounder investment than ships, I’ve found. Whores seldom
sink, and when they are boarded by pirates, why, the pirates pay good coin like everyone
else.” Lord Petyr chuckled at his own wit.
Ned let him prattle on. After a time, he quieted and they rode in silence. The streets of
King’s Landing were dark and deserted. The rain had driven everyone under their roofs.
It beat down on Ned’s head, warm as blood and relentless as old guilts. Fat drops of
water ran down his face.
“Robert will never keep to one bed,” Lyanna had told him at Winterfell, on the night long
ago when their father had promised her hand to the young Lord of Storm’s End. “I hear
he has gotten a child on some girl in the Vale.” Ned had held the babe in his arms; he
could scarcely deny her, nor would he lie to his sister, but he had assured her that what
Robert did before their betrothal was of no matter, that he was a good man and true who
would love her with all his heart. Lyanna had only smiled. “Love is sweet, dearest Ned,
but it cannot change a man’s nature.”
The girl had been so young Ned had not dared to ask her age. No doubt she’d been a
virgin; the better brothels could always find a virgin, if the purse was fat enough. She
had light red hair and a powdering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and when
she slipped free a breast to give her nipple to the babe, he saw that her bosom was
freckled as well. “I named her Barra,” she said as the child nursed. “She looks so like
him, does she not, milord? She has his nose, and his hair . . . ”
“She does.” Eddard Stark had touched the baby’s fine, dark hair. It flowed through his
fingers like black silk. Robert’s firstborn had had the same fine hair, he seemed to recall.
“Tell him that when you see him, milord, as it . . . as it please you. Tell him how beautiful
she is.”
“I will,” Ned had promised her. That was his curse. Robert would swear undying love
and forget them before evenfall, but Ned Stark kept his vows. He thought of the
promises he’d made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he’d paid to keep them.
“And tell him I’ve not been with no one else. I swear it, milord, by the old gods and new.
Chataya said I could have half a year, for the baby, and for hoping he’d come back. So
you’ll tell him I’m waiting, won’t you? I don’t want no jewels or nothing, just him. He
was always good to me, truly.”
Good to you, Ned thought hollowly. “I will tell him, child, and I promise you, Barra shall
not go wanting.”
�She had smiled then, a smile so tremulous and sweet that it cut the heart out of him.
Riding through the rainy night, Ned saw Jon Snow’s face in front of him, so like a
younger version of his own. If the gods frowned so on bastards, he thought dully, why
did they fill men with such lusts? “Lord Baelish, what do you know of Robert’s bastards?”
“Well, he has more than you, for a start.”
“How many?”
Littlefinger shrugged. Rivulets of moisture twisted down the back of his cloak. “Does it
matter? If you bed enough women, some will give you presents, and His Grace has never
been shy on that count. I know he’s acknowledged that boy at Storm’s End, the one he
fathered the night Lord Stannis wed. He could hardly do otherwise. The mother was a
Florent, niece to the Lady Selyse, one of her bedmaids. Renly says that Robert carried
the girl upstairs during the feast, and broke in the wedding bed while Stannis and his
bride were still dancing. Lord Stannis seemed to think that was a blot on the honor of his
wife’s House, so when the boy was born, he shipped him off to Renly.” He gave Ned a
sideways glance. “I’ve also heard whispers that Robert got a pair of twins on a serving
wench at Casterly Rock, three years ago when he went west for Lord Tywin’s tourney.
Cersei had the babes killed, and sold the mother to a passing slaver. Too much an affront
to Lannister pride, that close to home.”
Ned Stark grimaced. Ugly tales like that were told of every great lord in the realm. He
could believe it of Cersei Lannister readily enough . . . but would the king stand by and
let it happen? The Robert he had known would not have, but the Robert he had known
had never been so practiced at shutting his eyes to things he did not wish to see. “Why
would Jon Arryn take a sudden interest in the king’s baseborn children?”
The short man gave a sodden shrug. “He was the King’s Hand. Doubtless Robert asked
him to see that they were provided for.”
Ned was soaked through to the bone, and his soul had grown cold. “It had to be more
than that, or why kill him?”
Littlefinger shook the rain from his hair and laughed. “Now I see. Lord Arryn learned
that His Grace had filled the bellies of some whores and fishwives, and for that he had to
be silenced. Small wonder. Allow a man like that to live, and next he’s like to blurt out
that the sun rises in the east.”
There was no answer Ned Stark could give to that but a frown. For the first time in years,
he found himself remembering Rhaegar Targaryen. He wondered if Rhaegar had
frequented brothels; somehow he thought not.
�The rain was falling harder now, stinging the eyes and drumming against the ground.
Rivers of black water were running down the hill when Jory called out, “My lord,” his
voice hoarse with alarm. And in an instant, the street was full of soldiers.
Ned glimpsed ringmail over leather, gauntlets and greaves, steel helms with golden lions
on the crests. Their cloaks clung to their backs, sodden with rain. He had no time to
count, but there were ten at least, a line of them, on foot, blocking the street, with
longswords and iron-tipped spears. “Behind!” he heard Wyl cry, and when he turned his
horse, there were more in back of them, cutting off their retreat. Jory’s sword came
singing from its scabbard. “Make way or die!”
“The wolves are howling,” their leader said. Ned could see rain running down his face.
“Such a small pack, though.”
Littlefinger walked his horse forward, step by careful step. “What is the meaning of this?
This is the Hand of the King.”
“He was the Hand of the King.” The mud muffled the hooves of the blood bay stallion.
The line parted before him. On a golden breastplate, the lion of Lannister roared its
defiance. “Now, if truth be told, I’m not sure what he is.”
“Lannister, this is madness,” Littlefinger said. “Let us pass. We are expected back at the
castle. What do you think you’re doing?”
“He knows what he’s doing,” Ned said calmly.
Jaime Lannister smiled. “Quite true. I’m looking for my brother. You remember my
brother, don’t you, Lord Stark? He was with us at Winterfell. Fair-haired, mismatched
eyes, sharp of tongue. A short man.”
“I remember him well,” Ned replied.
“It would seem he has met some trouble on the road. My lord father is quite vexed. You
would not perchance have any notion of who might have wished my brother ill, would
you?”
“Your brother has been taken at my command, to answer for his crimes,” Ned Stark said.
Littlefinger groaned in dismay. “My lords—”
Ser Jaime ripped his longsword from its sheath and urged his stallion forward. “Show
�me your steel, Lord Eddard. I’ll butcher you like Aerys if I must, but I’d sooner you died
with a blade in your hand.” He gave Littlefinger a cool, contemptuous glance. “Lord
Baelish, I’d leave here in some haste if I did not care to get bloodstains on my costly
clothing.”
Littlefinger did not need to be urged. “I will bring the City Watch,” he promised Ned.
The Lannister line parted to let him through, and closed behind him. Littlefinger put his
heels to his mare and vanished around a corner.
Ned’s men had drawn their swords, but they were three against twenty. Eyes watched
from nearby windows and doors, but no one was about to intervene. His party was
mounted, the Lannisters on foot save for Jaime himself. A charge might win them free,
but it seemed to Eddard Stark that they had a surer, safer tactic. “Kill me,” he warned
the Kingslayer, “and Catelyn will most certainly slay Tyrion.”
Jaime Lannister poked at Ned’s chest with the gilded sword that had sipped the blood of
the last of the Dragonkings. “Would she? The noble Catelyn Tully of Riverrun murder a
hostage? I think . . . not.” He sighed. “But I am not willing to chance my brother’s life on
a woman’s honor.” Jaime slid the golden sword into its sheath. “So I suppose I’ll let you
run back to Robert to tell him how I frightened you. I wonder if he’ll care.” Jaime pushed
his wet hair back with his fingers and wheeled his horse around. When he was beyond
the line of swordsmen, he glanced back at his captain. “Tregar, see that no harm comes
to Lord Stark.”
“As you say, m’lord.”
“Still . . . we wouldn’t want him to leave here entirely unchastened, so”—through the
night and the rain, he glimpsed the white of Jaime’s smile—“kill his men.”
“No!” Ned Stark screamed, clawing for his sword. Jaime was already cantering off down
the street as he heard Wyl shout. Men closed from both sides. Ned rode one down,
cutting at phantoms in red cloaks who gave way before him. Jory Cassel put his heels
into his mount and charged. A steel-shod hoof caught a Lannister guardsman in the face
with a sickening crunch. A second man reeled away and for an instant Jory was free. Wyl
cursed as they pulled him off his dying horse, swords slashing in the rain. Ned galloped
to him, bringing his longsword down on Tregar’s helm. The jolt of impact made him grit
his teeth. Tregar stumbled to his knees, his lion crest sheared in half, blood running
down his face. Heward was hacking at the hands that had seized his bridle when a spear
caught him in the belly. Suddenly Jory was back among them, a red rain flying from his
sword. “No!” Ned shouted. “Jory, away!” Ned’s horse slipped under him and came
crashing down in the mud. There was a moment of blinding pain and the taste of blood
in his mouth.
�He saw them cut the legs from Jory’s mount and drag him to the earth, swords rising
and failing as they closed in around him. When Ned’s horse lurched back to its feet, he
tried to rise, only to fall again, choking on his scream. He could see the splintered bone
poking through his calf. It was the last thing he saw for a time. The rain came down and
down and down.
When he opened his eyes again, Lord Eddard Stark was alone with his dead. His horse
moved closer, caught the rank scent of blood, and galloped away. Ned began to drag
himself through the mud, gritting his teeth at the agony in his leg. It seemed to take
years. Faces watched from candlelit windows, and people began to emerge from alleys
and doors, but no one moved to help.
Littlefinger and the City Watch found him there in the street, cradling Jory Cassel’s body
in his arms.
Somewhere the gold cloaks found a litter, but the trip back to the castle was a blur of
agony, and Ned lost consciousness more than once. He remembered seeing the Red
Keep looming ahead of him in the first grey light of dawn. The rain had darkened the
pale pink stone of the massive walls to the color of blood.
Then Grand Maester Pycelle was looming over him, holding a cup, whispering, “Drink,
my lord. Here. The milk of the poppy, for your pain.” He remembered swallowing, and
Pycelle was telling someone to heat the wine to boiling and fetch him clean silk, and that
was the last he knew.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
DAENERYS
The Horse Gate of Vaes Dothrak was made of two gigantic bronze stallions, rearing, their
hooves meeting a hundred feet above the roadway to form a pointed arch.
Dany could not have said why the city needed a gate when it had no walls . . . and no
buildings that she could see. Yet there it stood, immense and beautiful, the great horses
framing the distant purple mountain beyond. The bronze stallions threw long shadows
across the waving grasses as Khal Drogo led the khalasar under their hooves and down
the godsway, his bloodriders beside him.
Dany followed on her silver, escorted by Ser Jorah Mormont and her brother Viserys,
mounted once more. After the day in the grass when she had left him to walk back to the
khalasar, the Dothraki had laughingly called him Khal Rhae Mhar, the Sorefoot King.
Khal Drogo had offered him a place in a cart the next day, and Viserys had accepted. In
his stubborn ignorance, he had not even known he was being mocked; the carts were for
eunuchs, cripples, women giving birth, the very young and the very old. That won him
yet another name: Khal Rhaggat, the Cart King. Her brother had thought it was the
khal’s way of apologizing for the wrong Dany had done him. She had begged Ser Jorah
not to tell him the truth, lest he be shamed. The knight had replied that the king could
well do with a bit of shame . . . yet he had done as she bid. It had taken much pleading,
and all the pillow tricks Doreah had taught her, before Dany had been able to make
Drogo relent and allow Viserys to rejoin them at the head of the column.
“Where is the city?” she asked as they passed beneath the bronze arch. There were no
buildings to be seen, no people, only the grass and the road, lined with ancient
monuments from all the lands the Dothraki had sacked over the centuries.
“Ahead,” Ser Jorah answered. “Under the mountain.”
Beyond the horse gate, plundered gods and stolen heroes loomed to either side of them.
The forgotten deities of dead cities brandished their broken thunderbolts at the sky as
Dany rode her silver past their feet. Stone kings looked down on her from their thrones,
their faces chipped and stained, even their names lost in the mists of time. Lithe young
maidens danced on marble plinths, draped only in flowers, or poured air from shattered
jars. Monsters stood in the grass beside the road; black iron dragons with jewels for
eyes, roaring griffins, manticores with their barbed tails poised to strike, and other
�beasts she could not name. Some of the statues were so lovely they took her breath away,
others so misshapen and terrible that Dany could scarcely bear to look at them. Those,
Ser Jorah said, had likely come from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai.
“So many,” she said as her silver stepped slowly onward, “and from so many lands.”
Viserys was less impressed. “The trash of dead cities,” he sneered. He was careful to
speak in the Common Tongue, which few Dothraki could understand, yet even so Dany
found herself glancing back at the men of her khas, to make certain he had not been
overheard. He went on blithely. “All these savages know how to do is steal the things
better men have built . . . and kill.” He laughed. “They do know how to kill. Otherwise I’d
have no use for them at all.”
“They are my people now,” Dany said. “You should not call them savages, brother.”
“The dragon speaks as he likes,” Viserys said . . . in the Common Tongue. He glanced
over his shoulder at Aggo and Rakharo, riding behind them, and favored them with a
mocking smile. “See, the savages lack the wit to understand the speech of civilized men.”
A moss-eaten stone monolith loomed over the road, fifty feet tall. Viserys gazed at it with
boredom in his eyes. “How long must we linger amidst these ruins before Drogo gives
me my army? I grow tired of waiting.”
“The princess must be presented to the dosh khaleen . . . ”
“The crones, yes,” her brother interrupted, “and there’s to be some mummer’s show of a
prophecy for the whelp in her belly, you told me. What is that to me? I’m tired of eating
horsemeat and I’m sick of the stink of these savages.” He sniffed at the wide, floppy
sleeve of his tunic, where it was his custom to keep a sachet. It could not have helped
much. The tunic was filthy. All the silk and heavy wools that Viserys had worn out of
Pentos were stained by hard travel and rotted from sweat.
Ser Jorah Mormont said, “The Western Market will have food more to your taste, Your
Grace. The traders from the Free Cities come there to sell their wares. The khal will
honor his promise in his own time.”
“He had better,” Viserys said grimly. “I was promised a crown, and I mean to have it.
The dragon is not mocked.” Spying an obscene likeness of a woman with six breasts and
a ferret’s head, he rode off to inspect it more closely.
Dany was relieved, yet no less anxious. “I pray that my sun-and-stars will not keep him
waiting too long,” she told Ser Jorah when her brother was out of earshot.
�The knight looked after Viserys doubtfully. “Your brother should have bided his time in
Pentos. There is no place for him in a khalasar. Illyrio tried to warn him.”
“He will go as soon as he has his ten thousand. My lord husband promised a golden
crown.”
Ser Jorah grunted. “Yes, Khaleesi, but . . . the Dothraki look on these things differently
than we do in the west. I have told him as much, as Illyrio told him, but your brother
does not listen. The horselords are no traders. Viserys thinks he sold you, and now he
wants his price. Yet Khal Drogo would say he had you as a gift. He will give Viserys a gift
in return, yes . . . in his own time. You do not demand a gift, not of a khal. You do not
demand anything of a khal.”
“It is not right to make him wait.” Dany did not know why she was defending her
brother, yet she was. “Viserys says he could sweep the Seven Kingdoms with ten
thousand Dothraki screamers.”
Ser Jorah snorted. “Viserys could not sweep a stable with ten thousand brooms.”
Dany could not pretend to surprise at the disdain in his tone. “What . . . what if it were
not Viserys?” she asked. “If it were someone else who led them? Someone stronger?
Could the Dothraki truly conquer the Seven Kingdoms?”
Ser Jorah’s face grew thoughtful as their horses trod together down the godsway. “When
I first went into exile, I looked at the Dothraki and saw half-naked barbarians, as wild as
their horses. If you had asked me then, Princess, I should have told you that a thousand
good knights would have no trouble putting to flight a hundred times as many Dothraki.”
“But if I asked you now?”
“Now,” the knight said, “I am less certain. They are better riders than any knight, utterly
fearless, and their bows outrange ours. In the Seven Kingdoms, most archers fight on
foot, from behind a shieldwall or a barricade of sharpened stakes. The Dothraki fire from
horseback, charging or retreating, it makes no matter, they are full as deadly . . . and
there are so many of them, my lady. Your lord husband alone counts forty thousand
mounted warriors in his khalasar.”
“Is that truly so many?”
“Your brother Rhaegar brought as many men to the Trident,” Ser Jorah admitted, “but
of that number, no more than a tenth were knights. The rest were archers, freeriders,
and foot soldiers armed with spears and pikes. When Rhaegar fell, many threw down
�their weapons and fled the field. How long do you imagine such a rabble would stand
against the charge of forty thousand screamers howling for blood? How well would
boiled leather jerkins and mailed shirts protect them when the arrows fall like rain?”
“Not long,” she said, “not well.”
He nodded. “Mind you, Princess, if the lords of the Seven Kingdoms have the wit the
gods gave a goose, it will never come to that. The riders have no taste for siegecraft. I
doubt they could take even the weakest castle in the Seven Kingdoms, but if Robert
Baratheon were fool enough to give them battle . . . ”
“Is he?” Dany asked. “A fool, I mean?”
Ser Jorah considered that for a moment. “Robert should have been born Dothraki,” he
said at last. “Your khal would tell you that only a coward hides behind stone walls
instead of facing his enemy with a blade in hand. The Usurper would agree. He is a
strong man, brave . . . and rash enough to meet a Dothraki horde in the open field. But
the men around him, well, their pipers play a different tune. His brother Stannis, Lord
Tywin Lannister, Eddard Stark . . . ” He spat.
“You hate this Lord Stark,” Dany said.
“He took from me all I loved, for the sake of a few lice-ridden poachers and his precious
honor,” Ser Jorah said bitterly. From his tone, she could tell the loss still pained him. He
changed the subject quickly. “There,” he announced, pointing. “Vaes Dothrak. The city of
the horselords.”
Khal Drogo and his bloodriders led them through the great bazaar of the Western
Market, down the broad ways beyond. Dany followed close on her silver, staring at the
strangeness about her. Vaes Dothrak was at once the largest city and the smallest that
she had ever known. She thought it must be ten times as large as Pentos, a vastness
without walls or limits, its broad windswept streets paved in grass and mud and
carpeted with wildflowers. In the Free Cities of the west, towers and manses and hovels
and bridges and shops and halls all crowded in on one another, but Vaes Dothrak
sprawled languorously, baking in the warm sun, ancient, arrogant, and empty.
Even the buildings were so queer to her eyes. She saw carved stone pavilions, manses of
woven grass as large as castles, rickety wooden towers, stepped pyramids faced with
marble, log halls open to the sky. In place of walls, some palaces were surrounded by
thorny hedges. “None of them are alike,” she said.
“Your brother had part of the truth,” Ser Jorah admitted. “The Dothraki do not build. A
�thousand years ago, to make a house, they would dig a hole in the earth and cover it with
a woven grass roof. The buildings you see were made by slaves brought here from lands
they’ve plundered, and they built each after the fashion of their own peoples.”
Most of the halls, even the largest, seemed deserted. “Where are the people who live
here?” Dany asked. The bazaar had been full of running children and men shouting, but
elsewhere she had seen only a few eunuchs going about their business.
“Only the crones of the dosh khaleen dwell permanently in the sacred city, them and
their slaves and servants,” Ser Jorah replied, “yet Vaes Dothrak is large enough to house
every man of every khalasar, should all the khals return to the Mother at once. The
crones have prophesied that one day that will come to pass, and so Vaes Dothrak must
be ready to embrace all its children.”
Khal Drogo finally called a halt near the Eastern Market where the caravans from Yi Ti
and Asshai and the Shadow Lands came to trade, with the Mother of Mountains looming
overhead. Dany smiled as she recalled Magister Illyrio’s slave girl and her talk of a palace
with two hundred rooms and doors of solid silver. The “palace” was a cavernous wooden
feasting hall, its rough-hewn timbered walls rising forty feet, its roof sewn silk, a vast
billowing tent that could be raised to keep out the rare rains, or lowered to admit the
endless sky. Around the hall were broad grassy horse yards fenced with high hedges,
firepits, and hundreds of round earthen houses that bulged from the ground like
miniature hills, covered with grass.
A small army of slaves had gone ahead to prepare for Khal Drogo’s arrival. As each rider
swung down from his saddle, he unbelted his arakh and handed it to a waiting slave,
and any other weapons he carried as well. Even Khal Drogo himself was not exempt. Ser
Jorah had explained that it was forbidden to carry a blade in Vaes Dothrak, or to shed a
free man’s blood. Even warring khalasars put aside their feuds and shared meat and
mead together when they were in sight of the Mother of Mountains. In this place, the
crones of the dosh khaleen had decreed, all Dothraki were one blood, one khalasar, one
herd.
Cohollo came to Dany as Irri and Jhiqui were helping her down off her silver. He was the
oldest of Drogo’s three bloodriders, a squat bald man with a crooked nose and a mouth
full of broken teeth, shattered by a mace twenty years before when he saved the young
khalakka from sellswords who hoped to sell him to his father’s enemies. His life had
been bound to Drogo’s the day her lord husband was born.
Every khal had his bloodriders. At first Dany had thought of them as a kind of Dothraki
Kingsguard, sworn to protect their lord, but it went further than that. Jhiqui had taught
her that a bloodrider was more than a guard; they were the khal’s brothers, his shadows,
�his fiercest friends. “Blood of my blood,” Drogo called them, and so it was; they shared a
single life. The ancient traditions of the horselords demanded that when the khal died,
his bloodriders died with him, to ride at his side in the night lands. If the khal died at the
hands of some enemy, they lived only long enough to avenge him, and then followed him
joyfully into the grave. In some khalasars, Jhiqui said, the bloodriders shared the khal’s
wine, his tent, and even his wives, though never his horses. A man’s mount was his own.
Daenerys was glad that Khal Drogo did not hold to those ancient ways. She should not
have liked being shared. And while old Cohollo treated her kindly enough, the others
frightened her; Haggo, huge and silent, often glowered as if he had forgotten who she
was, and Qotho had cruel eyes and quick hands that liked to hurt. He left bruises on
Doreah’s soft white skin whenever he touched her, and sometimes made Irri sob in the
night. Even his horses seemed to fear him.
Yet they were bound to Drogo for life and death, so Daenerys had no choice but to accept
them. And sometimes she found herself wishing her father had been protected by such
men. In the songs, the white knights of the Kingsguard were ever noble, valiant, and
true, and yet King Aerys had been murdered by one of them, the handsome boy they
now called the Kingslayer, and a second, Ser Barristan the Bold, had gone over to the
Usurper. She wondered if all men were as false in the Seven Kingdoms. When her son
sat the Iron Throne, she would see that he had bloodriders of his own to protect him
against treachery in his Kingsguard.
“Khaleesi,” Cohollo said to her, in Dothraki. “Drogo, who is blood of my blood,
commands me to tell you that he must ascend the Mother of Mountains this night, to
sacrifice to the gods for his safe return.”
Only men were allowed to set foot on the Mother, Dany knew. The khal’s bloodriders
would go with him, and return at dawn. “Tell my sun-and-stars that I dream of him, and
wait anxious for his return,” she replied, thankful. Dany tired more easily as the child
grew within her; in truth, a night of rest would be most welcome. Her pregnancy only
seemed to have inflamed Drogo’s desire for her, and of late his embraces left her
exhausted.
Doreah led her to the hollow hill that had been prepared for her and her khal. It was cool
and dim within, like a tent made of earth. “Jhiqui, a bath, please,” she commanded, to
wash the dust of travel from her skin and soak her weary bones. It was pleasant to know
that they would linger here for a while, that she would not need to climb back on her
silver on the morrow.
The water was scalding hot, as she liked it. “I will give my brother his gifts tonight,” she
decided as Jhiqui was washing her hair. “He should look a king in the sacred city.
�Doreah, run and find him and invite him to sup with me.” Viserys was nicer to the
Lysene girl than to her Dothraki handmaids, perhaps because Magister Illyrio had let
him bed her back in Pentos. “Irri, go to the bazaar and buy fruit and meat. Anything but
horseflesh.”
“Horse is best,” Irri said. “Horse makes a man strong.”
“Viserys hates horsemeat.”
“As you say, Khaleesi.”
She brought back a haunch of goat and a basket of fruits and vegetables. Jhiqui roasted
the meat with sweetgrass and firepods, basting it with honey as it cooked, and there were
melons and pomegranates and plums and some queer eastern fruit Dany did not know.
While her handmaids prepared the meal, Dany laid out the clothing she’d had made to
her brother’s measure: a tunic and leggings of crisp white linen, leather sandals that
laced up to the knee, a bronze medallion belt, a leather vest painted with fire-breathing
dragons. The Dothraki would respect him more if he looked less a beggar, she hoped,
and perhaps he would forgive her for shaming him that day in the grass. He was still her
king, after all, and her brother. They were both blood of the dragon.
She was arranging the last of his gifts—a sandsilk cloak, green as grass, with a pale grey
border that would bring out the silver in his hair—when Viserys arrived, dragging
Doreah by the arm. Her eye was red where he’d hit her. “How dare you send this whore
to give me commands,” he said. He shoved the handmaid roughly to the carpet.
The anger took Dany utterly by surprise. “I only wanted . . . Doreah, what did you say?”
“Khaleesi, pardons, forgive me. I went to him, as you bid, and told him you commanded
him to join you for supper.”
“No one commands the dragon,” Viserys snarled. “I am your king! I should have sent
you back her head!”
The Lysene girl quailed, but Dany calmed her with a touch. “Don’t be afraid, he won’t
hurt you. Sweet brother, please, forgive her, the girl misspoke herself, I told her to ask
you to sup with me, if it pleases Your Grace.” She took him by the hand and drew him
across the room. “Look. These are for you.”
Viserys frowned suspiciously. “What is all this?”
“New raiment. I had it made for you.” Dany smiled shyly.
�He looked at her and sneered. “Dothraki rags. Do you presume to dress me now?”
“Please . . . you’ll be cooler and more comfortable, and I thought . . . maybe if you
dressed like them, the Dothraki . . . ” Dany did not know how to say it without waking his
dragon.
“Next you’ll want to braid my hair.”
“I’d never . . . ” Why was he always so cruel? She had only wanted to help. “You have no
right to a braid, you have won no victories yet.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Fury shone from his lilac eyes, yet he dared not strike her,
not with her handmaids watching and the warriors of her khas outside. Viserys picked
up the cloak and sniffed at it. “This stinks of manure. Perhaps I shall use it as a horse
blanket.”
“I had Doreah sew it specially for you,” she told him, wounded. “These are garments fit
for a khal.”
“I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not some grass-stained savage with bells in his
hair,” Viserys spat back at her. He grabbed her arm. “You forget yourself, slut. Do you
think that big belly will protect you if you wake the dragon?”
His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again,
quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the
first thing she touched, the belt she’d hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze
medallions. She swung it with all her strength.
It caught him full in the face. Viserys let go of her. Blood ran down his cheek where the
edge of one of the medallions had sliced it open. “You are the one who forgets himself,”
Dany said to him. “Didn’t you learn anything that day in the grass? Leave me now,
before I summon my khas to drag you out. And pray that Khal Drogo does not hear of
this, or he will cut open your belly and feed you your own entrails.”
Viserys scrambled back to his feet. “When I come into my kingdom, you will rue this day,
slut.” He walked off, holding his torn face, leaving her gifts behind him.
Drops of his blood had spattered the beautiful sandsilk cloak. Dany clutched the soft
cloth to her cheek and sat cross-legged on her sleeping mats.
“Your supper is ready, Khaleesi,” Jhiqui announced.
�“I’m not hungry,” Dany said sadly. She was suddenly very tired. “Share the food among
yourselves, and send some to Ser Jorah, if you would.” After a moment she added,
“Please, bring me one of the dragon’s eggs.”
Irri fetched the egg with the deep green shell, bronze flecks shining amid its scales as she
turned it in her small hands. Dany curled up on her side, pulling the sandsilk cloak
across her and cradling the egg in the hollow between her swollen belly and small,
tender breasts. She liked to hold them. They were so beautiful, and sometimes just being
close to them made her feel stronger, braver, as if somehow she were drawing strength
from the stone dragons locked inside.
She was lying there, holding the egg, when she felt the child move within her . . . as if he
were reaching out, brother to brother, blood to blood. “You are the dragon,” Dany
whispered to him, “the true dragon. I know it. I know it.” And she smiled, and went to
sleep dreaming of home.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
BRAN
A light snow was falling. Bran could feel the flakes on his face, melting as they touched
his skin like the gentlest of rains. He sat straight atop his horse, watching as the iron
portcullis was winched upward. Try as he might to keep calm, his heart was fluttering in
his chest.
“Are you ready?” Robb asked.
Bran nodded, trying not to let his fear show. He had not been outside Winterfell since
his fall, but he was determined to ride out as proud as any knight.
“Let’s ride, then.” Robb put his heels into his big grey-and-white gelding, and the horse
walked under the portcullis.
“Go,” Bran whispered to his own horse. He touched her neck lightly, and the small
chestnut filly started forward. Bran had named her Dancer. She was two years old, and
Joseth said she was smarter than any horse had a right to be. They had trained her
special, to respond to rein and voice and touch. Up to now, Bran had only ridden her
around the yard. At first Joseth or Hodor would lead her, while Bran sat strapped to her
back in the oversize saddle the Imp had drawn up for him, but for the past fortnight he
had been riding her on his own, trotting her round and round, and growing bolder with
every circuit.
They passed beneath the gatehouse, over the drawbridge, through the outer walls.
Summer and Grey Wind came loping beside them, sniffing at the wind. Close behind
came Theon Greyjoy, with his longbow and a quiver of broadheads; he had a mind to
take a deer, he had told them. He was followed by four guardsmen in mailed shirts and
coifs, and Joseth, a stick-thin stableman whom Robb had named master of horse while
Hullen was away. Maester Luwin brought up the rear, riding on a donkey. Bran would
have liked it better if he and Robb had gone off alone, just the two of them, but Hal
Mollen would not hear of it, and Maester Luwin backed him. If Bran fell off his horse or
injured himself, the maester was determined to be with him.
Beyond the castle lay the market square, its wooden stalls deserted now. They rode down
the muddy streets of the village, past rows of small neat houses of log and undressed
stone. Less than one in five were occupied, thin tendrils of woodsmoke curling up from
�their chimneys. The rest would fill up one by one as it grew colder. When the snow fell
and the ice winds howled down out of the north, Old Nan said, farmers left their frozen
fields and distant holdfasts, loaded up their wagons, and then the winter town came
alive. Bran had never seen it happen, but Maester Luwin said the day was looming
closer. The end of the long summer was near at hand. Winter is coming.
A few villagers eyed the direwolves anxiously as the riders went past, and one man
dropped the wood he was carrying as he shrank away in fear, but most of the townfolk
had grown used to the sight. They bent the knee when they saw the boys, and Robb
greeted each of them with a lordly nod.
With his legs unable to grip, the swaying motion of the horse made Bran feel unsteady at
first, but the huge saddle with its thick horn and high back cradled him comfortingly,
and the straps around his chest and thighs would not allow him to fall. After a time the
rhythm began to feel almost natural. His anxiety faded, and a tremulous smile crept
across his face.
Two serving wenches stood beneath the sign of the Smoking Log, the local alehouse.
When Theon Greyjoy called out to them, the younger girl turned red and covered her
face. Theon spurred his mount to move up beside Robb. “Sweet Kyra,” he said with a
laugh. “She squirms like a weasel in bed, but say a word to her on the street, and she
blushes pink as a maid. Did I ever tell you about the night that she and Bessa—”
“Not where my brother can hear, Theon,” Robb warned him with a glance at Bran.
Bran looked away and pretended not to have heard, but he could feel Greyjoy’s eyes on
him. No doubt he was smiling. He smiled a lot, as if the world were a secret joke that
only he was clever enough to understand. Robb seemed to admire Theon and enjoy his
company, but Bran had never warmed to his father’s ward.
Robb rode closer. “You are doing well, Bran.”
“I want to go faster,” Bran replied.
Robb smiled. “As you will.” He sent his gelding into a trot. The wolves raced after him.
Bran snapped the reins sharply, and Dancer picked up her pace. He heard a shout from
Theon Greyjoy, and the hoofbeats of the other horses behind him.
Bran’s cloak billowed out, rippling in the wind, and the snow seemed to rush at his face.
Robb was well ahead, glancing back over his shoulder from time to time to make sure
Bran and the others were following. He snapped the reins again. Smooth as silk, Dancer
slid into a gallop. The distance closed. By the time he caught Robb on the edge of the
�wolfswood, two miles beyond the winter town, they had left the others well behind. “I
can ride!” Bran shouted, grinning. It felt almost as good as flying.
“I’d race you, but I fear you’d win.” Robb’s tone was light and joking, yet Bran could tell
that something was troubling his brother underneath the smile.
“I don’t want to race.” Bran looked around for the direwolves. Both had vanished into
the wood. “Did you hear Summer howling last night?”
“Grey Wind was restless too,” Robb said. His auburn hair had grown shaggy and
unkempt, and a reddish stubble covered his jaw, making him look older than his fifteen
years. “Sometimes I think they know things . . . sense things . . . ” Robb sighed. “I never
know how much to tell you, Bran. I wish you were older.”
“I’m eight now!” Bran said. “Eight isn’t so much younger than fifteen, and I’m the heir to
Winterfell, after you.”
“So you are.” Robb sounded sad, and even a little scared. “Bran, I need to tell you
something. There was a bird last night. From King’s Landing. Maester Luwin woke me.”
Bran felt a sudden dread. Dark wings, dark words, Old Nan always said, and of late the
messenger ravens had been proving the truth of the proverb. When Robb wrote to the
Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, the bird that came back brought word that Uncle
Benjen was still missing. Then a message had arrived from the Eyrie, from Mother, but
that had not been good news either. She did not say when she meant to return, only that
she had taken the Imp as prisoner. Bran had sort of liked the little man, yet the name
Lannister sent cold fingers creeping up his spine. There was something about the
Lannisters, something he ought to remember, but when he tried to think what, he felt
dizzy and his stomach clenched hard as a stone. Robb spent most of that day locked
behind closed doors with Maester Luwin, Theon Greyjoy, and Hallis Mollen. Afterward,
riders were sent out on fast horses, carrying Robb’s commands throughout the north.
Bran heard talk of Moat Cailin, the ancient stronghold the First Men had built at the top
of the Neck. No one ever told him what was happening, yet he knew it was not good.
And now another raven, another message. Bran clung to hope. “Was the bird from
Mother? Is she coming home?”
“The message was from Alyn in King’s Landing. Jory Cassel is dead. And Wyl and
Heward as well. Murdered by the Kingslayer.” Robb lifted his face to the snow, and the
flakes melted on his cheeks. “May the gods give them rest.”
Bran did not know what to say. He felt as if he’d been punched. Jory had been captain of
�the household guard at Winterfell since before Bran was born. “They killed Jory?” He
remembered all the times Jory had chased him over the roofs. He could picture him
striding across the yard in mail and plate, or sitting at his accustomed place on the
bench in the Great Hall, joking as he ate. “Why would anyone kill Jory?”
Robb shook his head numbly, the pain plain in his eyes. “I don’t know, and . . . Bran,
that’s not the worst of it. Father was caught beneath a falling horse in the fight. Alyn says
his leg was shattered, and . . . Maester Pycelle has given him the milk of the poppy, but
they aren’t sure when . . . when he . . .” The sound of hoofbeats made him glance down
the road, to where Theon and the others were coming up. “When he will wake,” Robb
finished. He laid his hand on the pommel of his sword then, and went on in the solemn
voice of Robb the Lord. “Bran, I promise you, whatever might happen, I will not let this
be forgotten.”
Something in his tone made Bran even more fearful. “What will you do?” he asked as
Theon Greyjoy reined in beside them.
“Theon thinks I should call the banners,” Robb said.
“Blood for blood.” For once Greyjoy did not smile. His lean, dark face had a hungry look
to it, and black hair fell down across his eyes.
“Only the lord can call the banners,” Bran said as the snow drifted down around them.
“If your father dies,” Theon said, “Robb will be Lord of Winterfell.”
“He won’t die!” Bran screamed at him.
Robb took his hand. “He won’t die, not Father,” he said calmly. “Still . . . the honor of the
north is in my hands now. When our lord father took his leave of us, he told me to be
strong for you and for Rickon. I’m almost a man grown, Bran.”
Bran shivered. “I wish Mother was back,” he said miserably. He looked around for
Maester Luwin; his donkey was visible in the far distance, trotting over a rise. “Does
Maester Luwin say to call the banners too?”
“The maester is timid as an old woman,” said Theon.
“Father always listened to his counsel,” Bran reminded his brother. “Mother too.”
“I listen to him,” Robb insisted. “I listen to everyone.”
�The joy Bran had felt at the ride was gone, melted away like the snowflakes on his face.
Not so long ago, the thought of Robb calling the banners and riding off to war would
have filled him with excitement, but now he felt only dread. “Can we go back now?” he
asked. “I’m cold.”
Robb glanced around. “We need to find the wolves. Can you stand to go a bit longer?”
“I can go as long as you can.” Maester Luwin had warned him to keep the ride short, for
fear of saddle sores, but Bran would not admit to weakness in front of his brother. He
was sick of the way everyone was always fussing over him and asking how he was.
“Let’s hunt down the hunters, then,” Robb said. Side by side, they urged their mounts off
the kingsroad and struck out into the wolfswood. Theon dropped back and followed well
behind them, talking and joking with the guardsmen.
It was nice under the trees. Bran kept Dancer to a walk, holding the reins lightly and
looking all around him as they went. He knew this wood, but he had been so long
confined to Winterfell that he felt as though he were seeing it for the first time. The
smells filled his nostrils; the sharp fresh tang of pine needles, the earthy odor of wet
rotting leaves, the hints of animal musk and distant cooking fires. He caught a glimpse
of a black squirrel moving through the snow-covered branches of an oak, and paused to
study the silvery web of an empress spider.
Theon and the others fell farther and farther behind, until Bran could no longer hear
their voices. From ahead came the faint sound of rushing waters. It grew louder until
they reached the stream. Tears stung his eyes.
“Bran?” Robb asked. “What’s wrong?”
Bran shook his head. “I was just remembering,” he said. “Jory brought us here once, to
fish for trout. You and me and Jon. Do you remember?”
“I remember,” Robb said, his voice quiet and sad.
“I didn’t catch anything,” Bran said, “but Jon gave me his fish on the way back to
Winterfell. Will we ever see Jon again?”
“We saw Uncle Benjen when the king came to visit,” Robb pointed out. “Jon will visit
too, you’ll see.”
The stream was running high and fast. Robb dismounted and led his gelding across the
�ford. In the deepest part of the crossing, the water came up to midthigh. He tied his
horse to a tree on the far side, and waded back across for Bran and Dancer. The current
foamed around rock and root, and Bran could feel the spray on his face as Robb led him
over. It made him smile. For a moment he felt strong again, and whole. He looked up at
the trees and dreamed of climbing them, right up to the very top, with the whole forest
spread out beneath him.
They were on the far side when they heard the howl, a long rising wail that moved
through the trees like a cold wind. Bran raised his head to listen. “Summer,” he said. No
sooner had he spoken than a second voice joined the first.
“They’ve made a kill,” Robb said as he remounted. “I’d best go and bring them back.
Wait here, Theon and the others should be along shortly.”
“I want to go with you,” Bran said.
“I’ll find them faster by myself.” Robb spurred his gelding and vanished into the trees.
Once he was gone, the woods seemed to close in around Bran. The snow was falling
more heavily now. Where it touched the ground it melted, but all about him rock and
root and branch wore a thin blanket of white. As he waited, he was conscious of how
uncomfortable he felt. He could not feel his legs, hanging useless in the stirrups, but the
strap around his chest was tight and chafing, and the melting snow had soaked through
his gloves to chill his hands. He wondered what was keeping Theon and Maester Luwin
and Joseth and the rest.
When he heard the rustle of leaves, Bran used the reins to make Dancer turn, expecting
to see his friends, but the ragged men who stepped out onto the bank of the stream were
strangers.
“Good day to you,” he said nervously. One look, and Bran knew they were neither
foresters nor farmers. He was suddenly conscious of how richly he was dressed. His
surcoat was new, dark grey wool with silver buttons, and a heavy silver pin fastened his
fur-trimmed cloak at the shoulders. His boots and gloves were lined with fur as well.
“All alone, are you?” said the biggest of them, a bald man with a raw windburnt face.
“Lost in the wolfswood, poor lad.”
“I’m not lost.” Bran did not like the way the strangers were looking at him. He counted
four, but when he turned his head, he saw two others behind him. “My brother rode off
just a moment ago, and my guard will be here shortly.”
�“Your guard, is it?” a second man said. Grey stubble covered his gaunt face. “And what
would they be guarding, my little lord? Is that a silver pin I see there on your cloak?”
“Pretty,” said a woman’s voice. She scarcely looked like a woman; tall and lean, with the
same hard face as the others, her hair hidden beneath a bowl-shaped halfhelm. The
spear she held was eight feet of black oak, tipped in rusted steel.
“Let’s have a look,” said the big bald man.
Bran watched him anxiously. The man’s clothes were filthy, fallen almost to pieces,
patched here with brown and here with blue and there with a dark green, and faded
everywhere to grey, but once that cloak might have been black. The grey stubbly man
wore black rags too, he saw with a sudden start. Suddenly Bran remembered the
oathbreaker his father had beheaded, the day they had found the wolf pups; that man
had worn black as well, and Father said he had been a deserter from the Night’s Watch.
No man is more dangerous, he remembered Lord Eddard saying. The deserter knows
his life is forfeit if he is taken, so he will not flinch from any crime, no matter how vile
or cruel.
“The pin, lad,” the big man said. He held out his hand.
“We’ll take the horse too,” said another of them, a woman shorter than Robb, with a
broad fiat face and lank yellow hair. “Get down, and be quick about it.” A knife slid from
her sleeve into her hand, its edge jagged as a saw.
“No,” Bran blurted. “I can’t . . . ”
The big man grabbed his reins before Bran could think to wheel Dancer around and
gallop off. “You can, lordling . . . and will, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Stiv, look how he’s strapped on.” The tall woman pointed with her spear. “Might be it’s
the truth he’s telling.”
“Straps, is it?” Stiv said. He drew a dagger from a sheath at his belt. “There’s ways to deal
with straps.”
“You some kind of cripple?” asked the short woman.
Bran flared. “I’m Brandon Stark of Winterfell, and you better let go of my horse, or I’ll
see you all dead.”
The gaunt man with the grey stubbled face laughed. “The boy’s a Stark, true enough.
�Only a Stark would be fool enough to threaten where smarter men would beg.”
“Cut his little cock off and stuff it in his mouth,” suggested the short woman. “That
should shut him up.”
“You’re as stupid as you are ugly, Hali,” said the tall woman. “The boy’s worth nothing
dead, but alive . . . gods be damned, think what Mance would give to have Benjen Stark’s
own blood to hostage!”
“Mance be damned,” the big man cursed. “You want to go back there, Osha? More fool
you. Think the white walkers will care if you have a hostage?” He turned back to Bran
and slashed at the strap around his thigh. The leather parted with a sigh.
The stroke had been quick and careless, biting deep. Looking down, Bran glimpsed pale
flesh where the wool of his leggings had parted. Then the blood began to flow. He
watched the red stain spread, feeling light-headed, curiously apart; there had been no
pain, not even a hint of feeling. The big man grunted in surprise.
“Put down your steel now, and I promise you shall have a quick and painless death,”
Robb called out.
Bran looked up in desperate hope, and there he was. The strength of the words were
undercut by the way his voice cracked with strain. He was mounted, the bloody carcass
of an elk slung across the back of his horse, his sword in a gloved hand.
“The brother,” said the man with the grey stubbly face.
“He’s a fierce one, he is,” mocked the short woman. Hali, they called her. “You mean to
fight us, boy?”
“Don’t be a fool, lad. You’re one against six.” The tall woman, Osha, leveled her spear.
“Off the horse, and throw down the sword. We’ll thank you kindly for the mount and for
the venison, and you and your brother can be on your way.”
Robb whistled. They heard the faint sound of soft feet on wet leaves. The undergrowth
parted, low-hanging branches giving up their accumulation of snow, and Grey Wind and
Summer emerged from the green. Summer sniffed the air and growled.
“Wolves,” gasped Hali.
“Direwolves,” Bran said. Still half-grown, they were as large as any wolf he had ever
�seen, but the differences were easy to spot, if you knew what to look for. Maester Luwin
and Farlen the kennelmaster had taught him. A direwolf had a bigger head and longer
legs in proportion to its body, and its snout and jaw were markedly leaner and more
pronounced. There was something gaunt and terrible about them as they stood there
amid the gently falling snow. Fresh blood spotted Grey Wind’s muzzle.
“Dogs,” the big bald man said contemptuously. “Yet I’m told there’s nothing like a
wolfskin cloak to warm a man by night.” He made a sharp gesture. “Take them.”
Robb shouted, “Winterfell!” and kicked his horse. The gelding plunged down the bank as
the ragged men closed. A man with an axe rushed in, shouting and heedless. Robb’s
sword caught him full in the face with a sickening crunch and a spray of bright blood.
The man with the gaunt stubbly face made a grab for the reins, and for half a second he
had them . . . and then Grey Wind was on him, bearing him down. He fell back into the
stream with a splash and a shout, flailing wildly with his knife as his head went under.
The direwolf plunged in after him, and the white water turned red where they had
vanished.
Robb and Osha matched blows in midstream. Her long spear was a steel-headed
serpent, flashing out at his chest, once, twice, three times, but Robb parried every thrust
with his longsword, turning the point aside. On the fourth or fifth thrust, the tall woman
overextended herself and lost her balance, just for a second. Robb charged, riding her
down.
A few feet away, Summer darted in and snapped at Hali. The knife bit at his flank.
Summer slid away, snarling, and came rushing in again. This time his jaws closed
around her calf. Holding the knife with both hands, the small woman stabbed down, but
the direwolf seemed to sense the blade coming. He pulled free for an instant, his mouth
full of leather and cloth and bloody flesh. When Hali stumbled and fell, he came at her
again, slamming her backward, teeth tearing at her belly.
The sixth man ran from the carnage . . . but not far. As he went scrambling up the far
side of the bank, Grey Wind emerged from the stream, dripping wet. He shook the water
off and bounded after the running man, hamstringing him with a single snap of his
teeth, and going for the throat as the screaming man slid back down toward the water.
And then there was no one left but the big man, Stiv. He slashed at Bran’s chest strap,
grabbed his arm, and yanked. Suddenly Bran was falling. He sprawled on the ground,
his legs tangled under him, one foot in the stream. He could not feel the cold of the
water, but he felt the steel when Stiv pressed his dagger to his throat. “Back away,” the
man warned, “or I’ll open the boy’s windpipe, I swear it.”
�Robb reined his horse in, breathing hard. The fury went out of his eyes, and his sword
arm dropped.
In that moment Bran saw everything. Summer was savaging Hali, pulling glistening blue
snakes from her belly. Her eyes were wide and staring. Bran could not tell whether she
was alive or dead. The grey stubbly man and the one with the axe lay unmoving, but
Osha was on her knees, crawling toward her fallen spear. Grey Wind padded toward her,
dripping wet. “Call him off!” the big man shouted. “Call them both off, or the cripple boy
dies now!”
“Grey Wind, Summer, to me,” Robb said.
The direwolves stopped, turned their heads. Grey Wind loped back to Robb. Summer
stayed where he was, his eyes on Bran and the man beside him. He growled. His muzzle
was wet and red, but his eyes burned.
Osha used the butt end of her spear to lever herself back to her feet. Blood leaked from a
wound on the upper arm where Robb had cut her. Bran could see sweat trickling down
the big man’s face. Stiv was as scared as he was, he realized. “Starks,” the man muttered,
“bloody Starks.” He raised his voice. “Osha, kill the wolves and get his sword.”
“Kill them yourself,” she replied. “I’ll not be getting near those monsters.”
For a moment Stiv was at a loss. His hand trembled; Bran felt a trickle of blood where
the knife pressed against his neck. The stench of the man filled his nose; he smelled of
fear. “You,” he called out to Robb. “You have a name?”
“I am Robb Stark, the heir to Winterfell.”
“This is your brother?”
“Yes.”
“You want him alive, you do what I say. Off the horse.”
Robb hesitated a moment. Then, slowly and deliberately, he dismounted and stood with
his sword in hand.
“Now kill the wolves.”
Robb did not move.
�“You do it. The wolves or the boy.”
“No!” Bran screamed. If Robb did as they asked, Stiv would kill them both anyway, once
the direwolves were dead.
The bald man took hold of his hair with his free hand and twisted it cruelly, till Bran
sobbed in pain. “You shut your mouth, cripple, you hear me?” He twisted harder. “You
hear me?”
A low thrum came from the woods behind them. Stiv gave a choked gasp as a half foot of
razor-tipped broadhead suddenly exploded out of his chest. The arrow was bright red, as
if it had been painted in blood.
The dagger fell away from Bran’s throat. The big man swayed and collapsed, facedown in
the stream. The arrow broke beneath him. Bran watched his life go swirling off in the
water.
Osha glanced around as Father’s guardsmen appeared from beneath the trees, steel in
hand. She threw down her spear. “Mercy, m’lord,” she called to Robb.
The guardsmen had a strange, pale look to their faces as they took in the scene of
slaughter. They eyed the wolves uncertainly, and when Summer returned to Hali’s
corpse to feed, Joseth dropped his knife and scrambled for the bush, heaving. Even
Maester Luwin seemed shocked as he stepped from behind a tree, but only for an
instant. Then he shook his head and waded across the stream to Bran’s side. “Are you
hurt?”
“He cut my leg,” Bran said, “but I couldn’t feel it.”
As the maester knelt to examine the wound, Bran turned his head. Theon Greyjoy stood
beside a sentinel tree, his bow in hand. He was smiling. Ever smiling. A half-dozen
arrows were thrust into the soft ground at his feet, but it had taken only one. “A dead
enemy is a thing of beauty,” he announced.
“Jon always said you were an ass, Greyjoy,” Robb said loudly. “I ought to chain you up in
the yard and let Bran take a few practice shots at you.”
“You should be thanking me for saving your brother’s life.”
“What if you had missed the shot?” Robb said. “What if you’d only wounded him? What
if you had made his hand jump, or hit Bran instead? For all you knew, the man might
�have been wearing a breastplate, all you could see was the back of his cloak. What would
have happened to my brother then? Did you ever think of that, Greyjoy?”
Theon’s smile was gone. He gave a sullen shrug and began to pull his arrows from the
ground, one by one.
Robb glared at his guardsmen. “Where were you?” he demanded of them. “I was sure
you were close behind us.”
The men traded unhappy glances. “We were following, m’lord,” said Quent, the youngest
of them, his beard a soft brown fuzz. “Only first we waited for Maester Luwin and his
ass, begging your pardons, and then, well, as it were . . . ” He glanced over at Theon and
quickly looked away, abashed.
“I spied a turkey,” Theon said, annoyed by the question. “How was I to know that you’d
leave the boy alone?”
Robb turned his head to look at Theon once more. Bran had never seen him so angry, yet
he said nothing. Finally he knelt beside Maester Luwin. “How badly is my brother
wounded?”
“No more than a scratch,” the maester said. He wet a cloth in the stream to clean the cut.
“Two of them wear the black,” he told Robb as he worked.
Robb glanced over at where Stiv lay sprawled in the stream, his ragged black cloak
moving fitfully as the rushing waters tugged at it. “Deserters from the Night’s Watch,” he
said grimly. “They must have been fools, to come so close to Winterfell.”
“Folly and desperation are ofttimes hard to tell apart,” said Maester Luwin.
“Shall we bury them, m’lord?” asked Quent.
“They would not have buried us,” Robb said. “Hack off their heads, we’ll send them back
to the Wall. Leave the rest for the carrion crows.”
“And this one?” Quent jerked a thumb toward Osha.
Robb walked over to her. She was a head taller than he was, but she dropped to her
knees at his approach. “Give me my life, m’lord of Stark, and I am yours.”
“Mine? What would I do with an oathbreaker?”
�“I broke no oaths. Stiv and Wallen flew down off the Wall, not me. The black crows got
no place for women.”
Theon Greyjoy sauntered closer. “Give her to the wolves,” he urged Robb. The woman’s
eyes went to what was left of Hali, and just as quickly away. She shuddered. Even the
guardsmen looked queasy.
“She’s a woman,” Robb said.
“A wildling,” Bran told him. “She said they should keep me alive so they could take me to
Mance Rayder.”
“Do you have a name?” Robb asked her.
“Osha, as it please the lord,” she muttered sourly.
Maester Luwin stood. “We might do well to question her.”
Bran could see the relief on his brother’s face. “As you say, Maester. Wayn, bind her
hands. She’ll come back to Winterfell with us . . . and live or die by the truths she gives
us.”
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TYRION
You want eat?” Mord asked, glowering. He had a plate of oiled beans in one thick, stubfingered hand.
Tyrion Lannister was starved, but he refused to let this brute see him cringe. “A leg of
lamb would be pleasant,” he said, from the heap of soiled straw in the corner of his cell.
“Perhaps a dish of peas and onions, some fresh baked bread with butter, and a flagon of
mulled wine to wash it down. Or beer, if that’s easier. I try not to be overly particular.”
“Is beans,” Mord said. “Here.” He held out the plate.
Tyrion sighed. The turnkey was twenty stone of gross stupidity, with brown rotting teeth
and small dark eyes. The left side of his face was slick with scar where an axe had cut off
his ear and part of his cheek. He was as predictable as he was ugly, but Tyrion was
hungry. He reached up for the plate.
Mord jerked it away, grinning. “Is here,” he said, holding it out beyond Tyrion’s reach.
The dwarf climbed stiffly to his feet, every joint aching. “Must we play the same fool’s
game with every meal?” He made another grab for the beans.
Mord shambled backward, grinning through his rotten teeth. “Is here, dwarf man.” He
held the plate out at arm’s length, over the edge where the cell ended and the sky began.
“You not want eat? Here. Come take.”
Tyrion’s arms were too short to reach the plate, and he was not about to step that close
to the edge. All it would take would be a quick shove of Mord’s heavy white belly, and he
would end up a sickening red splotch on the stones of Sky, like so many other prisoners
of the Eyrie over the centuries. “Come to think on it, I’m not hungry after all,” he
declared, retreating to the corner of his cell.
Mord grunted and opened his thick fingers. The wind took the plate, flipping it over as it
fell. A handful of beans sprayed back at them as the food tumbled out of sight. The
turnkey laughed, his gut shaking like a bowl of pudding.
Tyrion felt a pang of rage. “You fucking son of a pox-ridden ass,” he spat. “I hope you die
�of a bloody flux.”
For that, Mord gave him a kick, driving a steel-toed boot hard into Tyrion’s ribs on the
way out. “I take it back!” he gasped as he doubled over on the straw. “I’ll kill you myself,
I swear it!” The heavy iron-bound door slammed shut. Tyrion heard the rattle of keys.
For a small man, he had been cursed with a dangerously big mouth, he reflected as he
crawled back to his corner of what the Arryns laughably called their dungeon. He
huddled beneath the thin blanket that was his only bedding, staring out at a blaze of
empty blue sky and distant mountains that seemed to go on forever, wishing he still had
the shadowskin cloak he’d won from Marillion at dice, after the singer had stolen it off
the body of that brigand chief. The skin had smelled of blood and mold, but it was warm
and thick. Mord had taken it the moment he laid eyes on it.
The wind tugged at his blanket with gusts sharp as talons. His cell was miserably small,
even for a dwarf. Not five feet away, where a wall ought to have been, where a wall would
be in a proper dungeon, the floor ended and the sky began. He had plenty of fresh air
and sunshine, and the moon and stars by night, but Tyrion would have traded it all in an
instant for the dankest, gloomiest pit in the bowels of the Casterly Rock.
“You fly,” Mord had promised him, when he’d shoved him into the cell. “Twenty day,
thirty, fifty maybe. Then you fly.”
The Arryns kept the only dungeon in the realm where the prisoners were welcome to
escape at will. That first day, after girding up his courage for hours, Tyrion had lain flat
on his stomach and squirmed to the edge, to poke out his head and look down. Sky was
six hundred feet below, with nothing between but empty air. If he craned his neck out as
far as it could go, he could see other cells to his right and left and above him. He was a
bee in a stone honeycomb, and someone had torn off his wings.
It was cold in the cell, the wind screamed night and day, and worst of all, the floor
sloped. Ever so slightly, yet it was enough. He was afraid to close his eyes, afraid that he
might roll over in his steep and wake in sudden terror as he went sliding off the edge.
Small wonder the sky cells drove men mad.
Gods save me, some previous tenant had written on the wall in something that looked
suspiciously like blood, the blue is calling. At first Tyrion wondered who he’d been, and
what had become of him; later, he decided that he would rather not know.
If only he had shut his mouth . . .
The wretched boy had started it, looking down on him from a throne of carved weirwood
�beneath the moon-and-falcon banners of House Arryn. Tyrion Lannister had been
looked down on all his life, but seldom by rheumy-eyed six-year-olds who needed to
stuff fat cushions under their cheeks to lift them to the height of a man. “Is he the bad
man?” the boy had asked, clutching his doll.
“He is,” the Lady Lysa had said from the lesser throne beside him. She was all in blue,
powdered and perfumed for the suitors who filled her court.
“He’s so small,” the Lord of the Eyrie said, giggling.
“This is Tyrion the Imp, of House Lannister, who murdered your father.” She raised her
voice so it carried down the length of High Hall of the Eyrie, ringing off the milk-white
walls and the slender pillars, so every man could hear it. “He slew the Hand of the King!”
“Oh, did I kill him too?” Tyrion had said, like a fool.
That would have been a very good time to have kept his mouth closed and his head
bowed. He could see that now; seven hells, he had seen it then. The High Hall of the
Arryns was long and austere, with a forbidding coldness to its walls of blue-veined white
marble, but the faces around him had been colder by far. The power of Casterly Rock
was far away, and there were no friends of the Lannisters in the Vale of Arryn.
Submission and silence would have been his best defenses.
But Tyrion’s mood had been too foul for sense. To his shame, he had faltered during the
last leg of their day-long climb up to the Eyrie, his stunted legs unable to take him any
higher. Bronn had carried him the rest of the way, and the humiliation poured oil on the
flames of his anger. “It would seem I’ve been a busy little fellow,” he said with bitter
sarcasm. “I wonder when I found the time to do all this slaying and murdering.”
He ought to have remembered who he was dealing with. Lysa Arryn and her half-sane
weakling son had not been known at court for their love of wit, especially when it was
directed at them.
“Imp,” Lysa said coldly, “you will guard that mocking tongue of yours and speak to my
son politely, or I promise you will have cause to regret it. Remember where you are. This
is the Eyrie, and these are knights of the Vale you see around you, true men who loved
Jon Arryn well. Every one of them would die for me.”
“Lady Arryn, should any harm come to me, my brother Jaime will be pleased to see that
they do.” Even as he spat out the words, Tyrion knew they were folly.
“Can you fly, my lord of Lannister?” Lady Lysa asked. “Does a dwarf have wings? If not,
�you would be wiser to swallow the next threat that comes to mind.”
“I made no threats,” Tyrion said. “That was a promise.”
Little Lord Robert hopped to his feet at that, so upset he dropped his doll. “You can’t
hurt us,” he screamed. “No one can hurt us here. Tell him, Mother, tell him he can’t hurt
us here.” The boy began to twitch.
“The Eyrie is impregnable,” Lysa Arryn declared calmly. She drew her son close, holding
him safe in the circle of her plump white arms. “The Imp is trying to frighten us, sweet
baby. The Lannisters are all liars. No one will hurt my sweet boy.”
The hell of it was, she was no doubt right. Having seen what it took to get here, Tyrion
could well imagine how it would be for a knight trying to fight his way up in armor, while
stones and arrows poured down from above and enemies contested with him for every
step. Nightmare did not begin to describe it. Small wonder the Eyrie had never been
taken.
Still, Tyrion had been unable to silence himself. “Not impregnable,” he said, “merely
inconvenient.”
Young Robert pointed down, his hand trembling. “You’re a liar. Mother, I want to see
him fly.” Two guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks seized Tyrion by the arms, lifting him off his
floor.
The gods only know what might have happened then were it not for Catelyn Stark.
“Sister,” she called out from where she stood below the thrones, “I beg you to remember,
this man is my prisoner. I will not have him harmed.”
Lysa Arryn glanced at her sister coolly for a moment, then rose and swept down on
Tyrion, her long skirts trailing after her. For an instant he feared she would strike him,
but instead she commanded them to release him. Her men shoved him to the floor, his
legs went out from under him, and Tyrion fell.
He must have made quite a sight as he struggled to his knees, only to feel his right leg
spasm, sending him sprawling once more. Laughter boomed up and down the High Hall
of the Arryns.
“My sister’s little guest is too weary to stand,” Lady Lysa announced. “Ser Vardis, take
him down to the dungeon. A rest in one of our sky cells will do him much good.”
The guardsmen jerked him upright. Tyrion Lannister dangled between them, kicking
�feebly, his face red with shame. “I will remember this,” he told them all as they carried
him off.
And so he did, for all the good it did him.
At first he had consoled himself that this imprisonment could not last long. Lysa Arryn
wanted to humble him, that was all. She would send for him again, and soon. If not her,
then Catelyn Stark would want to question him. This time he would guard his tongue
more closely. They dare not kill him out of hand; he was still a Lannister of Casterly
Rock, and if they shed his blood, it would mean war. Or so he had told himself.
Now he was not so certain.
Perhaps his captors only meant to let him rot here, but he feared he did not have the
strength to rot for long. He was growing weaker every day, and it was only a matter of
time until Mord’s kicks and blows did him serious harm, provided the gaoler did not
starve him to death first. A few more nights of cold and hunger, and the blue would start
calling to him too.
He wondered what was happening beyond the walls (such as they were) of his cell. Lord
Tywin would surely have sent out riders when the word reached him. Jaime might be
leading a host through the Mountains of the Moon even now . . . unless he was riding
north against Winterfell instead. Did anyone outside the Vale even suspect where
Catelyn Stark had taken him? He wondered what Cersei would do when she heard. The
king could order him freed, but would Robert listen to his queen or his Hand? Tyrion
had no illusions about the king’s love for his sister.
If Cersei kept her wits about her, she would insist the king sit in judgment of Tyrion
himself. Even Ned Stark could scarcely object to that, not without impugning the honor
of the king. And Tyrion would be only too glad to take his chances in a trial. Whatever
murders they might lay at his door, the Starks had no proof of anything so far as he
could see. Let them make their case before the Iron Throne and the lords of the land. It
would be the end of them. If only Cersei were clever enough to see that . . .
Tyrion Lannister sighed. His sister was not without a certain low cunning, but her pride
blinded her. She would see the insult in this, not the opportunity. And Jaime was even
worse, rash and headstrong and quick to anger. His brother never untied a knot when he
could slash it in two with his sword.
He wondered which of them had sent the footpad to silence the Stark boy, and whether
they had truly conspired at the death of Lord Arryn. If the old Hand had been murdered,
it was deftly and subtly done. Men of his age died of sudden illness all the time. In
�contrast, sending some oaf with a stolen knife after Brandon Stark struck him as
unbelievably clumsy. And wasn’t that peculiar, come to think on it . . .
Tyrion shivered. Now there was a nasty suspicion. Perhaps the direwolf and the lion
were not the only beasts in the woods, and if that was true, someone was using him as a
catspaw. Tyrion Lannister hated being used.
He would have to get out of here, and soon. His chances of overpowering Mord were
small to none, and no one was about to smuggle him a six-hundred-foot-long rope, so he
would have to talk himself free. His mouth had gotten him into this cell; it could damn
well get him out.
Tyrion pushed himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the slope of the floor beneath
him, with its ever-so-subtle tug toward the edge. He hammered on the door with a fist.
“Mord!” he shouted. “Turnkey! Mord, I want you!” He had to keep it up a good ten
minutes before he heard footsteps. Tyrion stepped back an instant before the door
opened with a crash.
“Making noise,” Mord growled, with blood in his eyes. Dangling from one meaty hand
was a leather strap, wide and thick, doubled over in his fist.
Never show them you’re afraid, Tyrion reminded himself. “How would you like to be
rich?” he asked.
Mord hit him. He swung the strap backhand, lazily, but the leather caught Tyrion high
on the arm. The force of it staggered him, and the pain made him grit his teeth. “No
mouth, dwarf man,” Mord warned him.
“Gold,” Tyrion said, miming a smile. “Casterly Rock is full of gold . . . ahhhh . . . ” This
time the blow was a forehand, and Mord put more of his arm into the swing, making the
leather crack and jump. It caught Tyrion in the ribs and dropped him to his knees,
wimpering. He forced himself to look up at the gaoler. “As rich as the Lannisters,” he
wheezed. “That’s what they say, Mord—”
Mord grunted. The strap whistled through the air and smashed Tyrion full in the face.
The pain was so bad he did not remember falling, but when he opened his eyes again he
was on the floor of his cell. His ear was ringing, and his mouth was full of blood. He
groped for purchase, to push himself up, and his fingers brushed against . . . nothing.
Tyrion snatched his hand back as fast as if it had been scalded, and tried his best to stop
breathing. He had fallen right on the edge, inches from the blue.
“More to say?” Mord held the strap between his fists and gave it a sharp pull. The snap
�made Tyrion jump. The turnkey laughed.
He won’t push me over, Tyrion told himself desperately as he crawled away from the
edge. Catelyn Stark wants me alive, he doesn’t dare kill me. He wiped the blood off his
lips with the back of his hand, grinned, and said, “That was a stiff one, Mord.” The gaoler
squinted at him, trying to decide if he was being mocked. “I could make good use of a
strong man like you.” The strap flew at him, but this time Tyrion was able to cringe away
from it. He took a glancing blow to the shoulder, nothing more. “Gold,” he repeated,
scrambling backward like a crab, “more gold than you’ll see here in a lifetime. Enough to
buy land, women, horses . . . you could be a lord. Lord Mord.” Tyrion hawked up a glob
of blood and phlegm and spat it out into the sky.
“Is no gold,” Mord said.
He’s listening! Tyrion thought. “They relieved me of my purse when they captured me,
but the gold is still mine. Catelyn Stark might take a man prisoner, but she’d never stoop
to rob him. That wouldn’t be honorable. Help me, and all the gold is yours.” Mord’s strap
licked out, but it was a halfhearted, desultory swing, slow and contemptuous. Tyrion
caught the leather in his hand and held it prisoned. “There will be no risk to you. All you
need do is deliver a message.”
The gaoler yanked his leather strap free of Tyrion’s grasp. “Message,” he said, as if he
had never heard the word before. His frown made deep creases in his brow.
“You heard me, my lord. Only carry my word to your lady. Tell her . . . ” What? What
would possibly make Lysa Anyn relent? The inspiration came to Tyrion Lannister
suddenly. “ . . . .tell her that I wish to confess my crimes.”
Mord raised his arm and Tyrion braced himself for another blow, but the turnkey
hesitated. Suspicion and greed warred in his eyes. He wanted that gold, yet he feared a
trick; he had the look of a man who had often been tricked. “Is lie,” he muttered darkly.
“Dwarf man cheat me.”
“I will put my promise in writing,” Tyrion vowed.
Some illiterates held writing in disdain; others seemed to have a superstitious reverence
for the written word, as if it were some sort of magic. Fortunately, Mord was one of the
latter. The turnkey lowered the strap. “Writing down gold. Much gold.”
“Oh, much gold,” Tyrion assured him. “The purse is just a taste, my friend. My brother
wears armor of solid gold plate.” In truth, Jaime’s armor was gilded steel, but this oaf
would never know the difference.
�Mord fingered his strap thoughtfully, but in the end, he relented and went to fetch paper
and ink. When the letter was written, the gaoler frowned at it suspiciously. “Now deliver
my message,” Tyrion urged.
He was shivering in his sleep when they came for him, late that night. Mord opened the
door but kept his silence. Ser Vardis Egen woke Tyrion with the point of his boot. “On
your feet, Imp. My lady wants to see you.”
Tyrion rubbed the sleep from his eyes and put on a grimace he scarcely felt. “No doubt
she does, but what makes you think I wish to see her?”
Ser Vardis frowned. Tyrion remembered him well from the years he had spent at King’s
Landing as the captain of the Hand’s household guard. A square, plain face, silver hair, a
heavy build, and no humor whatsoever. “Your wishes are not my concern. On your feet,
or I’ll have you carried.”
Tyrion clambered awkwardly to his feet. “A cold night,” he said casually, “and the High
Hall is so drafty. I don’t wish to catch a chill. Mord, if you would be so good, fetch my
cloak.”
The gaoler squinted at him, face dull with suspicion.
“My cloak,” Tyrion repeated. “The shadowskin you took from me for safekeeping. You
recall.”
“Get him the damnable cloak,” Ser Vardis said.
Mord did not dare grumble. He gave Tyrion a glare that promised future retribution, yet
he went for the cloak. When he draped it around his prisoner’s neck, Tyrion smiled. “My
thanks. I shall think of you whenever I wear it.” He flung the trailing end of the long fur
over his right shoulder, and felt warm for the first time in days. “Lead on, Ser Vardis.”
The High Hall of the Arryns was aglow with the light of fifty torches, burning in the
sconces along the walls. The Lady Lysa wore black silk, with the moon-and-falcon sewn
on her breast in pearls. Since she did not look the sort to join the Night’s Watch, Tyrion
could only imagine that she had decided mourning clothes were appropriate garb for a
confession. Her long auburn hair, woven into an elaborate braid, fell across her left
shoulder. The taller throne beside her was empty; no doubt the little Lord of the Eyrie
was off shaking in his sleep. Tyrion was thankful for that much, at least.
He bowed deeply and took a moment to glance around the hall. Lady Arryn had
�summoned her knights and retainers to hear his confession, as he had hoped. He saw
Ser Brynden Tully’s craggy face and Lord Nestor Royce’s bluff one. Beside Nestor stood a
younger man with fierce black side-whiskers who could only be his heir, Ser Albar. Most
of the principal houses of the Vale were represented. Tyrion noted Ser Lyn Corbray,
slender as a sword, Lord Hunter with his gouty legs, the widowed Lady Waynwood
surrounded by her sons. Others sported sigils he did not know; broken lance, green
viper, burning tower, winged chalice.
Among the lords of the Vale were several of his companions from the high road; Ser
Rodrik Cassel, pale from half-healed wounds, stood with Ser Willis Wode beside him.
Marillion the singer had found a new woodharp. Tyrion smiled; whatever happened here
tonight, he did not wish it to happen in secret, and there was no one like a singer for
spreading a story near and far.
In the rear of the hall, Bronn lounged beneath a pillar. The freerider’s black eyes were
fixed on Tyrion, and his hand lay lightly on the pommel of his sword. Tyrion gave him a
long look, wondering . . .
Catelyn Stark spoke first. “You wish to confess your crimes, we are told.”
“I do, my lady,” Tyrion answered.
Lysa Arryn smiled at her sister. “The sky cells always break them. The gods can see them
there, and there is no darkness to hide in.”
“He does not look broken to me,” Lady Catelyn said.
Lady Lysa paid her no mind. “Say what you will,” she commanded Tyrion.
And now to roll the dice, he thought with another quick glance back at Bronn. “Where to
begin? I am a vile little man, I confess it. My crimes and sins are beyond counting, my
lords and ladies. I have lain with whores, not once but hundreds of times. I have wished
my own lord father dead, and my sister, our gracious queen, as well.” Behind him,
someone chuckled. “I have not always treated my servants with kindness. I have
gambled. I have even cheated, I blush to admit. I have said many cruel and malicious
things about the noble lords and ladies of the court.” That drew outright laughter. “Once
I—”
“Silence!” Lysa Arryn’s pale round face had turned a burning pink. “What do you
imagine you are doing, dwarf?”
Tyrion cocked his head to one side. “Why, confessing my crimes, my lady—”
�Catelyn Stark took a step forward. “You are accused of sending a hired knife to slay my
son Bran in his bed, and of conspiring to murder Lord Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King.”
Tyrion gave a helpless shrug. “Those crimes I cannot confess, I fear. I know nothing of
any murders.”
Lady Lysa rose from her weirwood throne. “I will not be made mock of. You have had
your little jape, Imp. I trust you enjoyed it. Ser Vardis, take him back to the
dungeon . . . but this time find him a smaller cell, with a floor more sharply sloped.”
“Is this how justice is done in the Vale?” Tyrion roared, so loudly that Ser Vardis froze
for an instant. “Does honor stop at the Bloody Gate? You accuse me of crimes, I deny
them, so you throw me into an open cell to freeze and starve.” He lifted his head, to give
them all a good look at the bruises Mord had left on his face. “Where is the king’s
justice? Is the Eyrie not part of the Seven Kingdoms? I stand accused, you say. Very well.
I demand a trial! Let me speak, and let my truth or falsehood be judged openly, in the
sight of gods and men.”
A low murmuring filled the High Hall. He had her, Tyrion knew. He was highborn, the
son of the most powerful lord in the realm, the brother of the queen. He could not be
denied a trial. Guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks had started toward Tyrion, but Ser Vardis
bid them halt and looked to Lady Lysa.
Her small mouth twitched in a petulant smile. “If you are tried and found to be guilty of
the crimes for which you stand accused, then by the king’s own laws, you must pay with
your life’s blood. We keep no headsman in the Eyrie, my lord of Lannister. Open the
Moon Door.”
The press of spectators parted. A narrow weirwood door stood between two slender
marble pillars, a crescent moon carved in the white wood. Those standing closest edged
backward as a pair of guardsmen marched through. One man removed the heavy bronze
bars; the second pulled the door inward. Their blue cloaks rose snapping from their
shoulders, caught in the sudden gust of wind that came howling through the open door.
Beyond was the emptiness of the night sky, speckled with cold uncaring stars.
“Behold the king’s justice,” Lysa Arryn said. Torch flames fluttered like pennons along
the walls, and here and there the odd torch guttered out.
“Lysa, I think this unwise,” Catelyn Stark said as the black wind swirled around the hall.
Her sister ignored her. “You want a trial, my lord of Lannister. Very well, a trial you shall
�have. My son will listen to whatever you care to say, and you shall hear his judgment.
Then you may leave . . . by one door or the other.”
She looked so pleased with herself, Tyrion thought, and small wonder. How could a trial
threaten her, when her weakling son was the lord judge? Tyrion glanced at her Moon
Door. Mother, I want to see him fly! the boy had said. How many men had the snotnosed little wretch sent through that door already?
“I thank you, my good lady, but I see no need to trouble Lord Robert,” Tyrion said
politely. “The gods know the truth of my innocence. I will have their verdict, not the
judgment of men. I demand trial by combat.”
A storm of sudden laughter filled the High Hall of the Arryns. Lord Nestor Royce
snorted, Ser Willis chuckled, Ser Lyn Corbray guffawed, and others threw back their
heads and howled until tears ran down their faces. Marillion clumsily plucked a gay note
on his new woodharp with the fingers of his broken hand. Even the wind seemed to
whistle with derision as it came skirling through the Moon Door.
Lysa Arryn’s watery blue eyes looked uncertain. He had caught her off balance. “You
have that right, to be sure.”
The young knight with the green viper embroidered on his surcoat stepped forward and
went to one knee. “My lady, I beg the boon of championing your cause.”
“The honor should be mine,” old Lord Hunter said. “For the love I bore your lord
husband, let me avenge his death.”
“My father served Lord Jon faithfully as High Steward of the Vale,” Ser Albar Royce
boomed. “Let me serve his son in this.”
“The gods favor the man with the just cause,” said Ser Lyn Corbray, “yet often that turns
out to be the man with the surest sword. We all know who that is.” He smiled modestly.
A dozen other men all spoke at once, clamoring to be heard. Tyrion found it
disheartening to realize so many strangers were eager to kill him. Perhaps this had not
been such a clever plan after all.
Lady Lysa raised a hand for silence. “I thank you, my lords, as I know my son would
thank you if he were among us. No men in the Seven Kingdoms are as bold and true as
the knights of the Vale. Would that I could grant you all this honor. Yet I can choose only
one.” She gestured. “Ser Vardis Egen, you were ever my lord husband’s good right hand.
You shall be our champion.”
�Ser Vardis had been singularly silent. “My lady,” he said gravely, sinking to one knee,
“pray give this burden to another, I have no taste for it. The man is no warrior. Look at
him. A dwarf, half my size and lame in the legs. It would be shameful to slaughter such a
man and call it justice.”
Oh, excellent, Tyrion thought. “I agree.”
Lysa glared at him. “You demanded a trial by combat.”
“And now I demand a champion, such as you have chosen for yourself. My brother
Jaime will gladly take my part, I know.”
“Your precious Kingslayer is hundreds of leagues from here,” snapped Lysa Arryn.
“Send a bird for him. I will gladly await his arrival.”
“You will face Ser Vardis on the morrow.”
“Singer,” Tyrion said, turning to Marillion, “when you make a ballad of this, be certain
you tell them how Lady Arryn denied the dwarf the right to a champion, and sent him
forth lame and bruised and hobbling to face her finest knight.”
“I deny you nothing!” Lysa Arryn said, her voice peeved and shrill with irritation. “Name
your champion, Imp . . . if you think you can find a man to die for you.”
“If it is all the same to you, I’d sooner find one to kill for me.” Tyrion looked over the
long hall. No one moved. For a long moment he wondered if it had all been a colossal
blunder.
Then there was a stirring in the rear of the chamber. “I’ll stand for the dwarf,” Bronn
called out.
previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and
Lyanna in her bed of blood.
In the dream his friends rode with him, as they had in life. Proud Martyn Cassel, Jory’s
father; faithful Theo Wull; Ethan Glover, who had been Brandon’s squire; Ser Mark
Ryswell, soft of speech and gentle of heart; the crannogman, Howland Reed; Lord
Dustin on his great red stallion. Ned had known their faces as well as he knew his own
once, but the years leech at a man’s memories, even those he has vowed never to forget.
In the dream they were only shadows, grey wraiths on horses made of mist.
They were seven, facing three. In the dream as it had been in life. Yet these were no
ordinary three. They waited before the round tower, the red mountains of Dorne at their
backs, their white cloaks blowing in the wind. And these were no shadows; their faces
burned clear, even now. Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, had a sad smile on
his lips. The hilt of the greatsword Dawn poked up over his right shoulder. Ser Oswell
Whent was on one knee, sharpening his blade with a whetstone. Across his whiteenameled helm, the black bat of his House spread its wings. Between them stood fierce
old Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.
“I looked for you on the Trident,” Ned said to them.
“We were not there,” Ser Gerold answered.
“Woe to the Usurper if we had been,” said Ser Oswell.
“When King’s Landing fell, Ser Jaime slew your king with a golden sword, and I
wondered where you were.”
“Far away,” Ser Gerold said, “or Aerys would yet sit the Iron Throne, and our false
brother would burn in seven hells.”
“I came down on Storm’s End to lift the siege,” Ned told them, “and the Lords Tyrell and
Redwyne dipped their banners, and all their knights bent the knee to pledge us fealty. I
was certain you would be among them.”
�“Our knees do not bend easily,” said Ser Arthur Dayne.
“Ser Willem Darry is fled to Dragonstone, with your queen and Prince Viserys. I thought
you might have sailed with him.”
“Ser Willem is a good man and true,” said Ser Oswell.
“But not of the Kingsguard,” Ser Gerold pointed out. “The Kingsguard does not flee.”
“Then or now,” said Ser Arthur. He donned his helm.
“We swore a vow,” explained old Ser Gerold.
Ned’s wraiths moved up beside him, with shadow swords in hand. They were seven
against three.
“And now it begins,” said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed
Dawn and held it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass, alive with light.
“No,” Ned said with sadness in his voice. “Now it ends.” As they came together in a rush
of steel and shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. “Eddard!” she called. A storm of
rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.
“Lord Eddard,” Lyanna called again.
“I promise,” he whispered. “Lya, I promise . . . ”
“Lord Eddard,” a man echoed from the dark.
Groaning, Eddard Stark opened his eyes. Moonlight streamed through the tall windows
of the Tower of the Hand.
“Lord Eddard?” A shadow stood over the bed.
“How . . . how long?” The sheets were tangled, his leg splinted and plastered. A dull
throb of pain shot up his side.
“Six days and seven nights.” The voice was Vayon Poole’s. The steward held a cup to
Ned’s lips. “Drink, my lord.”
“What . . . ?”
�“Only water. Maester Pycelle said you would be thirsty.”
Ned drank. His lips were parched and cracked. The water tasted sweet as honey.
“The king left orders,” Vayon Poole told him when the cup was empty. “He would speak
with you, my lord.”
“On the morrow,” Ned said. “When I am stronger.” He could not face Robert now. The
dream had left him weak as a kitten.
“My lord,” Poole said, “he commanded us to send you to him the moment you opened
your eyes.” The steward busied himself lighting a bedside candle.
Ned cursed softly. Robert was never known for his patience. “Tell him I’m too weak to
come to him. If he wishes to speak with me, I should be pleased to receive him here. I
hope you wake him from a sound sleep. And summon . . . ” He was about to say Jory
when he remembered. “Summon the captain of my guard.”
Alyn stepped into the bedchamber a few moments after the steward had taken his leave.
“My lord.”
“Poole tells me it has been six days,” Ned said. “I must know how things stand.”
“The Kingslayer is fled the city,” Alyn told him. “The talk is he’s ridden back to Casterly
Rock to join his father. The story of how Lady Catelyn took the Imp is on every lip. I have
put on extra guards, if it please you.”
“It does,” Ned assured him. “My daughters?”
“They have been with you every day, my lord. Sansa prays quietly, but Arya . . . ” He
hesitated. “She has not said a word since they brought you back. She is a fierce little
thing, my lord. I have never seen such anger in a girl.”
“Whatever happens,” Ned said, “I want my daughters kept safe. I fear this is only the
beginning.”
“No harm will come to them, Lord Eddard,” Alyn said. “I stake my life on that.”
“Jory and the others . . . ”
“I gave them over to the silent sisters, to be sent north to Winterfell. Jory would want to
�lie beside his grandfather.”
It would have to be his grandfather, for Jory’s father was buried far to the south. Martyn
Cassel had perished with the rest. Ned had pulled the tower down afterward, and used
its bloody stones to build eight cairns upon the ridge. It was said that Rhaegar had
named that place the tower of joy, but for Ned it was a bitter memory. They had been
seven against three, yet only two had lived to ride away; Eddard Stark himself and the
little crannogman, Howland Reed. He did not think it omened well that he should dream
that dream again after so many years.
“You’ve done well, Alyn,” Ned was saying when Vayon Poole returned. The steward
bowed low. “His Grace is without, my lord, and the queen with him.”
Ned pushed himself up higher, wincing as his leg trembled with pain. He had not
expected Cersei to come. It did not bode well that she had. “Send them in, and leave us.
What we have to say should not go beyond these walls.” Poole withdrew quietly.
Robert had taken time to dress. He wore a black velvet doublet with the crowned stag of
Baratheon worked upon the breast in golden thread, and a golden mantle with a cloak of
black and gold squares. A flagon of wine was in his hand, his face already flushed from
drink. Cersei Lannister entered behind him, a jeweled tiara in her hair.
“Your Grace,” Ned said. “Your pardons. I cannot rise.”
“No matter,” the king said gruffly. “Some wine? From the Arbor. A good vintage.”
“A small cup,” Ned said. “My head is still heavy from the milk of the poppy.”
“A man in your place should count himself fortunate that his head is still on his
shoulders,” the queen declared.
“Quiet, woman,” Robert snapped. He brought Ned a cup of wine. “Does the leg still pain
you?”
“Some,” Ned said. His head was swimming, but it would not do to admit to weakness in
front of the queen.
“Pycelle swears it will heal clean.” Robert frowned. “I take it you know what Catelyn has
done?”
“I do.” Ned took a small swallow of wine. “My lady wife is blameless, Your Grace. All she
�did she did at my command.”
“I am not pleased, Ned,” Robert grumbled.
“By what right do you dare lay hands on my blood?” Cersei demanded. “Who do you
think you are?”
“The Hand of the King,” Ned told her with icy courtesy. “Charged by your own lord
husband to keep the king’s peace and enforce the king’s justice.”
“You were the Hand,” Cersei began, “but now—”
“Silence!” the king roared. “You asked him a question and he answered it.” Cersei
subsided, cold with anger, and Robert turned back to Ned. “Keep the king’s peace, you
say. Is this how you keep my peace, Ned? Seven men are dead . . . ”
“Eight,” the queen corrected. “Tregar died this morning, of the blow Lord Stark gave
him.”
“Abductions on the kingsroad and drunken slaughter in my streets,” the king said. “I will
not have it, Ned.”
“Catelyn had good reason for taking the Imp—”
“I said, I will not have it! To hell with her reasons. You will command her to release the
dwarf at once, and you will make your peace with Jaime.”
“Three of my men were butchered before my eyes, because Jaime Lannister wished to
chasten me. Am I to forget that?”
“My brother was not the cause of this quarrel,” Cersei told the king. “Lord Stark was
returning drunk from a brothel. His men attacked Jaime and his guards, even as his wife
attacked Tyrion on the kingsroad.”
“You know me better than that, Robert,” Ned said. “Ask Lord Baelish if you doubt me.
He was there.”
“I’ve talked to Littlefinger,” Robert said. “He claims he rode off to bring the gold cloaks
before the fighting began, but he admits you were returning from some whorehouse.”
“Some whorehouse? Damn your eyes, Robert, I went there to have a look at your
�daughter! Her mother has named her Barra. She looks like that first girl you fathered,
when we were boys together in the Vale.” He watched the queen as he spoke; her face
was a mask, still and pale, betraying nothing.
Robert flushed. “Barra,” he grumbled. “Is that supposed to please me? Damn the girl. I
thought she had more sense.”
“She cannot be more than fifteen, and a whore, and you thought she had sense?” Ned
said, incredulous. His leg was beginning to pain him sorely. It was hard to keep his
temper. “The fool child is in love with you, Robert.”
The king glanced at Cersei. “This is no fit subject for the queen’s ears.”
“Her Grace will have no liking for anything I have to say,” Ned replied. “I am told the
Kingslayer has fled the city. Give me leave to bring him back to justice.”
The king swirled the wine in his cup, brooding. He took a swallow. “No,” he said. “I want
no more of this. Jaime slew three of your men, and you five of his. Now it ends.”
“Is that your notion of justice?” Ned flared. “If so, I am pleased that I am no longer your
Hand.”
The queen looked to her husband. “If any man had dared speak to a Targaryen as he has
spoken to you—”
“Do you take me for Aerys?” Robert interrupted.
“I took you for a king. Jaime and Tyrion are your own brothers, by all the laws of
marriage and the bonds we share. The Starks have driven off the one and seized the
other. This man dishonors you with every breath he takes, and yet you stand there
meekly, asking if his leg pains him and would he like some wine.”
Robert’s face was dark with anger. “How many times must I tell you to hold your tongue,
woman?”
Cersei’s face was a study in contempt. “What a jape the gods have made of us two,” she
said. “By all rights, you ought to be in skirts and me in mail.”
Purple with rage, the king lashed out, a vicious backhand blow to the side of the head.
She stumbled against the table and fell hard, yet Cersei Lannister did not cry out. Her
slender fingers brushed her cheek, where the pale smooth skin was already reddening.
On the morrow the bruise would cover half her face. “I shall wear this as a badge of
�honor,” she announced.
“Wear it in silence, or I’ll honor you again,” Robert vowed. He shouted for a guard. Ser
Meryn Trant stepped into the room, tall and somber in his white armor. “The queen is
tired. See her to her bedchamber.” The knight helped Cersei to her feet and led her out
without a word.
Robert reached for the flagon and refilled his cup. “You see what she does to me, Ned.”
The king seated himself, cradling his wine cup. “My loving wife. The mother of my
children.” The rage was gone from him now; in his eyes Ned saw something sad and
scared. “I should not have hit her. That was not . . . that was not kingly.” He stared down
at his hands, as if he did not quite know what they were. “I was always strong . . . no one
could stand before me, no one. How do you fight someone if you can’t hit them?”
Confused, the king shook his head. “Rhaegar . . . Rhaegar won, damn him. I killed him,
Ned, I drove the spike right through that black armor into his black heart, and he died at
my feet. They made up songs about it. Yet somehow he still won. He has Lyanna now,
and I have her.” The king drained his cup.
“Your Grace,” Ned Stark said, “we must talk . . . ”
Robert pressed his fingertips against his temples. “I am sick unto death of talk. On the
morrow I’m going to the kingswood to hunt. Whatever you have to say can wait until I
return.”
“If the gods are good, I shall not be here on your return. You commanded me to return to
Winterfell, remember?”
Robert stood up, grasping one of the bedposts to steady himself. “The gods are seldom
good, Ned. Here, this is yours.” He pulled the heavy silver hand clasp from a pocket in
the lining of his cloak and tossed it on the bed. “Like it or not, you are my Hand, damn
you. I forbid you to leave.”
Ned picked up the silver clasp. He was being given no choice, it seemed. His leg
throbbed, and he felt as helpless as a child. “The Targaryen girl—”
The king groaned. “Seven hells, don’t start with her again. That’s done, I’ll hear no more
of it.”
“Why would you want me as your Hand, if you refuse to listen to my counsel?”
“Why?” Robert laughed. “Why not? Someone has to rule this damnable kingdom. Put on
the badge, Ned. It suits you. And if you ever throw it in my face again, I swear to you, I’ll
�pin the damned thing on Jaime Lannister.”
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CATELYN
The eastern sky was rose and gold as the sun broke over the Vale of Arryn. Catelyn Stark
watched the light spread, her hands resting on the delicate carved stone of the
balustrade outside her window. Below her the world turned from black to indigo to
green as dawn crept across fields and forests. Pale white mists rose off Alyssa’s Tears,
where the ghost waters plunged over the shoulder of the mountain to begin their long
tumble down the face of the Giant’s Lance. Catelyn could feel the faint touch of spray on
her face.
Alyssa Arryn had seen her husband, her brothers, and all her children slain, and yet in
life she had never shed a tear. So in death, the gods had decreed that she would know no
rest until her weeping watered the black earth of the Vale, where the men she had loved
were buried. Alyssa had been dead six thousand years now, and still no drop of the
torrent had ever reached the valley floor far below. Catelyn wondered how large a
waterfall her own tears would make when she died. “Tell me the rest of it,” she said.
“The Kingslayer is massing a host at Casterly Rock,” Ser Rodrik Cassel answered from
the room behind her. “Your brother writes that he has sent riders to the Rock,
demanding that Lord Tywin proclaim his intent, but he has had no answer. Edmure has
commanded Lord Vance and Lord Piper to guard the pass below the Golden Tooth. He
vows to you that he will yield no foot of Tully land without first watering it with
Lannister blood.”
Catelyn turned away from the sunrise. Its beauty did little to lighten her mood; it seemed
cruel for a day to dawn so fair and end so foul as this one promised to. “Edmure has sent
riders and made vows,” she said, “but Edmure is not the Lord of Riverrun. What of my
lord father?”
“The message made no mention of Lord Hoster, my lady.” Ser Rodrik tugged at his
whiskers. They had grown in white as snow and bristly as a thornbush while he was
recovering from his wounds; he looked almost himself again.
“My father would not have given the defense of Riverrun over to Edmure unless he was
very sick,” she said, worried. “I should have been woken as soon as this bird arrived.”
“Your lady sister thought it better to let you sleep, Maester Colemon told me.”
�“I should have been woken,” she insisted.
“The maester tells me your sister planned to speak with you after the combat,” Ser
Rodrik said.
“Then she still plans to go through with this mummer’s farce?” Catelyn grimaced. “The
dwarf has played her like a set of pipes, and she is too deaf to hear the tune. Whatever
happens this morning, Ser Rodrik, it is past time we took our leave. My place is at
Winterfell with my sons. If you are strong enough to travel, I shall ask Lysa for an escort
to see us to Gulltown. We can take ship from there.”
“Another ship?” Ser Rodrik looked a shade green, yet he managed not to shudder. “As
you say, my lady.”
The old knight waited outside her door as Catelyn summoned the servants Lysa had
given her. If she spoke to her sister before the duel, perhaps she could change her mind,
she thought as they dressed her. Lysa’s policies varied with her moods, and her moods
changed hourly. The shy girl she had known at Riverrun had grown into a woman who
was by turns proud, fearful, cruel, dreamy, reckless, timid, stubborn, vain, and, above
all, inconstant.
When that vile turnkey of hers had come crawling to tell them that Tyrion Lannister
wished to confess, Catelyn had urged Lysa to have the dwarf brought to them privately,
but no, nothing would do but that her sister must make a show of him before half the
Vale. And now this . . .
“Lannister is my prisoner,” she told Ser Rodrik as they descended the tower stairs and
made their way through the Eyrie’s cold white halls. Catelyn wore plain grey wool with a
silvered belt. “My sister must be reminded of that.”
At the doors to Lysa’s apartments, they met her uncle storming out. “Going to join the
fool’s festival?” Ser Brynden snapped. “I’d tell you to slap some sense into your sister, if I
thought it would do any good, but you’d only bruise your hand.”
“There was a bird from Riverrun,” Catelyn began, “a letter from Edmure . . . ”
“I know, child.” The black fish that fastened his cloak was Brynden’s only concession to
ornament. “I had to hear it from Maester Colemon. I asked your sister for leave to take a
thousand seasoned men and ride for Riverrun with all haste. Do you know what she told
me? The Vale cannot spare a thousand swords, nor even one, Uncle, she said. You are
the Knight of the Gate. Your place is here.” A gust of childish laughter drifted through
�the open doors behind him, and her uncle glanced darkly over his shoulder. “Well, I told
her she could bloody well find herself a new Knight of the Gate. Black fish or no, I am
still a Tully. I shall leave for Riverrun by evenfall.”
Catelyn could not pretend to surprise. “Alone? You know as well as I that you will never
survive the high road. Ser Rodrik and I are returning to Winterfell. Come with us, Uncle.
I will give you your thousand men. Riverrun will not fight alone.”
Brynden thought a moment, then nodded a brusque agreement. “As you say. It’s the long
way home, but I’m more like to get there. I’ll wait for you below.” He went striding off,
his cloak swirling behind him.
Catelyn exchanged a look with Ser Rodrik. They went through the doors to the high,
nervous sound of a child’s giggles.
Lysa’s apartments opened over a small garden, a circle of dirt and grass planted with
blue flowers and ringed on all sides by tall white towers. The builders had intended it as
a godswood, but the Eyrie rested on the hard stone of the mountain, and no matter how
much soil was hauled up from the Vale, they could not get a weirwood to take root here.
So the Lords of the Eyrie planted grass and scattered statuary amidst low, flowering
shrubs. It was there the two champions would meet to place their lives, and that of
Tyrion Lannister, into the hands of the gods.
Lysa, freshly scrubbed and garbed in cream velvet with a rope of sapphires and
moonstones around her milk-white neck, was holding court on the terrace overlooking
the scene of the combat, surrounded by her knights, retainers, and lords high and low.
Most of them still hoped to wed her, bed her, and rule the Vale of Arryn by her side.
From what Catelyn had seen during her stay at the Eyrie, it was a vain hope.
A wooden platform had been built to elevate Robert’s chair; there the Lord of the Eyrie
sat, giggling and clapping his hands as a humpbacked puppeteer in blue-and-white
motley made two wooden knights hack and slash at each other. Pitchers of thick cream
and baskets of blackberries had been set out, and the guests were sipping a sweet orangescented wine from engraved silver cups. A fool’s festival, Brynden had called it, and
small wonder.
Across the terrace, Lysa laughed gaily at some jest of Lord Hunter’s, and nibbled a
blackberry from the point of Ser Lyn Corbray’s dagger. They were the suitors who stood
highest in Lysa’s favor . . . today, at least. Catelyn would have been hard-pressed to say
which man was more unsuitable. Eon Hunter was even older than Jon Arryn had been,
half-crippled by gout, and cursed with three quarrelsome sons, each more grasping than
the last. Ser Lyn was a different sort of folly; lean and handsome, heir to an ancient but
�impoverished house, but vain, reckless, hot-tempered . . . and, it was whispered,
notoriously uninterested in the intimate charms of women.
When Lysa espied Catelyn, she welcomed her with a sisterly embrace and a moist kiss on
the cheek. “Isn’t it a lovely morning? The gods are smiling on us. Do try a cup of the
wine, sweet sister. Lord Hunter was kind enough to send for it, from his own cellars.”
“Thank you, no. Lysa, we must talk.”
“After,” her sister promised, already beginning to turn away from her.
“Now.” Catelyn spoke more loudly than she’d intended. Men were turning to look. “Lysa,
you cannot mean to go ahead with this folly. Alive, the Imp has value. Dead, he is only
food for crows. And if his champion should prevail here—”
“Small chance of that, my lady,” Lord Hunter assured her, patting her shoulder with a
liver-spotted hand. “Ser Vardis is a doughty fighter. He will make short work of the
sellsword.”
“Will he, my lord?” Catelyn said coolly. “I wonder.” She had seen Bronn fight on the high
road; it was no accident that he had survived the journey while other men had died. He
moved like a panther, and that ugly sword of his seemed a part of his arm.
Lysa’s suitors were gathering around them like bees round a blossom. “Women
understand little of these things,” Ser Morton Waynwood said. “Ser Vardis is a knight,
sweet lady. This other fellow, well, his sort are all cowards at heart. Useful enough in a
battle, with thousands of their fellows around them, but stand them up alone and the
manhood leaks right out of them.”
“Say you have the truth of it, then,” Catelyn said with a courtesy that made her mouth
ache. “What will we gain by the dwarf’s death? Do you imagine that Jaime will care a fig
that we gave his brother a trial before we flung him off a mountain?”
“Behead the man,” Ser Lyn Corbray suggested. “When the Kingslayer receives the Imp’s
head, it will be a warning to him,”
Lysa gave an impatient shake of her waist-long auburn hair. “Lord Robert wants to see
him fly,” she said, as if that settled the matter. “And the Imp has only himself to blame.
It was he who demanded a trial by combat.”
“Lady Lysa had no honorable way to deny him, even if she’d wished to,” Lord Hunter
intoned ponderously.
�Ignoring them all, Catelyn turned all her force on her sister. “I remind you, Tyrion
Lannister is my prisoner.”
“And I remind you, the dwarf murdered my lord husband!” Her voice rose. “He
poisoned the Hand of the King and left my sweet baby fatherless, and now I mean to see
him pay!” Whirling, her skirts swinging around her, Lysa stalked across the terrace. Ser
Lyn and Ser Morton and the other suitors excused themselves with cool nods and trailed
after her.
“Do you think he did?” Ser Rodrik asked her quietly when they were alone again.
“Murder Lord Jon, that is? The Imp still denies it, and most fiercely . . . ”
“I believe the Lannisters murdered Lord Arryn,” Catelyn replied, “but whether it was
Tyrion, or Ser Jaime, or the queen, or all of them together, I could not begin to say.”
Lysa had named Cersei in the letter she had sent to Winterfell, but now she seemed
certain that Tyrion was the killer . . . perhaps because the dwarf was here, while the
queen was safe behind the walls of the Red Keep, hundreds of leagues to the south.
Catelyn almost wished she had burned her sister’s letter before reading it.
Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers. “Poison, well . . . that could be the dwarf’s work, true
enough. Or Cersei’s. It’s said poison is a woman’s weapon, begging your pardons, my
lady. The Kingslayer, now . . . I have no great liking for the man, but he’s not the sort.
Too fond of the sight of blood on that golden sword of his. Was it poison, my lady?”
Catelyn frowned, vaguely uneasy. “How else could they make it look a natural death?”
Behind her, Lord Robert shrieked with delight as one of the puppet knights sliced the
other in half, spilling a flood of red sawdust onto the terrace. She glanced at her nephew
and sighed. “The boy is utterly without discipline. He will never be strong enough to rule
unless he is taken away from his mother for a time.”
“His lord father agreed with you,” said a voice at her elbow. She turned to behold
Maester Colemon, a cup of wine in his hand. “He was planning to send the boy to
Dragonstone for fostering, you know . . . oh, but I’m speaking out of turn.” The apple of
his throat bobbed anxiously beneath the loose maester’s chain. “I fear I’ve had too much
of Lord Hunter’s excellent wine. The prospect of bloodshed has my nerves all a-fray . . . ”
“You are mistaken, Maester,” Catelyn said. “It was Casterly Rock, not Dragonstone, and
those arrangements were made after the Hand’s death, without my sister’s consent.”
The maester’s head jerked so vigorously at the end of his absurdly long neck that he
looked half a puppet himself. “No, begging your forgiveness, my lady, but it was Lord
�Jon who—”
A bell tolled loudly below them. High lords and serving girls alike broke off what they
were doing and moved to the balustrade. Below, two guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks led
forth Tyrion Lannister. The Eyrie’s plump septon escorted him to the statue in the center
of the garden, a weeping woman carved in veined white marble, no doubt meant to be
Alyssa.
“The bad little man,” Lord Robert said, giggling. “Mother, can I make him fly? I want to
see him fly.”
“Later, my sweet baby,” Lysa promised him.
“Trial first,” drawled Ser Lyn Corbray, “then execution.”
A moment later the two champions appeared from opposite sides of the garden. The
knight was attended by two young squires, the sellsword by the Eyrie’s master-at-arms.
Ser Vardis Egen was steel from head to heel, encased in heavy plate armor over mail and
padded surcoat. Large circular rondels, enameled cream-and-blue in the moon-andfalcon sigil of House Arryn, protected the vulnerable juncture of arm and breast. A skirt
of lobstered metal covered him from waist to midthigh, while a solid gorget encircled his
throat. Falcon’s wings sprouted from the temples of his helm, and his visor was a
pointed metal beak with a narrow slit for vision.
Bronn was so lightly armored he looked almost naked beside the knight. He wore only a
shirt of black oiled ringmail over boiled leather, a round steel halfhelm with a
noseguard, and a mail coif. High leather boots with steel shinguards gave some
protection to his legs, and discs of black iron were sewn into the fingers of his gloves. Yet
Catelyn noted that the sellsword stood half a hand taller than his foe, with a longer
reach . . . and Bronn was fifteen years younger, if she was any judge.
They knelt in the grass beneath the weeping woman, facing each other, with Lannister
between them. The septon removed a faceted crystal sphere from the soft cloth bag at his
waist. He lifted it high above his head, and the light shattered. Rainbows danced across
the Imp’s face. In a high, solemn, singsong voice, the septon asked the gods to look down
and bear witness, to find the truth in this man’s soul, to grant him life and freedom if he
was innocent, death if he was guilty. His voice echoed off the surrounding towers.
When the last echo had died away, the septon lowered his crystal and made a hasty
departure. Tyrion leaned over and whispered something in Bronn’s ear before the
guardsmen led him away. The sellsword rose laughing and brushed a blade of grass from
�his knee.
Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale, was fidgeting impatiently in
his elevated chair. “When are they going to fight?” he asked plaintively.
Ser Vardis was helped back to his feet by one of his squires. The other brought him a
triangular shield almost four feet tall, heavy oak dotted with iron studs. They strapped it
to his left forearm. When Lysa’s master-at-arms offered Bronn a similar shield, the
sellsword spat and waved it away. Three days growth of coarse black beard covered his
jaw and cheeks, but if he did not shave it was not for want of a razor; the edge of his
sword had the dangerous glimmer of steel that had been honed every day for hours, until
it was too sharp to touch.
Ser Vardis held out a gauntleted hand, and his squire placed a handsome double-edged
longsword in his grasp. The blade was engraved with a delicate silver tracery of a
mountain sky; its pommel was a falcon’s head, its crossguard fashioned into the shape of
wings. “I had that sword crafted for Jon in King’s Landing,” Lysa told her guests proudly
as they watched Ser Vardis try a practice cut. “He wore it whenever he sat the Iron
Throne in King Robert’s place. Isn’t it a lovely thing? I thought it only fitting that our
champion avenge Jon with his own blade.”
The engraved silver blade was beautiful beyond a doubt, but it seemed to Catelyn that
Ser Vardis might have been more comfortable with his own sword. Yet she said nothing;
she was weary of futile arguments with her sister.
“Make them fight!” Lord Robert called out.
Ser Vardis faced the Lord of the Eyrie and lifted his sword in salute. “For the Eyrie and
the Vale!”
Tyrion Lannister had been seated on a balcony across the garden, flanked by his guards.
It was to him that Bronn turned with a cursory salute.
“They await your command,” Lady Lysa said to her lord son.
“Fight!” the boy screamed, his arms trembling as they clutched at his chair.
Ser Vardis swiveled, bringing up his heavy shield. Bronn turned to face him. Their
swords rang together, once, twice, a testing. The sellsword backed off a step. The knight
came after, holding his shield before him. He tried a slash, but Bronn jerked back, just
out of reach, and the silver blade cut only air. Bronn circled to his right. Ser Vardis
turned to follow, keeping his shield between them. The knight pressed forward, placing
�each foot carefully on the uneven ground. The sellsword gave way, a faint smile playing
over his lips. Ser Vardis attacked, slashing, but Bronn leapt away from him, hopping
lightly over a low, moss-covered stone. Now the sellsword circled left, away from the
shield, toward the knight’s unprotected side. Ser Vardis tried a hack at his legs, but he
did not have the reach. Bronn danced farther to his left. Ser Vardis turned in place.
“The man is craven,” Lord Hunter declared. “Stand and fight, coward! “ Other voices
echoed the sentiment.
Catelyn looked to Ser Rodrik. Her master-at-arms gave a curt shake of his head. “He
wants to make Ser Vardis chase him. The weight of armor and shield will tire even the
strongest man.”
She had seen men practice at their swordplay near every day of her life, had viewed half
a hundred tourneys in her time, but this was something different and deadlier: a dance
where the smallest misstep meant death. And as she watched, the memory of another
duel in another time came back to Catelyn Stark, as vivid as if it had been yesterday.
They met in the lower bailey of Riverrun. When Brandon saw that Petyr wore only helm
and breastplate and mail, he took off most of his armor. Petyr had begged her for a favor
he might wear, but she had turned him away. Her lord father promised her to Brandon
Stark, and so it was to him that she gave her token, a pale blue handscarf she had
embroidered with the leaping trout of Riverrun. As she pressed it into his hand, she
pleaded with him. “He is only a foolish boy, but I have loved him like a brother. It would
grieve me to see him die.” And her betrothed looked at her with the cool grey eyes of a
Stark and promised to spare the boy who loved her.
That fight was over almost as soon as it began. Brandon was a man grown, and he drove
Littlefinger all the way across the bailey and down the water stair, raining steel on him
with every step, until the boy was staggering and bleeding from a dozen wounds. “Yield!”
he called, more than once, but Petyr would only shake his head and fight on, grimly.
When the river was lapping at their ankles, Brandon finally ended it, with a brutal
backhand cut that bit through Petyr’s rings and leather into the soft flesh below the ribs,
so deep that Catelyn was certain that the wound was mortal. He looked at her as he fell
and murmured “Cat” as the bright blood came flowing out between his mailed fingers.
She thought she had forgotten that.
That was the last time she had seen his face . . . until the day she was brought before him
in King’s Landing.
A fortnight passed before Littlefinger was strong enough to leave Riverrun, but her lord
father forbade her to visit him in the tower where he lay abed. Lysa helped their maester
�nurse him; she had been softer and shyer in those days. Edmure had called on him as
well, but Petyr had sent him away. Her brother had acted as Brandon’s squire at the
duel, and Littlefinger would not forgive that. As soon as he was strong enough to be
moved, Lord Hoster Tully sent Petyr Baelish away in a closed litter, to finish his healing
on the Fingers, upon the windswept jut of rock where he’d been born.
The ringing clash of steel on steel jarred Catelyn back to the present. Ser Vardis was
coming hard at Bronn, driving into him with shield and sword. The sellsword scrambled
backward, checking each blow, stepping lithely over rock and root, his eyes never leaving
his foe. He was quicker, Catelyn saw; the knight’s silvered sword never came near to
touching him, but his own ugly grey blade hacked a notch from Ser Vardis’s shoulder
plate.
The brief flurry of fighting ended as swiftly as it had begun when Bronn sidestepped and
slid behind the statue of the weeping woman. Ser Vardis lunged at where he had been,
striking a spark off the pale marble of Alyssa’s thigh.
“They’re not fighting good, Mother,” the Lord of the Eyrie complained. “I want them to
fight.”
“They will, sweet baby,” his mother soothed him. “The sellsword can’t run all day.”
Some of the lords on Lysa’s terrace were making wry jests as they refilled their wine
cups, but across the garden, Tyrion Lannister’s mismatched eyes watched the champions
dance as if there were nothing else in the world.
Bronn came out from behind the statue hard and fast, still moving left, aiming a twohanded cut at the knight’s unshielded right side. Ser Vardis blocked, but clumsily, and
the sellsword’s blade flashed upward at his head. Metal rang, and a falcon’s wing
collapsed with a crunch. Ser Vardis took a half step back to brace himself, raised his
shield. Oak chips flew as Bronn’s sword hacked at the wooden wall. The sellsword
stepped left again, away from the shield, and caught Ser Vardis across the stomach, the
razor edge of his blade leaving a bright gash when it bit into the knight’s plate.
Ser Vardis drove forward off his back foot, his own silver blade descending in a savage
arc. Bronn slammed it aside and danced away. The knight crashed into the weeping
woman, rocking her on her plinth. Staggered, he stepped backward, his head turning
this way and that as he searched for his foe. The slit visor of his helm narrowed his
vision.
“Behind you, ser!” Lord Hunter shouted, too late. Bronn brought his sword down with
both hands, catching Ser Vardis in the elbow of his sword arm. The thin lobstered metal
�that protected the joint crunched. The knight grunted, turning, wrenching his weapon
up. This time Bronn stood his ground. The swords flew at each other, and their steel
song filled the garden and rang off the white towers of the Eyrie.
“Ser Vardis is hurt,” Ser Rodrik said, his voice grave.
Catelyn did not need to be told; she had eyes, she could see the bright finger of blood
running along the knight’s forearm, the wetness inside the elbow joint. Every parry was
a little slower and a little lower than the one before. Ser Vardis turned his side to his foe,
trying to use his shield to block instead, but Bronn slid around him, quick as a cat. The
sellsword seemed to be getting stronger. His cuts were leaving their marks now. Deep
shiny gashes gleamed all over the knight’s armor, on his right thigh, his beaked visor,
crossing on his breastplate, a long one along the front of his gorget. The moon-andfalcon rondel over Ser Vardis’s right arm was sheared clean in half, hanging by its strap.
They could hear his labored breath, rattling through the air holes in his visor.
Blind with arrogance as they were, even the knights and lords of the Vale could see what
was happening below them, yet her sister could not. “Enough, Ser Vardis!” Lady Lysa
called down. “Finish him now, my baby is growing tired.”
And it must be said of Ser Vardis Egen that he was true to his lady’s command, even to
the last. One moment he was reeling backward, half-crouched behind his scarred shield;
the next he charged. The sudden bull rush caught Bronn off balance. Ser Vardis crashed
into him and slammed the lip of his shield into the sellsword’s face. Almost, almost,
Bronn lost his feet . . . he staggered back, tripped over a rock, and caught hold of the
weeping woman to keep his balance. Throwing aside his shield, Ser Vardis lurched after
him, using both hands to raise his sword. His right arm was blood from elbow to fingers
now, yet his last desperate blow would have opened Bronn from neck to navel . . . if the
sellsword had stood to receive it.
But Bronn jerked back. Jon Arryn’s beautiful engraved silver sword glanced off the
marble elbow of the weeping woman and snapped clean a third of the way up the blade.
Bronn put his shoulder into the statue’s back. The weathered likeness of Alyssa Arryn
tottered and fell with a great crash, and Ser Vardis Egen went down beneath her.
Bronn was on him in a heartbeat, kicking what was left of his shattered rondel aside to
expose the weak spot between arm and breastplate. Ser Vardis was lying on his side,
pinned beneath the broken torso of the weeping woman. Catelyn heard the knight groan
as the sellsword lifted his blade with both hands and drove it down and in with all his
weight behind it, under the arm and through the ribs. Ser Vardis Egen shuddered and
lay still.
�Silence hung over the Eyrie. Bronn yanked off his halfhelm and let it fall to the grass. His
lip was smashed and bloody where the shield had caught him, and his coal-black hair
was soaked with sweat. He spit out a broken tooth.
“Is it over, Mother?” the Lord of the Eyrie asked.
No, Catelyn wanted to tell him, it’s only now beginning.
“Yes,” Lysa said glumly, her voice as cold and dead as the captain of her guard.
“Can I make the little man fly now?”
Across the garden, Tyrion Lannister got to his feet. “Not this little man,” he said. “This
little man is going down in the turnip hoist, thank you very much.”
“You presume—” Lysa began.
“I presume that House Arryn remembers its own words,” the Imp said. “As High as
Honor.”
“You promised I could make him fly,” the Lord of the Eyrie screamed at his mother. He
began to shake.
Lady Lysa’s face was flushed with fury. “The gods have seen fit to proclaim him
innocent, child. We have no choice but to free him.” She lifted her voice. “Guards. Take
my lord of Lannister and his . . . creature here out of my sight. Escort them to the Bloody
Gate and set them free. See that they have horses and supplies sufficient to reach the
Trident, and make certain all their goods and weapons are returned to them. They shall
need them on the high road.”
“The high road,” Tyrion Lannister said. Lysa allowed herself a faint, satisfied smile. It
was another sort of death sentence, Catelyn realized. Tyrion Lannister must know that
as well. Yet the dwarf favored Lady Arryn with a mocking bow. “As you command, my
lady,” he said. “I believe we know the way.”
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JON
You are as hopeless as any boys I have ever trained,” Ser Alliser Thorne announced when
they had all assembled in the yard. “Your hands were made for manure shovels, not for
swords, and if it were up to me, the lot of you would be set to herding swine. But last
night I was told that Gueren is marching five new boys up the kingsroad. One or two
may even be worth the price of piss. To make room for them, I have decided to pass eight
of you on to the Lord Commander to do with as he will.” He called out the names one by
one. “Toad. Stone Head. Aurochs. Lover. Pimple. Monkey. Ser Loon.” Last, he looked at
Jon. “And the Bastard.”
Pyp let fly a whoop and thrust his sword into the air. Ser Alliser fixed him with a reptile
stare. “They will call you men of Night’s Watch now, but you are bigger fools than the
Mummer’s Monkey here if you believe that. You are boys still, green and stinking of
summer, and when the winter comes you will die like flies.” And with that, Ser Alliser
Thorne took his leave of them.
The other boys gathered round the eight who had been named, laughing and cursing and
offering congratulations. Halder smacked Toad on the butt with the flat of his sword and
shouted, “Toad, of the Night’s Watch!” Yelling that a black brother needed a horse, Pyp
leapt onto Grenn’s shoulders, and they tumbled to the ground, rolling and punching and
hooting. Dareon dashed inside the armory and returned with a skin of sour red. As they
passed the wine from hand to hand, grinning like fools, Jon noticed Samwell Tarly
standing by himself beneath a bare dead tree in the corner of the yard. Jon offered him
the skin. “A swallow of wine?”
Sam shook his head. “No thank you, Jon.”
“Are you well?”
“Very well, truly,” the fat boy lied. “I am so happy for you all.” His round face quivered as
he forced a smile. “You will be First Ranger someday, just as your uncle was.”
“Is,” Jon corrected. He would not accept that Benjen Stark was dead. Before he could say
more, Haider cried, “Here, you planning to drink that all yourself?” Pyp snatched the
skin from his hand and danced away, laughing. While Grenn seized his arm, Pyp gave
the skin a squeeze, and a thin stream of red squirted Jon in the face. Haider howled in
�protest at the waste of good wine. Jon sputtered and struggled. Matthar and Jeren
climbed the wall and began pelting them all with snowballs.
By the time he wrenched free, with snow in his hair and wine stains on his surcoat,
Samwell Tarly had gone.
That night, Three-Finger Hobb cooked the boys a special meal to mark the occasion.
When Jon arrived at the common hall, the Lord Steward himself led him to the bench
near the fire. The older men clapped him on the arm in passing. The eight soon-to-be
brothers feasted on rack of lamb baked in a crust of garlic and herbs, garnished with
sprigs of mint, and surrounded by mashed yellow turnips swimming in butter. “From
the Lord Commander’s own table,” Bowen Marsh told them. There were salads of
spinach and chickpeas and turnip greens, and afterward bowls of iced blueberries and
sweet cream.
“Do you think they’ll keep us together?” Pyp wondered as they gorged themselves
happily.
Toad made a face. “I hope not. I’m sick of looking at those ears of yours.”
“Ho,” said Pyp. “Listen to the crow call the raven black. You’re certain to be a ranger,
Toad. They’ll want you as far from the castle as they can. If Mance Rayder attacks, lift
your visor and show your face, and he’ll run off screaming.”
Everyone laughed but Grenn. “I hope I’m a ranger.”
“You and everyone else,” said Matthar. Every man who wore the black walked the Wall,
and every man was expected to take up steel in its defense, but the rangers were the true
fighting heart of the Night’s Watch. It was they who dared ride beyond the Wall,
sweeping through the haunted forest and the icy mountain heights west of the Shadow
Tower, fighting wildlings and giants and monstrous snow bears.
“Not everyone,” said Halder. “It’s the builders for me. What use would rangers be if the
Wall fell down?”
The order of builders provided the masons and carpenters to repair keeps and towers,
the miners to dig tunnels and crush stone for roads and footpaths, the woodsmen to
clear away new growth wherever the forest pressed too close to the Wall. Once, it was
said, they had quarried immense blocks of ice from frozen lakes deep in the haunted
forest, dragging them south on sledges so the Wall might be raised ever higher. Those
days were centuries gone, however; now, it was all they could do to ride the Wall from
Eastwatch to the Shadow Tower, watching for cracks or signs of melt and making what
�repairs they could.
“The Old Bear’s no fool,” Dareon observed. “You’re certain to be a builder, and Jon’s
certain to be a ranger. He’s the best sword and the best rider among us, and his uncle
was the First before he . . . ” His voice trailed off awkwardly as he realized what he had
almost said.
“Benjen Stark is still First Ranger,” Jon Snow told him, toying with his bowl of
blueberries. The rest might have given up all hope of his uncle’s safe return, but not him.
He pushed away the berries, scarcely touched, and rose from the bench.
“Aren’t you going to eat those?” Toad asked.
“They’re yours.” Jon had hardly tasted Hobb’s great feast. “I could not eat another bite.”
He took his cloak from its hook near the door and shouldered his way out.
Pyp followed him. “Jon, what is it?”
“Sam,” he admitted. “He was not at table tonight.”
“It’s not like him to miss a meal,” Pyp said thoughtfully. “Do you suppose he’s taken ill?”
“He’s frightened. We’re leaving him.” He remembered the day he had left Winterfell, all
the bittersweet farewells; Bran lying broken, Robb with snow in his hair, Arya raining
kisses on him after he’d given her Needle. “Once we say our words, we’ll all have duties
to attend to. Some of us may be sent away, to Eastwatch or the Shadow Tower. Sam will
remain in training, with the likes of Rast and Cuger and these new boys who are coming
up the kingsroad. Gods only know what they’ll be like, but you can bet Ser Alliser will
send them against him, first chance he gets.”
Pyp made a grimace. “You did all you could.”
“All we could wasn’t enough,” Jon said.
A deep restlessness was on him as he went back to Hardin’s Tower for Ghost. The
direwolf walked beside him to the stables. Some of the more skittish horses kicked at
their stalls and laid back their ears as they entered. Jon saddled his mare, mounted, and
rode out from Castle Black, south across the moonlit night. Ghost raced ahead of him,
flying over the ground, gone in the blink of an eye. Jon let him go. A wolf needed to hunt.
He had no destination in mind. He wanted only to ride. He followed the creek for a time,
listening to the icy trickle of water over rock, then cut across the fields to the kingsroad.
�It stretched out before him, narrow and stony and pocked with weeds, a road of no
particular promise, yet the sight of it filled Jon Snow with a vast longing. Winterfell was
down that road, and beyond it Riverrun and King’s Landing and the Eyrie and so many
other places; Casterly Rock, the Isle of Faces, the red mountains of Dorne, the hundred
islands of Braavos in the sea, the smoking ruins of old Valyria. All the places that Jon
would never see. The world was down that road . . . and he was here.
Once he swore his vow, the Wall would be his home until he was old as Maester Aemon.
“I have not sworn yet,” he muttered. He was no outlaw, bound to take the black or pay
the penalty for his crimes. He had come here freely, and he might leave freely . . . until
he said the words. He need only ride on, and he could leave it all behind. By the time the
moon was full again, he would be back in Winterfell with his brothers.
Your half brothers, a voice inside reminded him. And Lady Stark, who will not welcome
you. There was no place for him in Winterfell, no place in King’s Landing either. Even
his own mother had not had a place for him. The thought of her made him sad. He
wondered who she had been, what she had looked like, why his father had left her.
Because she was a whore or an adulteress, fool. Something dark and dishonorable, or
else why was Lord Eddard too ashamed to speak of her?
Jon Snow turned away from the kingsroad to look behind him. The fires of Castle Black
were hidden behind a hill, but the Wall was there, pale beneath the moon, vast and cold,
running from horizon to horizon.
He wheeled his horse around and started for home.
Ghost returned as he crested a rise and saw the distant glow of lamplight from the Lord
Commander’s Tower. The direwolf s muzzle was red with blood as he trotted beside the
horse. Jon found himself thinking of Samwell Tarly again on the ride back. By the time
he reached the stables, he knew what he must do.
Maester Aemon’s apartments were in a stout wooden keep below the rookery. Aged and
frail, the maester shared his chambers with two of the younger stewards, who tended to
his needs and helped him in his duties. The brothers joked that he had been given the
two ugliest men in the Night’s Watch; being blind, he was spared having to look at them.
Clydas was short, bald, and chinless, with small pink eyes like a mole. Chett had a wen
on his neck the size of a pigeon’s egg, and a face red with boils and pimples. Perhaps that
was why he always seemed so angry.
It was Chett who answered Jon’s knock. “I need to speak to Maester Aemon,” Jon told
him.
�“The maester is abed, as you should be. Come back on the morrow and maybe he’ll see
you.” He began to shut the door.
Jon jammed it open with his boot. “I need to speak to him now. The morning will be too
late.”
Chett scowled. “The maester is not accustomed to being woken in the night. Do you
know how old he is?”
“Old enough to treat visitors with more courtesy than you,” Jon said. “Give him my
pardons. I would not disturb his rest if it were not important.”
“And if I refuse?”
Jon had his boot wedged solidly in the door. “I can stand here all night if I must.”
The black brother made a disgusted noise and opened the door to admit him. “Wait in
the library. There’s wood. Start a fire. I won’t have the maester catching a chill on
account of you.”
Jon had the logs crackling merrily by the time Chett led in Maester Aemon. The old man
was clad in his bed robe, but around his throat was the chain collar of his order. A
maester did not remove it even to sleep. “The chair beside the fire would be pleasant,” he
said when he felt the warmth on his face. When he was settled comfortably, Chett
covered his legs with a fur and went to stand by the door.
“I am sorry to have woken you, Maester,” Jon Snow said.
“You did not wake me,” Maester Aemon replied. “I find I need less sleep as I grow older,
and I am grown very old. I often spend half the night with ghosts, remembering times
fifty years past as if they were yesterday. The mystery of a midnight visitor is a welcome
diversion. So tell me, Jon Snow, why have you come calling at this strange hour?”
“To ask that Samwell Tarly be taken from training and accepted as a brother of the
Night’s Watch.”
“This is no concern of Maester Aemon,” Chett complained.
“Our Lord Commander has given the training of recruits into the hands of Ser Alliser
Thorne,” the maester said gently. “Only he may say when a boy is ready to swear his vow,
as you surely know. Why then come to me?”
�“The Lord Commander listens to you,” Jon told him. “And the wounded and the sick of
the Night’s Watch are in your charge.”
“And is your friend Samwell wounded or sick?”
“He will be,” Jon promised, “unless you help.”
He told them all of it, even the part where he’d set Ghost at Rast’s throat. Maester
Aemon listened silently, blind eyes fixed on the fire, but Chett’s face darkened with each
word. “Without us to keep him safe, Sam will have no chance,” Jon finished. “He’s
hopeless with a sword. My sister Arya could tear him apart, and she’s not yet ten. If Ser
Alliser makes him fight, it’s only a matter of time before he’s hurt or killed.”
Chett could stand no more. “I’ve seen this fat boy in the common hall,” he said. “He is a
pig, and a hopeless craven as well, if what you say is true.”
“Maybe it is so,” Maester Aemon said. “Tell me, Chett, what would you have us do with
such a boy?”
“Leave him where he is,” Chett said. “The Wall is no place for the weak. Let him train
until he is ready, no matter how many years that takes. Ser Alliser shall make a man of
him or kill him, as the gods will.”
“That’s stupid,” Jon said. He took a deep breath to gather his thoughts. “I remember
once I asked Maester Luwin why he wore a chain around his throat.”
Maester Aemon touched his own collar lightly, his bony, wrinkled finger stroking the
heavy metal links. “Go on.”
“He told me that a maester’s collar is made of chain to remind him that he is sworn to
serve,” Jon said, remembering. “I asked why each link was a different metal. A silver
chain would look much finer with his grey robes, I said. Maester Luwin laughed. A
maester forges his chain with study, he told me. The different metals are each a different
kind of learning, gold for the study of money and accounts, silver for healing, iron for
warcraft. And he said there were other meanings as well. The collar is supposed to
remind a maester of the realm he serves, isn’t that so? Lords are gold and knights steel,
but two links can’t make a chain. You also need silver and iron and lead, tin and copper
and bronze and all the rest, and those are farmers and smiths and merchants and the
like. A chain needs all sorts of metals, and a land needs all sorts of people.”
Maester Aemon smiled. “And so?”
�“The Night’s Watch needs all sorts too. Why else have rangers and stewards and
builders? Lord Randyll couldn’t make Sam a warrior, and Ser Alliser won’t either. You
can’t hammer tin into iron, no matter how hard you beat it, but that doesn’t mean tin is
useless. Why shouldn’t Sam be a steward?”
Chett gave an angry scowl. “I’m a steward. You think it’s easy work, fit for cowards? The
order of stewards keeps the Watch alive. We hunt and farm, tend the horses, milk the
cows, gather firewood, cook the meals. Who do you think makes your clothing? Who
brings up supplies from the south? The stewards.”
Maester Aemon was gentler. “Is your friend a hunter?”
“He hates hunting,” Jon had to admit.
“Can he plow a field?” the maester asked. “Can he drive a wagon or sail a ship? Could he
butcher a cow?”
“No.”
Chett gave a nasty laugh. “I’ve seen what happens to soft lordlings when they’re put to
work. Set them to churning butter and their hands blister and bleed. Give them an axe to
split logs, and they cut off their own foot.”
“I know one thing Sam could do better than anyone.”
“Yes?” Maester Aemon prompted.
Jon glanced warily at Chett, standing beside the door, his boils red and angry. “He could
help you,” he said quickly. “He can do sums, and he knows how to read and write. I
know Chett can’t read, and Clydas has weak eyes. Sam read every book in his father’s
library. He’d be good with the ravens too. Animals seem to like him. Ghost took to him
straight off. There’s a lot he could do, besides fighting. The Night’s Watch needs every
man. Why kill one, to no end? Make use of him instead.”
Maester Aemon closed his eyes, and for a brief moment Jon was afraid that he had gone
to sleep. Finally he said, “Maester Luwin taught you well, Jon Snow. Your mind is as deft
as your blade, it would seem.”
“Does that mean . . . ”
“It means I shall think on what you have said,” the maester told him firmly. “And now, I
�believe I am ready to sleep. Chett, show our young brother to the door.”
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TYRION
They had taken shelter beneath a copse of aspens just off the high road. Tyrion was
gathering deadwood while their horses took water from a mountain stream. He stooped
to pick up a splintered branch and examined it critically. “Will this do? I am not
practiced at starting fires. Morrec did that for me.”
“A fire?” Bronn said, spitting. “Are you so hungry to die, dwarf? Or have you taken leave
of your senses? A fire will bring the clansmen down on us from miles around. I mean to
survive this journey, Lannister.”
“And how do you hope to do that?” Tyrion asked. He tucked the branch under his arm
and poked around through the sparse undergrowth, looking for more. His back ached
from the effort of bending; they had been riding since daybreak, when a stone-faced Ser
Lyn Corbray had ushered them through the Bloody Gate and commanded them never to
return.
“We have no chance of fighting our way back,” Bronn said, “but two can cover more
ground than ten, and attract less notice. The fewer days we spend in these mountains,
the more like we are to reach the riverlands. Ride hard and fast, I say. Travel by night
and hole up by day, avoid the road where we can, make no noise and light no fires.”
Tyrion Lannister sighed. “A splendid plan, Bronn. Try it, as you like . . . and forgive me if
I do not linger to bury you.”
“You think to outlive me, dwarf?” The sellsword grinned. He had a dark gap in his smile
where the edge of Ser Vardis Egen’s shield had cracked a tooth in half.
Tyrion shrugged. “Riding hard and fast by night is a sure way to tumble down a
mountain and crack your skull. I prefer to make my crossing slow and easy. I know you
love the taste of horse, Bronn, but if our mounts die under us this time, we’ll be trying to
saddle shadowcats . . . and if truth be told, I think the clans will find us no matter what
we do. Their eyes are all around us.” He swept a gloved hand over the high, wind-carved
crags that surrounded them.
Bronn grimaced. “Then we’re dead men, Lannister.”
�“If so, I prefer to die comfortable,” Tyrion replied. “We need a fire. The nights are cold
up here, and hot food will warm our bellies and lift our spirits. Do you suppose there’s
any game to be had? Lady Lysa has kindly provided us with a veritable feast of salt beef,
hard cheese, and stale bread, but I would hate to break a tooth so far from the nearest
maester.”
“I can find meat.” Beneath a fall of black hair, Bronn’s dark eyes regarded Tyrion
suspiciously. “I should leave you here with your fool’s fire. If I took your horse, I’d have
twice the chance to make it through. What would you do then, dwarf?”
“Die, most like.” Tyrion stooped to get another stick.
“You don’t think I’d do it?”
“You’d do it in an instant, if it meant your life. You were quick enough to silence your
friend Chiggen when he caught that arrow in his belly.” Bronn had yanked back the
man’s head by the hair and driven the point of his dirk in under the ear, and afterward
told Catelyn Stark that the other sellsword had died of his wound.
“He was good as dead,” Bronn said, “and his moaning was bringing them down on us.
Chiggen would have done the same for me . . . and he was no friend, only a man I rode
with. Make no mistake, dwarf. I fought for you, but I do not love you.”
“It was your blade I needed,” Tyrion said, “not your love.” He dumped his armful of
wood on the ground.
Bronn grinned. “You’re bold as any sellsword, I’ll give you that. How did you know I’d
take your part?”
“Know?” Tyrion squatted awkwardly on his stunted legs to build the fire. “I tossed the
dice. Back at the inn, you and Chiggen helped take me captive. Why? The others saw it as
their duty, for the honor of the lords they served, but not you two. You had no lord, no
duty, and precious little honor, so why trouble to involve yourselves?” He took out his
knife and whittled some thin strips of bark off one of the sticks he’d gathered, to serve as
kindling. “Well, why do sellswords do anything? For gold. You were thinking Lady
Catelyn would reward you for your help, perhaps even take you into her service. Here,
that should do, I hope. Do you have a flint?”
Bronn slid two fingers into the pouch at his belt and tossed down a flint. Tyrion caught it
in the air.
“My thanks,” he said. “The thing is, you did not know the Starks. Lord Eddard is a
�proud, honorable, and honest man, and his lady wife is worse. Oh, no doubt she would
have found a coin or two for you when this was all over, and pressed it in your hand with
a polite word and a look of distaste, but that’s the most you could have hoped for. The
Starks look for courage and loyalty and honor in the men they choose to serve them, and
if truth be told, you and Chiggen were lowborn scum.” Tyrion struck the flint against his
dagger, trying for a spark. Nothing.
Bronn snorted. “You have a bold tongue, little man. One day someone is like to cut it out
and make you eat it.”
“Everyone tells me that.” Tyrion glanced up at the sellsword. “Did I offend you? My
pardons . . . but you are scum, Bronn, make no mistake. Duty, honor, friendship, what’s
that to you? No, don’t trouble yourself, we both know the answer. Still, you’re not stupid.
Once we reached the Vale, Lady Stark had no more need of you . . . but I did, and the one
thing the Lannisters have never lacked for is gold. When the moment came to toss the
dice, I was counting on your being smart enough to know where your best interest lay.
Happily for me, you did.” He slammed stone and steel together again, fruitlessly.
“Here,” said Bronn, squatting, “I’ll do it.” He took the knife and flint from Tyrion’s hands
and struck sparks on his first try. A curl of bark began to smolder.
“Well done,” Tyrion said. “Scum you may be, but you’re undeniably useful, and with a
sword in your hand you’re almost as good as my brother Jaime. What do you want,
Bronn? Gold? Land? Women? Keep me alive, and you’ll have it.”
Bronn blew gently on the fire, and the flames leapt up higher. “And if you die?”
“Why then, I’ll have one mourner whose grief is sincere,” Tyrion said, grinning. “The
gold ends when I do.”
The fire was blazing up nicely. Bronn stood, tucked the flint back into his pouch, and
tossed Tyrion his dagger. “Fair enough,” he said. “My sword’s yours, then . . . but don’t
go looking for me to bend the knee and m’lord you every time you take a shit. I’m no
man’s toady.”
“Nor any man’s friend,” Tyrion said. “I’ve no doubt you’d betray me as quick as you did
Lady Stark, if you saw a profit in it. If the day ever comes when you’re tempted to sell me
out, remember this, Bronn—I’ll match their price, whatever it is. I like living. And now,
do you think you could do something about finding us some supper?”
“Take care of the horses,” Bronn said, unsheathing the long dirk he wore at his hip. He
strode into the trees.
�An hour later the horses had been rubbed down and fed, the fire was crackling away
merrily, and a haunch of a young goat was turning above the flames, spitting and
hissing. “All we lack now is some good wine to wash down our kid,” Tyrion said.
“That, a woman, and another dozen swords,” Bronn said. He sat cross-legged beside the
fire, honing the edge of his longsword with an oilstone. There was something strangely
reassuring about the rasping sound it made when he drew it down the steel. “It will be
full dark soon,” the sellsword pointed out. “I’ll take first watch . . . for all the good it will
do us. It might be kinder to let them kill us in our sleep.”
“Oh, I imagine they’ll be here long before it comes to sleep.” The smell of the roasting
meat made Tyrion’s mouth water.
Bronn watched him across the fire. “You have a plan,” he said flatly, with a scrape of
steel on stone.
“A hope, call it,” Tyrion said. “Another toss of the dice.”
“With our lives as the stake?”
Tyrion shrugged. “What choice do we have?” He leaned over the fire and sawed a thin
slice of meat from the kid. “Ahhhh,” he sighed happily as he chewed. Grease ran down
his chin. “A bit tougher than I’d like, and in want of spicing, but I’ll not complain too
loudly. If I were back at the Eyrie, I’d be dancing on a precipice in hopes of a boiled
bean.”
“And yet you gave the turnkey a purse of gold,” Bronn said.
“A Lannister always pays his debts.”
Even Mord had scarcely believed it when Tyrion tossed him the leather purse. The
gaoler’s eyes had gone big as boiled eggs as he yanked open the drawstring and beheld
the glint of gold. “I kept the silver,” Tyrion had told him with a crooked smile, “but you
were promised the gold, and there it is.” It was more than a man like Mord could hope to
earn in a lifetime of abusing prisoners. “And remember what I said, this is only a taste. If
you ever grow tired of Lady Arryn’s service, present yourself at Casterly Rock, and I’ll
pay you the rest of what I owe you.” With golden dragons spilling out of both hands,
Mord had fallen to his knees and promised that he would do just that.
Bronn yanked out his dirk and pulled the meat from the fire. He began to carve thick
chunks of charred meat off the bone as Tyrion hollowed out two heels of stale bread to
�serve as trenchers. “If we do reach the river, what will you do then?” the sellsword asked
as he cut.
“Oh, a whore and a featherbed and a flagon of wine, for a start.” Tyrion held out his
trencher, and Bronn filled it with meat. “And then to Casterly Rock or King’s Landing, I
think. I have some questions that want answering, concerning a certain dagger.”
The sellsword chewed and swallowed. “So you were telling it true? It was not your knife?”
Tyrion smiled thinly. “Do I look a liar to you?”
By the time their bellies were full, the stars had come out and a halfmoon was rising over
the mountains. Tyrion spread his shadowskin cloak on the ground and stretched out
with his saddle for a pillow. “Our friends are taking their sweet time.”
“If I were them, I’d fear a trap,” Bronn said. “Why else would we be so open, if not to lure
them in?”
Tyrion chuckled. “Then we ought to sing and send them fleeing in terror.” He began to
whistle a tune.
“You’re mad, dwarf,” Bronn said as he cleaned the grease out from under his nails with
his dirk.
“Where’s your love of music, Bronn?”
“If it was music you wanted, you should have gotten the singer to champion you.”
Tyrion grinned. “That would have been amusing. I can just see him fending off Ser
Vardis with his woodharp.” He resumed his whistling. “Do you know this song?” he
asked.
“You hear it here and there, in inns and whorehouses.”
“Myrish. ‘The Seasons of My Love.’ Sweet and sad, if you understand the words. The first
girl I ever bedded used to sing it, and I’ve never been able to put it out of my head.”
Tyrion gazed up at the sky. It was a clear cold night and the stars shone down upon the
mountains as bright and merciless as truth. “I met her on a night like this,” he heard
himself saying. “Jaime and I were riding back from Lannisport when we heard a scream,
and she came running out into the road with two men dogging her heels, shouting
threats. My brother unsheathed his sword and went after them, while I dismounted to
protect the girl. She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a
�face that would break your heart. It certainly broke mine. Lowborn, half-starved,
unwashed . . . yet lovely. They’d torn the rags she was wearing half off her back, so I
wrapped her in my cloak while Jaime chased the men into the woods. By the time he
came trotting back, I’d gotten a name out of her, and a story. She was a crofter’s child,
orphaned when her father died of fever, on her way to . . . well, nowhere, really.
“Jaime was all in a lather to hunt down the men. It was not often outlaws dared prey on
travelers so near to Casterly Rock, and he took it as an insult. The girl was too frightened
to send off by herself, though, so I offered to take her to the closest inn and feed her
while my brother rode back to the Rock for help.
“She was hungrier than I would have believed. We finished two whole chickens and part
of a third, and drank a flagon of wine, talking. I was only thirteen, and the wine went to
my head, I fear. The next thing I knew, I was sharing her bed. If she was shy, I was shyer.
I’ll never know where I found the courage. When I broke her maidenhead, she wept, but
afterward she kissed me and sang her little song, and by morning I was in love.”
“You?” Bronn’s voice was amused.
“Absurd, isn’t it?” Tyrion began to whistle the song again. “I married her,” he finally
admitted.
“A Lannister of Casterly Rock wed to a crofter’s daughter,” Bronn said. “How did you
manage that?”
“Oh, you’d be astonished at what a boy can make of a few lies, fifty pieces of silver, and a
drunken septon. I dared not bring my bride home to Casterly Rock, so I set her up in a
cottage of her own, and for a fortnight we played at being man and wife. And then the
septon sobered and confessed all to my lord father.” Tyrion was surprised at how
desolate it made him feel to say it, even after all these years. Perhaps he was just tired.
“That was the end of my marriage.” He sat up and stared at the dying fire, blinking at the
light.
“He sent the girl away?”
“He did better than that,” Tyrion said. “First he made my brother tell me the truth. The
girl was a whore, you see. Jaime arranged the whole affair, the road, the outlaws, all of it.
He thought it was time I had a woman. He paid double for a maiden, knowing it would
be my first time.
“After Jaime had made his confession, to drive home the lesson, Lord Tywin brought my
wife in and gave her to his guards. They paid her fair enough. A silver for each man, how
�many whores command that high a price? He sat me down in the corner of the barracks
and bade me watch, and at the end she had so many silvers the coins were slipping
through her fingers and rolling on the floor, she . . . ” The smoke was stinging his eyes.
Tyrion cleared his throat and turned away from the fire, to gaze out into darkness. “Lord
Tywin had me go last,” he said in a quiet voice. “And he gave me a gold coin to pay her,
because I was a Lannister, and worth more.”
After a time he heard the noise again, the rasp of steel on stone as Bronn sharpened his
sword. “Thirteen or thirty or three, I would have killed the man who did that to me.”
Tyrion swung around to face him. “You may get that chance one day. Remember what I
told you. A Lannister always pays his debts.” He yawned. “I think I will try and sleep.
Wake me if we’re about to die.”
He rolled himself up in the shadowskin and shut his eyes. The ground was stony and
cold, but after a time Tyrion Lannister did sleep. He dreamt of the sky cell. This time he
was the gaoler, not the prisoner, big, with a strap in his hand, and he was hitting his
father, driving him back, toward the abyss . . .
“Tyrion.” Bronn’s warning was low and urgent.
Tyrion was awake in the blink of an eye. The fire had burned down to embers, and the
shadows were creeping in all around them. Bronn had raised himself to one knee, his
sword in one hand and his dirk in the other. Tyrion held up a hand: stay still, it said.
“Come share our fire, the night is cold,” he called out to the creeping shadows. “I fear
we’ve no wine to offer you, but you’re welcome to some of our goat.”
All movement stopped. Tyrion saw the glint of moonlight on metal. “Our mountain,” a
voice called out from the trees, deep and hard and unfriendly. “Our goat.”
“Your goat,” Tyrion agreed. “Who are you?”
“When you meet your gods,” a different voice replied, “say it was Gunthor son of Gurn of
the Stone Crows who sent you to them.” A branch cracked underfoot as he stepped into
the light; a thin man in a horned helmet, armed with a long knife.
“And Shagga son of Dolf.” That was the first voice, deep and deadly. A boulder shifted to
their left, and stood, and became a man. Massive and slow and strong he seemed,
dressed all in skins, with a club in his right hand and an axe in his left. He smashed them
together as he lumbered closer.
Other voices called other names, Conn and Torrek and Jaggot and more that Tyrion
�forgot the instant he heard them; ten at least. A few had swords and knives; others
brandished pitchforks and scythes and wooden spears. He waited until they were done
shouting out their names before he gave them answer. “I am Tyrion son of Tywin, of the
Clan Lannister, the Lions of the Rock. We will gladly pay you for the goat we ate.”
“What do you have to give us, Tyrion son of Tywin?” asked the one who named himself
Gunthor, who seemed to be their chief.
“There is silver in my purse,” Tyrion told them. “This hauberk I wear is large for me, but
it should fit Conn nicely, and the battle-axe I carry would suit Shagga’s mighty hand far
better than that wood-axe he holds.”
“The halfman would pay us with our own coin,” said Conn.
“Conn speaks truly,” Gunthor said. “Your silver is ours. Your horses are ours. Your
hauberk and your battle-axe and the knife at your belt, those are ours too. You have
nothing to give us but your lives. How would you like to die, Tyrion son of Tywin?”
“In my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a maiden’s mouth around my cock, at the
age of eighty,” he replied.
The huge one, Shagga, laughed first and loudest. The others seemed less amused. “Conn,
take their horses,” Gunthor commanded. “Kill the other and seize the halfinan. He can
milk the goats and make the mothers laugh.”
Bronn sprang to his feet. “Who dies first?”
“No!” Tyrion said sharply. “Gunthor son of Gurn, hear me. My House is rich and
powerful. If the Stone Crows will see us safely through these mountains, my lord father
will shower you with gold.”
“The gold of a lowland lord is as worthless as a halfman’s promises,” Gunthor said.
“Half a man I may be,” Tyrion said, “yet I have the courage to face my enemies. What do
the Stone Crows do, but hide behind rocks and shiver with fear as the knights of the Vale
ride by?”
Shagga gave a roar of anger and clashed club against axe. Jaggot poked at Tyrion’s face
with the fire-hardened point of a long wooden spear. He did his best not to flinch. “Are
these the best weapons you could steal?” he said. “Good enough for killing sheep,
perhaps . . . if the sheep do not fight back. My father’s smiths shit better steel.”
�“Little boyman,” Shagga roared, “will you mock my axe after I chop off your manhood
and feed it to the goats?”
But Gunthor raised a hand. “No. I would hear his words. The mothers go hungry, and
steel fills more mouths than gold. What would you give us for your lives, Tyrion son of
Tywin? Swords? Lances? Mail?”
“All that, and more, Gunthor son of Gurn,” Tyrion Lannister replied, smiling. “I will give
you the Vale of Arryn.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
Through the high narrow windows of the Red Keep’s cavernous throne room, the light of
sunset spilled across the floor, laying dark red stripes upon the walls where the heads of
dragons had once hung. Now the stone was covered with hunting tapestries, vivid with
greens and browns and blues, and yet still it seemed to Ned Stark that the only color in
the hall was the red of blood.
He sat high upon the immense ancient seat of Aegon the Conqueror, an ironwork
monstrosity of spikes and jagged edges and grotesquely twisted metal. It was, as Robert
had warned him, a hellishly uncomfortable chair, and never more so than now, with his
shattered leg throbbing more sharply every minute. The metal beneath him had grown
harder by the hour, and the fanged steel behind made it impossible to lean back. A king
should never sit easy, Aegon the Conqueror had said, when he commanded his armorers
to forge a great seat from the swords laid down by his enemies. Damn Aegon for his
arrogance, Ned thought sullenly, and damn Robert and his hunting as well.
“You are quite certain these were more than brigands?” Varys asked softly from the
council table beneath the throne. Grand Maester Pycelle stirred uneasily beside him,
while Littlefinger toyed with a pen. They were the only councillors in attendance. A
white hart had been sighted in the kingswood, and Lord Renly and Ser Barristan had
joined the king to hunt it, along with Prince Joffrey, Sandor Clegane, Balon Swann, and
half the court. So Ned must needs sit the Iron Throne in his absence.
At least he could sit. Save the council, the rest must stand respectfully, or kneel. The
petitioners clustered near the tall doors, the knights and high lords and ladies beneath
the tapestries, the smallfolk in the gallery, the mailed guards in their cloaks, gold or
grey: all stood.
The villagers were kneeling: men, women, and children, alike tattered and bloody, their
faces drawn by fear. The three knights who had brought them here to bear witness stood
behind them.
“Brigands, Lord Varys?” Ser Raymun Darry’s voice dripped scorn. “Oh, they were
brigands, beyond a doubt. Lannister brigands.”
Ned could feel the unease in the hall, as high lords and servants alike strained to listen.
�He could not pretend to surprise. The west had been a tinderbox since Catelyn had
seized Tyrion Lannister. Both Riverrun and Casterly Rock had called their banners, and
armies were massing in the pass below the Golden Tooth. It had only been a matter of
time until the blood began to flow. The sole question that remained was how best to
stanch the wound.
Sad-eyed Ser Karyl Vance, who would have been handsome but for the winestain
birthmark that discolored his face, gestured at the kneeling villagers. “This is all the
remains of the holdfast of Sherrer, Lord Eddard. The rest are dead, along with the
people of Wendish Town and the Mummer’s Ford.”
“Rise,” Ned commanded the villagers. He never trusted what a man told him from his
knees. “All of you, up.”
In ones and twos, the holdfast of Sherrer struggled to its feet. One ancient needed to be
helped, and a young girl in a bloody dress stayed on her knees, staring blankly at Ser
Arys Oakheart, who stood by the foot of the throne in the white armor of the Kingsguard,
ready to protect and defend the king . . . or, Ned supposed, the King’s Hand.
“Joss,” Ser Raymun Darry said to a plump balding man in a brewer’s apron. “Tell the
Hand what happened at Sherrer.”
Joss nodded. “If it please His Grace—”
“His Grace is hunting across the Blackwater,” Ned said, wondering how a man could live
his whole life a few days ride from the Red Keep and still have no notion what his king
looked like. Ned was clad in a white linen doublet with the direwolf of Stark on the
breast; his black wool cloak was fastened at the collar by his silver hand of office. Black
and white and grey, all the shades of truth. “I am Lord Eddard Stark, the King’s Hand.
Tell me who you are and what you know of these raiders.”
“I keep . . . I kept . . . I kept an alehouse, m’lord, in Sherrer, by the stone bridge. The
finest ale south of the Neck, everyone said so, begging your pardons, m’lord. It’s gone
now like all the rest, m’lord. They come and drank their fill and spilled the rest before
they fired my roof, and they would of spilled my blood too, if they’d caught me. M’lord.”
“They burnt us out,” a farmer beside him said. “Come riding in the dark, up from the
south, and fired the fields and the houses alike, killing them as tried to stop them. They
weren’t no raiders, though, m’lord. They had no mind to steal our stock, not these, they
butchered my milk cow where she stood and left her for the flies and the crows.”
“They rode down my ’prentice boy,” said a squat man with a smith’s muscles and a
�bandage around his head. He had put on his finest clothes to come to court, but his
breeches were patched, his cloak travel-stained and dusty. “Chased him back and forth
across the fields on their horses, poking at him with their lances like it was a game, them
laughing and the boy stumbling and screaming till the big one pierced him clean
through.”
The girl on her knees craned her head up at Ned, high above her on the throne. “They
killed my mother too, Your Grace. And they . . . they . . . ” Her voice trailed off, as if she
had forgotten what she was about to say. She began to sob.
Ser Raymun Darry took up the tale. “At Wendish Town, the people sought shelter in
their holdfast, but the walls were timbered. The raiders piled straw against the wood and
burnt them all alive. When the Wendish folk opened their gates to flee the fire, they shot
them down with arrows as they came running out, even women with suckling babes.”
“Oh, dreadful,” murmured Varys. “How cruel can men be?”
“They would of done the same for us, but the Sherrer holdfast’s made of stone,” Joss
said. “Some wanted to smoke us out, but the big one said there was riper fruit upriver,
and they made for the Mummer’s Ford.”
Ned could feel cold steel against his fingers as he leaned forward. Between each finger
was a blade, the points of twisted swords fanning out like talons from arms of the
throne. Even after three centuries, some were still sharp enough to cut. The Iron Throne
was full of traps for the unwary. The songs said it had taken a thousand blades to make
it, heated white-hot in the furnace breath of Balerion the Black Dread. The hammering
had taken fifty-nine days. The end of it was this hunched black beast made of razor
edges and barbs and ribbons of sharp metal; a chair that could kill a man, and had, if the
stories could be believed.
What Eddard Stark was doing sitting there he would never comprehend, yet there he sat,
and these people looked to him for justice. “What proof do you have that these were
Lannisters?” he asked, trying to keep his fury under control. “Did they wear crimson
cloaks or fly a lion banner?”
“Even Lannisters are not so blind stupid as that,” Ser Marq Piper snapped. He was a
swaggering bantam rooster of a youth, too young and too hot-blooded for Ned’s taste,
though a fast friend of Catelyn’s brother, Edmure Tully.
“Every man among them was mounted and mailed, my lord,” Ser Karyl answered calmly.
“They were armed with steel-tipped lances and longswords, with battle-axes for the
butchering.” He gestured toward one of the ragged survivors. “You. Yes, you, no one’s
�going to hurt you. Tell the Hand what you told me.”
The old man bobbed his head. “Concerning their horses,” he said, “it were warhorses
they rode. Many a year I worked in old Ser Willum’s stables, so I knows the difference.
Not a one of these ever pulled a plow, gods bear witness if I’m wrong.”
“Well-mounted brigands,” observed Littlefinger. “Perhaps they stole the horses from the
last place they raided.”
“How many men were there in this raiding party?” Ned asked.
“A hundred, at the least,” Joss answered, in the same instant as the bandaged smith said,
“Fifty,” and the grandmother behind him, “Hunnerds and hunnerds, m’lord, an army
they was.”
“You are more right than you know, goodwoman,” Lord Eddard told her. “You say they
flew no banners. What of the armor they wore? Did any of you note ornaments or
decorations, devices on shield or helm?”
The brewer, Joss, shook his head. “It grieves me, m’lord, but no, the armor they showed
us was plain, only . . . the one who led them, he was armored like the rest, but there was
no mistaking him all the same. It was the size of him, m’lord. Those as say the giants are
all dead never saw this one, I swear. Big as an ox he was, and a voice like stone breaking.”
“The Mountain!” Ser Marq said loudly. “Can any man doubt it? This was Gregor
Clegane’s work.”
Ned heard muttering from beneath the windows and the far end of the hall. Even in the
galley, nervous whispers were exchanged. High lords and smallfolk alike knew what it
could mean if Ser Marq was proved right. Ser Gregor Clegane stood bannerman to Lord
Tywin Lannister.
He studied the frightened faces of the villagers. Small wonder they had been so fearful;
they had thought they were being dragged here to name Lord Tywin a red-handed
butcher before a king who was his son by marriage. He wondered if the knights had
given them a choice.
Grand Maester Pycelle rose ponderously from the council table, his chain of office
clinking. “Ser Marq, with respect, you cannot know that this outlaw was Ser Gregor.
There are many large men in the realm.”
“As large as the Mountain That Rides?” Ser Karyl said. “I have never met one.”
�“Nor has any man here,” Ser Raymun added hotly. “Even his brother is a pup beside
him. My lords, open your eyes. Do you need to see his seal on the corpses? It was
Gregor.”
“Why should Ser Gregor turn brigand?” Pycelle asked. “By the grace of his liege lord, he
holds a stout keep and lands of his own. The man is an anointed knight.”
“A false knight!” Ser Marq said. “Lord Tywin’s mad dog.”
“My lord Hand,” Pycelle declared in a stiff voice, “I urge you to remind this good knight
that Lord Tywin Lannister is the father of our own gracious queen.”
“Thank you, Grand Maester Pycelle,” Ned said. “I fear we might have forgotten that if
you had not pointed it out.”
From his vantage point atop the throne, he could see men slipping out the door at the far
end of the hall. Hares going to ground, he supposed . . . or rats off to nibble the queen’s
cheese. He caught a glimpse of Septa Mordane in the gallery, with his daughter Sansa
beside her. Ned felt a flash of anger; this was no place for a girl. But the septa could not
have known that today’s court would be anything but the usual tedious business of
hearing petitions, settling disputes between rival holdfasts, and adjudicating the
placement of boundary stones.
At the council table below, Petyr Baelish lost interest in his quill and leaned forward.
“Ser Marq, Ser Karyl, Ser Raymun—perhaps I might ask you a question? These holdfasts
were under your protection. Where were you when all this slaughtering and burning was
going on?”
Ser Karyl Vance answered. “I was attending my lord father in the pass below the Golden
Tooth, as was Ser Marq. When the word of these outrages reached Ser Edmure Tully, he
sent word that we should take a small force of men to find what survivors we could and
bring them to the king.”
Ser Raymun Darry spoke up. “Ser Edmure had summoned me to Riverrun with all my
strength. I was camped across the river from his walls, awaiting his commands, when
the word reached me. By the time I could return to my own lands, Clegane and his
vermin were back across the Red Fork, riding for Lannister’s hills.”
Littlefinger stroked the point of his beard thoughtfully. “And if they come again, ser?”
“If they come again, we’ll use their blood to water the fields they burnt,” Ser Marq Piper
�declared hotly.
“Ser Edmure has sent men to every village and holdfast within a day’s ride of the
border,” Ser Karyl explained. “The next raider will not have such an easy time of it.”
And that may be precisely what Lord Tywin wants, Ned thought to himself, to bleed off
strength from Riverrun, goad the boy into scattering his swords. His wife’s brother was
young, and more gallant than wise. He would try to hold every inch of his soil, to defend
every man, woman, and child who named him lord, and Tywin Lannister was shrewd
enough to know that.
“If your fields and holdfasts are safe from harm,” Lord Petyr was saying, “what then do
you ask of the throne?”
“The lords of the Trident keep the king’s peace,” Ser Raymun Darry said. “The
Lannisters have broken it. We ask leave to answer them, steel for steel. We ask justice for
the smallfolk of Sherrer and Wendish Town and the Mummer’s Ford.”
“Edmure agrees, we must pay Gregor Clegane back his bloody coin,” Ser Marq declared,
“but old Lord Hoster commanded us to come here and beg the king’s leave before we
strike.”
Thank the gods for old Lord Hoster, then. Tywin Lannister was as much fox as lion. If
indeed he’d sent Ser Gregor to burn and pillage—and Ned did not doubt that he had—
he’d taken care to see that he rode under cover of night, without banners, in the guise of
a common brigand. Should Riverrun strike back, Cersei and her father would insist that
it had been the Tullys who broke the king’s peace, not the Lannisters. The gods only
knew what Robert would believe.
Grand Maester Pycelle was on his feet again. “My lord Hand, if these good folk believe
that Ser Gregor has forsaken his holy vows for plunder and rape, let them go to his liege
lord and make their complaint. These crimes are no concern of the throne. Let them seek
Lord Tywin’s justice.”
“It is all the king’s justice,” Ned told him. “North, south, east, or west, all we do we do in
Robert’s name.”
“The king’s justice,” Grand Maester Pycelle said. “So it is, and so we should defer this
matter until the king—”
“The king is hunting across the river and may not return for days,” Lord Eddard said.
“Robert bid me to sit here in his place, to listen with his ears, and to speak with his voice.
�I mean to do just that . . . though I agree that he must be told.” He saw a familiar face
beneath the tapestries. “Ser Robar.”
Ser Robar Royce stepped forward and bowed. “My lord.”
“Your father is hunting with the king,” Ned said. “Will you bring them word of what was
said and done here today?”
“At once, my lord.”
“Do we have your leave to take our vengeance against Ser Gregor, then?” Marq Piper
asked the throne.
“Vengeance?” Ned said. “I thought we were speaking of justice. Burning Clegane’s fields
and slaughtering his people will not restore the king’s peace, only your injured pride.”
He glanced away before the young knight could voice his outraged protest, and
addressed the villagers. “People of Sherrer, I cannot give you back your homes or your
crops, nor can I restore your dead to life. But perhaps I can give you some small measure
of justice, in the name of our king, Robert.”
Every eye in the hall was fixed on him, waiting. Slowly Ned struggled to his feet, pushing
himself up from the throne with the strength of his arms, his shattered leg screaming
inside its cast. He did his best to ignore the pain; it was no moment to let them see his
weakness. “The First Men believed that the judge who called for death should wield the
sword, and in the north we hold to that still. I mislike sending another to do my
killing . . . yet it seems I have no choice.” He gestured at his broken leg.
“Lord Eddard!” The shout came from the west side of the hall as a handsome stripling of
a boy strode forth boldly. Out of his armor, Ser Loras Tyrell looked even younger than
his sixteen years. He wore pale blue silk, his belt a linked chain of golden roses, the sigil
of his House. “I beg you the honor of acting in your place. Give this task to me, my lord,
and I swear I shall not fail you.”
Littlefinger chuckled. “Ser Loras, if we send you off alone, Ser Gregor will send us back
your head with a plum stuffed in that pretty mouth of yours. The Mountain is not the
sort to bend his neck to any man’s justice.”
“I do not fear Gregor Clegane,” Ser Loras said haughtily.
Ned eased himself slowly back onto the hard iron seat of Aegon’s misshapen throne. His
eyes searched the faces along the wall. “Lord Beric,” he called out. “Thoros of Myr. Ser
Gladden. Lord Lothar.” The men named stepped forward one by one. “Each of you is to
�assemble twenty men, to bring my word to Gregor’s keep. Twenty of my own guards
shall go with you. Lord Beric Dondarrion, you shall have the command, as befits your
rank.”
The young lord with the red-gold hair bowed. “As you command, Lord Eddard.”
Ned raised his voice, so it carried to the far end of the throne room. “In the name of
Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the
Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by
the word of Eddard of the House Stark, his Hand, I charge you to ride to the westlands
with all haste, to cross the Red Fork of the Trident under the king’s flag, and there bring
the king’s justice to the false knight Gregor Clegane, and to all those who shared in his
crimes. I denounce him, and attaint him, and strip him of all rank and titles, of all lands
and incomes and holdings, and do sentence him to death. May the gods take pity on his
soul.”
When the echo of his words had died away, the Knight of Flowers seemed perplexed.
“Lord Eddard, what of me?”
Ned looked down on him. From on high, Loras Tyrell seemed almost as young as Robb.
“No one doubts your valor, Ser Loras, but we are about justice here, and what you seek is
vengeance.” He looked back to Lord Beric. “Ride at first light. These things are best done
quickly.” He held up a hand. “The throne will hear no more petitions today.”
Alyn and Porther climbed the steep iron steps to help him back down. As they made
their descent, he could feel Loras Tyrell’s sullen stare, but the boy had stalked away
before Ned reached the floor of the throne room.
At the base of the Iron Throne, Varys was gathering papers from the council table.
Littlefinger and Grand Maester Pycelle had already taken their leave. “You are a bolder
man than I, my lord,” the eunuch said softly.
“How so, Lord Varys?” Ned asked brusquely. His leg was throbbing, and he was in no
mood for word games.
“Had it been me up there, I should have sent Ser Loras. He so wanted to go . . . and a
man who has the Lannisters for his enemies would do well to make the Tyrells his
friends.”
“Ser Loras is young,” said Ned. “I daresay he will outgrow the disappointment.”
“And Ser Ilyn?” The eunuch stroked a plump, powdered cheek. “He is the King’s Justice,
�after all. Sending other men to do his office . . . some might construe that as a grave
insult.”
“No slight was intended.” In truth, Ned did not trust the mute knight, though perhaps
that was only because he misliked executioners. “I remind you, the Paynes are
bannermen to House Lannister. I thought it best to choose men who owed Lord Tywin
no fealty.”
“Very prudent, no doubt,” Varys said. “Still, I chanced to see Ser Ilyn in the back of the
hall, staring at us with those pale eyes of his, and I must say, he did not look pleased,
though to be sure it is hard to tell with our silent knight. I hope he outgrows his
disappointment as well. He does so love his work . . . ”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
SANSA
He wouldn’t send Ser Loras,” Sansa told Jeyne Poole that night as they shared a cold
supper by lamplight. “I think it was because of his leg.”
Lord Eddard had taken his supper in his bedchamber with Alyn, Harwin, and Vayon
Poole, the better to rest his broken leg, and Septa Mordane had complained of sore feet
after standing in the gallery all day. Arya was supposed to join them, but she was late
coming back from her dancing lesson.
“His leg?” Jeyne said uncertainly. She was a pretty, dark-haired girl of Sansa’s own age.
“Did Ser Loras hurt his leg?”
“Not his leg,” Sansa said, nibbling delicately at a chicken leg. “Father’s leg, silly. It hurts
him ever so much, it makes him cross. Otherwise I’m certain he would have sent Ser
Loras.”
Her father’s decision still bewildered her. When the Knight of Flowers had spoken up,
she’d been sure she was about to see one of Old Nan’s stories come to life. Ser Gregor
was the monster and Ser Loras the true hero who would slay him. He even looked a true
hero, so slim and beautiful, with golden roses around his slender waist and his rich
brown hair tumbling down into his eyes. And then Father had refused him! It had upset
her more than she could tell. She had said as much to Septa Mordane as they descended
the stairs from the gallery, but the septa had only told her it was not her place to
question her lord father’s decisions.
That was when Lord Baelish had said, “Oh, I don’t know, Septa. Some of her lord father’s
decisions could do with a bit of questioning. The young lady is as wise as she is lovely.”
He made a sweeping bow to Sansa, so deep she was not quite sure if she was being
complimented or mocked.
Septa Mordane had been very upset to realize that Lord Baelish had overheard them.
“The girl was just talking, my lord,” she’d said. “Foolish chatter. She meant nothing by
the comment.”
Lord Baelish stroked his little pointed beard and said, “Nothing? Tell me, child, why
would you have sent Ser Loras?”
�Sansa had no choice but to explain about heroes and monsters. The king’s councillor
smiled. “Well, those are not the reasons I’d have given, but . . . ” He had touched her
cheek, his thumb lightly tracing the line of a cheekbone. “Life is not a song, sweetling.
You may learn that one day to your sorrow.”
Sansa did not feel like telling all that to Jeyne, however; it made her uneasy just to think
back on it.
“Ser Ilyn’s the King’s Justice, not Ser Loras,” Jcyne said. “Lord Eddard should have sent
him.”
Sansa shuddered. Every time she looked at Ser Ilyn Payne, she shivered. He made her
feel as though something dead were slithering over her naked skin. “Ser Ilyn’s almost
like a second monster. I’m glad Father didn’t pick him.”
“Lord Beric is as much a hero as Ser Loras. He’s ever so brave and gallant.”
“I suppose,” Sansa said doubtfully. Beric Dondarrion was handsome enough, but he was
awfully old, almost twenty-two; the Knight of Flowers would have been much better. Of
course, Jeyne had been in love with Lord Beric ever since she had first glimpsed him in
the lists. Sansa thought she was being silly; Jeyne was only a steward’s daughter, after
all, and no matter how much she mooned after him, Lord Beric would never look at
someone so far beneath him, even if she hadn’t been half his age.
It would have been unkind to say so, however, so Sansa took a sip of milk and changed
the subject. “I had a dream that Joffrey would be the one to take the white hart,” she
said. It had been more of a wish, actually, but it sounded better to call it a dream.
Everyone knew that dreams were prophetic. White harts were supposed to be very rare
and magical, and in her heart she knew her gallant prince was worthier than his drunken
father.
“A dream? Truly? Did Prince Joffrey just go up to it and touch it with his bare hand and
do it no harm?”
“No,” Sansa said. “He shot it with a golden arrow and brought it back for me.” In the
songs, the knights never killed magical beasts, they just went up to them and touched
them and did them no harm, but she knew Joffrey liked hunting, especially the killing
part. Only animals, though. Sansa was certain her prince had no part in murdering Jory
and those other poor men; that had been his wicked uncle, the Kingslayer. She knew her
father was still angry about that, but it wasn’t fair to blame Joff. That would be like
blaming her for something that Arya had done.
�“I saw your sister this afternoon,” Jeyne blurted out, as if she’d been reading Sansa’s
thoughts. “She was walking through the stables on her hands. Why would she do a thing
like that?”
“I’m sure I don’t know why Arya does anything.” Sansa hated stables, smelly places full
of manure and flies. Even when she went riding, she liked the boy to saddle the horse
and bring it to her in the yard. “Do you want to hear about the court or not?”
“I do,” Jeyne said.
“There was a black brother,” Sansa said, “begging men for the Wall, only he was kind of
old and smelly.” She hadn’t liked that at all. She had always imagined the Night’s Watch
to be men like Uncle Benjen. In the songs, they were called the black knights of the Wall.
But this man had been crookbacked and hideous, and he looked as though he might have
lice. If this was what the Night’s Watch was truly like, she felt sorry for her bastard half
brother, Jon. “Father asked if there were any knights in the hall who would do honor to
their houses by taking the black, but no one came forward, so he gave this Yoren his pick
of the king’s dungeons and sent him on his way. And later these two brothers came
before him, freeriders from the Dornish Marches, and pledged their swords to the
service of the king. Father accepted their oaths . . . ”
Jeyne yawned. “Are there any lemon cakes?”
Sansa did not like being interrupted, but she had to admit, lemon cakes sounded more
interesting than most of what had gone on in the throne room. “Let’s see,” she said.
The kitchen yielded no lemon cakes, but they did find half of a cold strawberry pie, and
that was almost as good. They ate it on the tower steps, giggling and gossiping and
sharing secrets, and Sansa went to bed that night feeling almost as wicked as Arya.
The next morning she woke before first light and crept sleepily to her window to watch
Lord Beric form up his men. They rode out as dawn was breaking over the city, with
three banners going before them; the crowned stag of the king flew from the high staff,
the direwolf of Stark and Lord Beric’s own forked lightning standard from shorter poles.
It was all so exciting, a song come to life; the clatter of swords, the flicker of torchlight,
banners dancing in the wind, horses snorting and whinnying, the golden glow of sunrise
slanting through the bars of the portcullis as it jerked upward. The Winterfell men
looked especially fine in their silvery mail and long grey cloaks.
Alyn carried the Stark banner. When she saw him rein in beside Lord Beric to exchange
words, it made Sansa feel ever so proud. Alyn was handsomer than Jory had been; he
was going to be a knight one day.
�The Tower of the Hand seemed so empty after they left that Sansa was even pleased to
see Arya when she went down to break her fast. “Where is everyone?” her sister wanted
to know as she ripped the skin from a blood orange. “Did Father send them to hunt
down Jaime Lannister?”
Sansa sighed. “They rode with Lord Beric, to behead Ser Gregor Clegane.” She turned to
Septa Mordane, who was eating porridge with a wooden spoon. “Septa, will Lord Beric
spike Ser Gregor’s head on his own gate or bring it back here for the king?” She and
Jeyne Poole had been arguing over that last night.
The septa was horror-struck. “A lady does not discuss such things over her porridge.
Where are your courtesies, Sansa? I swear, of late you’ve been near as bad as your sister.”
“What did Gregor do?” Arya asked.
“He burned down a holdfast and murdered a lot of people, women and children too.”
Arya screwed up her face in a scowl. “Jaime Lannister murdered Jory and Heward and
Wyl, and the Hound murdered Mycah. Somebody should have beheaded them.”
“It’s not the same,” Sansa said. “The Hound is Joffrey’s sworn shield. Your butcher’s boy
attacked the prince.”
“Liar,” Arya said. Her hand clenched the blood orange so hard that red juice oozed
between her fingers.
“Go ahead, call me all the names you want,” Sansa said airily. “You won’t dare when I’m
married to Joffrey. You’ll have to bow to me and call me Your Grace.” She shrieked as
Arya flung the orange across the table. It caught her in the middle of the forehead with a
wet squish and plopped down into her lap.
“You have juice on your face, Your Grace,” Arya said.
It was running down her nose and stinging her eyes. Sansa wiped it away with a napkin.
When she saw what the fruit in her lap had done to her beautiful ivory silk dress, she
shrieked again. “You’re horrible,” she screamed at her sister. “They should have killed
you instead of Lady!”
Septa Mordane came lurching to her feet. “Your lord father will hear of this! Go to your
chambers, at once. At once!”
�“Me too?” Tears welled in Sansa’s eyes. “That’s not fair.”
“The matter is not subject to discussion. Go!”
Sansa stalked away with her head up. She was to be a queen, and queens did not cry. At
least not where people could see. When she reached her bedchamber, she barred the
door and took off her dress. The blood orange had left a blotchy red stain on the silk. “I
hate her!” she screamed. She balled up the dress and flung it into the cold hearth, on top
of the ashes of last night’s fire. When she saw that the stain had bled through onto her
underskirt, she began to sob despite herself. She ripped off the rest of her clothes wildly,
threw herself into bed, and cried herself back to sleep.
It was midday when Septa Mordane knocked upon her door. “Sansa. Your lord father
will see you now.”
Sansa sat up. “Lady,” she whispered. For a moment it was as if the direwolf was there in
the room, looking at her with those golden eyes, sad and knowing. She had been
dreaming, she realized. Lady was with her, and they were running together,
and . . . and . . . trying to remember was like trying to catch the rain with her fingers. The
dream faded, and Lady was dead again.
“Sansa.” The rap came again, sharply. “Do you hear me?”
“Yes, Septa,” she called out. “Might I have a moment to dress, please?” Her eyes were red
from crying, but she did her best to make herself beautiful.
Lord Eddard was bent over a huge leather-bound book when Septa Mordane marched
her into the solar, his plaster-wrapped leg stiff beneath the table. “Come here, Sansa,” he
said, not unkindly, when the septa had gone for her sister. “Sit beside me.” He closed the
book.
Septa Mordane returned with Arya squirming in her grasp. Sansa had put on a lovely
pale green damask gown and a look of remorse, but her sister was still wearing the ratty
leathers and roughspun she’d worn at breakfast. “Here is the other one,” the septa
announced.
“My thanks, Septa Mordane. I would talk to my daughters alone, if you would be so
kind.” The septa bowed and left.
“Arya started it,” Sansa said quickly, anxious to have the first word. “She called me a liar
and threw an orange at me and spoiled my dress, the ivory silk, the one Queen Cersei
�gave me when I was betrothed to Prince Joffrey. She hates that I’m going to marry the
prince. She tries to spoil everything, Father, she can’t stand for anything to be beautiful
or nice or splendid.”
“Enough, Sansa.” Lord Eddard’s voice was sharp with impatience.
Arya raised her eyes. “I’m sorry, Father. I was wrong and I beg my sweet sister’s
forgiveness.”
Sansa was so startled that for a moment she was speechless. Finally she found her voice.
“What about my dress?”
“Maybe . . . I could wash it,” Arya said doubtfully.
“Washing won’t do any good,” Sansa said. “Not if you scrubbed all day and all night. The
silk is ruined.”
“Then I’ll . . . make you a new one,” Arya said.
Sansa threw back her head in disdain. “You? You couldn’t sew a dress fit to clean the
pigsties.”
Their father sighed. “I did not call you here to talk of dresses. I’m sending you both back
to Winterfell.”
For the second time Sansa found herself too stunned for words. She felt her eyes grow
moist again.
“You can’t,” Arya said.
“Please, Father,” Sansa managed at last. “Please don’t.”
Eddard Stark favored his daughters with a tired smile. “At last we’ve found something
you agree on.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Sansa pleaded with him. “I don’t want to go back.” She
loved Mng’s Landing; the pagaentry of the court, the high lords and ladies in their
velvets and silks and gemstones, the great city with all its people. The tournament had
been the most magical time of her whole life, and there was so much she had not seen
yet, harvest feasts and masked balls and mummer shows. She could not bear the thought
of losing it all. “Send Arya away, she started it, Father, I swear it. I’ll be good, you’ll see,
�just let me stay and I promise to be as fine and noble and courteous as the queen.”
Father’s mouth twitched strangely. “Sansa, I’m not sending you away for fighting,
though the gods know I’m sick of you two squabbling. I want you back in Winterfell for
your own safety. Three of my men were cut down like dogs not a league from where we
sit, and what does Robert do? He goes hunting.”
Arya was chewing at her lip in that disgusting way she had. “Can we take Syrio back with
us?”
“Who cares about your stupid dancing master?” Sansa flared. “Father, I only just now
remembered, I can’t go away, I’m to marry Prince Joffrey.” She tried to smile bravely for
him. “I love him, Father, I truly truly do, I love him as much as Queen Naerys loved
Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian. I want to be his
queen and have his babies.”
“Sweet one,” her father said gently, “listen to me. When you’re old enough, I will make
you a match with a high lord who’s worthy of you, someone brave and gentle and strong.
This match with Joffrey was a terrible mistake. That boy is no Prince Aemon, you must
believe me.”
“He is!” Sansa insisted. “I don’t want someone brave and gentle, I want him. We’ll be
ever so happy, just like in the songs, you’ll see. I’ll give him a son with golden hair, and
one day he’ll be the king of all the realm, the greatest king that ever was, as brave as the
wolf and as proud as the lion.”
Arya made a face. “Not if Joffrey’s his father,” she said. “He’s a liar and a craven and
anyhow he’s a stag, not a lion.”
Sansa felt tears in her eyes. “He is not! He’s not the least bit like that old drunken king,”
she screamed at her sister, forgetting herself in her grief.
Father looked at her strangely. “Gods,” he swore softly, “out of the mouth of babes . . . ”
He shouted for Septa Mordane. To the girls he said, “I am looking for a fast trading
galley to take you home. These days, the sea is safer than the kingsroad. You will sail as
soon as I can find a proper ship, with Septa Mordane and a complement of
guards . . . and yes, with Syrio Forel, if he agrees to enter my service. But say nothing of
this. It’s better if no one knows of our plans. We’ll talk again tomorrow.”
Sansa cried as Septa Mordane marched them down the steps. They were going to take it
all away; the tournaments and the court and her prince, everything, they were going to
send her back to the bleak grey walls of Winterfell and lock her up forever. Her life was
�over before it had begun.
“Stop that weeping, child,” Septa Mordane said sternly. “I am certain your lord father
knows what is best for you.”
“It won’t be so bad, Sansa,” Arya said. “We’re going to sail on a galley. It will be an
adventure, and then we’ll be with Bran and Robb again, and Old Nan and Hodor and the
rest.” She touched her on the arm.
“Hodor!” Sansa yelled. “You ought to marry Hodor, you’re just like him, stupid and hairy
and ugly!” She wrenched away from her sister’s hand, stormed into her bedchamber,
and barred the door behind her.
previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
Pain is a gift from the gods, Lord Eddard,” Grand Maester Pycelle told him. “It means
the bone is knitting, the flesh healing itself. Be thankful.”
“I will be thankful when my leg stops throbbing.”
Pycelle set a stoppered flask on the table by the bed. “The milk of the poppy, for when
the pain grows too onerous.”
“I sleep too much already.”
“Sleep is the great healer.”
“I had hoped that was you.”
Pycelle smiled wanly. “It is good to see you in such a fierce humor, my lord.” He leaned
close and lowered his voice. “There was a raven this morning, a letter for the queen from
her lord father. I thought you had best know.”
“Dark wings, dark words,” Ned said grimly. “What of it?”
“Lord Tywin is greatly wroth about the men you sent after Ser Gregor Clegane,” the
maester confided. “I feared he would be. You will recall, I said as much in council.”
“Let him be wroth,” Ned said. Every time his leg throbbed, he remembered Jaime
Lannister’s smile, and Jory dead in his arms. “Let him write all the letters to the queen
he likes. Lord Beric rides beneath the king’s own banner. If Lord Tywin attempts to
interfere with the king’s justice, he will have Robert to answer to. The only thing His
Grace enjoys more than hunting is making war on lords who defy him.”
Pycelle pulled back, his maester’s chain jangling. “As you say. I shall visit again on the
morrow.” The old man hurriedly gathered up his things and took his leave. Ned had little
doubt that he was bound straight for the royal apartments, to whisper at the queen. I
thought you had best know, indeed . . . as if Cersei had not instructed him to pass along
her father’s threats. He hoped his response rattled those perfect teeth of hers. Ned was
not near as confident of Robert as he pretended, but there was no reason Cersei need
�know that.
When Pycelle was gone, Ned called for a cup of honeyed wine. That clouded the mind as
well, yet not as badly. He needed to be able to think. A thousand times, he asked himself
what Jon Arryn might have done, had he lived long enough to act on what he’d learned.
Or perhaps he had acted, and died for it.
It was queer how sometimes a child’s innocent eyes can see things that grown men are
blind to. Someday, when Sansa was grown, he would have to tell her how she had made
it all come clear for him. He’s not the least bit like that old drunken king, she had
declared, angry and unknowing, and the simple truth of it had twisted inside him, cold
as death. This was the sword that killed Jon Arryn, Ned thought then, and it will kill
Robert as well, a slower death but full as certain. Shattered legs may heal in time, but
some betrayals fester and poison the soul.
Littlefinger came calling an hour after the Grand Maester had left, clad in a plumcolored doublet with a mockingbird embroidered on the breast in black thread, and a
striped cloak of black and white. “I cannot visit long, my lord,” he announced. “Lady
Tanda expects me to lunch with her. No doubt she will roast me a fatted calf. If it’s near
as fatted as her daughter, I’m like to rupture and die. And how is your leg?”
“Inflamed and painful, with an itch that is driving me mad.”
Littlefinger lifted an eyebrow. “In future, try not to let any horses fall on it. I would urge
you to heal quickly. The realm grows restive. Varys has heard ominous whispers from
the west. Freeriders and sellswords have been flocking to Casterly Rock, and not for the
thin pleasure of Lord Tywin’s conversation.”
“Is there word of the king?” Ned demanded. “Just how long does Robert intend to hunt?”
“Given his preferences, I believe he’d stay in the forest until you and the queen both die
of old age,” Lord Petyr replied with a faint smile. “Lacking that, I imagine he’ll return as
soon as he’s killed something. They found the white hart, it seems . . . or rather, what
remained of it. Some wolves found it first, and left His Grace scarcely more than a hoof
and a horn. Robert was in a fury, until he heard talk of some monstrous boar deeper in
the forest. Then nothing would do but he must have it. Prince Joffrey returned this
morning, with the Royces, Ser Balon Swann, and some twenty others of the party. The
rest are still with the king.”
“The Hound?” Ned asked, frowning. Of all the Lannister party, Sandor Clegane was the
one who concerned him the most, now that Ser Jaime had fled the city to join his father.
�“Oh, returned with Joffrey, and went straight to the queen.” Littlefinger smiled. “I would
have given a hundred silver stags to have been a roach in the rushes when he learned
that Lord Beric was off to behead his brother.”
“Even a blind man could see the Hound loathed his brother.”
“Ah, but Gregor was his to loathe, not yours to kill. Once Dondarrion lops the summit off
our Mountain, the Clegane lands and incomes will pass to Sandor, but I wouldn’t hold
my water waiting for his thanks, not that one. And now you must forgive me. Lady
Tanda awaits with her fatted calves.”
On the way to the door, Lord Petyr spied Grand Maester Malleon’s massive tome on the
table and paused to idly flip open the cover. “The Lineages and Histories of the Great
Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, With Descriptions of Many High Lords and Noble
Ladies and Their Children,“ he read. “Now there is tedious reading if ever I saw it. A
sleeping potion, my lord?”
For a brief moment Ned considered telling him all of it, but there was something in
Littlefinger’s japes that irked him. The man was too clever by half, a mocking smile
never far from his lips. “Jon Arryn was studying this volume when he was taken sick,”
Ned said in a careful tone, to see how he might respond.
And he responded as he always did: with a quip. “In that case,” he said, “death must
have come as a blessed relief.” Lord Petyr Baelish bowed and took his leave.
Eddard Stark allowed himself a curse. Aside from his own retainers, there was scarcely a
man in this city he trusted. Littlefinger had concealed Catelyn and helped Ned in his
inquiries, yet his haste to save his own skin when Jaime and his swords had come out of
the rain still rankled. Varys was worse. For all his protestations of loyalty, the eunuch
knew too much and did too little. Grand Maester Pycelle seemed more Cersei’s creature
with every passing day, and Ser Barristan was an old man, and rigid. He would tell Ned
to do his duty.
Time was perilously short. The king would return from his hunt soon, and honor would
require Ned to go to him with all he had learned. Vayon Poole had arranged for Sansa
and Arya to sail on the Wind Witch out of Braavos, three days hence. They would be
back at Winterfell before the harvest. Ned could no longer use his concern for their
safety to excuse his delay.
Yet last night he had dreamt of Rhaegar’s children. Lord Tywin had laid the bodies
beneath the Iron Throne, wrapped in the crimson cloaks of his house guard. That was
clever of him; the blood did not show so badly against the red cloth. The little princess
�had been barefoot, still dressed in her bed gown, and the boy . . . the boy . . .
Ned could not let that happen again. The realm could not withstand a second mad king,
another dance of blood and vengeance. He must find some way to save the children.
Robert could be merciful. Ser Barristan was scarcely the only man he had pardoned.
Grand Maester Pycelle, Varys the Spider, Lord Balon Greyjoy; each had been counted an
enemy to Robert once, and each had been welcomed into friendship and allowed to
retain honors and office for a pledge of fealty. So long as a man was brave and honest,
Robert would treat him with all the honor and respect due a valiant enemy.
This was something else: poison in the dark, a knife thrust to the soul. This he could
never forgive, no more than he had forgiven Rhaegar. He will kill them all, Ned realized.
And yet, he knew he could not keep silent. He had a duty to Robert, to the realm, to the
shade of Jon Arryn . . . and to Bran, who surely must have stumbled on some part of the
truth. Why else would they have tried to slay him?
Late that afternoon he summoned Tomard, the portly guardsman with the gingercolored whiskers his children called Fat Tom. With Jory dead and Alyn gone, Fat Tom
had command of his household guard. The thought filled Ned with vague disquiet.
Tomard was a solid man; affable, loyal, tireless, capable in a limited way, but he was
near fifty, and even in his youth he had never been energetic. Perhaps Ned should not
have been so quick to send off half his guard, and all his best swords among them.
“I shall require your help,” Ned said when Tomard appeared, looking faintly
apprehensive, as he always did when called before his lord. “Take me to the godswood.”
“Is that wise, Lord Eddard? With your leg and all?”
“Perhaps not. But necessary.”
Tomard summoned Varly. With one arm around each man’s shoulders, Ned managed to
descend the steep tower steps and hobble across the bailey. “I want the guard doubled,”
he told Fat Tom. “No one enters or leaves the Tower of the Hand without my leave.”
Tom blinked. “M’lord, with Alyn and the others away, we are hard-pressed already—”
“It will only be a short while. Lengthen the watches.”
“As you say, m’lord,” Tom answered. “Might I ask why—”
�“Best not,” Ned answered crisply.
The godswood was empty, as it always was here in this citadel of the southron gods.
Ned’s leg was screaming as they lowered him to the grass beside the heart tree. “Thank
you.” He drew a paper from his sleeve, sealed with the sigil of his House. “Kindly deliver
this at once.”
Tomard looked at the name Ned had written on the paper and licked his lips anxiously.
“My lord . . . ”
“Do as I bid you, Tom,” Ned said.
How long he waited in the quiet of the godswood, he could not say. It was peaceful here.
The thick walls shut out the clamor of the castle, and he could hear birds singing, the
murmur of crickets, leaves rustling in a gentle wind. The heart tree was an oak, brown
and faceless, yet Ned Stark still felt the presence of his gods. His leg did not seem to hurt
so much.
She came to him at sunset, as the clouds reddened above the walls and towers. She came
alone, as he had bid her. For once she was dressed simply, in leather boots and hunting
greens. When she drew back the hood of her brown cloak, he saw the bruise where the
king had struck her. The angry plum color had faded to yellow, and the swelling was
down, but there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was.
“Why here?” Cersei Lannister asked as she stood over him.
“So the gods can see.”
She sat beside him on the grass. Her every move was graceful. Her curling blond hair
moved in the wind, and her eyes were green as the leaves of summer. It had been a long
time since Ned Stark had seen her beauty, but he saw it now. “I know the truth Jon
Arryn died for,” he told her.
“Do you?” The queen watched his face, wary as a cat. “Is that why you called me here,
Lord Stark? To pose me riddles? Or is it your intent to seize me, as your wife seized my
brother?”
“If you truly believed that, you would never have come.” Ned touched her cheek gently.
“Has he done this before?”
“Once or twice.” She shied away from his hand. “Never on the face before. Jaime would
�have killed him, even if it meant his own life.” Cersei looked at him defiantly. “My
brother is worth a hundred of your friend.”
“Your brother?” Ned said. “Or your lover?”
“Both.” She did not flinch from the truth. “Since we were children together. And why
not? The Targaryens wed brother to sister for three hundred years, to keep the
bloodlines pure. And Jaime and I are more than brother and sister. We are one person in
two bodies. We shared a womb together. He came into this world holding my foot, our
old maester said. When he is in me, I feel . . . whole.” The ghost of a smile flitted over her
lips.
“My son Bran . . . ”
To her credit, Cersei did not look away. “He saw us. You love your children, do you not?”
Robert had asked him the very same question, the morning of the melee. He gave her the
same answer. “With all my heart.”
“No less do I love mine.”
Ned thought, If it came to that, the life of some child I did not know, against Robb and
Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon, what would I do? Even more so, what would
Catelyn do, if it were Jon’s life, against the children of her body? He did not know. He
prayed he never would.
“All three are Jaime’s,” he said. It was not a question.
“Thank the gods.”
The seed is strong, Jon Arryn had cried on his deathbed, and so it was. All those
bastards, all with hair as black as night. Grand Maester Malleon recorded the last mating
between stag and lion, some ninety years ago, when Tya Lannister wed Gowen
Baratheon, third son of the reigning lord. Their only issue, an unnamed boy described in
Malleon’s tome as a large and lusty lad born with a full head of black hair, died in
infancy. Thirty years before that a male Lannister had taken a Baratheon maid to wife.
She had given him three daughters and a son, each black-haired. No matter how far back
Ned searched in the brittle yellowed pages, always he found the gold yielding before the
coal.
“A dozen years,” Ned said. “How is it that you have had no children by the king?”
�She lifted her head, defiant. “Your Robert got me with child once,” she said, her voice
thick with contempt. “My brother found a woman to cleanse me. He never knew. If truth
be told, I can scarcely bear for him to touch me, and I have not let him inside me for
years. I know other ways to pleasure him, when he leaves his whores long enough to
stagger up to my bedchamber. Whatever we do, the king is usually so drunk that he’s
forgotten it all by the next morning.”
How could they have all been so blind? The truth was there in front of them all the time,
written on the children’s faces. Ned felt sick. “I remember Robert as he was the day he
took the throne, every inch a king,” he said quietly. “A thousand other women might
have loved him with all their hearts. What did he do to make you hate him so?”
Her eyes burned, green fire in the dusk, like the lioness that was her sigil. “The night of
our wedding feast, the first time we shared a bed, he called me by your sister’s name. He
was on top of me, in me, stinking of wine, and he whispered Lyanna.”
Ned Stark thought of pale blue roses, and for a moment he wanted to weep. “I do not
know which of you I pity most.”
The queen seemed amused by that. “Save your pity for yourself, Lord Stark. I want none
of it.”
“You know what I must do.”
“Must?” She put her hand on his good leg, just above the knee. “A true man does what he
will, not what he must.” Her fingers brushed lightly against his thigh, the gentlest of
promises. “The realm needs a strong Hand. Joff will not come of age for years. No one
wants war again, least of all me.” Her hand touched his face, his hair. “If friends can turn
to enemies, enemies can become friends. Your wife is a thousand leagues away, and my
brother has fled. Be kind to me, Ned. I swear to you, you shall never regret it.”
“Did you make the same offer to Jon Arryn?”
She slapped him.
“I shall wear that as a badge of honor,” Ned said dryly.
“Honor,” she spat. “How dare you play the noble lord with me! What do you take me
for? You’ve a bastard of your own, I’ve seen him. Who was the mother, I wonder? Some
Dornish peasant you raped while her holdfast burned? A whore? Or was it the grieving
sister, the Lady Ashara? She threw herself into the sea, I’m told. Why was that? For the
brother you slew, or the child you stole? Tell me, my honorable Lord Eddard, how are
�you any different from Robert, or me, or Jaime?”
“For a start,” said Ned, “I do not kill children. You would do well to listen, my lady. I
shall say this only once. When the king returns from his hunt, I intend to lay the truth
before him. You must be gone by then. You and your children, all three, and not to
Casterly Rock. If I were you, I should take ship for the Free Cities, or even farther, to the
Summer Isles or the Port of Ibben. As far as the winds blow.”
“Exile,” she said. “A bitter cup to drink from.”
“A sweeter cup than your father served Rhaegar’s children,” Ned said, “and kinder than
you deserve. Your father and your brothers would do well to go with you. Lord Tywin’s
gold will buy you comfort and hire swords to keep you safe. You shall need them. I
promise you, no matter where you flee, Robert’s wrath will follow you, to the back of
beyond if need be.”
The queen stood. “And what of my wrath, Lord Stark?” she asked softly. Her eyes
searched his face. “You should have taken the realm for yourself. It was there for the
taking. Jaime told me how you found him on the Iron Throne the day King’s Landing
fell, and made him yield it up. That was your moment. All you needed to do was climb
those steps, and sit. Such a sad mistake.”
“I have made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine,” Ned said, “but that was not
one of them.”
“Oh, but it was, my lord,” Cersei insisted. “When you play the game of thrones, you win
or you die. There is no middle ground.”
She turned up her hood to hide her swollen face and left him there in the dark beneath
the oak, amidst the quiet of the godswood, under a blue-black sky. The stars were
coming out.
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DAENERYS
The heart was steaming in the cool evening air when Khal Drogo set it before her, raw
and bloody. His arms were red to the elbow. Behind him, his bloodriders knelt on the
sand beside the corpse of the wild stallion, stone knives in their hands. The stallion’s
blood looked black in the flickering orange glare of the torches that ringed the high chalk
walls of the pit.
Dany touched the soft swell of her belly. Sweat beaded her skin and trickled down her
brow. She could feel the old women watching her, the ancient crones of Vaes Dothrak,
with eyes that shone dark as polished flint in their wrinkled faces. She must not flinch or
look afraid. I am the blood of the dragon, she told herself as she took the stallion’s heart
in both hands, lifted it to her mouth, and plunged her teeth into the tough, stringy flesh.
Warm blood filled her mouth and ran down over her chin. The taste threatened to gag
her, but she made herself chew and swallow. The heart of a stallion would make her son
strong and swift and fearless, or so the Dothraki believed, but only if the mother could
eat it all. If she choked on the blood or retched up the flesh, the omens were less
favorable; the child might be stillborn, or come forth weak, deformed, or female.
Her handmaids had helped her ready herself for the ceremony. Despite the tender
mother’s stomach that had afflicted her these past two moons, Dany had dined on bowls
of half-clotted blood to accustom herself to the taste, and Irri made her chew strips of
dried horseflesh until her jaws were aching. She had starved herself for a day and a night
before the ceremony in the hopes that hunger would help her keep down the raw meat.
The wild stallion’s heart was all muscle, and Dany had to worry it with her teeth and
chew each mouthful a long time. No steel was permitted within the sacred confines of
Vaes Dothrak, beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains; she had to rip the heart
apart with teeth and nails. Her stomach roiled and heaved, yet she kept on, her face
smeared with the heartsblood that sometimes seemed to explode against her lips.
Khal Drogo stood over her as she ate, his face as hard as a bronze shield. His long black
braid was shiny with oil. He wore gold rings in his mustache, gold bells in his braid, and
a heavy belt of solid gold medallions around his waist, but his chest was bare. She looked
at him whenever she felt her strength failing; looked at him, and chewed and swallowed,
chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. Toward the end, Dany thought she
�glimpsed a fierce pride in his dark, almond-shaped eyes, but she could not be sure. The
khal’s face did not often betray the thoughts within.
And finally it was done. Her cheeks and fingers were sticky as she forced down the last of
it. Only then did she turn her eyes back to the old women, the crones of the dosh khaleen.
“Khalakka dothrae mr’anha!” she proclaimed in her best Dothraki. A prince rides inside
me! She had practiced the phrase for days with her handmaid Jhiqui.
The oldest of the crones, a bent and shriveled stick of a woman with a single black eye,
raised her arms on high. “Khalakka dothrae!” she shrieked. The prince is riding!
“He is riding!” the other women answered. “Rakh! Rakh! Rakh haj!” they proclaimed. A
boy, a boy, a strong boy.
Bells rang, a sudden clangor of bronze birds. A deep-throated warhorn sounded its long
low note. The old women began to chant. Underneath their painted leather vests, their
withered dugs swayed back and forth, shiny with oil and sweat. The eunuchs who served
them threw bundles of dried grasses into a great bronze brazier, and clouds of fragrant
smoke rose up toward the moon and the stars. The Dothraki believed the stars were
horses made of fire, a great herd that galloped across the sky by night.
As the smoke ascended, the chanting died away and the ancient crone closed her single
eye, the better to peer into the future. The silence that fell was complete. Dany could
hear the distant call of night birds, the hiss and crackle of the torches, the gentle lapping
of water from the lake. The Dothraki stared at her with eyes of night, waiting.
Khal Drogo laid his hand on Dany’s arm. She could feel the tension in his fingers. Even a
khal as mighty as Drogo could know fear when the dosh khaleen peered into smoke of
the future. At her back, her handmaids fluttered anxiously.
Finally the crone opened her eye and lifted her arms. “I have seen his face, and heard the
thunder of his hooves,” she proclaimed in a thin, wavery voice.
“The thunder of his hooves!” the others chorused.
“As swift as the wind he rides, and behind him his khalasar covers the earth, men
without number, with arakhs shining in their hands like blades of razor grass. Fierce as
a storm this prince will be. His enemies will tremble before him, and their wives will
weep tears of blood and rend their flesh in grief. The bells in his hair will sing his
coming, and the milk men in the stone tents will fear his name.” The old woman
trembled and looked at Dany almost as if she were afraid. “The prince is riding, and he
�shall be the stallion who mounts the world.”
“The stallion who mounts the world!” the onlookers cried in echo, until the night rang to
the sound of their voices.
The one-eyed crone peered at Dany. “What shall he be called, the stallion who mounts
the world?”
She stood to answer. “He shall be called Rhaego,” she said, using the words that Jhiqui
had taught her. Her hands touched the swell beneath her breasts protectively as a roar
went up from the Dothraki. “Rhaego,” they screamed. “Rhaego, Rhaego, Rhaego!”
The name was still ringing in her ears as Khal Drogo led her from the pit. His
bloodriders fell in behind them. A procession followed them out onto the godsway, the
broad grassy road that ran through the heart of Vaes Dothrak, from the horse gate to the
Mother of Mountains. The crones of the dosh khaleen came first, with their eunuchs and
slaves. Some supported themselves with tall carved staffs as they struggled along on
ancient, shaking legs, while others walked as proud as any horselord. Each of the old
women had been a khaleesi once. When their lord husbands died and a new khal took
his place at the front of his riders, with a new khaleesi mounted beside him, they were
sent here, to reign over the vast Dothraki nation. Even the mightiest of khals bowed to
the wisdom and authority of the dosh khaleen. Still, it gave Dany the shivers to think
that one day she might be sent to join them, whether she willed it or no.
Behind the wise women came the others; Khal Ogo and his son, the khalakka Fogo, Khal
Jommo and his wives, the chief men of Drogo’s khalasar, Dany’s handmaids, the khal’s
servants and slaves, and more. Bells rang and drums beat a stately cadence as they
marched along the godsway. Stolen heroes and the gods of dead peoples brooded in the
darkness beyond the road. Alongside the procession, slaves ran lightly through the grass
with torches in their hands, and the flickering flames made the great monuments seem
almost alive.
“What is meaning, name Rhaego?” Khal Drogo asked as they walked, using the Common
Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms. She had been teaching him a few words when she could.
Drogo was quick to learn when he put his mind to it, though his accent was so thick and
barbarous that neither Ser Jorah nor Viserys could understand a word he said.
“My brother Rhaegar was a fierce warrior, my sun-and-stars,” she told him. “He died
before I was born. Ser Jorah says that he was the last of the dragons.”
Khal Drogo looked down at her. His face was a copper mask, yet under the long black
mustache, drooping beneath the weight of its gold rings, she thought she glimpsed the
�shadow of a smile. “Is good name, Dan Ares wife, moon of my life,” he said.
They rode to the lake the Dothraki called the Womb of the World, surrounded by a
fringe of reeds, its water still and calm. A thousand thousand years ago, Jhiqui told her,
the first man had emerged from its depths, riding upon the back of the first horse.
The procession waited on the grassy shore as Dany stripped and let her soiled clothing
fall to the ground. Naked, she stepped gingerly into the water. Irri said the lake had no
bottom, but Dany felt soft mud squishing between her toes as she pushed through the
tall reeds. The moon floated on the still black waters, shattering and re-forming as her
ripples washed over it. Goose pimples rose on her pale skin as the coldness crept up her
thighs and kissed her lower lips. The stallion’s blood had dried on her hands and around
her mouth. Dany cupped her fingers and lifted the sacred waters over her head,
cleansing herself and the child inside her while the khal and the others looked on. She
heard the old women of the dosh khaleen muttering to each other as they watched, and
wondered what they were saying.
When she emerged from the lake, shivering and dripping, her handmaid Doreah hurried
to her with a robe of painted sandsilk, but Khal Drogo waved her away. He was looking
on her swollen breasts and the curve of her belly with approval, and Dany could see the
shape of his manhood pressing through his horsehide trousers, below the heavy gold
medallions of his belt. She went to him and helped him unlace. Then her huge khal took
her by the hips and lifted her into the air, as he might lift a child. The bells in his hair
rang softly.
Dany wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face against his neck as
he thrust himself inside her. Three quick strokes and it was done. “The stallion who
mounts the world,” Drogo whispered hoarsely. His hands still smelled of horse blood.
He bit at her throat, hard, in the moment of his pleasure, and when he lifted her off, his
seed filled her and trickled down the inside of her thighs. Only then was Doreah
permitted to drape her in the scented sandsilk, and Irri to fit soft slippers to her feet.
Khal Drogo laced himself up and spoke a command, and horses were brought to the
lakeshore. Cohollo had the honor of helping the khaleesi onto her silver. Drogo spurred
his stallion, and set off down the godsway beneath the moon and stars. On her silver,
Dany easily kept pace.
The silk tenting that roofed Khal Drogo’s hall had been rolled up tonight, and the moon
followed them inside. Flames leapt ten feet in the air from three huge stone-lined
firepits. The air was thick with the smells of roasting meat and curdled, fermented
mare’s milk. The hall was crowded and noisy when they entered, the cushions packed
with those whose rank and name were not sufficient to allow them at the ceremony. As
�Dany rode beneath the arched entry and up the center aisle, every eye was on her. The
Dothraki screamed out comments on her belly and her breasts, hailing the life within
her. She could not understand all they shouted, but one phrase came clear. “The stallion
that mounts the world,” she heard, bellowed in a thousand voices.
The sounds of drums and horns swirled up into the night. Half-clothed women spun and
danced on the low tables, amid joints of meat and platters piled high with plums and
dates and pomegranates. Many of the men were drunk on clotted mare’s milk, yet Dany
knew no arakhs would clash tonight, not here in the sacred city, where blades and
bloodshed were forbidden.
Khal Drogo dismounted and took his place on the high bench. Khal Jommo and Khal
Ogo, who had been in Vaes Dothrak with their khalasars when they arrived, were given
seats of high honor to Drogo’s right and left. The bloodriders of the three khals sat below
them, and farther down Khal Jommo’s four wives.
Dany climbed off her silver and gave the reins to one of the slaves. As Doreah and Irri
arranged her cushions, she searched for her brother. Even across the length of the
crowded hall, Viserys should have been conspicuous with his pale skin, silvery hair, and
beggar’s rags, but she did not see him anywhere.
Her glance roamed the crowded tables near the walls, where men whose braids were
even shorter than their manhoods sat on frayed rugs and flat cushions around the low
tables, but all the faces she saw had black eyes and copper skin. She spied Ser Jorah
Mormont near the center of the hall, close to the middle firepit. It was a place of respect,
if not high honor; the Dothraki esteemed the knight’s prowess with a sword. Dany sent
Jhiqui to bring him to her table. Mormont came at once, and went to one knee before
her. “Khaleesi,” he said, “I am yours to command.”
She patted the stuffed horsehide cushion beside her. “Sit and talk with me.”
“You honor me.” The knight seated himself cross-legged on the cushion. A slave knelt
before him, offering a wooden platter full of ripe figs. Ser Jorah took one and bit it in
half.
“Where is my brother?” Dany asked. “He ought to have come by now, for the feast.”
“I saw His Grace this morning,” he told her. “He told me he was going to the Western
Market, in search of wine.”
“Wine?” Dany said doubtfully. Viserys could not abide the taste of the fermented mare’s
milk the Dothraki drank, she knew that, and he was oft at the bazaars these days,
�drinking with the traders who came in the great caravans from east and west. He seemed
to find their company more congenial than hers.
“Wine,” Ser Jorah confirmed, “and he has some thought to recruit men for his army
from the sellswords who guard the caravans.” A serving girl laid a blood pie in front of
him, and he attacked it with both hands.
“Is that wise?” she asked. “He has no gold to pay soldiers. What if he’s betrayed?”
Caravan guards were seldom troubled much by thoughts of honor, and the Usurper in
King’s Landing would pay well for her brother’s head. “You ought to have gone with him,
to keep him safe. You are his sworn sword.”
“We are in Vaes Dothrak,” he reminded her. “No one may carry a blade here or shed a
man’s blood.”
“Yet men die,” she said. “Jhogo told me. Some of the traders have eunuchs with them,
huge men who strangle thieves with wisps of silk. That way no blood is shed and the
gods are not angered.”
“Then let us hope your brother will be wise enough not to steal anything.” Ser Jorah
wiped the grease off his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned close over the table.
“He had planned to take your dragon’s eggs, until I warned him that I’d cut off his hand
if he so much as touched them.”
For a moment Dany was so shocked she had no words. “My eggs . . . but they’re mine,
Magister Illyrio gave them to me, a bride gift, why would Viserys want . . . they’re only
stones . . . ”
“The same could be said of rubies and diamonds and fire opals, Princess . . . and
dragon’s eggs are rarer by far. Those traders he’s been drinking with would sell their own
manhoods for even one of those stones, and with all three Viserys could buy as many
sellswords as he might need.”
Dany had not known, had not even suspected. “Then . . . he should have them. He does
not need to steal them. He had only to ask. He is my brother . . . and my true king.”
“He is your brother,” Ser Jorah acknowledged.
“You do not understand, ser,” she said. “My mother died giving me birth, and my father
and my brother Rhaegar even before that. I would never have known so much as their
names if Viserys had not been there to tell me. He was the only one left. The only one.
He is all I have.”
�“Once,” said Ser Jorah. “No longer, Khaleesi. You belong to the Dothraki now. In your
womb rides the stallion who mounts the world.” He held out his cup, and a slave filled it
with fermented mare’s milk, sour-smelling and thick with clots.
Dany waved her away. Even the smell of it made her feel ill, and she would take no
chances of bringing up the horse heart she had forced herself to eat. “What does it
mean?” she asked. “What is this stallion? Everyone was shouting it at me, but I don’t
understand.”
“The stallion is the khal of khals promised in ancient prophecy, child. He will unite the
Dothraki into a single khalasar and ride to the ends of the earth, or so it was promised.
All the people of the world will be his herd.”
“Oh,” Dany said in a small voice. Her hand smoothed her robe down over the swell of
her stomach. “I named him Rhaego.”
“A name to make the Usurper’s blood run cold.”
Suddenly Doreah was tugging at her elbow. “My lady, “ the handmaid whispered
urgently, “your brother . . . ”
Dany looked down the length of the long, roofless hall and there he was, striding toward
her. From the lurch in his step, she could tell at once that Viserys had found his
wine . . . and something that passed for courage.
He was wearing his scarlet silks, soiled and travel-stained. His cloak and gloves were
black velvet, faded from the sun. His boots were dry and cracked, his silver-blond hair
matted and tangled. A longsword swung from his belt in a leather scabbard. The
Dothraki eyed the sword as he passed; Dany heard curses and threats and angry
muttering rising all around her, like a tide. The music died away in a nervous
stammering of drums.
A sense of dread closed around her heart. “Go to him,” she commanded Ser Jorah. “Stop
him. Bring him here. Tell him he can have the dragon’s eggs if that is what he wants.”
The knight rose swiftly to his feet.
“Where is my sister?” Viserys shouted, his voice thick with wine. “I’ve come for her feast.
How dare you presume to eat without me? No one eats before the king. Where is she?
The whore can’t hide from the dragon.”
He stopped beside the largest of the three firepits, peering around at the faces of the
�Dothraki. There were five thousand men in the hall, but only a handful who knew the
Common Tongue. Yet even if his words were incomprehensible, you had only to look at
him to know that he was drunk.
Ser Jorah went to him swiftly, whispered something in his ear, and took him by the arm,
but Viserys wrenched free. “Keep your hands off me! No one touches the dragon without
leave.”
Dany glanced anxiously up at the high bench. Khal Drogo was saying something to the
other khals beside him. Khal Jommo grinned, and Khal Ogo began to guffaw loudly.
The sound of laughter made Viserys lift his eyes. “Khal Drogo,” he said thickly, his voice
almost polite. “I’m here for the feast.” He staggered away from Ser Jorah, making to join
the three khals on the high bench.
Khal Drogo rose, spat out a dozen words in Dothraki, faster than Dany could
understand, and pointed. “Khal Drogo says your place is not on the high bench,” Ser
Jorah translated for her brother. “Khal Drogo says your place is there.”
Viserys glanced where the khal was pointing. At the back of the long hall, in a corner by
the wall, deep in shadow so better men would not need to look on them, sat the lowest of
the low; raw unblooded boys, old men with clouded eyes and stiff joints, the dim-witted
and the maimed. Far from the meat, and farther from honor. “That is no place for a
king,” her brother declared.
“Is place,” Khal Drogo answered, in the Common Tongue that Dany had taught him, “for
Sorefoot King.” He clapped his hands together. “A cart! Bring cart for Khal Rhaggat!”
Five thousand Dothraki began to laugh and shout. Ser Jorah was standing beside
Viserys, screaming in his ear, but the roar in the hall was so thunderous that Dany could
not hear what he was saying. Her brother shouted back and the two men grappled, until
Mormont knocked Viserys bodily to the floor.
Her brother drew his sword.
The bared steel shone a fearful red in the glare from the firepits. “Keep away from me!”
Viserys hissed. Ser Jorah backed off a step, and her brother climbed unsteadily to his
feet. He waved the sword over his head, the borrowed blade that Magister Illyrio had
given him to make him seem more kingly. Dothraki were shrieking at him from all sides,
screaming vile curses.
Dany gave a wordless cry of terror. She knew what a drawn sword meant here, even if
�her brother did not.
Her voice made Viserys turn his head, and he saw her for the first time. “There she is,”
he said, smiling. He stalked toward her, slashing at the air as if to cut a path through a
wall of enemies, though no one tried to bar his way.
“The blade . . . you must not,” she begged him. “Please, Viserys. It is forbidden. Put down
the sword and come share my cushions. There’s drink, food . . . is it the dragon’s eggs
you want? You can have them, only throw away the sword.”
“Do as she tells you, fool,” Ser Jorah shouted, “before you get us all killed.”
Viserys laughed. “They can’t kill us. They can’t shed blood here in the sacred city . . . but
I can.” He laid the point of his sword between Daenerys’s breasts and slid it downward,
over the curve of her belly. “I want what I came for,” he told her. “I want the crown he
promised me. He bought you, but he never paid for you. Tell him I want what I
bargained for, or I’m taking you back. You and the eggs both. He can keep his bloody
foal. I’ll cut the bastard out and leave it for him.” The sword point pushed through her
silks and pricked at her navel. Viserys was weeping, she saw; weeping and laughing, both
at the same time, this man who had once been her brother.
Distantly, as from far away, Dany heard her handmaid Jhiqui sobbing in fear, pleading
that she dared not translate, that the khal would bind her and drag her behind his horse
all the way up the Mother of Mountains. She put her arm around the girl. “Don’t be
afraid,” she said. “I shall tell him.”
She did not know if she had enough words, yet when she was done Khal Drogo spoke a
few brusque sentences in Dothraki, and she knew he understood. The sun of her life
stepped down from the high bench. “What did he say?” the man who had been her
brother asked her, flinching.
It had grown so silent in the hall that she could hear the bells in Khal Drogo’s hair,
chiming softly with each step he took. His bloodriders followed him, like three copper
shadows. Daenerys had gone cold all over. “He says you shall have a splendid golden
crown that men shall tremble to behold.”
Viserys smiled and lowered his sword. That was the saddest thing, the thing that tore at
her afterward . . . the way he smiled. “That was all I wanted,” he said. “What was
promised.”
When the sun of her life reached her, Dany slid an arm around his waist. The khal said a
word, and his bloodriders leapt forward. Qotho seized the man who had been her
�brother by the arms. Haggo shattered his wrist with a single, sharp twist of his huge
hands. Cohollo pulled the sword from his limp fingers. Even now Viserys did not
understand. “No,” he shouted, “you cannot touch me, I am the dragon, the dragon, and I
will be crowned!”
Khal Drogo unfastened his belt. The medallions were pure gold, massive and ornate,
each one as large as a man’s hand. He shouted a command. Cook slaves pulled a heavy
iron stew pot from the firepit, dumped the stew onto the ground, and returned the pot to
the flames. Drogo tossed in the belt and watched without expression as the medallions
turned red and began to lose their shape. She could see fires dancing in the onyx of his
eyes. A slave handed him a pair of thick horsehair mittens, and he pulled them on, never
so much as looking at the man.
Viserys began to scream the high, wordless scream of the coward facing death. He kicked
and twisted, whimpered like a dog and wept like a child, but the Dothraki held him tight
between them. Ser Jorah had made his way to Dany’s side. He put a hand on her
shoulder. “Turn away, my princess, I beg you.”
“No.” She folded her arms across the swell of her belly, protectively.
At the last, Viserys looked at her. “Sister, please . . . Dany, tell them . . . make
them . . . sweet sister . . . ”
When the gold was half-melted and starting to run, Drogo reached into the flames,
snatched out the pot. “Crown!” he roared. “Here. A crown for Cart King!” And upended
the pot over the head of the man who had been her brother.
The sound Viserys Targaryen made when that hideous iron helmet covered his face was
like nothing human. His feet hammered a frantic beat against the dirt floor, slowed,
stopped. Thick globs of molten gold dripped down onto his chest, setting the scarlet silk
to smoldering . . . yet no drop of blood was spilled.
He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon.
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EDDARD
He was walking through the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he he had walked a thousand
times before. The Kings of Winter watched him pass with eyes of ice, and the direwolves
at their feet turned their great stone heads and snarled. Last of all, he came to the tomb
where his father slept, with Brandon and Lyanna beside him. “Promise me, Ned,”
Lyanna’s statue whispered. She wore a garland of pale blue roses, and her eyes wept
blood.
Eddard Stark jerked upright, his heart racing, the blankets tangled around him. The
room was black as pitch, and someone was hammering on the door. “Lord Eddard,” a
voice called loudly.
“A moment.” Groggy and naked, he stumbled his way across the darkened chamber.
When he opened the door, he found Tomard with an upraised fist, and Cayn with a taper
in hand. Between them stood the king’s own steward.
The man’s face might have been carved of stone, so little did it show. “My lord Hand,” he
intoned. “His Grace the King commands your presence. At once.”
So Robert had returned from his hunt. It was long past time. “I shall need a few
moments to dress.” Ned left the man waiting without. Cayn helped him with his clothes;
white linen tunic and grey cloak, trousers cut open down his plaster-sheathed leg, his
badge of office, and last of all a belt of heavy silver links. He sheathed the Valyrian
dagger at his waist.
The Red Keep was dark and still as Cayn and Tomard escorted him across the inner
bailey. The moon hung low over the walls, ripening toward full. On the ramparts, a
guardsman in a gold cloak walked his rounds.
The royal apartments were in Maegor’s Holdfast, a massive square fortress that nestled
in the heart of the Red Keep behind walls twelve feet thick and a dry moat lined with
iron spikes, a castle-within-a-castle. Ser Boros Blount guarded the far end of the bridge,
white steel armor ghostly in the moonlight. Within, Ned passed two other knights of the
Kingsguard; Ser Preston Greenfield stood at the bottom of the steps, and Ser Barristan
Selmy waited at the door of the king’s bedchamber. Three men in white cloaks, he
thought, remembering, and a strange chill went through him. Ser Barristan’s face was as
�pale as his armor. Ned had only to look at him to know that something was dreadfully
wrong. The royal steward opened the door. “Lord Eddard Stark, the Hand of the King,”
he announced.
“Bring him here,” Robert’s voice called, strangely thick.
Fires blazed in the twin hearths at either end of the bedchamber, filling the room with a
sullen red glare. The heat within was suffocating. Robert lay across the canopied bed. At
the bedside hovered Grand Maester Pycelle, while Lord Renly paced restlessly before the
shuttered windows. Servants moved back and forth, feeding logs to the fire and boiling
wine. Cersei Lannister sat on the edge of the bed beside her husband. Her hair was
tousled, as if from sleep, but there was nothing sleepy in her eyes. They followed Ned as
Tomard and Cayn helped him cross the room. He seemed to move very slowly, as if he
were still dreaming.
The king still wore his boots. Ned could see dried mud and blades of grass clinging to the
leather where Robert’s feet stuck out beneath the blanket that covered him, A green
doublet lay on the floor, slashed open and discarded, the cloth crusted with red-brown
stains. The room smelled of smoke and blood and death.
“Ned,” the king whispered when he saw him. His face was pale as milk.
“Come . . . closer.”
His men brought him close. Ned steadied himself with a hand on the bedpost. He had
only to look down at Robert to know how bad it was. “What . . . ?” he began, his throat
clenched.
“A boar.” Lord Renly was still in his hunting greens, his cloak spattered with blood.
“A devil,” the king husked. “My own fault. Too much wine, damn me to hell. Missed my
thrust.”
“And where were the rest of you?” Ned demanded of Lord Renly. “Where was Ser
Barristan and the Kingsguard?”
Renly’s mouth twitched. “My brother commanded us to stand aside and let him take the
boar alone.”
Eddard Stark lifted the blanket.
They had done what they could to close him up, but it was nowhere near enough. The
boar must have been a fearsome thing. It had ripped the king from groin to nipple with
�its tusks. The wine-soaked bandages that Grand Maester Pycelle had applied were
already black with blood, and the smell off the wound was hideous. Ned’s stomach
turned. He let the blanket fall.
“Stinks,” Robert said. “The stink of death, don’t think I can’t smell it. Bastard did me
good, eh? But I . . . I paid him back in kind, Ned.” The king’s smile was as terrible as his
wound, his teeth red. “Drove a knife right through his eye. Ask them if I didn’t. Ask
them.”
“Truly,” Lord Renly murmured. “We brought the carcass back with us, at my brother’s
command.”
“For the feast,” Robert whispered. “Now leave us. The lot of you. I need to speak with
Ned.”
“Robert, my sweet lord . . . ” Cersei began.
“I said leave,” Robert insisted with a hint of his old fierceness. “What part of that don’t
you understand, woman?”
Cersei gathered up her skirts and her dignity and led the way to the door. Lord Renly
and the others followed. Grand Maester Pycelle lingered, his hands shaking as he offered
the king a cup of thick white liquid. “The milk of the poppy, Your Grace,” he said. “Drink.
For your pain.”
Robert knocked the cup away with the back of his hand. “Away with you. I’ll sleep soon
enough, old fool. Get out.”
Grand Maester Pycelle gave Ned a stricken look as he shuffled from the room.
“Damn you, Robert,” Ned said when they were alone. His leg was throbbing so badly he
was almost blind with pain. Or perhaps it was grief that fogged his eyes. He lowered
himself to the bed, beside his friend. “Why do you always have to be so headstrong?”
“Ah, fuck you, Ned,” the king said hoarsely. “I killed the bastard, didn’t I?” A lock of
matted black hair fell across his eyes as he glared up at Ned. “Ought to do the same for
you. Can’t leave a man to hunt in peace. Ser Robar found me. Gregor’s head. Ugly
thought. Never told the Hound. Let Cersei surprise him.” His laugh turned into a grunt
as a spasm of pain hit him. “Gods have mercy,” he muttered, swallowing his agony. “The
girl. Daenerys. Only a child, you were right . . . that’s why, the girl . . . the gods sent the
boar . . . sent to punish me . . .” The king coughed, bringing up blood. “Wrong, it was
wrong, I . . . only a girl . . . Varys, Littlefinger, even my brother . . . worthless . . . no one
�to tell me no but you, Ned . . . only you . . . ” He lifted his hand, the gesture pained and
feeble. “Paper and ink. There, on the table. Write what I tell you.”
Ned smoothed the paper out across his knee and took up the quill. “At your command,
Your Grace.”
“This is the will and word of Robert of House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of
the Andals and all the rest—put in the damn titles, you know how it goes. I do hereby
command Eddard of House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Hand of the King, to serve as
Lord Regent and Protector of the Realm upon my . . . upon my death . . . to rule in
my . . . in my stead, until my son Joffrey does come of age . . . ”
“Robert . . . ” Joffrey is not your son, he wanted to say, but the words would not come.
The agony was written too plainly across Robert’s face; he could not hurt him more. So
Ned bent his head and wrote, but where the king had said “my son Joffrey,” he scrawled
“my heir” instead. The deceit made him feel soiled. The lies we tell for love, he thought.
May the gods forgive me. “What else would you have me say?”
“Say . . . whatever you need to. Protect and defend, gods old and new, you have the
words. Write. I’ll sign it. You give it to the council when I’m dead.”
“Robert,” Ned said in a voice thick with grief, “you must not do this. Don’t die on me.
The realm needs you.”
Robert took his hand, fingers squeezing hard. “You are . . . such a bad liar, Ned Stark,”
he said through his pain. “The realm . . . the realm knows . . . what a wretched king I’ve
been. Bad as Aerys, the gods spare me.”
“No,” Ned told his dying friend, “not so bad as Aerys, Your Grace. Not near so bad as
Aerys.”
Robert managed a weak red smile. “At the least, they will say . . . this last thing . . . this I
did right. You won’t fail me. You’ll rule now. You’ll hate it, worse than I did . . . but you’ll
do well. Are you done with the scribbling?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Ned offered Robert the paper. The king scrawled his signature
blindly, leaving a smear of blood across the letter. “The seal should be witnessed.”
“Serve the boar at my funeral feast,” Robert rasped. “Apple in its mouth, skin seared
crisp. Eat the bastard. Don’t care if you choke on him. Promise me, Ned.”
“I promise.” Promise me, Ned, Lyanna’s voice echoed.
�“The girl,” the king said. “Daenerys. Let her live. If you can, if it . . . not too late . . . talk
to them . . . Varys, Littlefinger . . . don’t let them kill her. And help my son, Ned. Make
him be . . . better than me.” He winced. “Gods have mercy.”
“They will, my friend,” Ned said. “They will.”
The king closed his eyes and seemed to relax. “Killed by a pig,” he muttered. “Ought to
laugh, but it hurts too much.”
Ned was not laughing. “Shall I call them back?”
Robert gave a weak nod. “As you will. Gods, why is it so cold in here?”
The servants rushed back in and hurried to feed the fires. The queen had gone; that was
some small relief, at least. If she had any sense, Cersei would take her children and fly
before the break of day, Ned thought. She had lingered too long already.
King Robert did not seem to miss her. He bid his brother Renly and Grand Maester
Pycelle to stand in witness as he pressed his seal into the hot yellow wax that Ned had
dripped upon his letter. “Now give me something for the pain and let me die.”
Hurriedly Grand Maester Pycelle mixed him another draught of the milk of the poppy.
This time the king drank deeply. His black beard was beaded with thick white droplets
when he threw the empty cup aside. “Will I dream?”
Ned gave him his answer. “You will, my lord.”
“Good,” he said, smiling. “I will give Lyanna your love, Ned. Take care of my children for
me.”
The words twisted in Ned’s belly like a knife. For a moment he was at a loss. He could
not bring himself to lie. Then he remembered the bastards: little Barra at her mother’s
breast, Mya in the Vale, Gendry at his forge, and all the others. “I shall . . . guard your
children as if they were my own,” he said slowly.
Robert nodded and closed his eyes. Ned watched his old friend sag softly into the pillows
as the milk of the poppy washed the pain from his face. Sleep took him.
Heavy chains jangled softly as Grand Maester Pycelle came up to Ned. “I will do all in
my power, my lord, but the wound has mortified. It took them two days to get him back.
�By the time I saw him, it was too late. I can lessen His Grace’s suffering, but only the
gods can heal him now.”
“How long?” Ned asked.
“By rights, he should be dead already. I have never seen a man cling to life so fiercely.”
“My brother was always strong,” Lord Renly said. “Not wise, perhaps, but strong.” In the
sweltering heat of the bedchamber, his brow was slick with sweat. He might have been
Robert’s ghost as he stood there, young and dark and handsome. “He slew the boar. His
entrails were sliding from his belly, yet somehow he slew the boar.” His voice was full of
wonder.
“Robert was never a man to leave the battleground so long as a foe remained standing,”
Ned told him.
Outside the door, Ser Barristan Selmy still guarded the tower stairs. “Maester Pycelle
has given Robert the milk of the poppy,” Ned told him. “See that no one disturbs his rest
without leave from me.”
“It shall be as you command, my lord.” Ser Barristan seemed old beyond his years. “I
have failed my sacred trust.”
“Even the truest knight cannot protect a king against himself,” Ned said. “Robert loved
to hunt boar. I have seen him take a thousand of them.” He would stand his ground
without flinching, his legs braced, the great spear in his hands, and as often as not he
would curse the boar as it charged, and wait until the last possible second, until it was
almost on him, before he killed it with a single sure and savage thrust. “No one could
know this one would be his death.”
“You are kind to say so, Lord Eddard.”
“The king himself said as much. He blamed the wine.”
The white-haired knight gave a weary nod. “His Grace was reeling in his saddle by the
time we flushed the boar from his lair, yet he commanded us all to stand aside.”
“I wonder, Ser Barristan,” asked Varys, so quietly, “who gave the king this wine?”
Ned had not heard the eunuch approach, but when he looked around, there he stood. He
wore a black velvet robe that brushed the floor, and his face was freshly powdered.
�“The wine was from the king’s own skin,” Ser Barristan said.
“Only one skin? Hunting is such thirsty work.”
“I did not keep count. More than one, for a certainty. His squire would fetch him a fresh
skin whenever he required it.”
“Such a dutiful boy,” said Varys, “to make certain His Grace did not lack for
refreshment.”
Ned had a bitter taste in his mouth. He recalled the two fair-haired boys Robert had sent
chasing after a breastplate stretcher. The king had told everyone the tale that night at the
feast, laughing until he shook. “Which squire?”
“The elder,” said Ser Barristan. “Lancel.”
“I know the lad well,” said Varys. “A stalwart boy, Ser Kevan Lannister’s son, nephew to
Lord Tywin and cousin to the queen. I hope the dear sweet lad does not blame himself.
Children are so vulnerable in the innocence of their youth, how well do I remember.”
Certainly Varys had once been young. Ned doubted that he had ever been innocent. “You
mention children. Robert had a change of heart concerning Daenerys Targaryen.
Whatever arrangements you made, I want unmade. At once.”
“Alas,” said Varys. “At once may be too late. I fear those birds have flown. But I shall do
what I can, my lord. With your leave.” He bowed and vanished down the steps, his softsoled slippers whispering against the stone as he made his descent.
Cayn and Tomard were helping Ned across the bridge when Lord Renly emerged from
Maegor’s Holdfast. “Lord Eddard,” he called after Ned, “a moment, if you would be so
kind.”
Ned stopped. “As you wish.”
Renly walked to his side. “Send your men away.” They met in the center of the bridge,
the dry moat beneath them. Moonlight silvered the cruel edges of the spikes that lined
its bed.
Ned gestured. Tomard and Cayn bowed their heads and backed away respectfully. Lord
Renly glanced warily at Ser Boros on the far end of the span, at Ser Preston in the
doorway behind them. “That letter.” He leaned close. “Was it the regency? Has my
�brother named you Protector?” He did not wait for a reply. “My lord, I have thirty men
in my personal guard, and other friends beside, knights and lords. Give me an hour, and
I can put a hundred swords in your hand.”
“And what should I do with a hundred swords, my lord?”
“Strike! Now, while the castle sleeps.” Renly looked back at Ser Boros again and dropped
his voice to an urgent whisper. “We must get Joffrey away from his mother and take him
in hand. Protector or no, the man who holds the king holds the kingdom. We should
seize Myrcella and Tommen as well. Once we have her children, Cersei will not dare
oppose us. The council will confirm you as Lord Protector and make Joffrey your ward.”
Ned regarded him coldly. “Robert is not dead yet. The gods may spare him. If not, I shall
convene the council to hear his final words and consider the matter of the succession,
but I will not dishonor his last hours on earth by shedding blood in his halls and
dragging frightened children from their beds.”
Lord Renly took a step back, taut as a bowstring. “Every moment you delay gives Cersei
another moment to prepare. By the time Robert dies, it may be too late . . . for both of
us.”
“Then we should pray that Robert does not die.”
“Small chance of that,” said Renly.
“Sometimes the gods are merciful.”
“The Lannisters are not.” Lord Renly turned away and went back across the moat, to the
tower where his brother lay dying.
By the time Ned returned to his chambers, he felt weary and heartsick, yet there was no
question of his going back to sleep, not now. When you play the game of thrones, you
win or you die, Cersei Lannister had told him in the godswood. He found himself
wondering if he had done the right thing by refusing Lord Renly’s offer. He had no taste
for these intrigues, and there was no honor in threatening children, and yet . . . if Cersei
elected to fight rather than flee, he might well have need of Renly’s hundred swords, and
more besides.
“I want Littlefinger,” he told Cayn. “If he’s not in his chambers, take as many men as you
need and search every winesink and whorehouse in King’s Landing until you find him.
Bring him to me before break of day.” Cayn bowed and took his leave, and Ned turned to
Tomard. “The Wind Witch sails on the evening tide. Have you chosen the escort?”
�“Ten men, with Porther in command.”
“Twenty, and you will command,” Ned said. Porther was a brave man, but headstrong.
He wanted someone more solid and sensible to keep watch over his daughters.
“As you wish, m’lord,” Tom said. “Can’t say I’ll be sad to see the back of this place. I miss
the wife.”
“You will pass near Dragonstone when you turn north. I need you to deliver a letter for
me.”
Tom looked apprehensive. “To Dragonstone, m’lord?” The island fortress of House
Targaryen had a sinister repute.
“Tell Captain Qos to hoist my banner as soon as he comes in sight of the island. They
may be wary of unexpected visitors. If he is reluctant, offer him whatever it takes. I will
give you a letter to place into the hand of Lord Stannis Baratheon. No one else. Not his
steward, nor the captain of his guard, nor his lady wife, but only Lord Stannis himself.”
“As you command, m’lord.”
When Tomard had left him, Lord Eddard Stark sat staring at the flame of the candle that
burned beside him on the table. For a moment his grief overwhelmed him. He wanted
nothing so much as to seek out the godswood, to kneel before the heart tree and pray for
the life of Robert Baratheon, who had been more than a brother to him. Men would
whisper afterward that Eddard Stark had betrayed his king’s friendship and disinherited
his sons; he could only hope that the gods would know better, and that Robert would
learn the truth of it in the land beyond the grave.
Ned took out the king’s last letter. A roll of crisp white parchment sealed with golden
wax, a few short words and a smear of blood. How small the difference between victory
and defeat, between life and death.
He drew out a fresh sheet of paper and dipped his quill in the inkpot. To His Grace,
Stannis of the House Baratheon, he wrote. By the time you receive this letter, your
brother Robert, our King these past fifteen years, will be dead. He was savaged by a
boar whilst hunting in the kingswood . . .
The letters seemed to writhe and twist on the paper as his hand trailed to a stop. Lord
Tywin and Ser Jaime were not men to suffer disgrace meekly; they would fight rather
than flee. No doubt Lord Stannis was wary, after the murder of Jon Arryn, but it was
�imperative that he sail for King’s Landing at once with all his power, before the
Lannisters could march.
Ned chose each word with care. When he was done, he signed the letter Eddard Stark,
Lord of Winterfell, Hand of the King, and Protector of the Realm, blotted the paper,
folded it twice, and melted the sealing wax over the candle flame.
His regency would be a short one, he reflected as the wax softened. The new king would
choose his own Hand. Ned would be free to go home. The thought of Winterfell brought
a wan smile to his face. He wanted to hear Bran’s laughter once more, to go hawking
with Robb, to watch Rickon at play. He wanted to drift off to a dreamless sleep in his
own bed with his arms wrapped tight around his lady, Catelyn.
Cayn returned as he was pressing the direwolf seal down into the soft white wax.
Desmond was with him, and between them Littlefinger. Ned thanked his guards and
sent them away.
Lord Petyr was clad in a blue velvet tunic with puffed sleeves, his silvery cape patterned
with mockingbirds. “I suppose congratulations are in order,” he said as he seated
himself.
Ned scowled. “The king lies wounded and near to death.”
“I know,” Littlefinger said. “I also know that Robert has named you Protector of the
Realm.”
Ned’s eyes flicked to the king’s letter on the table beside him, its seal unbroken. “And
how is it you know that, my lord?”
“Varys hinted as much,” Littlefinger said, “and you have just confirmed it.”
Ned’s mouth twisted in anger. “Damn Varys and his little birds. Catelyn spoke truly, the
man has some black art. I do not trust him.”
“Excellent. You’re learning.” Littlefinger leaned forward. “Yet I’ll wager you did not drag
me here in the black of night to discuss the eunuch.”
“No,” Ned admitted. “I know the secret Jon Arryn was murdered to protect. Robert will
leave no trueborn son behind him. Joffrey and Tommen are Jaime Lannister’s bastards,
born of his incestuous union with the queen.”
Littlefinger lifted an eyebrow. “Shocking,” he said in a tone that suggested he was not
�shocked at all. “The girl as well? No doubt. So when the king dies . . . ”
“The throne by rights passes to Lord Stannis, the elder of Robert’s two brothers.”
Lord Petyr stroked his pointed beard as he considered the matter. “So it would seem.
Unless . . . ”
“Unless, my lord? There is no seeming to this. Stannis is the heir. Nothing can change
that.”
“Stannis cannot take the throne without your help. If you’re wise, you’ll make certain
Joffrey succeeds.”
Ned gave him a stony stare. “Have you no shred of honor?”
“Oh, a shred, surely,” Littlefinger replied negligently. “Hear me out. Stannis is no friend
of yours, nor of mine. Even his brothers can scarcely stomach him. The man is iron, hard
and unyielding. He’ll give us a new Hand and a new council, for a certainty. No doubt
he’ll thank you for handing him the crown, but he won’t love you for it. And his ascent
will mean war. Stannis cannot rest easy on the throne until Cersei and her bastards are
dead. Do you think Lord Tywin will sit idly while his daughter’s head is measured for a
spike? Casterly Rock will rise, and not alone. Robert found it in him to pardon men who
served King Aerys, so long as they did him fealty. Stannis is less forgiving. He will not
have forgotten the siege of Storm’s End, and the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne dare not.
Every man who fought beneath the dragon banner or rose with Balon Greyjoy will have
good cause to fear. Seat Stannis on the Iron Throne and I promise you, the realm will
bleed.
“Now look at the other side of the coin. Joffrey is but twelve, and Robert gave you the
regency, my lord. You are the Hand of the King and Protector of the Realm. The power is
yours, Lord Stark. All you need do is reach out and take it. Make your peace with the
Lannisters. Release the Imp. Wed Joffrey to your Sansa. Wed your younger girl to Prince
Tommen, and your heir to Myrcella. It will be four years before Joffrey comes of age. By
then he will look to you as a second father, and if not, well . . . four years is a good long
while, my lord. Long enough to dispose of Lord Stannis. Then, should Joffrey prove
troublesome, we can reveal his little secret and put Lord Renly on the throne.”
“We?” Ned repeated.
Littlefinger gave a shrug. “You’ll need someone to share your burdens. I assure you, my
price would be modest.”
�“Your price.” Ned’s voice was ice. “Lord Baelish, what you suggest is treason.”
“Only if we lose.”
“You forget,” Ned told him. “You forget Jon Arryn. You forget Jory Cassel. And you
forget this.” He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of
dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong,
between true and false, between life and death. “They sent a man to cut my son’s throat,
Lord Baelish.”
Littlefinger sighed. “I fear I did forget, my lord. Pray forgive me. For a moment I did not
remember that I was talking to a Stark.” His mouth quirked. “So it will be Stannis, and
war?”
“It is not a choice. Stannis is the heir.”
“Far be it from me to dispute the Lord Protector. What would you have of me, then? Not
my wisdom, for a certainty.”
“I shall do my best to forget your . . . wisdom,” Ned said with distaste. “I called you here
to ask for the help you promised Catelyn. This is a perilous hour for all of us. Robert has
named me Protector, true enough, but in the eyes of the world, Joffrey is still his son and
heir. The queen has a dozen knights and a hundred men-at-arms who will do whatever
she commands . . . enough to overwhelm what remains of my own household guard.
And for all I know, her brother Jaime may be riding for King’s Landing even as we
speak, with a Lannister host at his back.”
“And you without an army.” Littlefinger toyed with the dagger on the table, turning it
slowly with a finger. “There is small love lost between Lord Renly and the Lannisters.
Bronze Yohn Royce, Ser Balon Swann, Ser Loras, Lady Tanda, the Redwyne
twins . . . each of them has a retinue of knights and sworn swords here at court.”
“Renly has thirty men in his personal guard, the rest even fewer. It is not enough, even if
I could be certain that all of them will choose to give me their allegiance. I must have the
gold cloaks. The City Watch is two thousand strong, sworn to defend the castle, the city,
and the king’s peace.”
“Ah, but when the queen proclaims one king and the Hand another, whose peace do they
protect?” Lord Petyr flicked at the dagger with his finger, setting it spinning in place.
Round and round it went, wobbling as it turned. When at last it slowed to a stop, the
blade pointed at Littlefinger. “Why, there’s your answer,” he said, smiling. “They follow
the man who pays them.” He leaned back and looked Ned full in the face, his grey-green
�eyes bright with mockery. “You wear your honor like a suit of armor, Stark. You think it
keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move. Look
at you now. You know why you summoned me here. You know what you want to ask me
to do. You know it has to be done . . . but it’s not honorable, so the words stick in your
throat.”
Ned’s neck was rigid with tension. For a moment he was so angry that he did not trust
himself to speak.
Littlefinger laughed. “I ought to make you say it, but that would be cruel . . . so have no
fear, my good lord. For the sake of the love I bear for Catelyn, I will go to Janos Slynt this
very hour and make certain that the City Watch is yours. Six thousand gold pieces
should do it. A third for the Commander, a third for the officers, a third for the men. We
might be able to buy them for half that much, but I prefer not to take chances.” Smiling,
he plucked up the dagger and offered it to Ned, hilt first.
previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
JON
Jon was breaking his fast on applecakes and blood sausage when Samwell Tarly plopped
himself down on the bench. “I’ve been summoned to the sept,” Sam said in an excited
whisper. “They’re passing me out of training. I’m to be made a brother with the rest of
you. Can you believe it?”
“No, truly?”
“Truly. I’m to assist Maester Aemon with the library and the birds. He needs someone
who can read and write letters.”
“You’ll do well at that,” Jon said, smiling.
Sam glanced about anxiously. “Is it time to go? I shouldn’t be late, they might change
their minds.” He was fairly bouncing as they crossed the weed-strewn courtyard. The
day was warm and sunny. Rivulets of water trickled down the sides of the Wall, so the ice
seemed to sparkle and shine.
Inside the sept, the great crystal caught the morning light as it streamed through the
south-facing window and spread it in a rainbow on the altar. Pyp’s mouth dropped open
when he caught sight of Sam, and Toad poked Grenn in the ribs, but no one dared say a
word. Septon Celladar was swinging a censer, filling the air with fragrant incense that
reminded Jon of Lady Stark’s little sept in Winterfell. For once the septon seemed sober.
The high officers arrived in a body; Maester Aemon leaning on Clydas, Ser Alliser coldeyed and grim, Lord Commander Mormont resplendent in a black wool doublet with
silvered bearclaw fastenings. Behind them came the senior members of the three orders:
red-faced Bowen Marsh the Lord Steward, First Builder Othell Yarwyck, and Ser Jaremy
Rykker, who commanded the rangers in the absence of Benjen Stark.
Mormont stood before the altar, the rainbow shining on his broad bald head. “You came
to us outlaws,” he began, “poachers, rapers, debtors, killers, and thieves. You came to us
children. You came to us alone, in chains, with neither friends nor honor. You came to us
rich, and you came to us poor. Some of you bear the names of proud houses. Others have
only bastards’ names, or no names at all. It makes no matter. All that is past now. On the
Wall, we are all one house.
�“At evenfall, as the sun sets and we face the gathering night, you shall take your vows.
From that moment, you will be a Sworn Brother of the Night’s Watch. Your crimes will
be washed away, your debts forgiven. So too you must wash away your former loyalties,
put aside your grudges, forget old wrongs and old loves alike. Here you begin anew.
“A man of the Night’s Watch lives his life for the realm. Not for a king, nor a lord, nor the
honor of this house or that house, neither for gold nor glory nor a woman’s love, but for
the realm, and all the people in it. A man of the Night’s Watch takes no wife and fathers
no sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is honor. And you are the only sons we shall ever
know.
“You have learned the words of the vow. Think carefully before you say them, for once
you have taken the black, there is no turning back. The penalty for desertion is death.”
The Old Bear paused for a moment before he said, “Are there any among you who wish
to leave our company? If so, go now, and no one shall think the less of you.”
No one moved.
“Well and good,” said Mormont. “You may take your vows here at evenfall, before
Septon Celladar and the first of your order. Do any of you keep to the old gods?”
Jon stood. “I do, my lord.”
“I expect you will want to say your words before a heart tree, as your uncle did,”
Mormont said.
“Yes, my lord,” Jon said. The gods of the sept had nothing to do with him; the blood of
the First Men flowed in the veins of the Starks.
He heard Grenn whispering behind him. “There’s no godswood here. Is there? I never
saw a godswood.”
“You wouldn’t see a herd of aurochs until they trampled you into the snow,” Pyp
whispered back.
“I would so,” Grenn insisted. “I’d see them a long way off.”
Mormont himself confirmed Grenn’s doubts. “Castle Black has no need of a godswood.
Beyond the Wall the haunted forest stands as it stood in the Dawn Age, long before the
Andals brought the Seven across the narrow sea. You will find a grove of weirwoods half
a league from this spot, and mayhap your gods as well.”
�“My lord.” The voice made Jon glance back in surprise. Samwell Tarly was on his feet.
The fat boy wiped his sweaty palms against his tunic. “Might I . . . might I go as well? To
say my words at this heart tree?”
“Does House Tarly keep the old gods too?” Mormont asked.
“No, my lord,” Sam replied in a thin, nervous voice. The high officers frightened him,
Jon knew, the Old Bear most of all. “I was named in the light of the Seven at the sept on
Horn Hill, as my father was, and his father, and all the Tarlys for a thousand years.”
“Why would you forsake the gods of your father and your House?” wondered Ser Jaremy
Rykker.
“The Night’s Watch is my House now,” Sam said. “The Seven have never answered my
prayers. Perhaps the old gods will.”
“As you wish, boy,” Mormont said. Sam took his seat again, as did Jon. “We have placed
each of you in an order, as befits our need and your own strengths and skills.” Bowen
Marsh stepped forward and handed him a paper. The Lord Commander unrolled it and
began to read. “Haider, to the builders,” he began. Haider gave a stiff nod of approval.
“Grenn, to the rangers. Albett, to the builders. Pypar, to the rangers.” Pyp looked over at
Jon and wiggled his ears. “Samwell, to the stewards.” Sam sagged with relief, mopping at
his brow with,a scrap of silk. “Matthar, to the rangers. Dareon, to the stewards. Todder,
to the rangers. Jon, to the stewards.”
The stewards? For a moment Jon could not believe what he had heard. Mormont must
have read it wrong. He started to rise, to open his mouth, to tell them there had been a
mistake . . . and then he saw Ser Alliser studying him, eyes shiny as two flakes of
obsidian, and he knew.
The Old Bear rolled up the paper. “Your firsts will instruct you in your duties. May all the
gods preserve you, brothers.” The Lord Commander favored them with a half bow, and
took his leave. Ser Alliser went with him, a thin smile on his face. Jon had never seen the
master-at-arms took quite so happy.
“Rangers with me,” Ser Jaremy Rykker called when they were gone. Pyp was staring at
Jon as he got slowly to his feet. His ears were red. Grenn, grinning broadly, did not seem
to realize that anything was amiss. Matt and Toad fell in beside them, and they followed
Ser Jaremy from the sept.
“Builders,” announced lantern-jawed Othell Yarwyck. Haider and Albett trailed out after
�him.
Jon looked around him in sick disbelief. Maester Aemon’s blind eyes were raised toward
the light he could not see. The septon was arranging crystals on the altar. Only Sam and
Darcon remained on the benches; a fat boy, a singer . . . and him.
Lord Steward Bowen Marsh rubbed his plump hands together. “Samwell, you will assist
Maester Aemon in the rookery and library. Chett is going to the kennels, to help with the
hounds. You shall have his cell, so as to be close to the maester night and day. I trust you
will take good care of him. He is very old and very precious to us.
“Dareon, I am told that you sang at many a high lord’s table and shared their meat and
mead. We are sending you to Eastwatch. It may be your palate will be some help to
Cotter Pyke when merchant galleys come trading. We are paying too dear for salt beef
and pickled fish, and the quality of the olive oil we’re getting has been frightful, Present
yourself to Borcas when you arrive, he will keep you busy between ships.”
Marsh turned his smile on Jon. “Lord Commander Mormont has requested you for his
personal steward, Jon. You’ll sleep in a cell beneath his chambers, in the Lord
Commander’s tower.”
“And what will my duties be?” Jon asked sharply. “Will I serve the Lord Commander’s
meals, help him fasten his clothes, fetch hot water for his bath?”
“Certainly.” Marsh frowned at Jon’s tone. “And you will run his messages, keep a fire
burning in his chambers, change his sheets and blankets daily, and do all else that the
Lord Commander might require of you.”
“Do you take me for a servant?”
“No,” Maester Aemon said, from the back of the sept. Clydas helped him stand. “We took
you for a man of the Night’s Watch . . . but perhaps we were wrong in that.”
It was all Jon could do to stop himself from walking out. Was he supposed to churn
butter and sew doublets like a girl for the rest of his days? “May I go?” he asked stiffly.
“As you wish,” Bowen Marsh responded.
Dareon and Sam left with him. They descended to the yard in silence. Outside, Jon
looked up at the Wall shining in the sun, the melting ice creeping down its side in a
hundred thin fingers. Jon’s rage was such that he would have smashed it all in an
instant, and the world be damned.
�“Jon,” Samwell Tarly said excitedly. “Wait. Don’t you see what they’re doing?”
Jon turned on him in a fury. “I see Ser Alliser’s bloody hand, that’s all I see. He wanted
to shame me, and he has.”
Dareon gave him a look. “The stewards are fine for the likes of you and me, Sam, but not
for Lord Snow.”
“I’m a better swordsman and a better rider than any of you,” Jon blazed back. “It’s not
fair!”
“Fair?” Dareon sneered. “The girl was waiting for me, naked as the day she was born.
She pulled me through the window, and you talk to me of fair?” He walked off.
“There is no shame in being a steward,” Sam said.
“Do you think I want to spend the rest of my life washing an old man’s smallclothes?”
“The old man is Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch,” Sam reminded him. “You’ll be
with him day and night. Yes, you’ll pour his wine and see that his bed linen is fresh, but
you’ll also take his letters, attend him at meetings, squire for him in battle. You’ll be as
close to him as his shadow. You’ll know everything, be a part of everything . . . and the
Lord Steward said Mormont asked for you himself!
“When I was little, my father used to insist that I attend him in the audience chamber
whenever he held court. When he rode to Highgarden to bend his knee to Lord Tyrell, he
made me come. Later, though, he started to take Dickon and leave me at home, and he
no longer cared whether I sat through his audiences, so long as Dickon was there. He
wanted his heir at his side, don’t you see? To watch and listen and learn from all he did.
I’ll wager that’s why Lord Mormont requested you, Jon. What else could it be? He wants
to groom you for command!”
Jon was taken aback. It was true, Lord Eddard had often made Robb part of his councils
back at Winterfell. Could Sam be right? Even a bastard could rise high in the Night’s
Watch, they said. “I never asked for this,” he said stubbornly.
“None of us are here for asking,” Sam reminded him.
And suddenly Jon Snow was ashamed.
�Craven or not, Samwell Tarly had found the courage to accept his fate like a man. On the
Wall, a man gets only what he earns, Benjen Stark had said the last night Jon had seen
him alive. You’re no ranger, Jon, only a green boy with the smell of summer still on
you. He’d heard it said that bastards grow up faster than other children; on the Wall,
you grew up or you died.
Jon let out a deep sigh. “You have the right of it. I was acting the boy.”
“Then you’ll stay and say your words with me?”
“The old gods will be expecting us.” He made himself smile.
They set out late that afternoon. The Wall had no gates as such, neither here at Castle
Black nor anywhere along its three hundred miles. They led their horses down a narrow
tunnel cut through the ice, cold dark walls pressing in around them as the passage
twisted and turned. Three times their way was blocked by iron bars, and they had to stop
while Bowen Marsh drew out his keys and unlocked the massive chains that secured
them. Jon could sense the vast weight pressing down on him as he waited behind the
Lord Steward. The air was colder than a tomb, and more still. He felt a strange relief
when they reemerged into the afternoon light on the north side of the Wall.
Sam blinked at the sudden glare and looked around apprehensively. “The
wildlings . . . they wouldn’t . . . they’d never dare come this close to the Wall. Would
they?”
“They never have.” Jon climbed into his saddle. When Bowen Marsh and their ranger
escort had mounted, Jon put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Ghost came loping
out of the tunnel.
The Lord Steward’s garron whickered and backed away from the direwolf. “Do you mean
to take that beast?”
“Yes, my lord,” Jon said. Ghost’s head lifted. He seemed to taste the air. In the blink of
an eye he was off, racing across the broad, weed-choked field to vanish in the trees.
Once they had entered the forest, they were in a different world. Jon had often hunted
with his father and Jory and his brother Robb. He knew the wolfswood around
Winterfell as well as any man. The haunted forest was much the same, and yet the feel of
it was very different.
Perhaps it was all in the knowing. They had ridden past the end of the world; somehow
that changed everything. Every shadow seemed darker, every sound more ominous. The
�trees pressed close and shut out the light of the setting sun. A thin crust of snow cracked
beneath the hooves of their horses, with a sound like breaking bones. When the wind set
the leaves to rustling, it was like a chilly finger tracing a path up Jon’s spine. The Wall
was at their backs, and only the gods knew what lay ahead.
The sun was sinking below the trees when they reached their destination, a small
clearing in the deep of the wood where nine weirwoods grew in a rough circle. Jon drew
in a breath, and he saw Sam Tarly staring. Even in the wolfswood, you never found more
than two or three of the white trees growing together; a grove of nine was unheard of.
The forest floor was carpeted with fallen leaves, bloodred on top, black rot beneath. The
wide smooth trunks were bone pale, and nine faces stared inward. The dried sap that
crusted in the eyes was red and hard as ruby. Bowen Marsh commanded them to leave
their horses outside the circle. “This is a sacred place, we will not defile it.”
When they entered the grove, Samwell Tarly turned slowly looking at each face in turn.
No two were quite alike. “They’re watching us,” he whispered. “The old gods.”
“Yes.” Jon knelt, and Sam knelt beside him.
They said the words together, as the last light faded in the west and grey day became
black night.
“Hear my words, and bear witness to my vow,” they recited, their voices filling the twilit
grove. “Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall
take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory.
I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the
walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn
that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and
honor to the Night’s Watch, for this night and all the nights to come.”
The woods fell silent. “You knelt as boys,” Bowen Marsh intoned solemnly. “Rise now as
men of the Night’s Watch.”
Jon held out a hand to pull Sam back to his feet. The rangers gathered round to offer
smiles and congratulations, all but the gnarled old forester Dywen. “Best we be starting
back, m’lord,” he said to Bowen Marsh. “Dark’s falling, and there’s something in the
smell o’ the night that I mislike.”
And suddenly Ghost was back, stalking softly between two weirwoods. White fur and red
eyes, Jon realized, disquieted. Like the trees . . .
The wolf had something in his jaws. Something black. “What’s he got there?” asked
�Bowen Marsh, frowning.
“To me, Ghost.” Jon knelt. “Bring it here.”
The direwolf trotted to him. Jon heard Samwell Tarly’s sharp intake of breath.
“Gods be good,” Dywen muttered. “That’s a hand.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
The grey light of dawn was streaming through his window when the thunder of
hoofbeats awoke Eddard Stark from his brief, exhausted sleep. He lifted his head from
the table to look down into the yard. Below, men in mail and leather and crimson cloaks
were making the morning ring to the sound of swords, and riding down mock warriors
stuffed with straw. Ned watched Sandor Clegane gallop across the hard-packed ground
to drive an iron-tipped lance through a dummy’s head. Canvas ripped and straw
exploded as Lannister guardsmen joked and cursed.
Is this brave show for my benefit? he wondered. If so, Cersei was a greater fool than
he’d imagined. Damn her, he thought, why is the woman not fled? I have given her
chance after chance . . .
The morning was overcast and grim. Ned broke his fast with his daughters and Septa
Mordane. Sansa, still disconsolate, stared sullenly at her food and refused to eat, but
Arya wolfed down everything that was set in front of her. “Syrio says we have time for
one last lesson before we take ship this evening,” she said. “Can I, Father? All my things
are packed.”
“A short lesson, and make certain you leave yourself time to bathe and change. I want
you ready to leave by midday, is that understood?”
“By midday,” Arya said.
Sansa looked up from her food. “If she can have a dancing lesson, why won’t you let me
say farewell to Prince Joffrey?”
“I would gladly go with her, Lord Eddard,” Septa Mordane offered. “There would be no
question of her missing the ship.”
“It would not be wise for you to go to Joffrey right now, Sansa. I’m sorry.”
Sansa’s eyes filled with tears. “But why?”
“Sansa, your lord father knows best,” Septa Mordane said. “You are not to question his
decisions.”
�“It’s not fair!” Sansa pushed back from her table, knocked over her chair, and ran
weeping from the solar.
Septa Mordane rose, but Ned gestured her back to her seat. “Let her go, Septa. I will try
to make her understand when we are all safely back in Winterfell.” The septa bowed her
head and sat down to finish her breakfast.
It was an hour later when Grand Maester Pycelle came to Eddard Stark in his solar. His
shoulders slumped, as if the weight of the great maester’s chain around his neck had
become too great to bear. “My lord,” he said, “King Robert is gone. The gods give him
rest.”
“No,” Ned answered. “He hated rest. The gods give him love and laughter, and the joy of
righteous battle.” It was strange how empty he felt. He had been expecting the visit, and
yet with those words, something died within him. He would have given all his titles for
the freedom to weep . . . but he was Robert’s Hand, and the hour he dreaded had come.
“Be so good as to summon the members of the council here to my solar,” he told Pycelle.
The Tower of the Hand was as secure as he and Tomard could make it; he could not say
the same for the council chambers.
“My lord?” Pycelle blinked. “Surely the affairs of the kingdom will keep till the morrow,
when our grief is not so fresh.”
Ned was quiet but firm. “I fear we must convene at once.”
Pycelle bowed. “As the Hand commands.” He called his servants and sent them running,
then gratefully accepted Ned’s offer of a chair and a cup of sweet beer.
Ser Barristan Selmy was the first to answer the summons, immaculate in white cloak
and enameled scales. “My lords,” he said, “my place is beside the young king now. Pray
give me leave to attend him.”
“Your place is here, Ser Barristan,” Ned told him.
Littlefinger came next, still garbed in the blue velvets and silver mockingbird cape he
had worn the night previous, his boots dusty from riding. “My lords,” he said, smiling at
nothing in particular before he turned to Ned. “That little task you set me is
accomplished, Lord Eddard.”
Varys entered in a wash of lavender, pink from his bath, his plump face scrubbed and
freshly powdered, his soft slippers all but soundless. “The little birds sing a grievous
�song today,” he said as he seated himself. “The realm weeps. Shall we begin?”
“When Lord Renly arrives,” Ned said.
Varys gave him a sorrowful look. “I fear Lord Renly has left the city.”
“Left the city?” Ned had counted on Renly’s support.
“He took his leave through a postern gate an hour before dawn, accompanied by Ser
Loras Tyrell and some fifty retainers,” Varys told them. “When last seen, they were
galloping south in some haste, no doubt bound for Storm’s End or Highgarden.”
So much for Renly and his hundred swords. Ned did not like the smell of that, but there
was nothing to be done for it. He drew out Robert’s last letter. “The king called me to his
side last night and commanded me to record his final words. Lord Renly and Grand
Maester Pycelle stood witness as Robert sealed the letter, to be opened by the council
after his death. Ser Barristan, if you would be so kind?”
The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard examined the paper. “King Robert’s seal, and
unbroken.” He opened the letter and read. “Lord Eddard Stark is herein named
Protector of the Realm, to rule as regent until the heir comes of age.”
And as it happens, he is of age, Ned reflected, but he did not give voice to the thought.
He trusted neither Pycelle nor Varys, and Ser Barristan was honor-bound to protect and
defend the boy he thought his new king. The old knight would not abandon Joffrey
easily. The need for deceit was a bitter taste in his mouth, but Ned knew he must tread
softly here, must keep his counsel and play the game until he was firmly established as
regent. There would be time enough to deal with the succession when Arya and Sansa
were safely back in Winterfell, and Lord Stannis had returned to King’s Landing with all
his power.
“I would ask this council to confirm me as Lord Protector, as Robert wished,” Ned said,
watching their faces, wondering what thoughts hid behind Pycelle’s half-closed eyes,
Littlefinger’s lazy half-smile, and the nervous flutter of Varys’s fingers.
The door opened. Fat Tom stepped into the solar. “Pardon, my lords, the king’s steward
insists . . . ”
The royal steward entered and bowed. “Esteemed lords, the king demands the
immediate presence of his small council in the throne room.”
Ned had expected Cersei to strike quickly; the summons came as no surprise. “The king
�is dead,” he said, “but we shall go with you nonetheless. Tom, assemble an escort, if you
would.”
Littlefinger gave Ned his arm to help him down the steps. Varys, Pycelle, and Ser
Barristan followed close behind. A double column of men-at-arms in chainmail and steel
helms was waiting outside the tower, eight strong. Grey cloaks snapped in the wind as
the guardsmen marched them across the yard. There was no Lannister crimson to be
seen, but Ned was reassured by the number of gold cloaks visible on the ramparts and at
the gates.
Janos Slynt met them at the door to the throne room, armored in ornate black-and-gold
plate, with a high-crested helm under one arm. The Commander bowed stiffly. His men
pushed open the great oaken doors, twenty feet tall and banded with bronze.
The royal steward led them in. “All hail His Grace, Joffrey of the Houses Baratheon and
Lannister, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men,
Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm,” he sang out.
It was a long walk to the far end of the hall, where Joffrey waited atop the Iron Throne.
Supported by Littlefinger, Ned Stark slowly limped and hopped toward the boy who
called himself king. The others followed. The first time he had come this way, he had
been on horseback, sword in hand, and the Targaryen dragons had watched from the
walls as he forced Jaime Lannister down from the throne. He wondered if Joffrey would
step down quite so easily.
Five knights of the Kingsguard—all but Ser Jaime and Ser Barristan—were arrayed in a
crescent around the base of the throne. They were in full armor, enameled steel from
helm to heel, long pale cloaks over their shoulders, shining white shields strapped to
their left arms. Cersei Lannister and her two younger children stood behind Ser Boros
and Ser Meryn. The queen wore a gown of sea-green silk, trimmed with Myrish lace as
pale as foam. On her finger was a golden ring with an emerald the size of a pigeon’s egg,
on her head a matching tiara.
Above them, Prince Joffrey sat amidst the barbs and spikes in a cloth-of-gold doublet
and a red satin cape. Sandor Clegane was stationed at the foot of the throne’s steep
narrow stair. He wore mail and soot-grey plate and his snarling dog’s-head helm.
Behind the throne, twenty Lannister guardsmen waited with longswords hanging from
their belts. Crimson cloaks draped their shoulders and steel lions crested their helms.
But Littlefinger had kept his promise; all along the walls, in front of Robert’s tapestries
with their scenes of hunt and battle, the gold-cloaked ranks of the City Watch stood
stiffly to attention, each man’s hand clasped around the haft of an eight-foot-long spear
�tipped in black iron. They outnumbered the Lannisters five to one.
Ned’s leg was a blaze of pain by the time he stopped. He kept a hand on Littlefinger’s
shoulder to help support his weight.
Joffrey stood. His red satin cape was patterned in gold thread; fifty roaring lions to one
side, fifty prancing stags to the other. “I command the council to make all the necessary
arrangements for my coronation,” the boy proclaimed. “I wish to be crowned within the
fortnight. Today I shall accept oaths of fealty from my loyal councillors.”
Ned produced Robert’s letter. “Lord Varys, be so kind as to show this to my lady of
Lannister.”
The eunuch carried the letter to Cersei. The queen glanced at the words. “Protector of
the Realm,” she read. “Is this meant to be your shield, my lord? A piece of paper?” She
ripped the letter in half, ripped the halves in quarters, and let the pieces flutter to the
floor.
“Those were the king’s words,” Ser Barristan said, shocked.
“We have a new king now,” Cersei Lannister replied. “Lord Eddard, when last we spoke,
you gave me some counsel. Allow me to return the courtesy. Bend the knee, my lord.
Bend the knee and swear fealty to my son, and we shall allow you to step down as Hand
and live out your days in the grey waste you call home.”
“Would that I could,” Ned said grimly. If she was so determined to force the issue here
and now, she left him no choice. “Your son has no claim to the throne he sits. Lord
Stannis is Robert’s true heir.”
“Liar!” Joffrey screamed, his face reddening.
“Mother, what does he mean?” Princess Myrcella asked the queen plaintively. “Isn’t Joff
the king now?”
“You condemn yourself with your own mouth, Lord Stark,” said Cersei Lannister. “Ser
Barristan, seize this traitor.”
The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard hesitated. In the blink of an eye he was
surrounded by Stark guardsmen, bare steel in their mailed fists.
“And now the treason moves from words to deeds,” Cersei said. “Do you think Ser
Barristan stands alone, my lord?” With an ominous rasp of metal on metal, the Hound
�drew his longsword. The knights of the Kingsguard and twenty Lannister guardsmen in
crimson cloaks moved to support him.
“Kill him!” the boy king screamed down from the Iron Throne. “Kill all of them, I
command it!”
“You leave me no choice,” Ned told Cersei Lannister. He called out to Janos Slynt.
“Commander, take the queen and her children into custody. Do them no harm, but
escort them back to the royal apartments and keep them there, under guard.”
“Men of the Watch!” Janos Slynt shouted, donning his helm. A hundred gold cloaks
leveled their spears and closed.
“I want no bloodshed,” Ned told the queen. “Tell your men to lay down their swords, and
no one need—”
With a single sharp thrust, the nearest gold cloak drove his spear into Tomard’s back.
Fat Tom’s blade dropped from nerveless fingers as the wet red point burst out through
his ribs, piercing leather and mail. He was dead before his sword hit the floor.
Ned’s shout came far too late. Janos Slynt himself slashed open Varly’s throat. Cayn
whirled, steel flashing, drove back the nearest spearman with a flurry of blows; for an
instant it looked as though he might cut his way free. Then the Hound was on him.
Sandor Clegane’s first cut took off Cayn’s sword hand at the wrist; his second drove him
to his knees and opened him from shoulder to breastbone.
As his men died around him, Littlefinger slid Ned’s dagger from its sheath and shoved it
up under his chin. His smile was apologetic. “I did warn you not to trust me, you know.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
ARYA
High,” Syrio Forel called out, slashing at her head. The stick swords clacked as Arya
parried.
“Left,” he shouted, and his blade came whistling. Hers darted to meet it. The clack made
him click his teeth together.
“Right,” he said, and “Low,” and “Left,” and “Left” again, faster and faster, moving
forward. Arya retreated before him, checking each blow.
“Lunge,” he warned, and when he thrust she sidestepped, swept his blade away, and
slashed at his shoulder. She almost touched him, almost, so close it made her grin. A
strand of hair dangled in her eyes, limp with sweat. She pushed it away with the back of
her hand.
“Left,” Syrio sang out. “Low.” His sword was a blur, and the Small Hall echoed to the
clack clack clack. “Left. Left. High. Left. Right. Left. Low. Left!”
The wooden blade caught her high in the breast, a sudden stinging blow that hurt all the
more because it came from the wrong side. “Ow,” she cried out. She would have a fresh
bruise there by the time she went to sleep, somewhere out at sea. A bruise is a lesson,
she told herself, and each lesson makes us better.
Syrio stepped back. “You are dead now.”
Arya made a face. “You cheated,” she said hotly. “You said left and you went right.”
“Just so. And now you are a dead girl.”
“But you lied!”
“My words lied. My eyes and my arm shouted out the truth, but you were not seeing.”
“I was so,” Arya said. “I watched you every second!”
�“Watching is not seeing, dead girl. The water dancer sees. Come, put down the sword, it
is time for listening now.”
She followed him over to the wall, where he settled onto a bench. “Syrio Forel was first
sword to the Sealord of Braavos, and are you knowing how that came to pass?”
“You were the finest swordsman in the city.”
“Just so, but why? Other men were stronger, faster, younger, why was Syrio Forel the
best? I will tell you now.” He touched the tip of his little finger lightly to his eyelid. “The
seeing, the true seeing, that is the heart of it.
“Hear me. The ships of Braavos sail as far as the winds blow, to lands strange and
wonderful, and when they return their captains fetch queer animals to the Sealord’s
menagerie. Such animals as you have never seen, striped horses, great spotted things
with necks as long as stilts, hairy mouse-pigs as big as cows, stinging manticores, tigers
that carry their cubs in a pouch, terrible walking lizards with scythes for claws. Syrio
Forel has seen these things.
“On the day I am speaking of, the first sword was newly dead, and the Sealord sent for
me. Many bravos had come to him, and as many had been sent away, none could say
why. When I came into his presence, he was seated, and in his lap was a fat yellow cat.
He told me that one of his captains had brought the beast to him, from an island beyond
the sunrise. ‘Have you ever seen her like?’ he asked of me.
“And to him I said, ‘Each night in the alleys of Braavos I see a thousand like him,’ and
the Sealord laughed, and that day I was named the first sword.”
Arya screwed up her face. “I don’t understand.”
Syrio clicked his teeth together. “The cat was an ordinary cat, no more. The others
expected a fabulous beast, so that is what they saw. How large it was, they said. It was no
larger than any other cat, only fat from indolence, for the Sealord fed it from his own
table. What curious small ears, they said. Its ears had been chewed away in kitten fights.
And it was plainly a tomcat, yet the Sealord said ‘her,’ and that is what the others saw.
Are you hearing?”
Arya thought about it. “You saw what was there.”
“Just so. Opening your eyes is all that is needing. The heart lies and the head plays tricks
with us, but the eyes see true. Look with your eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your
mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then comes the thinking, afterward,
�and in that way knowing the truth.”
“Just so,” said Arya, grinning.
Syrio Forel allowed himself a smile. “I am thinking that when we are reaching this
Winterfell of yours, it will be time to put this needle in your hand.”
“Yes!” Arya said eagerly. “Wait till I show Jon—”
Behind her the great wooden doors of the Small Hall flew open with a resounding crash.
Arya whirled.
A knight of the Kingsguard stood beneath the arch of the door with five Lannister
guardsmen arrayed behind him. He was in full armor, but his visor was up. Arya
remembered his droopy eyes and rustcolored whiskers from when he had come to
Winterfell with the king: Ser Meryn Trant. The red cloaks wore mail shirts over boiled
leather and steel caps with lion crests. “Arya Stark,” the knight said, “come with us,
child.”
Arya chewed her lip uncertainly. “What do you want?”
“Your father wants to see you.”
Arya took a step forward, but Syrio Forel held her by the arm. “And why is it that Lord
Eddard is sending Lannister men in the place of his own? I am wondering.”
“Mind your place, dancing master,” Ser Meryn said. “This is no concern of yours.”
“My father wouldn’t send you,” Arya said. She snatched up her stick sword. The
Lannisters laughed.
“Put down the stick, girl,” Ser Meryn told her. “I am a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard,
the White Swords.”
“So was the Kingslayer when he killed the old king,” Arya said. “I don’t have to go with
you if I don’t want.”
Ser Meryn Trant ran out of patience. “Take her,” he said to his men. He lowered the
visor of his helm.
Three of them started forward, chainmail clinking softly with each step. Arya was
�suddenly afraid. Fear cuts deeper than swords, she told herself, to slow the racing of her
heart.
Syrio Forel stepped between them, tapping his wooden sword lightly against his boot.
“You will be stopping there. Are you men or dogs that you would threaten a child?”
“Out of the way, old man,” one of the red cloaks said.
Syrio’s stick came whistling up and rang against his helm. “I am Syrio Forel, and you will
now be speaking to me with more respect.”
“Bald bastard.” The man yanked free his longsword. The stick moved again, blindingly
fast. Arya heard a loud crack as the sword went clattering to the stone floor. “My hand,”
the guardsman yelped, cradling his broken fingers.
“You are quick, for a dancing master,” said Ser Meryn.
“You are slow, for a knight,” Syrio replied.
“Kill the Braavosi and bring me the girl,” the knight in the white armor commanded.
Four Lannister guardsmen unsheathed their swords. The fifth, with the broken fingers,
spat and pulled free a dagger with his left hand.
Syrio Forel clicked his teeth together, sliding into his water dancer’s stance, presenting
only his side to the foe. “Arya child,” he called out, never looking, never taking his eyes
off the Lannisters, “we are done with dancing for the day. Best you are going now. Run
to your father.”
Arya did not want to leave him, but he had taught her to do as he said. “Swift as a deer,”
she whispered.
“Just so,” said Syrio Forel as the Lannisters closed.
Arya retreated, her own sword stick clutched tightly in her hand. Watching him now, she
realized that Syrio had only been toying with her when they dueled. The red cloaks came
at him from three sides with steel in their hands. They had chainmail over their chest
and arms, and steel codpieces sewn into their pants, but only leather on their legs. Their
hands were bare, and the caps they wore had noseguards, but no visor over the eyes.
Syrio did not wait for them to reach him, but spun to his left. Arya had never seen a man
�move as fast. He checked one sword with his stick and whirled away from a second. Off
balance, the second man lurched into the first. Syrio put a boot to his back and the red
cloaks went down together. The third guard came leaping over them, slashing at the
water dancer’s head. Syrio ducked under his blade and thrust upward. The guardsman
fell screaming as blood welled from the wet red hole where his left eye had been.
The fallen men were getting up. Syrio kicked one in the face and snatched the steel cap
off the other’s head. The dagger man stabbed at him. Syrio caught the thrust in the
helmet and shattered the man’s kneecap with his stick. The last red cloak shouted a
curse and charged, hacking down with both hands on his sword. Syrio rolled right, and
the butcher’s cut caught the helmetless man between neck and shoulder as he struggled
to his knees. The longsword crunched through mail and leather and flesh. The man on
his knees shrieked. Before his killer could wrench free his blade, Syrio jabbed him in the
apple of his throat. The guardsman gave a choked cry and staggered back, clutching at
his neck, his face blackening.
Five men were down, dead, or dying by the time Arya reached the back door that opened
on the kitchen. She heard Ser Meryn Trant curse. “Bloody oafs,” he swore, drawing his
longsword from its scabbard.
Syrio Forel resumed his stance and clicked his teeth together. “Arya child,” he called out,
never looking at her, “be gone now.”
Look with your eyes, he had said. She saw: the knight in his pale armor head to foot,
legs, throat, and hands sheathed in metal, eyes hidden behind his high white helm, and
in his hand cruel steel. Against that: Syrio, in a leather vest, with a wooden sword in his
hand. “Syrio, run,” she screamed.
“The first sword of Braavos does not run,” he sang as Ser Meryn slashed at him. Syrio
danced away from his cut, his stick a blur. In a heartbeat, he had bounced blows off the
knight’s temple, elbow, and throat, the wood ringing against the metal of helm, gauntlet,
and gorget. Arya stood frozen. Ser Meryn advanced; Syrio backed away. He checked the
next blow, spun away from the second, deflected the third.
The fourth sliced his stick in two, splintering the wood and shearing through the lead
core.
Sobbing, Arya spun and ran.
She plunged through the kitchens and buttery, blind with panic, weaving between cooks
and potboys. A baker’s helper stepped in front of her, holding a wooden tray. Arya
bowled her over, scattering fragrant loaves of fresh-baked bread on the floor. She heard
�shouting behind her as she spun around a portly butcher who stood gaping at her with a
cleaver in his hands. His arms were red to the elbow.
All that Syrio Forel had taught her went racing through her head. Swift as a deer. Quiet
as a shadow. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Quick as a snake. Calm as still water. Fear
cuts deeper than swords. Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. Fear cuts deeper
than swords. The man who fears losing has already lost. Fear cuts deeper than swords.
Fear cuts deeper than swords. Fear cuts deeper than swords. The grip of her wooden
sword was slick with sweat, and Arya was breathing hard when she reached the turret
stair. For an instant she froze. Up or down? Up would take her to the covered bridge that
spanned the small court to the Tower of the Hand, but that would be the way they’d
expect her to go, for certain. Never do what they expect, Syrio once said. Arya went
down, around and around, leaping over the narrow stone steps two and three at a time.
She emerged in a cavernous vaulted cellar, surrounded by casks of ale stacked twenty
feet tall. The only light came through narrow slanting windows high in the wall.
The cellar was a dead end. There was no way out but the way she had come in. She dare
not go back up those steps, but she couldn’t stay here, either. She had to find her father
and tell him what had happened. Her father would protect her.
Arya thrust her wooden sword through her belt and began to climb, leaping from cask to
cask until she could reach the window. Grasping the stone with both hands, she pulled
herself up. The wall was three feet thick, the window a tunnel slanting up and out. Arya
wriggled toward daylight. When her head reached ground level, she peered across the
bailey to the Tower of the Hand.
The stout wooden door hung splintered and broken, as if by axes. A dead man sprawled
facedown on the steps, his cloak tangled beneath him, the back of his mailed shirt
soaked red. The corpse’s cloak was grey wool trimmed with white satin, she saw with
sudden terror. She could not tell who he was.
“No,” she whispered. What was happening? Where was her father? Why had the red
cloaks come for her? She remembered what the man with the yellow beard had said, the
day she had found the monsters. If one Hand can die, why not a second? Arya felt tears
in her eyes. She held her breath to listen. She heard the sounds of fighting, shouts,
screams, the clang of steel on steel, coming through the windows of the Tower of the
Hand.
She could not go back. Her father . . .
Arya closed her eyes. For a moment she was too frightened to move. They had killed
Jory and Wyl and Heward, and that guardsman on the step, whoever he had been. They
�could kill her father too, and her if they caught her. “Fear cuts deeper than swords,” she
said aloud, but it was no good pretending to be a water dancer, Syrio had been a water
dancer and the white knight had probably killed him, and anyhow she was only a little
girl with a wooden stick, alone and afraid.
She squirmed out into the yard, glancing around warily as she climbed to her feet. The
castle seemed deserted. The Red Keep was never deserted. All the people must be hiding
inside, their doors barred. Arya glanced up longingly at her bedchamber, then moved
away from the Tower of the Hand, keeping close to the wall as she slid from shadow to
shadow. She pretended she was chasing cats . . . except she was the cat now, and if they
caught her, they would kill her.
Moving between buildings and over walls, keeping stone to her back wherever possible
so no one could surprise her, Arya reached the stables almost without incident. A dozen
gold cloaks in mail and plate ran past as she was edging across the inner bailey, but
without knowing whose side they were on, she hunched down low in the shadows and let
them pass.
Hullen, who had been master of horse at Winterfell as long as Arya could remember, was
slumped on the ground by the stable door. He had been stabbed so many times it looked
as if his tunic was patterned with scarlet flowers. Arya was certain he was dead, but
when she crept closer, his eyes opened. “Arya Underfoot,” he whispered. “You
must . . . warn your . . . your lord father . . . ” Frothy red spittle bubbled from his mouth.
The master of horse closed his eyes again and said no more.
Inside were more bodies; a groom she had played with, and three of her father’s
household guard. A wagon, laden with crates and chests, stood abandoned near the door
of the stable. The dead men must have been loading it for the trip to the docks when they
were attacked. Arya snuck closer. One of the corpses was Desmond, who’d shown her his
longsword and promised to protect her father. He lay on his back, staring blindly at the
ceiling as flies crawled across his eyes. Close to him was a dead man in the red cloak and
lion-crest helm of the Lannisters. Only one, though. Every northerner is worth ten of
these southron swords, Desmond had told her. “You liar!” she said, kicking his body in a
sudden fury.
The animals were restless in their stalls, whickering and snorting at the scent of blood.
Arya’s only plan was to saddle a horse and flee, away from the castle and the city. All she
had to do was stay on the kingsroad and it would take her back to Winterfell. She took a
bridle and harness off the wall.
As she crossed in back of the wagon, a fallen chest caught her eye. It must have been
knocked down in the fight or dropped as it was being loaded. The wood had split, the lid
�opening to spill the chest’s contents across the ground. Arya recognized silks and satins
and velvets she never wore. She might need warm clothes on the kingsroad,
though . . . and besides . . .
Arya knelt in the dirt among the scattered clothes. She found a heavy woolen cloak, a
velvet skirt and a silk tunic and some smallclothes, a dress her mother had embroidered
for her, a silver baby bracelet she might sell. Shoving the broken lid out of the way, she
groped inside the chest for Needle. She had hidden it way down at the bottom, under
everything, but her stuff had all been jumbled around when the chest was dropped. For a
moment Arya was afraid someone had found the sword and stolen it. Then her fingers
felt the hardness of metal under a satin gown.
“There she is,” a voice hissed close behind her.
Startled, Arya whirled. A stableboy stood behind her, a smirk on his face, his filthy white
undertunic peeking out from beneath a soiled jerkin. His boots were covered with
manure, and he had a pitchfork in one hand. “Who are you?” she asked.
“She don’t know me,” he said, “but I knows her, oh, yes. The wolf girl.”
“Help me saddle a horse,” Arya pleaded, reaching back into the chest, groping for
Needle. “My father’s the Hand of the King, he’ll reward you.”
“Father’s dead,” the boy said. He shuffled toward her. “It’s the queen who’ll be
rewarding me. Come here, girl.”
“Stay away!” Her fingers closed around Needle’s hilt.
“I says, come.” He grabbed her arm, hard.
Everything Syrio Forel had ever taught her vanished in a heartbeat. In that instant of
sudden terror, the only lesson Arya could remember was the one Jon Snow had given
her, the very first.
She stuck him with the pointy end, driving the blade upward with a wild, hysterical
strength.
Needle went through his leather jerkin and the white flesh of his belly and came out
between his shoulder blades. The boy dropped the pitchfork and made a soft noise,
something between a gasp and a sigh. His hands closed around the blade. “Oh, gods,” he
moaned, as his undertunic began to redden. “Take it out.”
�When she took it out, he died.
The horses were screaming. Arya stood over the body, still and frightened in the face of
death. Blood had gushed from the boy’s mouth as he collapsed, and more was seeping
from the slit in his belly, pooling beneath his body. His palms were cut where he’d
grabbed at the blade. She backed away slowly, Needle red in her hand. She had to get
away, someplace far from here, someplace safe away from the stableboy’s accusing eyes.
She snatched up the bridle and harness again and ran to her mare, but as she lifted the
saddle to the horse’s back, Arya realized with a sudden sick dread that the castle gates
would be closed. Even the postern doors would likely be guarded. Maybe the guards
wouldn’t recognize her. If they thought she was a boy, perhaps they’d let her . . . no,
they’d have orders not to let anyone out, it wouldn’t matter whether they knew her or
not.
But there was another way out of the castle . . .
The saddle slipped from Arya’s fingers and fell to the dirt with a thump and a puff of
dust. Could she find the room with the monsters again? She wasn’t certain, yet she knew
she had to try.
She found the clothing she’d gathered and slipped into the cloak, concealing Needle
beneath its folds. The rest of her things she tied in a roll. With the bundle under her arm,
she crept to the far end of the stable. Unlatching the back door, she peeked out
anxiously. She could hear the distant sound of swordplay, and the shivery wail of a man
screaming in pain across the bailey. She would need to go down the serpentine steps,
past the small kitchen and the pig yard, that was how she’d gone last time, chasing the
black tomcat . . . only that would take her right past the barracks of the gold cloaks. She
couldn’t go that way. Arya tried to think of another way. If she crossed to the other side
of the castle, she could creep along the river wall and through the little godswood . . . but
first she’d have to cross the yard, in the plain view of the guards on the walls.
She had never seen so many men on the walls. Gold cloaks, most of them, armed with
spears. Some of them knew her by sight. What would they do if they saw her running
across the yard? She’d look so small from up there, would they be able to tell who she
was? Would they care?
She had to leave now, she told herself, but when the moment came, she was too
frightened to move.
Calm as still water, a small voice whispered in her ear. Arya was so startled she almost
dropped her bundle. She looked around wildly, but there was no one in the stable but
�her, and the horses, and the dead men.
Quiet as a shadow, she heard. Was it her own voice, or Syrio’s? She could not tell, yet
somehow it calmed her fears.
She stepped out of the stable.
It was the scariest thing she’d ever done. She wanted to run and hide, but she made
herself walk across the yard, slowly, putting one foot in front of the other as if she had
all the time in the world and no reason to be afraid of anyone. She thought she could feel
their eyes, like bugs crawling on her skin under her clothes. Arya never looked up. If she
saw them watching, all her courage would desert her, she knew, and she would drop the
bundle of clothes and run and cry like a baby, and then they would have her. She kept
her gaze on the ground. By the time she reached the shadow of the royal sept on the far
side of the yard, Arya was cold with sweat, but no one had raised the hue and cry.
The sept was open and empty. Inside, half a hundred prayer candles burned in a fragrant
silence. Arya figured the gods would never miss two. She stuffed them up her sleeves,
and left by a back window. Sneaking back to the alley where she had cornered the oneeared tom was easy, but after that she got lost. She crawled in and out of windows,
hopped over walls, and felt her way through dark cellars, quiet as a shadow. Once she
heard a woman weeping. It took her more than an hour to find the low narrow window
that slanted down to the dungeon where the monsters waited.
She tossed her bundle through and doubled back to light her candle. That was chancy;
the fire she’d remembered seeing had burnt down to embers, and she heard voices as
she was blowing on the coals. Cupping her fingers around the flickering candle, she went
out the window as they were coming in the door, without ever getting a glimpse of who it
was.
This time the monsters did not frighten her. They seemed almost old friends. Arya held
the candle over her head. With each step she took, the shadows moved against the walls,
as if they were turning to watch her pass. “Dragons,” she whispered. She slid Needle out
from under her cloak. The slender blade seemed very small and the dragons very big, yet
somehow Arya felt better with steel in her hand.
The long windowless hall beyond the door was as black as she remembered. She held
Needle in her left hand, her sword hand, the candle in her right fist. Hot wax ran down
across her knuckles. The entrance to the well had been to the left, so Arya went right.
Part of her wanted to run, but she was afraid of snuffing out her candle. She heard the
faint squeaking of rats and glimpsed a pair of tiny glowing eyes on the edge of the light,
but rats did not scare her. Other things did. It would be so easy to hide here, as she had
�hidden from the wizard and the man with the forked beard. She could almost see the
stableboy standing against the wall, his hands curled into claws with the blood still
dripping from the deep gashes in his palms where Needle had cut him. He might be
waiting to grab her as she passed. He would see her candle coming a long way off. Maybe
she would be better off without the light . . .
Fear cuts deeper than swords, the quiet voice inside her whispered. Suddenly Arya
remembered the crypts at Winterfell. They were a lot scarier than this place, she told
herself. She’d been just a little girl the first time she saw them. Her brother Robb had
taken them down, her and Sansa and baby Bran, who’d been no bigger than Rickon was
now. They’d only had one candle between them, and Bran’s eyes had gotten as big as
saucers as he stared at the stone faces of the Kings of Winter, with their wolves at their
feet and their iron swords across their laps.
Robb took them all the way down to the end, past Grandfather and Brandon and
Lyanna, to show them their own tombs. Sansa kept looking at the stubby little candle,
anxious that it might go out. Old Nan had told her there were spiders down here, and
rats as big as dogs. Robb smiled when she said that. “There are worse things than
spiders and rats,” he whispered. “This is where the dead walk.” That was when they
heard the sound, low and deep and shivery. Baby Bran had clutched at Arya’s hand.
When the spirit stepped out of the open tomb, pale white and moaning for blood, Sansa
ran shrieking for the stairs, and Bran wrapped himself around Robb’s leg, sobbing. Arya
stood her ground and gave the spirit a punch. It was only Jon, covered with flour. “You
stupid,” she told him, “you scared the baby,” but Jon and Robb just laughed and
laughed, and pretty soon Bran and Arya were laughing too.
The memory made Arya smile, and after that the darkness held no more terrors for her.
The stableboy was dead, she’d killed him, and if he jumped out at her she’d kill him
again. She was going home. Everything would be better once she was home again, safe
behind Winterfell’s grey granite walls.
Her footsteps sent soft echoes hurrying ahead of her as Arya plunged deeper into the
darkness.
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SANSA
They came for Sansa on the third day.
She chose a simple dress of dark grey wool, plainly cut but richly embroidered around
the collar and sleeves. Her fingers felt thick and clumsy as she struggled with the silver
fastenings without the benefit of servants. Jeyne Poole had been confined with her, but
Jeyne was useless. Her face was puffy from all her crying, and she could not seem to stop
sobbing about her father.
“I’m certain your father is well,” Sansa told her when she had finally gotten the dress
buttoned right. “I’ll ask the queen to let you see him.” She thought that kindness might
lift Jeyne’s spirits, but the other girl just looked at her with red, swollen eyes and began
to cry all the harder. She was such a child.
Sansa had wept too, the first day. Even within the stout walls of Maegor’s Holdfast, with
her door closed and barred, it was hard not to be terrified when the killing began. She
had grown up to the sound of steel in the yard, and scarcely a day of her life had passed
without hearing the clash of sword on sword, yet somehow knowing that the fighting was
real made all the difference in the world. She heard it as she had never heard it before,
and there were other sounds as well, grunts of pain, angry curses, shouts for help, and
the moans of wounded and dying men. In the songs, the knights never screamed nor
begged for mercy.
So she wept, pleading through her door for them to tell her what was happening, calling
for her father, for Septa Mordane, for the king, for her gallant prince. If the men
guarding her heard her pleas, they gave no answer. The only time the door opened was
late that night, when they thrust Jeyne Poole inside, bruised and shaking. “They’re
killing everyone,” the steward’s daughter had shrieked at her. She went on and on. The
Hound had broken down her door with a warhammer, she said. There were bodies on
the stair of the Tower of the Hand, and the steps were slick with blood. Sansa dried her
own tears as she struggled to comfort her friend. They went to sleep in the same bed,
cradled in each other’s arms like sisters.
The second day was even worse. The room where Sansa had been confined was at the
top of the highest tower of Maegor’s Holdfast. From its window, she could see that the
heavy iron portcullis in the gatehouse was down, and the drawbridge drawn up over the
�deep dry moat that separated the keep-within-a-keep from the larger castle that
surrounded it. Lannister guardsmen prowled the walls with spears and crossbows to
hand. The fighting was over, and the silence of the grave had settled over the Red Keep.
The only sounds were Jeyne Poole’s endless whimpers and sobs.
They were fed—hard cheese and fresh-baked bread and milk to break their fast, roast
chicken and greens at midday, and a late supper of beef and barley stew—but the
servants who brought the meals would not answer Sansa’s questions. That evening,
some women brought her clothes from the Tower of the Hand, and some of Jeyne’s
things as well, but they seemed nearly as frightened as Jeyne, and when she tried to talk
to them, they fled from her as if she had the grey plague. The guards outside the door
still refused to let them leave the room.
“Please, I need to speak to the queen again,” Sansa told them, as she told everyone she
saw that day. “She’ll want to talk to me, I know she will. Tell her I want to see her,
please. If not the queen, then Prince Joffrey, if you’d be so kind. We’re to marry when
we’re older.”
At sunset on the second day, a great bell began to ring. Its voice was deep and sonorous,
and the long slow clanging filled Sansa with a sense of dread. The ringing went on and
on, and after a while they heard other bells answering from the Great Sept of Baelor on
Visenya’s Hill. The sound rumbled across the city like thunder, warning of the storm to
come.
“What is it?” Jeyne asked, covering her ears. “Why are they ringing the bells?”
“The king is dead.” Sansa could not say how she knew it, yet she did. The slow, endless
clanging filled their room, as mournful as a dirge. Had some enemy stormed the castle
and murdered King Robert? Was that the meaning of the fighting they had heard?
She went to sleep wondering, restless, and fearful. Was her beautiful Joffrey the king
now? Or had they killed him too? She was afraid for him, and for her father. If only they
would tell her what was happening . . .
That night Sansa dreamt of Joffrey on the throne, with herself seated beside him in a
gown of woven gold. She had a crown on her head, and everyone she had ever known
came before her, to bend the knee and say their courtesies.
The next morning, the morning of the third day, Ser Boros Blount of the Kingsguard
came to escort her to the queen.
Ser Boros was an ugly man with a broad chest and short, bandy legs. His nose was flat,
�his cheeks baggy with jowls, his hair grey and brittle. Today he wore white velvet, and
his snowy cloak was fastened with a lion brooch. The beast had the soft sheen of gold,
and his eyes were tiny rubies. “You look very handsome and splendid this morning, Ser
Boros,” Sansa told him. A lady remembered her courtesies, and she was resolved to be a
lady no matter what.
“And you, my lady,” Ser Boros said in a flat voice. “Her Grace awaits. Come with me.”
There were guards outside her door, Lannister men-at-arms in crimson cloaks and lioncrested helms. Sansa made herself smile at them pleasantly and bid them a good
morning as she passed. It was the first time she had been allowed outside the chamber
since Ser Arys Oakheart had led her there two mornings past. “To keep you safe, my
sweet one,” Queen Cersei had told her. “Joffrey would never forgive me if anything
happened to his precious.”
Sansa had expected that Ser Boros would escort her to the royal apartments, but instead
he led her out of Maegor’s Holdfast. The bridge was down again. Some workmen were
lowering a man on ropes into the depths of the dry moat. When Sansa peered down, she
saw a body impaled on the huge iron spikes below. She averted her eyes quickly, afraid
to ask, afraid to look too long, afraid he might be someone she knew.
They found Queen Cersei in the council chambers, seated at the head of a long table
littered with papers, candles, and blocks of sealing wax. The room was as splendid as any
that Sansa had ever seen. She stared in awe at the carved wooden screen and the twin
sphinxes that sat beside the door.
“Your Grace,” Ser Boros said when they were ushered inside by another of the
Kingsguard, Ser Mandon of the curiously dead face, “I’ve brought the girl.”
Sansa had hoped Joffrey might be with her. Her prince was not there, but three of the
king’s councillors were. Lord Petyr Baelish sat on the queen’s left hand, Grand Maester
Pycelle at the end of the table, while Lord Varys hovered over them, smelling flowery. All
of them were clad in black, she realized with a feeling of dread. Mourning clothes . . .
The queen wore a high-collared black silk gown, with a hundred dark red rubies sewn
into her bodice, covering her from neck to bosom. They were cut in the shape of
teardrops, as if the queen were weeping blood. Cersei smiled to see her, and Sansa
thought it was the sweetest and saddest smile she had ever seen. “Sansa, my sweet
child,” she said, “I know you’ve been asking for me. I’m sorry that I could not send for
you sooner. Matters have been very unsettled, and I have not had a moment. I trust my
people have been taking good care of you?”
�“Everyone has been very sweet and pleasant, Your Grace, thank you ever so much for
asking,” Sansa said politely. “Only, well, no one will talk to us or tell us what’s
happened . . . ”
“Us?” Cersei seemed puzzled.
“We put the steward’s girl in with her,” Ser Boros said. “We did not know what else to do
with her.”
The queen frowned. “Next time, you will ask,” she said, her voice sharp. “The gods only
know what sort of tales she’s been filling Sansa’s head with.”
“Jeyne’s scared,” Sansa said. “She won’t stop crying. I promised her I’d ask if she could
see her father.”
Old Grand Maester Pycelle lowered his eyes.
“Her father is well, isn’t he?” Sansa said anxiously. She knew there had been fighting,
but surely no one would harm a steward. Vayon Poole did not even wear a sword.
Queen Cersei looked at each of the councillors in turn. “I won’t have Sansa fretting
needlessly. What shall we do with this little friend of hers, my lords?”
Lord Petyr leaned forward. “I’ll find a place for her.”
“Not in the city,” said the queen.
“Do you take me for a fool?”
The queen ignored that. “Ser Boros, escort this girl to Lord Petyr’s apartments and
instruct his people to keep her there until he comes for her. Tell her that Littlefinger will
be taking her to see her father, that ought to calm her down. I want her gone before
Sansa returns to her chamber.”
“As you command, Your Grace,” Ser Boros said. He bowed deeply, spun on his heel, and
took his leave, his long white cloak stirring the air behind him.
Sansa was confused. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Where is Jeyne’s father? Why can’t
Ser Boros take her to him instead of Lord Petyr having to do it?” She had promised
herself she would be a lady, gentle as the queen and as strong as her mother, the Lady
Catelyn, but all of a sudden she was scared again. For a second she thought she might
�cry. “Where are you sending her? She hasn’t done anything wrong, she’s a good girl.”
“She’s upset you,” the queen said gently. “We can’t be having that. Not another word,
now. Lord Baelish will see that Jeyne’s well taken care of, I promise you.” She patted the
chair beside her. “Sit down, Sansa. I want to talk to you.”
Sansa seated herself beside the queen. Cersei smiled again, but that did not make her
feel any less anxious. Varys was wringing his soft hands together, Grand Maester Pycelle
kept his sleepy eyes on the papers in front of him, but she could feel Littlefinger staring.
Something about the way the small man looked at her made Sansa feel as though she
had no clothes on. Goose bumps pimpled her skin.
“Sweet Sansa,” Queen Cersei said, laying a soft hand on her wrist. “Such a beautiful
child. I do hope you know how much Joffrey and I love you.”
“You do?” Sansa said, breathless. Littlefinger was forgotten. Her prince loved her.
Nothing else mattered.
The queen smiled. “I think of you almost as my own daughter. And I know the love you
bear for Joffrey.” She gave a weary shake of her head. “I am afraid we have some grave
news about your lord father. You must be brave, child.”
Her quiet words gave Sansa a chill. “What is it?”
“Your father is a traitor, dear,” Lord Varys said.
Grand Maester Pycelle lifted his ancient head. “With my own ears, I heard Lord Eddard
swear to our beloved King Robert that he would protect the young princes as if they were
his own sons. And yet the moment the king was dead, he called the small council
together to steal Prince Joffrey’s rightful throne.”
“No,” Sansa blurted. “He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t!”
The queen picked up a letter. The paper was torn and stiff with dried blood, but the
broken seal was her father’s, the direwolf stamped in pale wax. “We found this on the
captain of your household guard, Sansa. It is a letter to my late husband’s brother
Stannis, inviting him to take the crown.”
“Please, Your Grace, there’s been a mistake.” Sudden panic made her dizzy and faint.
“Please, send for my father, he’ll tell you, he would never write such a letter, the king was
his friend.”
�“Robert thought so,” said the queen. “This betrayal would have broken his heart. The
gods are kind, that he did not live to see it.” She sighed. “Sansa, sweetling, you must see
what a dreadful position this has left us in. You are innocent of any wrong, we all know
that, and yet you are the daughter of a traitor. How can I allow you to marry my son?”
“But I love him,” Sansa wailed, confused and frightened. What did they mean to do to
her? What had they done to her father? It was not supposed to happen this way. She had
to wed Joffrey, they were betrothed, he was promised to her, she had even dreamed
about it. It wasn’t fair to take him away from her on account of whatever her father
might have done.
“How well I know that, child,” Cersei said, her voice so kind and sweet. “Why else should
you have come to me and told me of your father’s plan to send you away from us, if not
for love?”
“It was for love,” Sansa said in a rush. “Father wouldn’t even give me leave to say
farewell.” She was the good girl, the obedient girl, but she had felt as wicked as Arya that
morning, sneaking away from Septa Mordane, defying her lord father. She had never
done anything so willful before, and she would never have done it then if she hadn’t
loved Joffrey as much as she did. “He was going to take me back to Winterfell and marry
me to some hedge knight, even though it was Joff I wanted. I told him, but he wouldn’t
listen.” The king had been her last hope. The king could command Father to let her stay
in King’s Landing and marry Prince Joffrey, Sansa knew he could, but the king had
always frightened her. He was loud and rough-voiced and drunk as often as not, and he
would probably have just sent her back to Lord Eddard, if they even let her see him. So
she went to the queen instead, and poured out her heart, and Cersei had listened and
thanked her sweetly . . . only then Ser Arys had escorted her to the high room in
Maegor’s Holdfast and posted guards, and a few hours later, the fighting had begun
outside. “Please,” she finished, “you have to let me marry Joffrey, I’ll be ever so good a
wife to him, you’ll see. I’ll be a queen just like you, I promise.”
Queen Cersei looked to the others. “My lords of the council, what do you say to her plea?”
“The poor child,” murmured Varys. “A love so true and innocent, Your Grace, it would be
cruel to deny it . . . and yet, what can we do? Her father stands condemned.” His soft
hands washed each other in a gesture of helpless distress.
“A child born of traitor’s seed will find that betrayal comes naturally to her,” said Grand
Maester Pycelle. “She is a sweet thing now, but in ten years, who can say what treasons
she may hatch?”
“No,” Sansa said, horrified. “I’m not, I’d never . . . I wouldn’t betray Joffrey, I love him, I
�swear it, I do.”
“Oh, so poignant,” said Varys. “And yet, it is truly said that blood runs truer than oaths.”
“She reminds me of the mother, not the father,” Lord Petyr Baelish said quietly. “Look at
her. The hair, the eyes. She is the very image of Cat at the same age.”
The queen looked at her, troubled, and yet Sansa could see kindness in her clear green
eyes. “Child,” she said, “if I could truly believe that you were not like your father, why
nothing should please me more than to see you wed to my Joffrey. I know he loves you
with all his heart.” She sighed. “And yet, I fear that Lord Varys and the Grand Maester
have the right of it. The blood will tell. I have only to remember how your sister set her
wolf on my son.”
“I’m not like Arya,” Sansa blurted. “She has the traitor’s blood, not me. I’m good, ask
Septa Mordane, she’ll tell you, I only want to be Joffrey’s loyal and loving wife.”
She felt the weight of Cersei’s eyes as the queen studied her face. “I believe you mean it,
child.” She turned to face the others. “My lords, it seems to me that if the rest of her kin
were to remain loyal in this terrible time, that would go a long way toward laying our
fears to rest.”
Grand Maester Pycelle stroked his huge soft beard, his wide brow furrowed in thought.
“Lord Eddard has three sons.”
“Mere boys,” Lord Petyr said with a shrug. “I should be more concerned with Lady
Catelyn and the Tullys.”
The queen took Sansa’s hand in both of hers. “Child, do you know your letters?”
Sansa nodded nervously. She could read and write better than any of her brothers,
although she was hopeless at sums.
“I am pleased to hear that. Perhaps there is hope for you and Joffrey still . . . ”
“What do you want me to do?”
“You must write your lady mother, and your brother, the eldest . . . what is his name?”
“Robb,” Sansa said.
�“The word of your lord father’s treason will no doubt reach them soon. Better that it
should come from you. You must tell them how Lord Eddard betrayed his king.”
Sansa wanted Joffrey desperately, but she did not think she had the courage to do as the
queen was asking. “But he never . . . I don’t . . . Your Grace, I wouldn’t know what to say
…”
The queen patted her hand. “We will tell you what to write, child. The important thing is
that you urge Lady Catelyn and your brother to keep the king’s peace.”
“It will go hard for them if they don’t,” said Grand Maester Pycelle. “By the love you bear
them, you must urge them to walk the path of wisdom.”
“Your lady mother will no doubt fear for you dreadfully,” the queen said. “You must tell
her that you are well and in our care, that we are treating you gently and seeing to your
every want. Bid them to come to King’s Landing and pledge their fealty to Joffrey when
he takes his throne. If they do that . . . why, then we shall know that there is no taint in
your blood, and when you come into the flower of your womanhood, you shall wed the
king in the Great Sept of Baelor, before the eyes of gods and men.”
. . . wed the king . . . The words made her breath come faster, yet still Sansa hesitated.
“Perhaps . . . if I might see my father, talk to him about . . . ”
“Treason?” Lord Varys hinted.
“You disappoint me, Sansa,” the queen said, with eyes gone hard as stones. “We’ve told
you of your father’s crimes. If you are truly as loyal as you say, why should you want to
see him?”
“I . . . I only meant . . . ” Sansa felt her eyes grow wet. “He’s not . . . please, he hasn’t
been . . . hurt, or . . . or . . . ”
“Lord Eddard has not been harmed,” the queen said.
“But . . . what’s to become of him?”
“That is a matter for the king to decide,” Grand Maester Pycelle announced ponderously.
The king! Sansa blinked back her tears. Joffrey was the king now, she thought. Her
gallant prince would never hurt her father, no matter what he might have done. If she
went to him and pleaded for mercy, she was certain he’d listen. He had to listen, he
loved her, even the queen said so. Joff would need to punish Father, the lords would
�expect it, but perhaps he could send him back to Winterfell, or exile him to one of the
Free Cities across the narrow sea. It would only have to be for a few years. By then she
and Joffrey would be married. Once she was queen, she could persuade Joff to bring
Father back and grant him a pardon.
Only . . . if Mother or Robb did anything treasonous, called the banners or refused to
swear fealty or anything, it would all go wrong. Her Joffrey was good and kind, she
knew it in her heart, but a king had to be stern with rebels. She had to make them
understand, she had to!
“I’ll . . . I’ll write the letters,” Sansa told them.
With a smile as warm as the sunrise, Cersei Lannister leaned close and kissed her gently
on the cheek. “I knew you would. Joffrey will be so proud when I tell him what courage
and good sense you’ve shown here today.”
In the end, she wrote four letters. To her mother, the Lady Catelyn Stark, and to her
brothers at Winterfell, and to her aunt and her grandfather as well, Lady Lysa Arryn of
the Eyrie, and Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun. By the time she had done, her fingers were
cramped and stiff and stained with ink. Varys had her father’s seal. She warmed the pale
white beeswax over a candle, poured it carefully, and watched as the eunuch stamped
each letter with the direwolf of House Stark.
Jeyne Poole and all her things were gone when Ser Mandon Moore returned Sansa to the
high tower of Maegor’s Holdfast. No more weeping, she thought gratefully. Yet somehow
it seemed colder with Jeyne gone, even after she’d built a fire. She pulled a chair close to
the hearth, took down one of her favorite books, and lost herself in the stories of Florian
and Jonquil, of Lady Shella and the Rainbow Knight, of valiant Prince Aemon and his
doomed love for his brother’s queen.
It was not until later that night, as she was drifting off to sleep, that Sansa realized she
had forgotten to ask about her sister.
previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
JON
Othor,” announced Ser Jaremy Rykker, “beyond a doubt. And this one was Jafer
Flowers.” He turned the corpse over with his foot, and the dead white face stared up at
the overcast sky with blue, blue eyes. “They were Ben Stark’s men, both of them.”
My uncle’s men, Jon thought numbly. He remembered how he’d pleaded to ride with
them. Gods, I was such a green boy. If he had taken me, it might be me lying here . . .
Jafer’s right wrist ended in the ruin of torn flesh and splintered bone left by Ghost’s
jaws. His right hand was floating in a jar of vinegar back in Maester Aemon’s tower. His
left hand, still at the end of his arm, was as black as his cloak.
“Gods have mercy,” the Old Bear muttered. He swung down from his garron, handing
his reins to Jon. The morning was unnaturally warm; beads of sweat dotted the Lord
Commander’s broad forehead like dew on a melon. His horse was nervous, rolling her
eyes, backing away from the dead men as far as her lead would allow. Jon led her off a
few paces, fighting to keep her from bolting. The horses did not like the feel of this place.
For that matter, neither did Jon.
The dogs liked it least of all. Ghost had led the party here; the pack of hounds had been
useless. When Bass the kennelmaster had tried to get them to take the scent from the
severed hand, they had gone wild, yowling and barking, fighting to get away. Even now
they were snarling and whimpering by turns, pulling at their leashes while Chett cursed
them for curs.
It is only a wood, Jon told himself, and they’re only dead men. He had seen dead men
before . . .
Last night he had dreamt the Winterfell dream again. He was wandering the empty
castle, searching for his father, descending into the crypts. Only this time the dream had
gone further than before. In the dark he’d heard the scrape of stone on stone. When he
turned he saw that the vaults were opening, one after the other. As the dead kings came
stumbling from their cold black graves, Jon had woken in pitch-dark, his heart
hammering. Even when Ghost leapt up on the bed to nuzzle at his face, he could not
shake his deep sense of terror. He dared not go back to sleep. Instead he had climbed the
Wall and walked, restless, until he saw the light of the dawn off to the cast. It was only a
�dream. I am a brother of the Night’s Watch now, not a frightened boy.
Samwell Tarly huddled beneath the trees, half-hidden behind the horses. His round fat
face was the color of curdled milk. So far he had not lurched off to the woods to retch,
but he had not so much as glanced at the dead men either. “I can’t look,” he whispered
miserably.
“You have to look,” Jon told him, keeping his voice low so the others would not hear.
“Maester Aemon sent you to be his eyes, didn’t he? What good are eyes if they’re shut?”
“Yes, but . . . I’m such a coward, Jon.”
Jon put a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “We have a dozen rangers with us, and the dogs, even
Ghost. No one will hurt you, Sam. Go ahead and look. The first look is the hardest.”
Sam gave a tremulous nod, working up his courage with a visible effort. Slowly he
swiveled his head. His eyes widened, but Jon held his arm so he could not turn away.
“Ser Jaremy,” the Old Bear asked gruffly, “Ben Stark had six men with him when he rode
from the Wall. Where are the others?”
Ser Jaremy shook his head. “Would that I knew.”
Plainly Mormont was not pleased with that answer. “Two of our brothers butchered
almost within sight of the Wall, yet your rangers heard nothing, saw nothing. Is this
what the Night’s Watch has fallen to? Do we still sweep these woods?”
“Yes, my lord, but—”
“Do we still mount watches?”
“We do, but—”
“This man wears a hunting horn.” Mormont pointed at Othor. “Must I suppose that he
died without sounding it? Or have your rangers all gone deaf as well as blind?”
Ser Jaremy bristled, his face taut with anger. “No horn was blown, my lord, or my
rangers would have heard it. I do not have sufficient men to mount as many patrols as I
should like . . . and since Benjen was lost, we have stayed closer to the Wall than we were
wont to do before, by your own command.”
�The Old Bear grunted. “Yes. Well. Be that as it may.” He made an impatient gesture.
“Tell me how they died.”
Squatting beside the dead man he had named Jafer Flowers, Ser Jaremy grasped his
head by the scalp. The hair came out between his fingers, brittle as straw. The knight
cursed and shoved at the face with the heel of his hand. A great gash in the side of the
corpse’s neck opened like a mouth, crusted with dried blood. Only a few ropes of pale
tendon still attached the head to the neck. “This was done with an axe.”
“Aye,” muttered Dywen, the old forester. “Belike the axe that Othor carried, m’lord.”
Jon could feel his breakfast churning in his belly, but he pressed his lips together and
made himself look at the second body. Othor had been a big ugly man, and he made a
big ugly corpse. No axe was in evidence. Jon remembered Othor; he had been the one
bellowing the bawdy song as the rangers rode out. His singing days were done. His flesh
was blanched white as milk, everywhere but his hands. His hands were black like Jafer’s.
Blossoms of hard cracked blood decorated the mortal wounds that covered him like a
rash, breast and groin and throat. Yet his eyes were still open. They stared up at the sky,
blue as sapphires.
Ser Jaremy stood. “The wildlings have axes too.”
Mormont rounded on him. “So you believe this is Mance Rayder’s work? This close to
the Wall?”
“Who else, my lord?”
Jon could have told him. He knew, they all knew, yet no man of them would say the
words. The Others are only a story, a tale to make children shiver. If they ever lived at
all, they are gone eight thousand years. Even the thought made him feel foolish; he was
a man grown now, a black brother of the Night’s Watch, not the boy who’d once sat at
Old Nan’s feet with Bran and Robb and Arya.
Yet Lord Commander Mormont gave a snort. “If Ben Stark had come under wildling
attack a half day’s ride from Castle Black, he would have returned for more men, chased
the killers through all seven hells and brought me back their heads.”
“Unless he was slain as well,” Ser Jaremy insisted.
The words hurt, even now. It had been so long, it seemed folly to cling to the hope that
Ben Stark was still alive, but Jon Snow was nothing if not stubborn.
�“It has been close on half a year since Benjen left us, my lord,” Ser Jaremy went on. “The
forest is vast. The wildlings might have fallen on him anywhere. I’d wager these two were
the last survivors of his party, on their way back to us . . . but the enemy caught them
before they could reach the safety of the Wall. The corpses are still fresh, these men
cannot have been dead more than a day . . . .”
“No,” Samwell Tarly squeaked.
Jon was startled. Sam’s nervous, high-pitched voice was the last he would have expected
to hear. The fat boy was frightened of the officers, and Ser Jaremy was not known for his
patience.
“I did not ask for your views, boy,” Rykker said coldly.
“Let him speak, ser,” Jon blurted.
Mormont’s eyes flicked from Sam to Jon and back again. “If the lad has something to
say, I’ll hear him out. Come closer, boy. We can’t see you behind those horses.”
Sam edged past Jon and the garrons, sweating profusely. “My lord, it . . . it can’t be a day
or . . . look . . . the blood . . . ”
“Yes?” Mormont growled impatiently. “Blood, what of it?”
“He soils his smallclothes at the sight of it,” Chett shouted out, and the rangers laughed.
Sam mopped at the sweat on his brow. “You . . . you can see where Ghost . . . Jon’s
direwolf . . . you can see where he tore off that man’s hand, and yet . . . the stump hasn’t
bled, look . . . ” He waved a hand. “My father . . . L-lord Randyll, he, he made me watch
him dress animals sometimes, when . . . after . . . ” Sam shook his head from side to side,
his chins quivering. Now that he had looked at the bodies, he could not seem to look
away. “A fresh kill . . . the blood would still flow, my lords. Later . . . later it would be
clotted, like a . . . a jelly, thick and . . . and . . . ” He looked as though he was going to be
sick. “This man . . . look at the wrist, it’s all . . . crusty . . . dry . . . like . . . ”
Jon saw at once what Sam meant. He could see the torn veins in the dead man’s wrist,
iron worms in the pale flesh. His blood was a black dust. Yet Jaremy Rykker was
unconvinced. “If they’d been dead much longer than a day, they’d be ripe by now, boy.
They don’t even smell.”
Dywen, the gnarled old forester who liked to boast that he could smell snow coming on,
sidled closer to the corpses and took a whiff. “Well, they’re no pansy flowers,
�but . . . m’lord has the truth of it. There’s no corpse stink.”
“They . . . they aren’t rotting.” Sam pointed, his fat finger shaking only a little. “Look,
there’s . . . there’s no maggots or . . . or . . . worms or anything . . . they’ve been lying here
in the woods, but they . . . they haven’t been chewed or eaten by animals . . . only
Ghost . . . otherwise they’re . . . they’re . . . ”
“Untouched,” Jon said softly. “And Ghost is different. The dogs and the horses won’t go
near them.”
The rangers exchanged glances; they could see it was true, every man of them. Mormont
frowned, glancing from the corpses to the dogs. “Chett, bring the hounds closer.”
Chett tried, cursing, yanking on the leashes, giving one animal a lick of his boot. Most of
the dogs just whimpered and planted their feet. He tried dragging one. The bitch
resisted, growling and squirming as if to escape her collar. Finally she lunged at him.
Chett dropped the leash and stumbled backward. The dog leapt over him and bounded
off into the trees.
“This . . . this is all wrong,” Sam Tarly said earnestly. “The blood . . . there’s bloodstains
on their clothes, and . . . and their flesh, dry and hard, but . . . there’s none on the
ground, or . . . anywhere. With those . . . those . . . those . . . ” Sam made himself swallow,
took a deep breath. “With those wounds . . . terrible wounds . . . there should be blood all
over. Shouldn’t there?”
Dywen sucked at his wooden teeth. “Might be they didn’t die here. Might be someone
brought ’em and left ’em for us. A warning, as like.” The old forester peered down
suspiciously. “And might be I’m a fool, but I don’t know that Othor never had no blue
eyes afore.”
Ser Jaremy looked startled. “Neither did Flowers,” he blurted, turning to stare at the
dead man.
A silence fell over the wood. For a moment all they heard was Sam’s heavy breathing and
the wet sound of Dywen sucking on his teeth. Jon squatted beside Ghost.
“Burn them,” someone whispered. One of the rangers; Jon could not have said who.
“Yes, burn them,” a second voice urged.
The Old Bear gave a stubborn shake of his head. “Not yet. I want Maester Aemon to have
a look at them. We’ll bring them back to the Wall.”
�Some commands are more easily given than obeyed. They wrapped the dead men in
cloaks, but when Hake and Dywen tried to tie one onto a horse, the animal went mad,
screaming and rearing, lashing out with its hooves, even biting at Ketter when he ran to
help. The rangers had no better luck with the other garrons; not even the most placid
wanted any part of these burdens. In the end they were forced to hack off branches and
fashion crude slings to carry the corpses back on foot. It was well past midday by the
time they started back.
“I will have these woods searched,” Mormont commanded Ser Jaremy as they set out.
“Every tree, every rock, every bush, and every foot of muddy ground within ten leagues
of here. Use all the men you have, and if you do not have enough, borrow hunters and
foresters from the stewards. If Ben and the others are out here, dead or alive, I will have
them found. And if there is anyone else in these woods, I will know of it. You are to track
them and take them, alive if possible. Is that understood?”
“It is, my lord,” Ser Jaremy said. “It will be done.”
After that, Mormont rode in silence, brooding. Jon followed close behind him; as the
Lord Commander’s steward, that was his place. The day was grey, damp, overcast, the
sort of day that made you wish for rain. No wind stirred the wood; the air hung humid
and heavy, and Jon’s clothes clung to his skin. It was warm. Too warm. The Wall was
weeping copiously, had been weeping for days, and sometimes Jon even imagined it was
shrinking.
The old men called this weather spirit summer, and said it meant the season was giving
up its ghosts at last. After this the cold would come, they warned, and a long summer
always meant a long winter. This summer had lasted ten years. Jon had been a babe in
arms when it began.
Ghost ran with them for a time and then vanished among the trees. Without the
direwolf, Jon felt almost naked. He found himself glancing at every shadow with unease.
Unbidden, he thought back on the tales that Old Nan used to tell them, when he was a
boy at Winterfell. He could almost hear her voice again, and the click-click-click of her
needles. In that darkness, the Others came riding, she used to say, dropping her voice
lower and lower. Cold and dead they were, and they hated iron and fire and the touch
of the sun, and every living creature with hot blood in its veins. Holdfasts and cities
and kingdoms of men all fell before them, as they moved south on pale dead horses,
leading hosts of the slain. They fed their dead servants on the flesh of human
children . . .
When he caught his first glimpse of the Wall looming above the tops of an ancient
gnarled oak, Jon was vastly relieved. Mormont reined up suddenly and turned in his
�saddle. “Tarly,” he barked, “come here.”
Jon saw the start of fright on Sam’s face as he lumbered up on his mare; doubtless he
thought he was in trouble. “You’re fat but you’re not stupid, boy,” the Old Bear said
gruffly. “You did well back there. And you, Snow.”
Sam blushed a vivid crimson and tripped over his own tongue as he tried to stammer out
a courtesy. Jon had to smile.
When they emerged from under the trees, Mormont spurred his tough little garron to a
trot. Ghost came streaking out from the woods to meet them, licking his chops, his
muzzle red from prey. High above, the men on the Wall saw the column approaching.
Jon heard the deep, throaty call of the watchman’s great horn, calling out across the
miles; a single long blast that shuddered through the trees and echoed off the ice.
UUUUUUUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooo.
The sound faded slowly to silence. One blast meant rangers returning, and Jon thought,
I was a ranger for one day, at least. Whatever may come, they cannot take that away
from me.
Bowen Marsh was waiting at the first gate as they led their garrons through the icy
tunnel. The Lord Steward was red-faced and agitated. “My lord,” he blurted at Mormont
as he swung open the iron bars, “there’s been a bird, you must come at once.”
“What is it, man?” Mormont said gruffly.
Curiously, Marsh glanced at Jon before he answered. “Maester Aemon has the letter.
He’s waiting in your solar.”
“Very well. Jon, see to my horse, and tell Ser Jaremy to put the dead men in a storeroom
until the maester is ready for them.” Mormont strode away grumbling.
As they led their horses back to the stable, Jon was uncomfortably aware that people
were watching him. Ser Alliser Thorne was drilling his boys in the yard, but he broke off
to stare at Jon, a faint half smile on his lips. One-armed Donal Noye stood in the door of
the armory. “The gods be with you, Snow,” he called out.
Something’s wrong, Jon thought. Something’s very wrong.
The dead men were carried to one of the storerooms along the base of the Wall, a dark
cold cell chiseled from the ice and used to keep meat and grain and sometimes even
�beer. Jon saw that Mormont’s horse was fed and watered and groomed before he took
care of his own. Afterward he sought out his friends. Grenn and Toad were on watch, but
he found Pyp in the common hall. “What’s happened?” he asked.
Pyp lowered his voice. “The king’s dead.”
Jon was stunned. Robert Baratheon had looked old and fat when he visited Winterfell,
yet he’d seemed hale enough, and there’d been no talk of illness. “How can you know?”
“One of the guards overheard Clydas reading the letter to Maester Aemon.” Pyp leaned
close. “Jon, I’m sorry. He was your father’s friend, wasn’t he?”
“They were as close as brothers, once.” Jon wondered if Joffrey would keep his father as
the King’s Hand. It did not seem likely. That might mean Lord Eddard would return to
Winterfell, and his sisters as well. He might even be allowed to visit them, with Lord
Mormont’s permission. It would be good to see Arya’s grin again and to talk with his
father. I will ask him about my mother, he resolved. I am a man now, it is past time he
told me. Even if she was a whore, I don’t care, I want to know.
“I heard Hake say the dead men were your uncle’s,” Pyp said.
“Yes,” Jon replied. “Two of the six he took with him. They’d been dead a long time,
only . . . the bodies are queer.”
“Queer?” Pyp was all curiosity. “How queer?”
“Sam will tell you.” Jon did not want to talk of it. “I should see if the Old Bear has need
of me.”
He walked to the Lord Commander’s Tower alone, with a curious sense of apprehension.
The brothers on guard eyed him solemnly as he approached. “The Old Bear’s in his
solar,” one of them announced. “He was asking for you.”
Jon nodded. He should have come straight from the stable. He climbed the tower steps
briskly. He wants wine or a fire in his hearth, that’s all, he told himself.
When he entered the solar, Mormont’s raven screamed at him. “Corn!” the bird
shrieked. “Corn! Corn! Corn!”
“Don’t you believe it, I just fed him,” the Old Bear growled. He was seated by the
window, reading a letter. “Bring me a cup of wine, and pour one for yourself.”
�“For myself, my lord?”
Mormont lifted his eyes from the letter to stare at Jon. There was pity in that look; he
could taste it. “You heard me.”
Jon poured with exaggerated care, vaguely aware that he was drawing out the act. When
the cups were filled, he would have no choice but to face whatever was in that letter. Yet
all too soon, they were filled. “Sit, boy,” Mormont commanded him. “Drink.”
Jon remained standing. “It’s my father, isn’t it?”
The Old Bear tapped the letter with a finger. “Your father and the king,” he rumbled. “I
won’t lie to you, it’s grievous news. I never thought to see another king, not at my age,
with Robert half my years and strong as a bull.” He took a gulp of wine. “They say the
king loved to hunt. The things we love destroy us every time, lad. Remember that. My
son loved that young wife of his. Vain woman. If not for her, he would never have
thought to sell those poachers.”
Jon could scarcely follow what he was saying. “My lord, I don’t understand. What’s
happened to my father?”
“I told you to sit,” Mormont grumbled. “Sit,” the raven screamed. “And have a drink,
damn you. That’s a command, Snow.”
Jon sat, and took a sip of wine.
“Lord Eddard has been imprisoned. He is charged with treason. It is said he plotted with
Robert’s brothers to deny the throne to Prince Joffrey.”
“No,” Jon said at once. “That couldn’t be. My father would never betray the king!”
“Be that as it may,” said Mormont. “It is not for me to say. Nor for you.”
“But it’s a lie,” Jon insisted. How could they think his father was a traitor, had they all
gone mad? Lord Eddard Stark would never dishonor himself . . . would he?
He fathered a bastard, a small voice whispered inside him. Where was the honor in
that? And your mother, what of her? He will not even speak her name.
“My lord, what will happen to him? Will they kill him?”
�“As to that, I cannot say, lad. I mean to send a letter. I knew some of the king’s
councillors in my youth. Old Pycelle, Lord Stannis, Ser Barristan . . . Whatever your
father has done, or hasn’t done, he is a great lord. He must be allowed to take the black
and join us here. Gods knows, we need men of Lord Eddard’s ability.”
Jon knew that other men accused of treason had been allowed to redeem their honor on
the Wall in days past. Why not Lord Eddard? His father here. That was a strange
thought, and strangely uncomfortable. It would be a monstrous injustice to strip him of
Winterfell and force him to take the black, and yet if it meant his life . . .
And would Joffrey allow it? He remembered the prince at Winterfell, the way he’d
mocked Robb and Ser Rodrik in the yard. Jon himself he had scarcely even noticed;
bastards were beneath even his contempt. “My lord, will the king listen to you?”
The Old Bear shrugged. “A boy king . . . I imagine he’ll listen to his mother. A pity the
dwarf isn’t with them. He’s the lad’s uncle, and he saw our need when he visited us. It
was a bad thing, your lady mother taking him captive—”
“Lady Stark is not my mother,” Jon reminded him sharply. Tyrion Lannister had been a
friend to him. If Lord Eddard was killed, she would be as much to blame as the queen.
“My lord, what of my sisters? Arya and Sansa, they were with my father, do you know—”
“Pycelle makes no mention of them, but doubtless they’ll be treated gently. I will ask
about them when I write.” Mormont shook his head. “This could not have happened at a
worse time. If ever the realm needed a strong king . . . there are dark days and cold
nights ahead, I feel it in my bones . . . ” He gave Jon a long shrewd look. “I hope you are
not thinking of doing anything stupid, boy.”
He’s my father, Jon wanted to say, but he knew that Mormont would not want to hear it.
His throat was dry. He made himself take another sip of wine.
“Your duty is here now,” the Lord Commander reminded him. “Your old life ended when
you took the black.” His bird made a raucous echo. “Black.” Mormont took no notice.
“Whatever they do in King’s Landing is none of our concern.” When Jon did not answer,
the old man finished his wine and said, “You’re free to go. I’ll have no further need of
you today. On the morrow you can help me write that letter.”
Jon did not remember standing or leaving the solar. The next he knew, he was
descending the tower steps, thinking, This is my father, my sisters, how can it be none
of my concern?
Outside, one of the guards looked at him and said, “Be strong, boy. The gods are cruel.”
�They know, Jon realized. “My father is no traitor,” he said hoarsely. Even the words
stuck in his throat, as if to choke him. The wind was rising, and it seemed colder in the
yard than it had when he’d gone in. Spirit summer was drawing to an end.
The rest of the afternoon passed as if in a dream. Jon could not have said where he
walked, what he did, who he spoke with. Ghost was with him, he knew that much. The
silent presence of the direwolf gave him comfort. The girls do not even have that much,
he thought. Their wolves might have kept them safe, but Lady is dead and Nymeria’s
lost, they’re all alone.
A north wind had begun to blow by the time the sun went down. Jon could hear it
skirling against the Wall and over the icy battlements as he went to the common hall for
the evening meal. Hobb had cooked up a venison stew, thick with barley, onions, and
carrots. When he spooned an extra portion onto Jon’s plate and gave him the crusty heel
of the bread, he knew what it meant. He knows. He looked around the hall, saw heads
turn quickly, eyes politely averted. They all know.
His friends rallied to him. “We asked the septon to light a candle for your father,”
Matthar told him. “It’s a lie, we all know it’s a lie, even Grenn knows it’s a lie,” Pyp
chimed in. Grenn nodded, and Sam clasped Jon’s hand, “You’re my brother now, so he’s
my father too,” the fat boy said. “If you want to go out to the weirwoods and pray to the
old gods, I’ll go with you.”
The weirwoods were beyond the Wall, yet he knew Sam meant what he said. They are
my brothers, he thought. As much as Robb and Bran and Rickon . . .
And then he heard the laughter, sharp and cruel as a whip, and the voice of Ser Alliser
Thorne. “Not only a bastard, but a traitor’s bastard,” he was telling the men around him.
In the blink of an eye, Jon had vaulted onto the table, dagger in his hand. Pyp made a
grab for him, but he wrenched his leg away, and then he was sprinting down the table
and kicking the bowl from Ser Alliser’s hand. Stew went flying everywhere, spattering
the brothers. Thorne recoiled. People were shouting, but Jon Snow did not hear them.
He lunged at Ser Alliser’s face with the dagger, slashing at those cold onyx eyes, but Sam
threw himself between them and before Jon could get around him, Pyp was on his back
clinging like a monkey, and Grenn was grabbing his arm while Toad wrenched the knife
from his fingers.
Later, much later, after they had marched him back to his sleeping cell, Mormont came
down to see him, raven on his shoulder. “I told you not to do anything stupid, boy,” the
Old Bear said. “Boy,” the bird chorused. Mormont shook his head, disgusted. “And to
�think I had high hopes for you.”
They took his knife and his sword and told him he was not to leave his cell until the high
officers met to decide what was to be done with him. And then they placed a guard
outside his door to make certain he obeyed. His friends were not allowed to see him, but
the Old Bear did relent and permit him Ghost, so he was not utterly alone.
“My father is no traitor,” he told the direwolf when the rest had gone. Ghost looked at
him in silence. Jon slumped against the wall, hands around his knees, and stared at the
candle on the table beside his narrow bed. The flame flickered and swayed, the shadows
moved around him, the room seemed to grow darker and colder. I will not sleep tonight,
Jon thought.
Yet he must have dozed. When he woke, his legs were stiff and cramped and the candle
had long since burned out. Ghost stood on his hind legs, scrabbling at the door. Jon was
startled to see how tall he’d grown. “Ghost, what is it?” he called softly. The direwolf
turned his head and looked down at him, baring his fangs in a silent snarl. Has he gone
mad? Jon wondered. “It’s me, Ghost,” he murmured, trying not to sound afraid. Yet he
was trembling, violently. When had it gotten so cold?
Ghost backed away from the door. There were deep gouges where he’d raked the wood.
Jon watched him with mounting disquiet. “There’s someone out there, isn’t there?” he
whispered. Crouching, the direwolf crept backward, white fur rising on the back of his
neck. The guard, he thought, they left a man to guard my door, Ghost smells him
through the door, that’s all it is.
Slowly, Jon pushed himself to his feet. He was shivering uncontrollably, wishing he still
had a sword. Three quick steps brought him to the door. He grabbed the handle and
pulled it inward. The creak of the hinges almost made him jump.
His guard was sprawled bonelessly across the narrow steps, looking up at him. Looking
up at him, even though he was lying on his stomach. His head had been twisted
completely around.
It can’t be, Jon told himself. This is the Lord Commander’s Tower, it’s guarded day and
night, this couldn’t happen, it’s a dream, I’m having a nightmare.
Ghost slid past him, out the door. The wolf started up the steps, stopped, looked back at
Jon. That was when he heard it; the soft scrape of a boot on stone, the sound of a latch
turning. The sounds came from above. From the Lord Commander’s chambers.
A nightmare this might be, yet it was no dream.
�The guard’s sword was in its sheath. Jon knelt and worked it free. The heft of steel in his
fist made him bolder. He moved up the steps, Ghost padding silently before him.
Shadows lurked in every turn of the stair. Jon crept up warily, probing any suspicious
darkness with the point of his sword.
Suddenly he heard the shriek of Mormont’s raven. “Corn,” the bird was screaming.
“Corn, corn, corn, corn, corn, corn.” Ghost bounded ahead, and Jon came scrambling
after. The door to Mormont’s solar was wide open. The direwolf plunged through. Jon
stopped in the doorway, blade in hand, giving his eyes a moment to adjust. Heavy drapes
had been pulled across the windows, and the darkness was black as ink. “Who’s there?”
he called out.
Then he saw it, a shadow in the shadows, sliding toward the inner door that led to
Mormont’s sleeping cell, a man-shape all in black, cloaked and hooded . . . but beneath
the hood, its eyes shone with an icy blue radiance . . .
Ghost leapt. Man and wolf went down together with neither scream nor snarl, rolling,
smashing into a chair, knocking over a table laden with papers. Mormont’s raven was
flapping overhead, screaming, “Corn, corn, corn, corn.” Jon felt as blind as Maester
Aemon. Keeping the wall to his back, he slid toward the window and ripped down the
curtain. Moonlight flooded the solar. He glimpsed black hands buried in white fur,
swollen dark fingers tightening around his direwolf’s throat. Ghost was twisting and
snapping, legs flailing in the air, but he could not break free.
Jon had no time to be afraid. He threw himself forward, shouting, bringing down the
longsword with all his weight behind it. Steel sheared through sleeve and skin and bone,
yet the sound was wrong somehow. The smell that engulfed him was so queer and cold
he almost gagged. He saw arm and hand on the floor, black fingers wriggling in a pool of
moonlight. Ghost wrenched free of the other hand and crept away, red tongue lolling
from his mouth.
The hooded man lifted his pale moon face, and Jon slashed at it without hesitation. The
sword laid the intruder open to the bone, taking off half his nose and opening a gash
cheek to cheek under those eyes, eyes, eyes like blue stars burning. Jon knew that face.
Othor, he thought, reeling back. Gods, he’s dead, he’s dead, I saw him dead.
He felt something scrabble at his ankle. Black fingers clawed at his calf. The arm was
crawling up his leg, ripping at wool and flesh. Shouting with revulsion, Jon pried the
fingers off his leg with the point of his sword and flipped the thing away. It lay writhing,
fingers opening and closing.
�The corpse lurched forward. There was no blood. One-armed, face cut near in half, it
seemed to feel nothing. Jon held the longsword before him. “Stay away!” he
commanded, his voice gone shrill. “Corn,” screamed the raven, “corn, corn.” The severed
arm was wriggling out of its torn sleeve, a pale snake with a black five-fingered head.
Ghost pounced and got it between his teeth. Finger bones crunched. Jon hacked at the
corpse’s neck, felt the steel bite deep and hard.
Dead Othor slammed into him, knocking him off his feet.
Jon’s breath went out of him as the fallen table caught him between his shoulder blades.
The sword, where was the sword? He’d lost the damned sword! When he opened his
mouth to scream, the wight jammed its black corpse fingers into Jon’s mouth. Gagging,
he tried to shove it off, but the dead man was too heavy. Its hand forced itself farther
down his throat, icy cold, choking him. Its face was against his own, filling the world.
Frost covered its eyes, sparkling blue. Jon raked cold flesh with his nails and kicked at
the thing’s legs. He tried to bite, tried to punch, tried to breathe . . .
And suddenly the corpse’s weight was gone, its fingers ripped from his throat. It was all
Jon could do to roll over, retching and shaking.
Ghost had it again. He watched as the direwolf buried his teeth in the wight’s gut and
began to rip and tear. He watched, only half conscious, for a long moment before he
finally remembered to look for his sword . . .
. . . and saw Lord Mormont, naked and groggy from sleep, standing in the doorway with
an oil lamp in hand. Gnawed and fingerless, the arm thrashed on the floor, wriggling
toward him.
Jon tried to shout, but his voice was gone. Staggering to his feet, he kicked the arm away
and snatched the lamp from the Old Bear’s fingers. The flame flickered and almost died.
“Burn!” the raven cawed. “Burn, burn, burn!”
Spinning, Jon saw the drapes he’d ripped from the window. He flung the lamp into the
puddled cloth with both hands. Metal crunched, glass shattered, oil spewed, and the
hangings went up in a great whoosh of flame. The heat of it on his face was sweeter than
any kiss Jon had ever known. “Ghost!” he shouted.
The direwolf wrenched free and came to him as the wight struggled to rise, dark snakes
spilling from the great wound in its belly. Jon plunged his hand into the flames, grabbed
a fistful of the burning drapes, and whipped them at the dead man. Let it burn, he
prayed as the cloth smothered the corpse, gods, please, please, let it burn.
�previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
BRAN
The Karstarks came in on a cold windy morning, bringing three hundred horsemen and
near two thousand foot from their castle at Karhold. The steel points of their pikes
winked in the pale sunlight as the column approached. A man went before them,
pounding out a slow, deep-throated marching rhythm on a drum that was bigger than he
was, boom, boom, boom.
Bran watched them come from a guard turret atop the outer wall, peering through
Maester Luwin’s bronze far-eye while perched on Hodor’s shoulders. Lord Rickard
himself led them, his sons Harrion and Eddard and Torrhen riding beside him beneath
night-black banners emblazoned with the white sunburst of their House. Old Nan said
they had Stark blood in them, going back hundreds of years, but they did not look like
Starks to Bran. They were big men, and fierce, faces covered with thick beards, hair worn
loose past the shoulders. Their cloaks were made of skins, the pelts of bear and seal and
wolf.
They were the last, he knew. The other lords were already here, with their hosts. Bran
yearned to ride out among them, to see the winter houses full to bursting, the jostling
crowds in the market square every morning, the streets rutted and torn by wheel and
hoof. But Robb had forbidden him to leave the castle. “We have no men to spare to
guard you,” his brother had explained.
“I’ll take Summer,” Bran argued.
“Don’t act the boy with me, Bran,” Robb said. “You know better than that. Only two days
ago one of Lord Bolton’s men knifed one of Lord Cerwyn’s at the Smoking Log. Our lady
mother would skin me for a pelt if I let you put yourself at risk.” He was using the voice
of Robb the Lord when he said it; Bran knew that meant there was no appeal.
It was because of what had happened in the wolfswood, he knew. The memory still gave
him bad dreams. He had been as helpless as a baby, no more able to defend himself than
Rickon would have been. Less, even . . . Rickon would have kicked them, at the least. It
shamed him. He was only a few years younger than Robb; if his brother was almost a
man grown, so was he. He should have been able to protect himself.
A year ago, before, he would have visited the town even if it meant climbing over the
�walls by himself. In those days he could run down stairs, get on and off his pony by
himself, and wield a wooden sword good enough to knock Prince Tommen in the dirt.
Now he could only watch, peering out through Maester Luwin’s lens tube. The maester
had taught him all the banners: the mailed fist of the Glovers, silver on scarlet; Lady
Mormont’s black bear; the hideous flayed man that went before Roose Bolton of the
Dreadfort; a bull moose for the Hornwoods; a battle-axe for the Cerwyns; three sentinel
trees for the Tallharts; and the fearsome sigil of House Umber, a roaring giant in
shattered chains.
And soon enough he learned the faces too, when the lords and their sons and knights
retainer came to Winterfell to feast. Even the Great Hall was not large enough to seat all
of them at once, so Robb hosted each of the principal bannermen in turn. Bran was
always given the place of honor at his brother’s right hand. Some of the lords bannermen
gave him queer hard stares as he sat there, as if they wondered by what right a green boy
should be placed above them, and him a cripple too.
“How many is it now?” Bran asked Maester Luwin as Lord Karstark and his sons rode
through the gates in the outer wall.
“Twelve thousand men, or near enough as makes no matter.”
“How many knights?”
“Few enough,” the maester said with a touch of impatience. “To be a knight, you must
stand your vigil in a sept, and be anointed with the seven oils to consecrate your vows. In
the north, only a few of the great houses worship the Seven. The rest honor the old gods,
and name no knights . . . but those lords and their sons and sworn swords are no less
fierce or loyal or honorable. A man’s worth is not marked by a ser before his name. As I
have told you a hundred times before.”
“Still,” said Bran, “how many knights?”
Maester Luwin sighed. “Three hundred, perhaps four . . . among three thousand
armored lances who are not knights.”
“Lord Karstark is the last,” Bran said thoughtfully. “Robb will feast him tonight.”
“No doubt he will.”
“How long before . . . before they go?”
“He must march soon, or not at all,” Maester Luwin said. “The winter town is full to
�bursting, and this army of his will eat the countryside clean if it camps here much
longer. Others are waiting to join him all along the kingsroad, barrow knights and
crannogmen and the Lords Manderly and Flint. The fighting has begun in the riverlands,
and your brother has many leagues to go.”
“I know.” Bran felt as miserable as he sounded. He handed the bronze tube back to the
maester, and noticed how thin Luwin’s hair had grown on top. He could see the pink of
scalp showing through. It felt queer to look down on him this way, when he’d spent his
whole life looking up at him, but when you sat on Hodor’s back you looked down on
everyone. “I don’t want to watch anymore. Hodor, take me back to the keep.”
“Hodor,” said Hodor.
Maester Luwin tucked the tube up his sleeve. “Bran, your lord brother will not have time
to see you now. He must greet Lord Karstark and his sons and make them welcome.”
“I won’t trouble Robb. I want to visit the godswood.” He put his hand on Hodor’s
shoulder. “Hodor.”
A series of chisel-cut handholds made a ladder in the granite of the tower’s inner wall.
Hodor hummed tunelessly as he went down hand under hand, Bran bouncing against
his back in the wicker seat that Maester Luwin had fashioned for him. Luwin had gotten
the idea from the baskets the women used to carry firewood on their backs; after that it
had been a simple matter of cutting legholes and attaching some new straps to spread
Bran’s weight more evenly. It was not as good as riding Dancer, but there were places
Dancer could not go, and this did not shame Bran the way it did when Hodor carried
him in his arms like a baby. Hodor seemed to like it too, though with Hodor it was hard
to tell. The only tricky part was doors. Sometimes Hodor forgot that he had Bran on his
back, and that could be painful when he went through a door.
For near a fortnight there had been so many comings and goings that Robb ordered both
portcullises kept up and the drawbridge down between them, even in the dead of night.
A long column of armored lancers was crossing the moat between the walls when Bran
emerged from the tower; Karstark men, following their lords into the castle. They wore
black iron halfhelms and black woolen cloaks patterned with the white sunburst. Hodor
trotted along beside them, smiling to himself, his boots thudding against the wood of the
drawbridge. The riders gave them queer looks as they went by, and once Bran heard
someone guffaw. He refused to let it trouble him. “Men will look at you,” Maester Luwin
had warned him the first time they had strapped the wicker basket around Hodor’s
chest. “They will look, and they will talk, and some will mock you.” Let them mock, Bran
thought. No one mocked him in his bedchamber, but he would not live his life in bed.
�As they passed beneath the gatehouse portcullis, Bran put two fingers into his mouth
and whistled. Summer came loping across the yard. Suddenly the Karstark lancers were
fighting for control, as their horses rolled their eyes and whickered in dismay. One
stallion reared, screaming, his rider cursing and hanging on desperately. The scent of the
direwolves sent horses into a frenzy of fear if they were not accustomed to it, but they’d
quiet soon enough once Summer was gone. “The godswood,” Bran reminded Hodor.
Even Winterfell itself was crowded. The yard rang to the sound of sword and axe, the
rumble of wagons, and the barking of dogs. The armory doors were open, and Bran
glimpsed Mikken at his forge, his hammer ringing as sweat dripped off his bare chest.
Bran had never seen as many strangers in all his years, not even when King Robert had
come to visit Father.
He tried not to flinch as Hodor ducked through a low door. They walked down a long
dim hallway, Summer padding easily beside them. The wolf glanced up from time to
time, eyes smoldering like liquid gold. Bran would have liked to touch him, but he was
riding too high for his hand to reach.
The godswood was an island of peace in the sea of chaos that Winterfell had become.
Hodor made his way through the dense stands of oak and ironwood and sentinels, to the
still pool beside the heart tree. He stopped under the gnarled limbs of the weirwood,
humming. Bran reached up over his head and pulled himself out of his seat, drawing the
dead weight of his legs up through the holes in the wicker basket. He hung for a
moment, dangling, the dark red leaves brushing against his face, until Hodor lifted him
and lowered him to the smooth stone beside the water. “I want to be by myself for a
while,” he said. “You go soak. Go to the pools.”
“Hodor.” Hodor stomped through the trees and vanished. Across the godswood, beneath
the windows of the Guest House, an underground hot spring fed three small ponds.
Steam rose from the water day and night, and the wall that loomed above was thick with
moss. Hodor hated cold water, and would fight like a treed wildcat when threatened with
soap, but he would happily immerse himself in the hottest pool and sit for hours, giving
a loud burp to echo the spring whenever a bubble rose from the murky green depths to
break upon the surface.
Summer lapped at the water and settled down at Bran’s side. He rubbed the wolf under
the jaw, and for a moment boy and beast both felt at peace. Bran had always liked the
godswood, even before, but of late he found himself drawn to it more and more. Even
the heart tree no longer scared him the way it used to. The deep red eyes carved into the
pale trunk still watched him, yet somehow he took comfort from that now. The gods
were looking over him, he told himself; the old gods, gods of the Starks and the First
Men and the children of the forest, his father’s gods. He felt safe in their sight, and the
�deep silence of the trees helped him think. Bran had been thinking a lot since his fall;
thinking, and dreaming, and talking with the gods.
“Please make it so Robb won’t go away,” he prayed softly. He moved his hand through
the cold water, sending ripples across the pool. “Please make him stay. Or if he has to go,
bring him home safe, with Mother and Father and the girls. And make it . . . make it so
Rickon understands.”
His baby brother had been wild as a winter storm since he learned Robb was riding off to
war, weeping and angry by turns. He’d refused to eat, cried and screamed for most of a
night, even punched Old Nan when she tried to sing him to sleep, and the next day he’d
vanished. Robb had set half the castle searching for him, and when at last they’d found
him down in the crypts, Rickon had slashed at them with a rusted iron sword he’d
snatched from a dead king’s hand, and Shaggydog had come slavering out of the
darkness like a green-eyed demon. The wolf was near as wild as Rickon; he’d bitten Gage
on the arm and torn a chunk of flesh from Mikken’s thigh. It had taken Robb himself
and Grey Wind to bring him to bay. Farlen had the black wolf chained up in the kennels
now, and Rickon cried all the more for being without him.
Maester Luwin counseled Robb to remain at Winterfell, and Bran pleaded with him too,
for his own sake as much as Rickon’s, but his brother only shook his head stubbornly
and said, “I don’t want to go. I have to.”
It was only half a lie. Someone had to go, to hold the Neck and help the Tullys against
the Lannisters, Bran could understand that, but it did not have to be Robb. His brother
might have given the command to Hal Mollen or Theon Greyjoy, or to one of his lords
bannermen. Maester Luwin urged him to do just that, but Robb would not hear of it.
“My lord father would never have sent men off to die while he huddled like a craven
behind the walls of Winterfell,” he said, all Robb the Lord.
Robb seemed half a stranger to Bran now, transformed, a lord in truth, though he had
not yet seen his sixteenth name day. Even their father’s bannermen seemed to sense it.
Many tried to test him, each in his own way. Roose Bolton and Robett Glover both
demanded the honor of battle command, the first brusquely, the second with a smile and
a jest. Stout, grey-haired Maege Mormont, dressed in mail like a man, told Robb bluntly
that he was young enough to be her grandson, and had no business giving her
commands . . . but as it happened, she had a granddaughter she would be willing to
have him marry. Soft-spoken Lord Cerwyn had actually brought his daughter with him,
a plump, homely maid of thirty years who sat at her father’s left hand and never lifted
her eyes from her plate. Jovial Lord Hornwood had no daughters, but he did bring gifts,
a horse one day, a haunch of venison the next, a silver-chased hunting horn the day
after, and he asked nothing in return . . . nothing but a certain holdfast taken from his
�grandfather, and hunting rights north of a certain ridge, and leave to dam the White
Knife, if it please the lord.
Robb answered each of them with cool courtesy, much as Father might have, and
somehow he bent them to his will.
And when Lord Umber, who was called the Greatjon by his men and stood as tall as
Hodor and twice as wide, threatened to take his forces home if he was placed behind the
Hornwoods or the Cerwyns in the order of march, Robb told him he was welcome to do
so. “And when we are done with the Lannisters,” he promised, scratching Grey Wind
behind the ear, “we will march back north, root you out of your keep, and hang you for
an oathbreaker.” Cursing, the Greatjon flung a flagon of ale into the fire and bellowed
that Robb was so green he must piss grass. When Hallis Mollen moved to restrain him,
he knocked him to the floor, kicked over a table, and unsheathed the biggest, ugliest
greatsword that Bran had ever seen. All along the benches, his sons and brothers and
sworn swords leapt to their feet, grabbing for their steel.
Yet Robb only said a quiet word, and in a snarl and the blink of an eye Lord Umber was
on his back, his sword spinning on the floor three feet away and his hand dripping blood
where Grey Wind had bitten off two fingers. “My lord father taught me that it was death
to bare steel against your liege lord,” Robb said, “but doubtless you only meant to cut my
meat.” Bran’s bowels went to water as the Greatjon struggled to rise, sucking at the red
stumps of fingers . . . but then, astonishingly, the huge man laughed. “Your meat,” he
roared, “is bloody tough.”
And somehow after that the Greatjon became Robb’s right hand, his staunchest
champion, loudly telling all and sundry that the boy lord was a Stark after all, and they’d
damn well better bend their knees if they didn’t fancy having them chewed off.
Yet that very night, his brother came to Bran’s bedchamber pale and shaken, after the
fires had burned low in the Great Hall. “I thought he was going to kill me,” Robb
confessed. “Did you see the way he threw down Hal, like he was no bigger than Rickon?
Gods, I was so scared. And the Greatjon’s not the worst of them, only the loudest. Lord
Roose never says a word, he only looks at me, and all I can think of is that room they
have in the Dreadfort, where the Boltons hang the skins of their enemies.”
“That’s just one of Old Nan’s stories,” Bran said. A note of doubt crept into his voice.
“Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” He gave a weary shake of his head. “Lord Cerwyn means to take his
daughter south with us. To cook for him, he says. Theon is certain I’ll find the girl in my
bedroll one night. I wish . . . I wish Father was here . . . ”
�That was the one thing they could agree on, Bran and Rickon and Robb the Lord; they all
wished Father was here. But Lord Eddard was a thousand leagues away, a captive in
some dungeon, a hunted fugitive running for his life, or even dead. No one seemed to
know for certain; every traveler told a different tale, each more terrifying than the last.
The heads of Father’s guardsmen were rotting on the walls of the Red Keep, impaled on
spikes. King Robert was dead at Father’s hands. The Baratheons had laid siege to King’s
Landing. Lord Eddard had fled south with the king’s wicked brother Renly. Arya and
Sansa had been murdered by the Hound. Mother had killed Tyrion the Imp and hung his
body from the walls of Riverrun. Lord Tywin Lannister was marching on the Eyrie,
burning and slaughtering as he went. One wine-sodden taleteller even claimed that
Rhaegar Targaryen had returned from the dead and was marshaling a vast host of
ancient heroes on Dragonstone to reclaim his father’s throne.
When the raven came, bearing a letter marked with Father’s own seal and written in
Sansa’s hand, the cruel truth seemed no less incredible. Bran would never forget the look
on Robb’s face as he stared at their sister’s words. “She says Father conspired at treason
with the king’s brothers,” he read. “King Robert is dead, and Mother and I are
summoned to the Red Keep to swear fealty to Joffrey. She says we must be loyal, and
when she marries Joffrey she will plead with him to spare our lord father’s life.” His
fingers closed into a fist, crushing Sansa’s letter between them. “And she says nothing of
Arya, nothing, not so much as a word. Damn her! What’s wrong with the girl?”
Bran felt all cold inside. “She lost her wolf,” he said, weakly, remembering the day when
four of his father’s guardsmen had returned from the south with Lady’s bones. Summer
and Grey Wind and Shaggydog had begun to howl before they crossed the drawbridge, in
voices drawn and desolate. Beneath the shadow of the First Keep was an ancient
lichyard, its headstones spotted with pale lichen, where the old Kings of Winter had laid
their faithful servants. It was there they buried Lady, while her brothers stalked between
the graves like restless shadows. She had gone south, and only her bones had returned.
Their grandfather, old Lord Rickard, had gone as well, with his son Brandon who was
Father’s brother, and two hundred of his best men. None had ever returned. And Father
had gone south, with Arya and Sansa, and Jory and Hullen and Fat Tom and the rest,
and later Mother and Ser Rodrik had gone, and they hadn’t come back either. And now
Robb meant to go. Not to King’s Landing and not to swear fealty, but to Riverrun, with a
sword in his hand. And if their lord father were truly a prisoner, that could mean his
death for a certainty. It frightened Bran more than he could say.
“If Robb has to go, watch over him,” Bran entreated the old gods, as they watched him
with the heart tree’s red eyes, “and watch over his men, Hal and Quent and the rest, and
Lord Umber and Lady Mormont and the other lords. And Theon too, I suppose. Watch
them and keep them safe, if it please you, gods. Help them defeat the Lannisters and
�save Father and bring them home.”
A faint wind sighed through the godswood and the red leaves stirred and whispered.
Summer bared his teeth. “You hear them, boy?” a voice asked.
Bran lifted his head. Osha stood across the pool, beneath an ancient oak, her face
shadowed by leaves. Even in irons, the wildling moved quiet as a cat. Summer circled the
pool, sniffed at her. The tall woman flinched.
“Summer, to me,” Bran called. The direwolf took one final sniff, spun, and bounded
back. Bran wrapped his arms around him. “What are you doing here?” He had not seen
Osha since they’d taken her captive in the wolfswood, though he knew she’d been set to
working in the kitchens.
“They are my gods too,” Osha said. “Beyond the Wall, they are the only gods.” Her hair
was growing out, brown and shaggy. It made her look more womanly, that and the
simple dress of brown roughspun they’d given her when they took her mail and leather.
“Gage lets me have my prayers from time to time, when I feel the need, and I let him do
as he likes under my skirt, when he feels the need. It’s nothing to me. I like the smell of
flour on his hands, and he’s gentler than Stiv.” She gave an awkward bow. “I’ll leave you.
There’s pots that want scouring.”
“No, stay,” Bran commanded her. “Tell me what you meant, about hearing the gods.”
Osha studied him. “You asked them and they’re answering. Open your ears, listen, you’ll
hear.”
Bran listened. “It’s only the wind,” he said after a moment, uncertain. “The leaves are
rustling.”
“Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?” She seated herself across the pool
from him, clinking faintly as she moved. Mikken had fixed iron manacles to her ankles,
with a heavy chain between them; she could walk, so long as she kept her strides small,
but there was no way for her to run, or climb, or mount a horse. “They see you, boy. They
hear you talking. That rustling, that’s them talking back.”
“What are they saying?”
“They’re sad. Your lord brother will get no help from them, not where he’s going. The old
gods have no power in the south. The weirwoods there were all cut down, thousands of
years ago. How can they watch your brother when they have no eyes?”
�Bran had not thought of that. It frightened him. If even the gods could not help his
brother, what hope was there? Maybe Osha wasn’t hearing them right. He cocked his
head and tried to listen again. He thought he could hear the sadness now, but nothing
more than that.
The rustling grew louder. Bran heard muffled footfalls and a low humming, and Hodor
came blundering out of the trees, naked and smiling. “Hodor!”
“He must have heard our voices,” Bran said. “Hodor, you forgot your clothes.”
“Hodor,” Hodor agreed. He was dripping wet from the neck down, steaming in the chill
air. His body was covered with brown hair, thick as a pelt. Between his legs, his
manhood swung long and heavy.
Osha eyed him with a sour smile. “Now there’s a big man,” she said. “He has giant’s
blood in him, or I’m the queen.”
“Maester Luwin says there are no more giants. He says they’re all dead, like the children
of the forest. All that’s left of them are old bones in the earth that men turn up with
plows from time to time.”
“Let Maester Luwin ride beyond the Wall,” Osha said. “He’ll find giants then, or they’ll
find him. My brother killed one. Ten foot tall she was, and stunted at that. They’ve been
known to grow big as twelve and thirteen feet. Fierce things they are too, all hair and
teeth, and the wives have beards like their husbands, so there’s no telling them apart.
The women take human men for lovers, and it’s from them the half bloods come. It goes
harder on the women they catch. The men are so big they’ll rip a maid apart before they
get her with child.” She grinned at him. “But you don’t know what I mean, do you, boy?”
“Yes I do,” Bran insisted. He understood about mating; he had seen dogs in the yard,
and watched a stallion mount a mare. But talking about it made him uncomfortable. He
looked at Hodor. “Go back and bring your clothes, Hodor,” he said. “Go dress.”
“Hodor.” He walked back the way he had come, ducking under a low-hanging tree limb.
He was awfully big, Bran thought as he watched him go. “Are there truly giants beyond
the Wall?” he asked Osha, uncertainly.
“Giants and worse than giants, Lordling. I tried to tell your brother when he asked his
questions, him and your maester and that smiley boy Greyjoy. The cold winds are rising,
and men go out from their fires and never come back . . . or if they do, they’re not men
no more, but only wights, with blue eyes and cold black hands. Why do you think I run
�south with Stiv and Hali and the rest of them fools? Mance thinks he’ll fight, the brave
sweet stubborn man, like the white walkers were no more than rangers, but what does
he know? He can call himself King-beyond-the-Wall all he likes, but he’s still just
another old black crow who flew down from the Shadow Tower. He’s never tasted
winter. I was born up there, child, like my mother and her mother before her and her
mother before her, born of the Free Folk. We remember.” Osha stood, her chains rattling
together. “I tried to tell your lordling brother. Only yesterday, when I saw him in the
yard. ‘M’lord Stark,’ I called to him, respectful as you please, but he looked through me,
and that sweaty oaf Greatjon Umber shoves me out of the path. So be it. I’ll wear my
irons and hold my tongue. A man who won’t listen can’t hear.”
“Tell me. Robb will listen to me, I know he will.”
“Will he now? We’ll see. You tell him this, m’lord. You tell him he’s bound on marching
the wrong way. It’s north he should be taking his swords. North, not south. You hear
me?”
Bran nodded. “I’ll tell him.”
But that night, when they feasted in the Great Hall, Robb was not with them. He took his
meal in the solar instead, with Lord Rickard and the Greatjon and the other lords
bannermen, to make the final plans for the long march to come. It was left to Bran to fill
his place at the head of the table, and act the host to Lord Karstark’s sons and honored
friends. They were already at their places when Hodor carried Bran into the hall on his
back, and knelt beside the high seat. Two of the serving men helped lift him from his
basket. Bran could feel the eyes of every stranger in the hall. It had grown quiet. “My
lords,” Hallis Mollen announced, “Brandon Stark, of Winterfell.”
“I welcome you to our fires,” Bran said stiffly, “and offer you meat and mead in honor of
our friendship.”
Harrion Karstark, the oldest of Lord Rickard’s sons, bowed, and his brothers after him,
yet as they settled back in their places he heard the younger two talking in low voices,
over the clatter of wine cups. “ . . . sooner die than live like that,” muttered one, his
father’s namesake Eddard, and his brother Torrhen said likely the boy was broken inside
as well as out, too craven to take his own life.
Broken, Bran thought bitterly as he clutched his knife. Is that what he was now? Bran
the Broken? “I don’t want to be broken,” he whispered fiercely to Maester Luwin, who’d
been seated to his right. “I want to be a knight.”
“There are some who call my order the knights of the mind,” Luwin replied. “You are a
�surpassing clever boy when you work at it, Bran. Have you ever thought that you might
wear a maester’s chain? There is no limit to what you might learn.”
“I want to learn magic,” Bran told him. “The crow promised that I would fly.”
Maester Luwin sighed. “I can teach you history, healing, herblore. I can teach you the
speech of ravens, and how to build a castle, and the way a sailor steers his ship by the
stars. I can teach you to measure the days and mark the seasons, and at the Citadel in
Oldtown they can teach you a thousand things more. But, Bran, no man can teach you
magic.”
“The children could,” Bran said. “The children of the forest.” That reminded him of the
promise he had made to Osha in the godswood, so he told Luwin what she had said.
The maester listened politely. “The wildling woman could give Old Nan lessons in telling
tales, I think,” he said when Bran was done. “I will talk with her again if you like, but it
would be best if you did not trouble your brother with this folly. He has more than
enough to concern him without fretting over giants and dead men in the woods. It’s the
Lannisters who hold your lord father, Bran, not the children of the forest.” He put a
gentle hand on Bran’s arm. “Think on what I said, child.”
And two days later, as a red dawn broke across a windswept sky, Bran found himself in
the yard beneath the gatehouse, strapped atop Dancer as he said his farewells to his
brother.
“You are the lord in Winterfell now,” Robb told him. He was mounted on a shaggy grey
stallion, his shield hung from the horse’s side; wood banded with iron, white and grey,
and on it the snarling face of a direwolf. His brother wore grey chainmail over bleached
leathers, sword and dagger at his waist, a fur-trimmed cloak across his shoulders. “You
must take my place, as I took Father’s, until we come home.”
“I know,” Bran replied miserably. He had never felt so little or alone or scared. He did
not know how to be a lord.
“Listen to Maester Luwin’s counsel, and take care of Rickon. Tell him that I’ll be back as
soon as the fighting is done.”
Rickon had refused to come down. He was up in his chamber, redeyed and defiant. “No!”
he’d screamed when Bran had asked if he didn’t want to say farewell to Robb. “NO
farewell!”
“I told him,” Bran said. “He says no one ever comes back.”
�“He can’t be a baby forever. He’s a Stark, and near four.” Robb sighed. “Well, Mother
will be home soon. And I’ll bring back Father, I promise.”
He wheeled his courser around and trotted away. Grey Wind followed, loping beside the
warhorse, lean and swift. Hallis Mollen went before them through the gate, carrying the
rippling white banner of House Stark atop a high standard of grey ash. Theon Greyjoy
and the Greatjon fell in on either side of Robb, and their knights formed up in a double
column behind them, steel-tipped lances glinting in the sun.
Uncomfortably, he remembered Osha’s words. He’s marching the wrong way, he
thought. For an instant he wanted to gallop after him and shout a warning, but when
Robb vanished beneath the portcullis, the moment was gone.
Beyond the castle walls, a roar of sound went up. The foot soldiers and townsfolk were
cheering Robb as he rode past, Bran knew; cheering for Lord Stark, for the Lord of
Winterfell on his great stallion, with his cloak streaming and Grey Wind racing beside
him. They would never cheer for him that way, he realized with a dull ache. He might be
the lord in Winterfell while his brother and father were gone, but he was still Bran the
Broken. He could not even get off his own horse, except to fall.
When the distant cheers had faded to silence and the yard was empty at last, Winterfell
seemed deserted and dead. Bran looked around at the faces of those who remained,
women and children and old men . . . and Hodor. The huge stableboy had a lost and
frightened look to his face. “Hodor?” he said sadly.
“Hodor,” Bran agreed, wondering what it meant.
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DAENERYS
When he had taken his pleasure, Khal Drogo rose from their sleeping mats to tower
above her. His skin shone dark as bronze in the ruddy light from the brazier, the faint
lines of old scars visible on his broad chest. Ink-black hair, loose and unbound, cascaded
over his shoulders and down his back, well past his waist. His manhood glistened wetly.
The khal’s mouth twisted in a frown beneath the droop of his long mustachio. “The
stallion who mounts the world has no need of iron chairs.”
Dany propped herself on an elbow to look up at him, so tall and magnificent. She loved
his hair especially. It had never been cut; he had never known defeat. “It was prophesied
that the stallion will ride to the ends of the earth,” she said.
“The earth ends at the black salt sea,” Drogo answered at once. He wet a cloth in a basin
of warm water to wipe the sweat and oil from his skin. “No horse can cross the poison
water.”
“In the Free Cities, there are ships by the thousand,” Dany told him, as she had told him
before. “Wooden horses with a hundred legs, that fly across the sea on wings full of
wind.”
Khal Drogo did not want to hear it. “We will speak no more of wooden horses and iron
chairs.” He dropped the cloth and began to dress. “This day I will go to the grass and
hunt, woman wife,” he announced as he shrugged into a painted vest and buckled on a
wide belt with heavy medallions of silver, gold, and bronze.
“Yes, my sun-and-stars,” Dany said. Drogo would take his bloodriders and ride in search
of hrakkar, the great white lion of the plains. If they returned triumphant, her lord
husband’s joy would be fierce, and he might be willing to hear her out.
Savage beasts he did not fear, nor any man who had ever drawn breath, but the sea was a
different matter. To the Dothraki, water that a horse could not drink was something
foul; the heaving grey-green plains of the ocean filled them with superstitious loathing.
Drogo was a bolder man than the other horselords in half a hundred ways, she had
found . . . but not in this. If only she could get him onto a ship . . .
After the khal and his bloodriders had ridden off with their bows, Dany summoned her
�handmaids. Her body felt so fat and ungainly now that she welcomed the help of their
strong arms and deft hands, whereas before she had often been uncomfortable with the
way they fussed and fluttered about her. They scrubbed her clean and dressed her in
sandsilk, loose and flowing. As Doreah combed out her hair, she sent Jhiqui to find Ser
Jorah Mormont.
The knight came at once. He wore horsehair leggings and painted vest, like a rider.
Coarse black hair covered his thick chest and muscular arms. “My princess. How may I
serve you?”
“You must talk to my lord husband,” Dany said. “Drogo says the stallion who mounts the
world will have all the lands of the earth to rule, and no need to cross the poison water.
He talks of leading his khalasar east after Rhaego is born, to plunder the lands around
the Jade Sea.”
The knight looked thoughtful. “The khal has never seen the Seven Kingdoms,” he said.
“They are nothing to him. If he thinks of them at all, no doubt he thinks of islands, a few
small cities clinging to rocks in the manner of Lorath or Lys, surrounded by stormy seas.
The riches of the east must seem a more tempting prospect.”
“But he must ride west,” Dany said, despairing. “Please, help me make him understand.”
She had never seen the Seven Kingdoms either, no more than Drogo, yet she felt as
though she knew them from all the tales her brother had told her. Viserys had promised
her a thousand times that he would take her back one day, but he was dead now and his
promises had died with him.
“The Dothraki do things in their own time, for their own reasons,” the knight answered.
“Have patience, Princess. Do not make your brother’s mistake. We will go home, I
promise you.”
Home? The word made her feel sad. Ser Jorah had his Bear Island, but what was home
to her? A few tales, names recited as solemnly as the words of a prayer, the fading
memory of a red door . . . was Vaes Dothrak to be her home forever? When she looked at
the crones of the dosh khaleen, was she looking at her future?
Ser Jorah must have seen the sadness on her face. “A great caravan arrived during the
night, Khaleesi. Four hundred horses, from Pentos by way of Norvos and Qohor, under
the command of Merchant Captain Byan Votyris. Illyrio may have sent a letter. Would
you care to visit the Western Market?”
Dany stirred. “Yes,” she said. “I would like that.” The markets came alive when a caravan
had come in. You could never tell what treasures the traders might bring this time, and it
�would be good to hear men speaking Valyrian again, as they did in the Free Cities. “Irri,
have them prepare a litter.”
“I shall tell your khas,” Ser Jorah said, withdrawing.
If Khal Drogo had been with her, Dany would have ridden her silver. Among the
Dothraki, mothers stayed on horseback almost up to the moment of birth, and she did
not want to seem weak in her husband’s eyes. But with the khal off hunting, it was
pleasant to lie back on soft cushions and be carried across Vaes Dothrak, with red silk
curtains to shield her from the sun. Ser Jorah saddled up and rode beside her, with the
four young men of her khas and her handmaids.
The day was warm and cloudless, the sky a deep blue. When the wind blew, she could
smell the rich scents of grass and earth. As her litter passed beneath the stolen
monuments, she went from sunlight to shadow and back again. Dany swayed along,
studying the faces of dead heroes and forgotten kings. She wondered if the gods of
burned cities could still answer prayers.
If I were not the blood of the dragon, she thought wistfully, this could be my home. She
was khaleesi, she had a strong man and a swift horse, handmaids to serve her, warriors
to keep her safe, an honored place in the dosh khaleen awaiting her when she grew
old . . . and in her womb grew a son who would one day bestride the world. That should
be enough for any woman . . . but not for the dragon. With Viserys gone, Daenerys was
the last, the very last. She was the seed of kings and conquerors, and so too the child
inside her. She must not forget.
The Western Market was a great square of beaten earth surrounded by warrens of mudbaked brick, animal pens, whitewashed drinking halls. Hummocks rose from the ground
like the backs of great subterranean beasts breaking the surface, yawning black mouths
leading down to cool and cavernous storerooms below. The interior of the square was a
maze of stalls and crookback aisles, shaded by awnings of woven grass.
A hundred merchants and traders were unloading their goods and setting up in stalls
when they arrived, yet even so the great market seemed hushed and deserted compared
to the teeming bazaars that Dany remembered from Pentos and the other Free Cities.
The caravans made their way to Vaes Dothrak from east and west not so much to sell to
the Dothraki as to trade with each other, Ser Jorah had explained. The riders let them
come and go unmolested, so long as they observed the peace of the sacred city, did not
profane the Mother of Mountains or the Womb of the World, and honored the crones of
the dosh khaleen with the traditional gifts of salt, silver, and seed. The Dothraki did not
truly comprehend this business of buying and selling.
�Dany liked the strangeness of the Eastern Market too, with all its queer sights and
sounds and smells. She often spent her mornings there, nibbling tree eggs, locust pie,
and green noodles, listening to the high ululating voices of the spellsingers, gaping at
manticores in silver cages and immense grey elephants and the striped black-and-white
horses of the Jogos Nhai. She enjoyed watching all the people too: dark solemn Asshai’i
and tall pale Qartheen, the bright-eyed men of Yi Ti in monkey-tail hats, warrior maids
from Bayasabhad, Shamyriana, and Kayakayanaya with iron rings in their nipples and
rubies in their cheeks, even the dour and frightening Shadow Men, who covered their
arms and legs and chests with tattoos and hid their faces behind masks. The Eastern
Market was a place of wonder and magic for Dany.
But the Western Market smelled of home.
As Irri and Jhiqui helped her from her litter, she sniffed, and recognized the sharp odors
of garlic and pepper, scents that reminded Dany of days long gone in the alleys of Tyrosh
and Myr and brought a fond smile to her face. Under that she smelled the heady sweet
perfumes of Lys. She saw slaves carrying bolts of intricate Myrish lace and fine wools in
a dozen rich colors. Caravan guards wandered among the aisles in copper helmets and
knee-length tunics of quilted yellow cotton, empty scabbards swinging from their woven
leather belts. Behind one stall an armorer displayed steel breastplates worked with gold
and silver in ornate patterns, and helms hammered in the shapes of fanciful beasts. Next
to him was a pretty young woman selling Lannisport goldwork, rings and brooches and
torcs and exquisitely wrought medallions suitable for belting. A huge eunuch guarded
her stall, mute and hairless, dressed in sweat-stained velvets and scowling at anyone
who came close. Across the aisle, a fat cloth trader from Yi Ti was haggling with a
Pentoshi over the price of some green dye, the monkey tail on his hat swaying back and
forth as he shook his head.
“When I was a little girl, I loved to play in the bazaar,” Dany told Ser Jorah as they
wandered down the shady aisle between the stalls. “It was so alive there, all the people
shouting and laughing, so many wonderful things to look at . . . though we seldom had
enough coin to buy anything . . . well, except for a sausage now and again, or
honeyfingers . . . do they have honeyfingers in the Seven Kingdoms, the kind they bake
in Tyrosh?”
“Cakes, are they? I could not say, Princess.” The knight bowed. “If you would pardon me
for a time, I will seek out the captain and see if he has letters for us.”
“Very well. I’ll help you find him.”
“There is no need for you to trouble yourself.” Ser Jorah glanced away impatiently.
“Enjoy the market. I will rejoin you when my business is concluded.”
�Curious, Dany thought as she watched him stride off through the throngs. She didn’t see
why she should not go with him. Perhaps Ser Jorah meant to find a woman after he met
with the merchant captain. Whores frequently traveled with the caravans, she knew, and
some men were queerly shy about their couplings. She gave a shrug. “Come,” she told
the others.
Her handmaids trailed along as Dany resumed her stroll through the market. “Oh, look,”
she exclaimed to Doreah, “those are the kind of sausages I meant.” She pointed to a stall
where a wizened little woman was grilling meat and onions on a hot firestone. “They
make them with lots of garlic and hot peppers.” Delighted with her discovery, Dany
insisted the others join her for a sausage. Her handmaids wolfed theirs down giggling
and grinning, though the men of her khas sniffed at the grilled meat suspiciously. “They
taste different than I remember,” Dany said after her first few bites.
“In Pentos, I make them with pork,” the old woman said, “but all my pigs died on the
Dothraki sea. These are made of horsemeat, Khaleesi, but I spice them the same.”
“Oh.” Dany felt disappointed, but Quaro liked his sausage so well he decided to have
another one, and Rakharo had to outdo him and eat three more, belching loudly. Dany
giggled.
“You have not laughed since your brother the Khal Rhaggat was crowned by Drogo,”
said Irri. “It is good to see, Khaleesi.”
Dany smiled shyly. It was sweet to laugh. She felt half a girl again.
They wandered for half the morning. She saw a beautiful feathered cloak from the
Summer Isles, and took it for a gift. In return, she gave the merchant a silver medallion
from her belt. That was how it was done among the Dothraki. A birdseller taught a greenand-red parrot to say her name, and Dany laughed again, yet still refused to take him.
What would she do with a green-and-red parrot in a khalasar? She did take a dozen
flasks of scented oils, the perfumes of her childhood; she had only to close her eyes and
sniff them and she could see the big house with the red door once more. When Doreah
looked longingly at a fertility charm at a magician’s booth, Dany took that too and gave it
to the handmaid, thinking that now she should find something for Irri and Jhiqui as well.
Turning a corner, they came upon a wine merchant offering thimble-sized cups of his
wares to the passersby. “Sweet reds,” he cried in fluent Dothraki, “I have sweet reds,
from Lys and Volantis and the Arbor. Whites from Lys, Tyroshi pear brandy, firewine,
pepperwine, the pale green nectars of Myr. Smokeberry browns and Andalish sours, I
have them, I have them.” He was a small man, slender and handsome, his flaxen hair
curled and perfumed after the fashion of Lys. When Dany paused before his stall, he
�bowed low. “A taste for the khaleesi? I have a sweet red from Dorne, my lady, it sings of
plums and cherries and rich dark oak. A cask, a cup, a swallow? One taste, and you will
name your child after me.”
Dany smiled. “My son has his name, but I will try your summerwine,” she said in
Valyrian, Valyrian as they spoke it in the Free Cities. The words felt strange on her
tongue, after so long. “Just a taste, if you would be so kind.”
The merchant must have taken her for Dothraki, with her clothes and her oiled hair and
sun-browned skin. When she spoke, he gaped at her in astonishment. “My lady, you
are . . . Tyroshi? Can it be so?”
“My speech may be Tyroshi, and my garb Dothraki, but I am of Westeros, of the Sunset
Kingdoms,” Dany told him.
Doreah stepped up beside her. “You have the honor to address Daenerys of the House
Targaryen, Daenerys Stormborn, khaleesi of the riding men and princess of the Seven
Kingdoms.”
The wine merchant dropped to his knees. “Princess,” he said, bowing his head.
“Rise,” Dany commanded him. “I would still like to taste that summerwine you spoke of.”
The man bounded to his feet. “That? Dornish swill. It is not worthy of a princess. I have
a dry red from the Arbor, crisp and delectable. Please, let me give you a cask.”
Khal Drogo’s visits to the Free Cities had given him a taste for good wine, and Dany
knew that such a noble vintage would please him. “You honor me, ser,” she murmured
sweetly.
“The honor is mine.” The merchant rummaged about in the back of his stall and
produced a small oaken cask. Burned into the wood was a cluster of grapes. “The
Redwyne sigil,” he said, pointing, “for the Arbor. There is no finer drink.”
“Khal Drogo and I will share it together. Aggo, take this back to my litter, if you’d be so
kind.” The wineseller beamed as the Dothraki hefted the cask.
She did not realize that Ser Jorah had returned until she heard the knight say, “No.” His
voice was strange, brusque. “Aggo, put down that cask.”
Aggo looked at Dany. She gave a hesitant nod. “Ser Jorah, is something wrong?”
�“I have a thirst. Open it, wineseller.”
The merchant frowned. “The wine is for the khaleesi, not for the likes of you, ser.”
Ser Jorah moved closer to the stall. “If you don’t open it, I’ll crack it open with your
head.” He carried no weapons here in the sacred city, save his hands—yet his hands were
enough, big, hard, dangerous, his knuckles covered with coarse dark hairs. The
wineseller hesitated a moment, then took up his hammer and knocked the plug from the
cask.
“Pour,” Ser Jorah commanded. The four young warriors of Dany’s khas arrayed
themselves behind him, frowning, watching with their dark, almond-shaped eyes.
“It would be a crime to drink this rich a wine without letting it breathe.” The wineseller
had not put his hammer down.
Jhogo reached for the whip coiled at his belt, but Dany stopped him with a light touch on
the arm. “Do as Ser Jorah says,” she said. People were stopping to watch.
The man gave her a quick, sullen glance. “As the princess commands.” He had to set
aside his hammer to lift the cask. He filled two thimble-sized tasting cups, pouring so
deftly he did not spill a drop.
Ser Jorah lifted a cup and sniffed at the wine, frowning.
“Sweet, isn’t it?” the wineseller said, smiling. “Can you smell the fruit, ser? The perfume
of the Arbor. Taste it, my lord, and tell me it isn’t the finest, richest wine that’s ever
touched your tongue.”
Ser Jorah offered him the cup. “You taste it first.”
“Me?” The man laughed. “I am not worthy of this vintage, my lord. And it’s a poor wine
merchant who drinks up his own wares.” His smile was amiable, yet she could see the
sheen of sweat on his brow.
“You will drink,” Dany said, cold as ice. “Empty the cup, or I will tell them to hold you
down while Ser Jorah pours the whole cask down your throat.”
The wineseller shrugged, reached for the cup . . . and grabbed the cask instead, flinging it
at her with both hands. Ser Jorah bulled into her, knocking her out of the way. The cask
bounced off his shoulder and smashed open on the ground. Dany stumbled and lost her
�feet. “No,” she screamed, thrusting her hands out to break her fall . . . and Doreah caught
her by the arm and wrenched her backward, so she landed on her legs and not her belly.
The trader vaulted over the stall, darting between Aggo and Rakharo. Quaro reached for
an arakh that was not there as the blond man slammed him aside. He raced down the
aisle. Dany heard the snap of Jhogo’s whip, saw the leather lick out and coil around the
wineseller’s leg. The man sprawled face first in the dirt.
A dozen caravan guards had come running. With them was the master himself,
Merchant Captain Byan Votyris, a diminutive Norvoshi with skin like old leather and a
bristling blue mustachio that swept up to his ears. He seemed to know what had
happened without a word being spoken. “Take this one away to await the pleasure of the
khal,” he commanded, gesturing at the man on the ground. Two guards hauled the
wineseller to his feet. “His goods I gift to you as well, Princess,” the merchant captain
went on. “Small token of regret, that one of mine would do this thing.”
Doreah and Jhiqui helped Dany back to her feet. The poisoned wine was leaking from
the broken cask into the dirt. “How did you know?” she asked Ser Jorah, trembling.
“How?”
“I did not know, Khaleesi, not until the man refused to drink, but once I read Magister
Illyrio’s letter, I feared.” His dark eyes swept over the faces of the strangers in the
market. “Come. Best not to talk of it here.”
Dany was near tears as they carried her back. The taste in her mouth was one she had
known before: fear. For years she had lived in terror of Viserys, afraid of waking the
dragon. This was even worse. It was not just for herself that she feared now, but for her
baby. He must have sensed her fright, for he moved restlessly inside her. Dany stroked
the swell of her belly gently, wishing she could reach him, touch him, soothe him. “You
are the blood of the dragon, little one,” she whispered as her litter swayed along, curtains
drawn tight. “You are the blood of the dragon, and the dragon does not fear.”
Under the hollow hummock of earth that was her home in Vaes Dothrak, Dany ordered
them to leave her—all but Ser Jorah. “Tell me,” she commanded as she lowered herself
onto her cushions. “Was it the Usurper?”
“Yes.” The knight drew out a folded parchment. “A letter to Viserys, from Magister
Illyrio. Robert Baratheon offers lands and lordships for your death, or your brother’s.”
“My brother?” Her sob was half a laugh. “He does not know yet, does he? The Usurper
owes Drogo a lordship.” This time her laugh was half a sob. She hugged herself
protectively. “And me, you said. Only me?”
�“You and the child,” Ser Jorah said, grim.
“No. He cannot have my son.” She would not weep, she decided. She would not shiver
with fear. The Usurper has woken the dragon now, she told herself . . . and her eyes
went to the dragon’s eggs resting in their nest of dark velvet. The shifting lamplight
limned their stony scales, and shimmering motes of jade and scarlet and gold swam in
the air around them, like courtiers around a king.
Was it madness that seized her then, born of fear? Or some strange wisdom buried in
her blood? Dany could not have said. She heard her own voice saying, “Ser Jorah, light
the brazier.”
“Khaleesi?” The knight looked at her strangely. “It is so hot. Are you certain?”
She had never been so certain. “Yes. I . . . I have a chill. Light the brazier.”
He bowed. “As you command.”
When the coals were afire, Dany sent Ser Jorah from her. She had to be alone to do what
she must do. This is madness, she told herself as she lifted the black-and-scarlet egg
from the velvet. It will only crack and burn, and it’s so beautiful, Ser Jorah will call me
a fool if I ruin it, and yet, and yet . . .
Cradling the egg with both hands, she carried it to the fire and pushed it down amongst
the burning coals. The black scales seemed to glow as they drank the heat. Flames licked
against the stone with small red tongues. Dany placed the other two eggs beside the
black one in the fire. As she stepped back from the brazier, the breath trembled in her
throat.
She watched until the coals had turned to ashes. Drifting sparks floated up and out of
the smokehole. Heat shimmered in waves around the dragon’s eggs. And that was all.
Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, Ser Jorah had said. Dany gazed at her eggs
sadly. What had she expected? A thousand thousand years ago they had been alive, but
now they were only pretty rocks. They could not make a dragon. A dragon was air and
fire. Living flesh, not dead stone.
The brazier was cold again by the time Khal Drogo returned. Cohollo was leading a
packhorse behind him, with the carcass of a great white lion slung across its back.
Above, the stars were coming out. The khal laughed as he swung down off his stallion
and showed her the scars on his leg where the hrakkar had raked him through his
�leggings. “I shall make you a cloak of its skin, moon of my life,” he swore.
When Dany told him what had happened at the market, all laughter stopped, and Khal
Drogo grew very quiet.
“This poisoner was the first,” Ser Jorah Mormont warned him, “but he will not be the
last. Men will risk much for a lordship.”
Drogo was silent for a time. Finally he said, “This seller of poisons ran from the moon of
my life. Better he should run after her. So he will. Jhogo, Jorah the Andal, to each of you
I say, choose any horse you wish from my herds, and it is yours. Any horse save my red
and the silver that was my bride gift to the moon of my life. I make this gift to you for
what you did.
“And to Rhaego son of Drogo, the stallion who will mount the world, to him I also pledge
a gift. To him I will give this iron chair his mother’s father sat in. I will give him Seven
Kingdoms. I, Drogo, khal, will do this thing.” His voice rose, and he lifted his fist to the
sky. “I will take my khalasar west to where the world ends, and ride the wooden horses
across the black salt water as no khal has done before. I will kill the men in the iron suits
and tear down their stone houses. I will rape their women, take their children as slaves,
and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak to bow down beneath the Mother of
Mountains. This I vow, I, Drogo son of Bharbo. This I swear before the Mother of
Mountains, as the stars look down in witness.”
His khalasar left Vaes Dothrak two days later, striking south and west across the plains.
Khal Drogo led them on his great red stallion, with Daenerys beside him on her silver.
The wineseller hurried behind them, naked, on foot, chained at throat and wrists. His
chains were fastened to the halter of Dany’s silver. As she rode, he ran after her, barefoot
and stumbling. No harm would come to him . . . so long as he kept up.
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CATELYN
It was too far to make out the banners clearly, but even through the drifting fog she
could see that they were white, with a dark smudge in their center that could only be the
direwolf of Stark, grey upon its icy field. When she saw it with her own eyes, Catelyn
reined up her horse and bowed her head in thanks. The gods were good. She was not too
late.
“They await our coming, my lady,” Ser Wylis Manderly said, “as my lord father swore
they would.”
“Let us not keep them waiting any longer, ser.” Ser Brynden Tully put the spurs to his
horse and trotted briskly toward the banners. Catelyn rode beside him.
Ser Wylis and his brother Ser Wendel followed, leading their levies, near fifteen hundred
men: some twenty-odd knights and as many squires, two hundred mounted lances,
swordsmen, and freeriders, and the rest foot, armed with spears, pikes and tridents.
Lord Wyman had remained behind to see to the defenses of White Harbor. A man of
near sixty years, he had grown too stout to sit a horse. “If I had thought to see war again
in my lifetime, I should have eaten a few less eels,” he’d told Catelyn when he met her
ship, slapping his massive belly with both hands. His fingers were fat as sausages. “My
boys will see you safe to your son, though, have no fear.”
His “boys” were both older than Catelyn, and she might have wished that they did not
take after their father quite so closely. Ser Wylis was only a few eels short of not being
able to mount his own horse; she pitied the poor animal. Ser Wendel, the younger boy,
would have been the fattest man she’d ever known, had she only neglected to meet his
father and brother. Wylis was quiet and formal, Wendel loud and boisterous; both had
ostentatious walrus mustaches and heads as bare as a baby’s bottom; neither seemed to
own a single garment that was not spotted with food stains. Yet she liked them well
enough; they had gotten her to Robb, as their father had vowed, and nothing else
mattered.
She was pleased to see that her son had sent eyes out, even to the east. The Lannisters
would come from the south when they came, but it was good that Robb was being
careful. My son is leading a host to war, she thought, still only half believing it. She was
desperately afraid for him, and for Winterfell, yet she could not deny feeling a certain
�pride as well. A year ago he had been a boy. What was he now? she wondered.
Outriders spied the Manderly banners—the white merman with trident in hand, rising
from a blue-green sea—and hailed them warmly. They were led to a spot of high ground
dry enough for a camp. Ser Wylis called a halt there, and remained behind with his men
to see the fires laid and the horses tended, while his brother Wendel rode on with
Catelyn and her uncle to present their father’s respects to their liege lord.
The ground under their horses’ hooves was soft and wet. It fell away slowly beneath
them as they rode past smoky peat fires, lines of horses, and wagons heavy-laden with
hardbread and salt beef. On a stony outcrop of land higher than the surrounding
country, they passed a lord’s pavilion with walls of heavy sailcloth. Catelyn recognized
the banner, the bull moose of the Hornwoods, brown on its dark orange field.
Just beyond, through the mists, she glimpsed the walls and towers of Moat Cailin . . . or
what remained of them. Immense blocks of black basalt, each as large as a crofter’s
cottage, lay scattered and tumbled like a child’s wooden blocks, half-sunk in the soft
boggy soil. Nothing else remained of a curtain wall that had once stood as high as
Winterfell’s. The wooden keep was gone entirely, rotted away a thousand years past,
with not so much as a timber to mark where it had stood. All that was left of the great
stronghold of the First Men were three towers . . . three where there had once been
twenty, if the taletellers could be believed.
The Gatehouse Tower looked sound enough, and even boasted a few feet of standing wall
to either side of it. The Drunkard’s Tower, off in the bog where the south and west walls
had once met, leaned like a man about to spew a bellyful of wine into the gutter. And the
tall, slender Children’s Tower, where legend said the children of the forest had once
called upon their nameless gods to send the hammer of the waters, had lost half its
crown. It looked as if some great beast had taken a bite out of the crenellations along the
tower top, and spit the rubble across the bog. All three towers were green with moss. A
tree was growing out between the stones on the north side of the Gatehouse Tower, its
gnarled limbs festooned with ropy white blankets of ghostskin.
“Gods have mercy,” Ser Brynden exclaimed when he saw what lay before them. “This is
Moat Cailin? It’s no more than a—”
“—death trap,” Catelyn finished. “I know how it looks, Uncle. I thought the same the first
time I saw it, but Ned assured me that this ruin is more formidable than it seems. The
three surviving towers command the causeway from all sides, and any enemy must pass
between them. The bogs here are impenetrable, full of quicksands and suckholes and
teeming with snakes. To assault any of the towers, an army would need to wade through
waist-deep black muck, cross a moat full of lizard-lions, and scale walls slimy with moss,
�all the while exposing themselves to fire from archers in the other towers.” She gave her
uncle a grim smile. “And when night falls, there are said to be ghosts, cold vengeful
spirits of the north who hunger for southron blood.”
Ser Brynden chuckled. “Remind me not to linger here. Last I looked, I was southron
myself.”
Standards had been raised atop all three towers. The Karstark sunburst hung from the
Drunkard’s Tower, beneath the direwolf; on the Children’s Tower it was the Greatjon’s
giant in shattered chains. But on the Gatehouse Tower, the Stark banner flew alone. That
was where Robb had made his seat. Catelyn made for it, with Ser Brynden and Ser
Wendel behind her, their horses stepping slowly down the log-and-plank road that had
been laid across the green-and-black fields of mud.
She found her son surrounded by his father’s lords bannermen, in a drafty hall with a
peat fire smoking in a black hearth. He was seated at a massive stone table, a pile of
maps and papers in front of him, talking intently with Roose Bolton and the Greatjon. At
first he did not notice her . . . but his wolf did. The great grey beast was lying near the
fire, but when Catelyn entered he lifted his head, and his golden eyes met hers. The lords
fell silent one by one, and Robb looked up at the sudden quiet and saw her. “Mother?” he
said, his voice thick with emotion.
Catelyn wanted to run to him, to kiss his sweet brow, to wrap him in her arms and hold
him so tightly that he would never come to harm . . . but here in front of his lords, she
dared not. He was playing a man’s part now, and she would not take that away from
him. So she held herself at the far end of the basalt slab they were using for a table. The
direwolf got to his feet and padded across the room to where she stood. It seemed bigger
than a wolf ought to be. “You’ve grown a beard,” she said to Robb, while Grey Wind
sniffed her hand.
He rubbed his stubbled jaw, suddenly awkward. “Yes.” His chin hairs were redder than
the ones on his head.
“I like it.” Catelyn stroked the wolfs head, gently. “It makes you look like my brother
Edmure.” Grey Wind nipped at her fingers, playful, and trotted back to his place by the
fire.
Ser Helman Tallhart was the first to follow the direwolf across the room to pay his
respects, kneeling before her and pressing his brow to her hand. “Lady Catelyn,” he said,
“you are fair as ever, a welcome sight in troubled times.” The Glovers followed, Galbart
and Robett, and Greatjon Umber, and the rest, one by one. Theon Greyjoy was the last.
“I had not looked to see you here, my lady,” he said as he knelt.
�“I had not thought to be here,” Catelyn said, “until I came ashore at White Harbor, and
Lord Wyman told me that Robb had called the banners. You know his son, Ser Wendel.”
Wendel Manderly stepped forward and bowed as low as his girth would allow. “And my
uncle, Ser Brynden Tully, who has left my sister’s service for mine.”
“The Blackfish,” Robb said. “Thank you for joining us, ser. We need men of your
courage. And you, Ser Wendel, I am glad to have you here. Is Ser Rodrik with you as
well, Mother? I’ve missed him.”
“Ser Rodrik is on his way north from White Harbor. I have named him castellan and
commanded him to hold Winterfell till our return. Maester Luwin is a wise counsellor,
but unskilled in the arts of war.”
“Have no fear on that count, Lady Stark,” the Greatjon told her in his bass rumble.
“Winterfell is safe. We’ll shove our swords up Tywin Lannister’s bunghole soon enough,
begging your pardons, and then it’s on to the Red Keep to free Ned.”
“My lady, a question, as it please you.” Roose Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort, had a small
voice, yet when he spoke larger men quieted to listen. His eyes were curiously pale,
almost without color, and his look disturbing. “It is said that you hold Lord Tywin’s
dwarf son as captive. Have you brought him to us? I vow, we should make good use of
such a hostage.”
“I did hold Tyrion Lannister, but no longer,” Catelyn was forced to admit. A chorus of
consternation greeted the news. “I was no more pleased than you, my lords. The gods
saw fit to free him, with some help from my fool of a sister.” She ought not to be so open
in her contempt, she knew, but her parting from the Eyrie had not been pleasant. She
had offered to take Lord Robert with her, to foster him at Winterfell for a few years. The
company of other boys would do him good, she had dared to suggest. Lysa’s rage had
been frightening to behold. “Sister or no,” she had replied, “if you try to steal my son,
you will leave by the Moon Door.” After that there was no more to be said.
The lords were anxious to question her further, but Catelyn raised a hand. “No doubt we
will have time for all this later, but my journey has fatigued me. I would speak with my
son alone. I know you will forgive me, my lords.” She gave them no choice; led by the
ever-obliging Lord Hornwood, the bannermen bowed and took their leave. “And you,
Theon,” she added when Greyjoy lingered. He smiled and left them.
There was ale and cheese on the table. Catelyn tilled a horn, sat, sipped, and studied her
son. He seemed taller than when she’d left, and the wisps of beard did make him look
older. “Edmure was sixteen when he grew his first whiskers.”
�“I will be sixteen soon enough,” Robb said.
“And you are fifteen now. Fifteen, and leading a host to battle. Can you understand why I
might fear, Robb?”
His look grew stubborn. “There was no one else.”
“No one?” she said. “Pray, who were those men I saw here a moment ago? Roose Bolton,
Rickard Karstark, Galbart and Robett Glover, the Greatjon, Helman Tallhart . . . you
might have given the command to any of them. Gods be good, you might even have sent
Theon, though he would not be my choice.”
“They are not Starks,” he said.
“They are men, Robb, seasoned in battle. You were fighting with wooden swords less
than a year past.”
She saw anger in his eyes at that, but it was gone as quick as it came, and suddenly he
was a boy again. “I know,” he said, abashed. “Are you . . . are you sending me back to
Winterfell?”
Catelyn sighed. “I should. You ought never have left. Yet I dare not, not now. You have
come too far. Someday these lords will look to you as their liege. If I pack you off now,
like a child being sent to bed without his supper, they will remember, and laugh about it
in their cups. The day will come when you need them to respect you, even fear you a
little. Laughter is poison to fear. I will not do that to you, much as I might wish to keep
you safe.”
“You have my thanks, Mother,” he said, his relief obvious beneath the formality.
She reached across his table and touched his hair. “You are my firstborn, Robb. I have
only to look at you to remember the day you came into the world, red-faced and
squalling.”
He rose, clearly uncomfortable with her touch, and walked to the hearth. Grey Wind
rubbed his head against his leg. “You know . . . about Father?”
“Yes.” The reports of Robert’s sudden death and Ned’s fall had frightened Catelyn more
than she could say, but she would not let her son see her fear. “Lord Manderly told me
when I landed at White Harbor. Have you had any word of your sisters?”
�“There was a letter,” Robb said, scratching his direwolf under the jaw. “One for you as
well, but it came to Winterfell with mine.” He went to the table, rummaged among some
maps and papers, and returned with a crumpled parchment. “This is the one she wrote
me, I never thought to bring yours.”
Something in Robb’s tone troubled her. She smoothed out the paper and read. Concern
gave way to disbelief, then to anger, and lastly to fear. “This is Cersei’s letter, not your
sister’s,” she said when she was done. “The real message is in what Sansa does not say.
All this about how kindly and gently the Lannisters are treating her . . . I know the sound
of a threat, even whispered. They have Sansa hostage, and they mean to keep her.”
“There’s no mention of Arya,” Robb pointed out, miserable.
“No.” Catelyn did not want to think what that might mean, not now, not here.
“I had hoped . . . if you still held the Imp, a trade of hostages . . . ” He took Sansa’s letter
and crumpled it in his fist, and she could tell from the way he did it that it was not the
first time. “Is there word from the Eyrie? I wrote to Aunt Lysa, asking help. Has she
called Lord Arryn’s banners, do you know? Will the knights of the Vale come join us?”
“Only one,” she said, “the best of them, my uncle . . . but Brynden Blackfish was a Tully
first. My sister is not about to stir beyond her Bloody Gate.”
Robb took it hard. “Mother, what are we going to do? I brought this whole army
together, eighteen thousand men, but I don’t . . . I’m not certain . . . ” He looked to her,
his eyes shining, the proud young lord melted away in an instant, and quick as that he
was a child again, a fifteen-year-old boy looking to his mother for answers.
It would not do.
“What are you so afraid of, Robb?” she asked gently.
“I . . . ” He turned his head away, to hide the first tear. “If we march . . . even if we
win . . . the Lannisters hold Sansa, and Father. They’ll kill them, won’t they?”
“They want us to think so.”
“You mean they’re lying?”
“I do not know, Robb. What I do know is that you have no choice. If you go to King’s
Landing and swear fealty, you will never be allowed to leave. If you turn your tail and
retreat to Winterfell, your lords will lose all respect for you. Some may even go over to
�the Lannisters. Then the queen, with that much less to fear, can do as she likes with her
prisoners. Our best hope, our only true hope, is that you can defeat the foe in the field. If
you should chance to take Lord Tywin or the Kingslayer captive, why then a trade might
very well be possible, but that is not the heart of it. So long as you have power enough
that they must fear you, Ned and your sister should be safe. Cersei is wise enough to
know that she may need them to make her peace, should the fighting go against her.”
“What if the fighting doesn’t go against her?” Robb asked. “What if it goes against us?”
Catelyn took his hand. “Robb, I will not soften the truth for you. If you lose, there is no
hope for any of us. They say there is naught but stone at the heart of Casterly Rock.
Remember the fate of Rhaegar’s children.”
She saw the fear in his young eyes then, but there was a strength as well. “Then I will not
lose,” he vowed.
“Tell me what you know of the fighting in the riverlands,” she said. She had to learn if he
was truly ready.
“Less than a fortnight past, they fought a battle in the hills below the Golden Tooth,”
Robb said. “Uncle Edmure had sent Lord Vance and Lord Piper to hold the pass, but the
Kingslayer descended on them and put them to flight. Lord Vance was slain. The last
word we had was that Lord Piper was falling back to join your brother and his other
bannermen at Riverrun, with Jaime Lannister on his heels. That’s not the worst of it,
though. All the time they were battling in the pass, Lord Tywin was bringing a second
Lannister army around from the south. It’s said to be even larger than Jaime’s host.
“Father must have known that, because he sent out some men to oppose them, under the
king’s own banner. He gave the command to some southron lordling, Lord Erik or Derik
or something like that, but Ser Raymun Darry rode with him, and the letter said there
were other knights as well, and a force of Father’s own guardsmen. Only it was a trap.
Lord Derik had no sooner crossed the Red Fork than the Lannisters fell upon him, the
king’s banner be damned, and Gregor Clegane took them in the rear as they tried to pull
back across the Mummer’s Ford. This Lord Derik and a few others may have escaped, no
one is certain, but Ser Raymun was killed, and most of our men from Winterfell. Lord
Tywin has closed off the kingsroad, it’s said, and now he’s marching north toward
Harrenhal, burning as he goes.”
Grim and grimmer, thought Catelyn. It was worse than she’d imagined. “You mean to
meet him here?” she asked.
“If he comes so far, but no one thinks he will,” Robb said. “I’ve sent word to Howland
�Reed, Father’s old friend at Greywater Watch. If the Lannisters come up the Neck, the
crannogmen will bleed them every step of the way, but Galbart Glover says Lord Tywin
is too smart for that, and Roose Bolton agrees. He’ll stay close to the Trident, they
believe, taking the castles of the river lords one by one, until Riverrun stands alone. We
need to march south to meet him.”
The very idea of it chilled Catelyn to the bone. What chance would a fifteen-year-old boy
have against seasoned battle commanders like Jaime and Tywin Lannister? “Is that
wise? You are strongly placed here. It’s said that the old Kings in the North could stand
at Moat Cailin and throw back hosts ten times the size of their own.”
“Yes, but our food and supplies are running low, and this is not land we can live off
easily. We’ve been waiting for Lord Manderly, but now that his sons have joined us, we
need to march.”
She was hearing the lords bannermen speaking with her son’s voice, she realized. Over
the years, she had hosted many of them at Winterfell, and been welcomed with Ned to
their own hearths and tables. She knew what sorts of men they were, each one. She
wondered if Robb did.
And yet there was sense in what they said. This host her son had assembled was not a
standing army such as the Free Cities were accustomed to maintain, nor a force of
guardsmen paid in coin. Most of them were smallfolk: crofters, fieldhands, fishermen,
sheepherders, the sons of innkeeps and traders and tanners, leavened with a smattering
of sellswords and freeriders hungry for plunder. When their lords called, they
came . . . but not forever. “Marching is all very well,” she said to her son, “but where, and
to what purpose? What do you mean to do?”
Robb hesitated. “The Greatjon thinks we should take the battle to Lord Tywin and
surprise him,” he said, “but the Glovers and the Karstarks feel we’d be wiser to go
around his army and join up with Uncle Ser Edmure against the Kingslayer.” He ran his
fingers through his shaggy mane of auburn hair, looking unhappy. “Though by the time
we reach Riverrun . . . I’m not certain . . . ”
“Be certain,” Catelyn told her son, “or go home and take up that wooden sword again.
You cannot afford to seem indecisive in front of men like Roose Bolton and Rickard
Karstark. Make no mistake, Robb—these are your bannermen, not your friends. You
named yourself battle commander. Command.”
Her son looked at her, startled, as if he could not credit what he was hearing. “As you
say, Mother.”
�“I’ll ask you again. What do you mean to do?”
Robb drew a map across the table, a ragged piece of old leather covered with lines of
faded paint. One end curled up from being rolled; he weighed it down with his dagger.
“Both plans have virtues, but . . . look, if we try to swing around Lord Tywin’s host, we
take the risk of being caught between him and the Kingslayer, and if we attack him . . . by
all reports, he has more men than I do, and a lot more armored horse. The Greatjon says
that won’t matter if we catch him with his breeches down, but it seems to me that a man
who has fought as many battles as Tywin Lannister won’t be so easily surprised.”
“Good,” she said. She could hear echoes of Ned in his voice, as he sat there, puzzling over
the map. “Tell me more.”
“I’d leave a small force here to hold Moat Cailin, archers mostly, and march the rest
down the causeway,” he said, “but once we’re below the Neck, I’d split our host in two.
The foot can continue down the kingsroad, while our horsemen cross the Green Fork at
the Twins.” He pointed. “When Lord Tywin gets word that we’ve come south, he’ll march
north to engage our main host, leaving our riders free to hurry down the west bank to
Riverrun.” Robb sat back, not quite daring to smile, but pleased with himself and hungry
for her praise.
Catelyn frowned down at the map. “You’d put a river between the two parts of your
army.”
“And between Jaime and Lord Tywin,” he said eagerly. The smile came at last. “There’s
no crossing on the Green Fork above the ruby ford, where Robert won his crown. Not
until the Twins, all the way up here, and Lord Frey controls that bridge. He’s your
father’s bannerman, isn’t that so?”
The Late Lord Frey, Catelyn thought. “He is,” she admitted, “but my father has never
trusted him. Nor should you.”
“I won’t,” Robb promised. “What do you think?”
She was impressed despite herself. He looks like a Tully, she thought, yet he’s still his
father’s son, and Ned taught him well. “Which force would you command?”
“The horse,” he answered at once. Again like his father; Ned would always take the more
dangerous task himself.
“And the other?”
�“The Greatjon is always saying that we should smash Lord Tywin. I thought I’d give him
the honor.”
It was his first misstep, but how to make him see it without wounding his fledgling
confidence? “Your father once told me that the Greatjon was as fearless as any man he
had ever known.”
Robb grinned. “Grey Wind ate two of his fingers, and he laughed about it. So you agree,
then?”
“Your father is not fearless,” Catelyn pointed out. “He is brave, but that is very different.”
Her son considered that for a moment. “The eastern host will be all that stands between
Lord Tywin and Winterfell,” he said thoughtfully. “Well, them and whatever few
bowmen I leave here at the Moat. So I don’t want someone fearless, do I?”
“No. You want cold cunning, I should think, not courage.”
“Roose Bolton,” Robb said at once. “That man scares me.”
“Then let us pray he will scare Tywin Lannister as well.”
Robb nodded and rolled up the map. “I’ll give the commands, and assemble an escort to
take you home to Winterfell.”
Catelyn had fought to keep herself strong, for Ned’s sake and for this stubborn brave son
of theirs. She had put despair and fear aside, as if they were garments she did not choose
to wear . . . but now she saw that she had donned them after all.
“I am not going to Winterfell,” she heard herself say, surprised at the sudden rush of
tears that blurred her vision. “My father may be dying behind the walls of Riverrun. My
brother is surrounded by foes. I must go to them.”
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TYRION
Chella daughter of Cheyk of the Black Ears had gone ahead to scout, and it was she who
brought back word of the army at the crossroads. “By their fires I call them twenty
thousand strong,” she said. “Their banners are red, with a golden lion.”
“Your father?” Bronn asked.
“Or my brother Jaime,” Tyrion said. “We shall know soon enough.” He surveyed his
ragged band of brigands: near three hundred Stone Crows, Moon Brothers, Black Ears,
and Burned Men, and those just the seed of the army he hoped to grow. Gunthor son of
Gurn was raising the other clans even now. He wondered what his lord father would
make of them in their skins and bits of stolen steel. If truth be told, he did not know
what to make of them himself. Was he their commander or their captive? Most of the
time, it seemed to be a little of both. “It might be best if I rode down alone,” he suggested.
“Best for Tyrion son of Tywin,” said Ulf, who spoke for the Moon Brothers.
Shagga glowered, a fearsome sight to see. “Shagga son of Dolf likes this not. Shagga will
go with the boyman, and if the boyman lies, Shagga will chop off his manhood—”
“—and feed it to the goats, yes,” Tyrion said wearily. “Shagga, I give you my word as a
Lannister, I will return.”
“Why should we trust your word?” Chella was a small hard woman, flat as a boy, and no
fool. “Lowland lords have lied to the clans before.”
“You wound me, Chella,” Tyrion said. “Here I thought we had become such friends. But
as you will. You shall ride with me, and Shagga and Conn for the Stone Crows, Ulf for the
Moon Brothers, and Timett son of Timett for the Burned Men.” The clansmen
exchanged wary looks as he named them. “The rest shall wait here until I send for you.
Try not to kill and maim each other while I’m gone.”
He put his heels to his horse and trotted off, giving them no choice but to follow or be
left behind. Either was fine with him, so long as they did not sit down to talk for a day
and a night. That was the trouble with the clans; they had an absurd notion that every
man’s voice should be heard in council, so they argued about everything, endlessly.
�Even their women were allowed to speak. Small wonder that it had been hundreds of
years since they last threatened the Vale with anything beyond an occasional raid.
Tyrion meant to change that.
Brorm rode with him. Behind them—after a quick bit of grumbling—the five clansmen
followed on their undersize garrons, scrawny things that looked like ponies and
scrambled up rock walls like goats.
The Stone Crows rode together, and Chella and Ulf stayed close as well, as the Moon
Brothers and Black Ears had strong bonds between them. Timett son of Timett rode
alone. Every clan in the Mountains of the Moon feared the Burned Men, who mortified
their flesh with fire to prove their courage and (the others said) roasted babies at their
feasts. And even the other Burned Men feared Timett, who had put out his own left eye
with a white-hot knife when he reached the age of manhood. Tyrion gathered that it was
more customary for a boy to burn off a nipple, a finger, or (if he was truly brave, or truly
mad) an ear. Timett’s fellow Burned Men were so awed by his choice of an eye that they
promptly named him a red hand, which seemed to be some sort of a war chief.
“I wonder what their king burned off,” Tyrion said to Bronn when he heard the tale.
Grinning, the sellsword had tugged at his crotch . . . but even Bronn kept a respectful
tongue around Timett. If a man was mad enough to put out his own eye, he was unlikely
to be gentle to his enemies.
Distant watchers peered down from towers of unmortared stone as the party descended
through the foothills, and once Tyrion saw a raven take wing. Where the high road
twisted between two rocky outcrops, they came to the first strong point. A low earthen
wall four feet high closed off the road, and a dozen crossbowmen manned the heights.
Tyrion halted his followers out of range and rode to the wall alone. “Who commands
here?” he shouted up.
The captain was quick to appear, and even quicker to give them an escort when he
recognized his lord’s son. They trotted past blackened fields and burned holdfasts, down
to the riverlands and the Green Fork of the Trident. Tyrion saw no bodies, but the air
was full of ravens and carrion crows; there had been fighting here, and recently.
Half a league from the crossroads, a barricade of sharpened stakes had been erected,
manned by pikemen and archers. Behind the line, the camp spread out to the far
distance. Thin fingers of smoke rose from hundreds of cookfires, mailed men sat under
trees and honed their blades, and familiar banners fluttered from staffs thrust into the
muddy ground.
A party of mounted horsemen rode forward to challenge them as they approached the
�stakes. The knight who led them wore silver armor inlaid with amethysts and a striped
purple-and-silver cloak. His shield bore a unicorn sigil, and a spiral horn two feet long
jutted up from the brow of his horsehead helm. Tyrion reined up to greet him. “Ser
Flement.”
Ser Flement Brax lifted his visor. “Tyrion,” he said in astonishment. “My lord, we all
feared you dead, or . . . ” He looked at the clansmen uncertainly. “These . . . companions
of yours . . . ”
“Bosom friends and loyal retainers,” Tyrion said. “Where will I find my lord father?”
“He has taken the inn at the crossroads for his quarters.”
Tyrion laughed. The inn at the crossroads! Perhaps the gods were just after all. “I will see
him at once.”
“As you say, my lord.” Ser Flement wheeled his horse about and shouted commands.
Three rows of stakes were pulled from the ground to make a hole in the line. Tyrion led
his party through.
Lord Tywin’s camp spread over leagues. Chella’s estimate of twenty thousand men could
not be far wrong. The common men camped out in the open, but the knights had thrown
up tents, and some of the high lords had erected pavilions as large as houses. Tyrion
spied the red ox of the Presters, Lord Crakehall’s brindled boar, the burning tree of
Marbrand, the badger of Lydden. Knights called out to him as he cantered past, and
men-at-arms gaped at the clansmen in open astonishment.
Shagga was gaping back; beyond a certainty, he had never seen so many men, horses,
and weapons in all his days. The rest of the mountain brigands did a better job of
guarding their faces, but Tyrion had no doubts that they were full as much in awe. Better
and better. The more impressed they were with the power of the Lannisters, the easier
they would be to command.
The inn and its stables were much as he remembered, though little more than tumbled
stones and blackened foundations remained where the rest of the village had stood. A
gibbet had been erected in the yard, and the body that swung there was covered with
ravens. At Tyrion’s approach they took to the air, squawking and flapping their black
wings. He dismounted and glanced up at what remained of the corpse. The birds had
eaten her lips and eyes and most of her cheeks, baring her stained red teeth in a hideous
smile. “A room, a meal, and a flagon of wine, that was all I asked,” he reminded her with
a sigh of reproach.
�Boys emerged hesitantly from the stables to see to their horses. Shagga did not want to
give his up. “The lad won’t steal your mare,” Tyrion assured him. “He only wants to give
her some oats and water and brush out her coat.” Shagga’s coat could have used a good
brushing too, but it would have been less than tactful to mention it. “You have my word,
the horse will not be harmed.”
Glaring, Shagga let go his grip on the reins. “This is the horse of Shagga son of Dolf,” he
roared at the stableboy.
“If he doesn’t give her back, chop off his manhood and feed it to the goats,” Tyrion
promised. “Provided you can find some.”
A pair of house guards in crimson cloaks and lion-crested helms stood under the inn’s
sign, on either side of the door. Tyrion recognized their captain. “My father?”
“In the common room, m’lord.”
“My men will want meat and mead,” Tyrion told him. “See that they get it.” He entered
the inn, and there was Father.
Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West, was in his middle
fifties, yet hard as a man of twenty. Even seated, he was tall, with long legs, broad
shoulders, a flat stomach. His thin arms were corded with muscle. When his once-thick
golden hair had begun to recede, he had commanded his barber to shave his head; Lord
Tywin did not believe in half measures. He razored his lip and chin as well, but kept his
side-whiskers, two great thickets of wiry golden hair that covered most of his cheeks
from ear to jaw. His eyes were a pale green, flecked with gold. A fool more foolish than
most had once jested that even Lord Tywin’s shit was flecked with gold. Some said the
man was still alive, deep in the bowels of Casterly Rock.
Ser Kevan Lannister, his father’s only surviving brother, was sharing a flagon of ale with
Lord Tywin when Tyrion entered the common room. His uncle was portly and balding,
with a close-cropped yellow beard that followed the line of his massive jaw. Ser Kevan
saw him first. “Tyrion,” he said in surprise.
“Uncle,” Tyrion said, bowing. “And my lord father. What a pleasure to find you here.”
Lord Tywin did not stir from his chair, but he did give his dwarf son a long, searching
look. “I see that the rumors of your demise were unfounded.”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Father,” Tyrion said. “No need to leap up and embrace me, I
wouldn’t want you to strain yourself.” He crossed the room to their table, acutely
�conscious of the way his stunted legs made him waddle with every step. Whenever his
father’s eyes were on him, he became uncomfortably aware of all his deformities and
shortcomings. “Kind of you to go to war for me,” he said as he climbed into a chair and
helped himself to a cup of his father’s ale.
“By my lights, it was you who started this,” Lord Tywin replied. “Your brother Jaime
would never have meekly submitted to capture at the hands of a woman.”
“That’s one way we differ, Jaime and I. He’s taller as well, you may have noticed.”
His father ignored the sally. “The honor of our House was at stake. I had no choice but to
ride. No man sheds Lannister blood with impunity.”
“Hear Me Roar,” Tyrion said, grinning. The Lannister words. “Truth be told, none of my
blood was actually shed, although it was a close thing once or twice. Morrec and Jyck
were killed.”
“I suppose you will be wanting some new men.”
“Don’t trouble yourself, Father, I’ve acquired a few of my own.” He tried a swallow of the
ale. It was brown and yeasty, so thick you could almost chew it. Very fine, in truth. A pity
his father had hanged the innkeep. “How is your war going?”
His uncle answered. “Well enough, for the nonce. Ser Edmure had scattered small troops
of men along his borders to stop our raiding, and your lord father and I were able to
destroy most of them piecemeal before they could regroup.”
“Your brother has been covering himself with glory,” his father said. “He smashed the
Lords Vance and Piper at the Golden Tooth, and met the massed power of the Tullys
under the walls of Riverrun. The lords of the Trident have been put to rout. Ser Edmure
Tully was taken captive, with many of his knights and bannermen. Lord Blackwood led a
few survivors back to Riverrun, where Jaime has them under siege. The rest fled to their
own strongholds.”
“Your father and I have been marching on each in turn,” Ser Kevan said. “With Lord
Blackwood gone, Raventree fell at once, and Lady Whent yielded Harrenhal for want of
men to defend it. Ser Gregor burnt out the Pipers and the Brackens . . . ”
“Leaving you unopposed?” Tyrion said.
“Not wholly,” Ser Kevan said. “The Mallisters still hold Seagard and Walder Frey is
marshaling his levies at the Twins.”
�“No matter,” Lord Tywin said. “Frey only takes the field when the scent of victory is in
the air, and all he smells now is ruin. And Jason Mallister lacks the strength to fight
alone. Once Jaime takes Riverrun, they will both be quick enough to bend the knee.
Unless the Starks and the Arryns come forth to oppose us, this war is good as won.”
“I would not fret overmuch about the Arryns if I were you,” Tyrion said. “The Starks are
another matter. Lord Eddard—”
“—is our hostage,” his father said. “He will lead no armies while he rots in a dungeon
under the Red Keep.”
“No,” Ser Kevan agreed, “but his son has called the banners and sits at Moat Cailin with
a strong host around him.”
“No sword is strong until it’s been tempered,” Lord Tywin declared. “The Stark boy is a
child. No doubt he likes the sound of warhorns well enough, and the sight of his banners
fluttering in the wind, but in the end it comes down to butcher’s work. I doubt he has the
stomach for it.”
Things had gotten interesting while he’d been away, Tyrion reflected. “And what is our
fearless monarch doing whilst all this ‘butcher’s work’ is being done?” he wondered.
“How has my lovely and persuasive sister gotten Robert to agree to the imprisonment of
his dear friend Ned?”
“Robert Baratheon is dead,” his father told him. “Your nephew reigns in King’s Landing.”
That did take Tyrion aback. “My sister, you mean.” He took another gulp of ale. The
realm would be a much different place with Cersei ruling in place of her husband.
“If you have a mind to make yourself of use, I will give you a command,” his father said.
“Marq Piper and Karyl Vance are loose in our rear, raiding our lands across the Red
Fork.”
Tyrion made a tsking sound. “The gall of them, fighting back. Ordinarily I’d be glad to
punish such rudeness, Father, but the truth is, I have pressing business elsewhere.”
“Do you?” Lord Tywin did not seem awed. “We also have a pair of Ned Stark’s
afterthoughts making a nuisance of themselves by harassing my foraging parties. Beric
Dondarrion, some young lordling with delusions of valor. He has that fat jape of a priest
with him, the one who likes to set his sword on fire. Do you think you might be able to
deal with them as you scamper off? Without making too much a botch of it?”
�Tyrion wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled. “Father, it warms my
heart to think that you might entrust me with . . . what, twenty men? Fifty? Are you sure
you can spare so many? Well, no matter. If I should come across Thoros and Lord Beric,
I shall spank them both.” He climbed down from his chair and waddled to the sideboard,
where a wheel of veined white cheese sat surrounded by fruit. “First, though, I have
some promises of my own to keep,” he said as he sliced off a wedge. “I shall require three
thousand helms and as many hauberks, plus swords, pikes, steel spearheads, maces,
battleaxes, gauntlets, gorgets, greaves, breastplates, wagons to carry all this—”
The door behind him opened with a crash, so violently that Tyrion almost dropped his
cheese. Ser Kevan leapt up swearing as the captain of the guard went flying across the
room to smash against the hearth. As he tumbled down into the cold ashes, his lion helm
askew, Shagga snapped the man’s sword in two over a knee thick as a tree trunk, threw
down the pieces, and lumbered into the common room. He was preceded by his stench,
riper than the cheese and overpowering in the closed space. “Little redcape,” he snarled,
“when next you bare steel on Shagga son of Dolf, I will chop off your manhood and roast
it in the fire.”
“What, no goats?” Tyrion said, taking a bite of cheese.
The other clansmen followed Shagga into the common room, Bronn with them. The
sellsword gave Tyrion a rueful shrug.
“Who might you be?” Lord Tywin asked, cool as snow.
“They followed me home, Father,” Tyrion explained. “May I keep them? They don’t eat
much.”
No one was smiling. “By what right do you savages intrude on our councils?” demanded
Ser Kevan.
“Savages, lowlander?” Conn might have been handsome if you washed him. “We are free
men, and free men by rights sit on all war councils.”
“Which one is the lion lord?” Chella asked.
“They are both old men,” announced Timett son of Timett, who had yet to see his
twentieth year.
Ser Kevan’s hand went to his sword hilt, but his brother placed two fingers on his wrist
and held him fast. Lord Tywin seemed unperturbed. “Tyrion, have you forgotten your
�courtesies? Kindly acquaint us with our . . . honored guests.”
Tyrion licked his fingers. “With pleasure,” he said. “The fair maid is Chella daughter of
Cheyk of the Black Ears.”
“I’m no maid,” Chella protested. “My sons have taken fifty ears among them.”
“May they take fifty more.” Tyrion waddled away from her. “This is Conn son of Coratt.
Shagga son of Dolf is the one who looks like Casterly Rock with hair. They are Stone
Crows. Here is Ulf son of Umar of the Moon Brothers, and here Timett son of Timett, a
red hand of the Burned Men. And this is Bronn, a sellsword of no particular allegiance.
He has already changed sides twice in the short time I’ve known him, you and he ought
to get on famously, Father.” To Bronn and the clansmen he said, “May I present my lord
father, Tywin son of Tytos of House Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the
West, Shield of Lannisport, and once and future Hand of the King.”
Lord Tywin rose, dignified and correct. “Even in the west, we know the prowess of the
warrior clans of the Mountains of the Moon. What brings you down from your
strongholds, my lords?”
“Horses,” said Shagga.
“A promise of silk and steel,” said Timett son of Timett.
Tyrion was about to tell his lord father how he proposed to reduce the Vale of Arryn to a
smoking wasteland, but he was never given the chance. The door banged open again.
The messenger gave Tyrion’s clansmen a quick, queer look as he dropped to one knee
before Lord Tywin. “My lord,” he said, “Ser Addam bid me tell you that the Stark host is
moving down the causeway.”
Lord Tywin Lannister did not smile. Lord Tywin never smiled, but Tyrion had learned to
read his father’s pleasure all the same, and it was there on his face. “So the wolfling is
leaving his den to play among the lions,” he said in a voice of quiet satisfaction.
“Splendid. Return to Ser Addam and tell him to fall back. He is not to engage the
northerners until we arrive, but I want him to harass their flanks and draw them farther
south.”
“It will be as you command.” The rider took his leave.
“We are well situated here,” Ser Kevan pointed out. “Close to the ford and ringed by pits
and spikes. If they are coming south, I say let them come, and break themselves against
us.”
�“The boy may hang back or lose his courage when he sees our numbers,” Lord Tywin
replied. “The sooner the Starks are broken, the sooner I shall be free to deal with Stannis
Baratheon. Tell the drummers to beat assembly, and send word to Jaime that I am
marching against Robb Stark.”
“As you will,” Ser Kevan said.
Tyrion watched with a grim fascination as his lord father turned next to the half-wild
clansmen. “It is said that the men of the mountain clans are warriors without fear.”
“It is said truly,” Conn of the Stone Crows answered.
“And the women,” Chella added.
“Ride with me against my enemies, and you shall have all my son promised you, and
more,” Lord Tywin told them.
“Would you pay us with our own coin?” Ulf son of Umar said. “Why should we need the
father’s promise, when we have the son’s?”
“I said nothing of need,” Lord Tywin replied. “My words were courtesy, nothing more.
You need not join us. The men of the winterlands are made of iron and ice, and even my
boldest knights fear to face them.”
Oh, deftly done, Tyrion thought, smiling crookedly.
“The Burned Men fear nothing. Timett son of Timett will ride with the lions.”
“Wherever the Burned Men go, the Stone Crows have been there first,” Conn declared
hotly. “We ride as well.”
“Shagga son of Dolf will chop off their manhoods and feed them to the crows.”
“We will ride with you, lion lord,” Chella daughter of Cheyk agreed, “but only if your
halfman son goes with us. He has bought his breath with promises. Until we hold the
steel he has pledged us, his life is ours.”
Lord Tywin turned his gold-flecked eyes on his son.
“Joy,” Tyrion said with a resigned smile.
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SANSA
The walls of the throne room had been stripped bare, the hunting tapestries that King
Robert loved taken down and stacked in the corner in an untidy heap.
Ser Mandon Moore went to take his place under the throne beside two of his fellows of
the Kingsguard. Sansa hovered by the door, for once unguarded. The queen had given
her freedom of the castle as a reward for being good, yet even so, she was escorted
everywhere she went. “Honor guards for my daughter-to-be,” the queen called them, but
they did not make Sansa feel honored.
“Freedom of the castle” meant that she could go wherever she chose within the Red Keep
so long as she promised not to go beyond the walls, a promise Sansa had been more than
willing to give. She couldn’t have gone beyond the walls anyway. The gates were watched
day and night by Janos Slynt’s gold cloaks, and Lannister house guards were always
about as well. Besides, even if she could leave the castle, where would she go? It was
enough that she could walk in the yard, pick flowers in Myrcella’s garden, and visit the
sept to pray for her father. Sometimes she prayed in the godswood as well, since the
Starks kept the old gods.
This was the first court session of Joffrey’s reign, so Sansa looked about nervously. A line
of Lannister house guards stood beneath the western windows, a line of gold-cloaked
City Watchmen beneath the east. Of smallfolk and commoners, she saw no sign, but
under the gallery a cluster of lords great and small milled restlessly. There were no more
than twenty, where a hundred had been accustomed to wait upon King Robert.
Sansa slipped in among them, murmuring greetings as she worked her way toward the
front. She recognized black-skinned Jalabhar Xho, gloomy Ser Aron Santagar, the
Redwyne twins Horror and Slobber . . . only none of them seemed to recognize her. Or if
they did, they shied away as if she had the grey plague. Sickly Lord Gyles covered his
face at her approach and feigned a fit of coughing, and when funny drunken Ser Dontos
started to hail her, Ser Balon Swann whispered in his ear and he turned away.
And so many others were missing. Where had the rest of them gone? Sansa wondered.
Vainly, she searched for friendly faces. Not one of them would meet her eyes. It was as if
she had become a ghost, dead before her time.
�Grand Maester Pycelle was seated alone at the council table, seemingly asleep, his hands
clasped together atop his beard. She saw Lord Varys hurry into the hall, his feet making
no sound. A moment later Lord Baelish entered through the tall doors in the rear,
smiling. He chatted amiably with Ser Balon and Ser Dontos as he made his way to the
front. Butterflies fluttered nervously in Sansa’s stomach. I shouldn’t be afraid, she told
herself. I have nothing to be afraid of, it will all come out well, Joff loves me and the
queen does too, she said so.
A herald’s voice rang out. “All hail His Grace, Joffrey of the Houses Baratheon and
Lannister, the First of his Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men,
and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. All hail his lady mother, Cersei of House Lannister,
Queen Regent, Light of the West, and Protector of the Realm.”
Ser Barristan Selmy, resplendent in white plate, led them in. Ser Arys Oakheart escorted
the queen, while Ser Boros Blount walked beside Joffrey, so six of the Kingsguard were
now in the hall, all the White Swords save Jaime Lannister alone. Her prince—no, her
king now!—took the steps of the Iron Throne two at a time, while his mother was seated
with the council. Joff wore plush black velvets slashed with crimson, a shimmering clothof-gold cape with a high collar, and on his head a golden crown crusted with rubies and
black diamonds.
When Joffrey turned to look out over the hall, his eye caught Sansa’s. He smiled, seated
himself, and spoke. “It is a king’s duty to punish the disloyal and reward those who are
true. Grand Maester Pycelle, I command you to read my decrees.”
Pycelle pushed himself to his feet. He was clad in a magnificent robe of thick red velvet,
with an ermine collar and shiny gold fastenings. From a drooping sleeve, heavy with
gilded scrollwork, he drew a parchment, unrolled it, and began to read a long list of
names, commanding each in the name of king and council to present themselves and
swear their fealty to Joffrey. Failing that, they would be adjudged traitors, their lands
and titles forfeit to the throne.
The names he read made Sansa hold her breath. Lord Stannis Baratheon, his lady wife,
his daughter. Lord Renly Baratheon. Both Lord Royces and their sons. Ser Loras Tyrell.
Lord Mace Tyrell, his brothers, uncles, sons. The red priest, Thoros of Myr. Lord Beric
Dondarrion. Lady Lysa Arryn and her son, the little Lord Robert. Lord Hoster Tully, his
brother Ser Brynden, his son Ser Edmure. Lord Jason Mallister. Lord Bryce Caron of the
Marches. Lord Tytos Blackwood. Lord Walder Frey and his heir Ser Stevron. Lord Karyl
Vance. Lord Jonos Bracken. Lady Sheila Whent. Doran Martell, Prince of Dorne, and all
his sons. So many, she thought as Pycelle read on and on, it will take a whole flock of
ravens to send out these commands.
�And at the end, near last, came the names Sansa had been dreading. Lady Catelyn Stark.
Robb Stark. Brandon Stark, Rickon Stark, Arya Stark. Sansa stifled a gasp. Arya. They
wanted Arya to present herself and swear an oath . . . it must mean her sister had fled on
the galley, she must be safe at Winterfell by now . . .
Grand Maester Pycelle rolled up the list, tucked it up his left sleeve, and pulled another
parchment from his right. He cleared his throat and resumed. “In the place of the traitor
Eddard Stark, it is the wish of His Grace that Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and
Warden of the West, take up the office of Hand of the King, to speak with his voice, lead
his armies against his enemies, and carry out his royal will. So the king has decreed. The
small council consents.
“In the place of the traitor Stannis Baratheon, it is the wish of His Grace that his lady
mother, the Queen Regent Cersei Lannister, who has ever been his staunchest support,
be seated upon his small council, that she may help him rule wisely and with justice. So
the king has decreed. The small council consents.”
Sansa heard a soft murmuring from the lords around her, but it was quickly stilled.
Pycelle continued.
“It is also the wish of His Grace that his loyal servant, Janos Slynt, Commander of the
City Watch of King’s Landing, be at once raised to the rank of lord and granted the
ancient seat of Harrenhal with all its attendant lands and incomes, and that his sons and
grandsons shall hold these honors after him until the end of time. It is moreover his
command that Lord Slynt be seated immediately upon his small council, to assist in the
governance of the realm. So the king has decreed. The small council consents.”
Sansa glimpsed motion from the corner of her eye as Janos Slynt made his entrance.
This time the muttering was louder and angrier. Proud lords whose houses went back
thousands of years made way reluctantly for the balding, frog-faced commoner as he
marched past. Golden scales had been sewn onto the black velvet of his doublet and rang
together softly with each step. His cloak was checked black-and-gold satin. Two ugly
boys who must have been his sons went before him, struggling with the weight of a
heavy metal shield as tall as they were. For his sigil he had taken a bloody spear, gold on
a night-black field. The sight of it raised goose prickles up and down Sansa’s arms.
As Lord Slynt took his place, Grand Maester Pycelle resumed. “Lastly, in these times of
treason and turmoil, with our beloved Robert so lately dead, it is the view of the council
that the life and safety of King Joffrey is of paramount importance . . . ” He looked to the
queen.
Cersei stood. “Ser Barristan Selmy, stand forth.”
�Ser Barristan had been standing at the foot of the Iron Throne, as still as any statue, but
now he went to one knee and bowed his head. “Your Grace, I am yours to command.”
“Rise, Ser Barristan,” Cersei Lannister said. “You may remove your helm.”
“My lady?” Standing, the old knight took off his high white helm, though he did not seem
to understand why.
“You have served the realm long and faithfully, good ser, and every man and woman in
the Seven Kingdoms owes you thanks. Yet now I fear your service is at an end. It is the
wish of king and council that you lay down your heavy burden.”
“My . . . burden? I fear I . . . I do not . . . ”
The new-made lord, Janos Slynt, spoke up, his voice heavy and blunt. “Her Grace is
trying to tell you that you are relieved as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.”
The tall, white-haired knight seemed to shrink as he stood there, scarcely breathing.
“Your Grace,” he said at last. “The Kingsguard is a Sworn Brotherhood. Our vows are
taken for life. Only death may relieve the Lord Commander of his sacred trust.”
“Whose death, Ser Barristan?” The queen’s voice was soft as silk, but her words carried
the whole length of the hall. “Yours, or your king’s?”
“You let my father die,” Joffrey said accusingly from atop the Iron Throne. “You’re too
old to protect anybody.”
Sansa watched as the knight peered up at his new king. She had never seen him look his
years before, yet now he did. “Your Grace,” he said. “I was chosen for the White Swords
in my twenty-third year. It was all I had ever dreamed, from the moment I first took
sword in hand. I gave up all claim to my ancestral keep. The girl I was to wed married
my cousin in my place, I had no need of land or sons, my life would be lived for the
realm. Ser Gerold Hightower himself heard my vows . . . to ward the king with all my
strength . . . to give my blood for his . . . I fought beside the White Bull and Prince Lewyn
of Dorne . . . beside Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. Before I served your
father, I helped shield King Aerys, and his father Jaehaerys before him . . . three
kings . . . ”
“And all of them dead,” Littlefinger pointed out.
“Your time is done,” Cersei Lannister announced. “Joffrey requires men around him
�who are young and strong. The council has determined that Ser Jaime Lannister will
take your place as the Lord Commander of Sworn Brothers of the White Swords.”
“The Kingslayer,” Ser Barristan said, his voice hard with contempt. “The false knight
who profaned his blade with the blood of the king he had sworn to defend.”
“Have a care for your words, ser,” the queen warned. “You are speaking of our beloved
brother, your king’s own blood.”
Lord Varys spoke, gentler than the others. “We are not unmindful of your service, good
ser. Lord Tywin Lannister has generously agreed to grant you a handsome tract of land
north of Lannisport, beside the sea, with gold and men sufficient to build you a stout
keep, and servants to see to your every need.”
Ser Barristan looked up sharply. “A hall to die in, and men to bury me. I thank you, my
lords . . . but I spit upon your pity.” He reached up and undid the clasps that held his
cloak in place, and the heavy white garment slithered from his shoulders to fall in a heap
on the floor. His helmet dropped with a clang. “I am a knight,” he told them. He opened
the silver fastenings of his breastplate and let that fall as well. “I shall die a knight.”
“A naked knight, it would seem,” quipped Littlefinger.
They all laughed then, Joffrey on his throne, and the lords standing attendance, Janos
Slynt and Queen Cersei and Sandor Clegane and even the other men of the Kingsguard,
the five who had been his brothers until a moment ago. Surely that must have hurt the
most, Sansa thought. Her heart went out to the gallant old man as he stood shamed and
red-faced, too angry to speak. Finally he drew his sword.
Sansa heard someone gasp. Ser Boros and Ser Meryn moved forward to confront him,
but Ser Barristan froze them in place with a look that dripped contempt. “Have no fear,
sers, your king is safe . . . no thanks to you. Even now, I could cut through the five of you
as easy as a dagger cuts cheese. If you would serve under the Kingslayer, not a one of you
is fit to wear the white.” He flung his sword at the foot of the Iron Throne. “Here, boy.
Melt it down and add it to the others, if you like. It will do you more good than the
swords in the hands of these five. Perhaps Lord Stannis will chance to sit on it when he
takes your throne.”
He took the long way out, his steps ringing loud against the floor and echoing off the
bare stone walls. Lords and ladies parted to let him pass. Not until the pages had closed
the great oak-and-bronze doors behind him did Sansa hear sounds again: soft voices,
uneasy stirrings, the shuffle of papers from the council table. “He called me boy,” Joffrey
said peevishly, sounding younger than his years. “He talked about my uncle Stannis too.”
�“Idle talk,” said Varys the eunuch. “Without meaning . . . ”
“He could be making plots with my uncles. I want him seized and questioned.” No one
moved. Joffrey raised his voice. “I said, I want him seized!”
Janos Slynt rose from the council table. “My gold cloaks will see to it, Your Grace.”
“Good,” said King Joffrey. Lord Janos strode from the hall, his ugly sons doublestepping to keep up as they lugged the great metal shield with the arms of House Slynt.
“Your Grace,” Littlefinger reminded the king. “If we might resume, the seven are now
six. We find ourselves in need of a new sword for your Kingsguard.”
Joffrey smiled. “Tell them, Mother.”
“The king and council have determined that no man in the Seven Kingdoms is more fit
to guard and protect His Grace than his sworn shield, Sandor Clegane.”
“How do you like that, dog?” King Joffrey asked.
The Hound’s scarred face was hard to read. He took a long moment to consider. “Why
not? I have no lands nor wife to forsake, and who’d care if I did?” The burned side of his
mouth twisted. “But I warn you, I’ll say no knight’s vows.”
“The Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard have always been knights,” Ser Boros said firmly.
“Until now,” the Hound said in his deep rasp, and Ser Boros fell silent.
When the king’s herald moved forward, Sansa realized the moment was almost at hand.
She smoothed down the cloth of her skirt nervously. She was dressed in mourning, as a
sign of respect for the dead king, but she had taken special care to make herself
beautiful. Her gown was the ivory silk that the queen had given her, the one Arya had
ruined, but she’d had them dye it black and you couldn’t see the stain at all. She had
fretted over her jewelry for hours and finally decided upon the elegant simplicity of a
plain silver chain.
The herald’s voice boomed out. “If any man in this hall has other matters to set before
His Grace, let him speak now or go forth and hold his silence.”
Sansa quailed. Now, she told herself, I must do it now. Gods give me courage. She took
one step, then another. Lords and knights stepped aside silently to let her pass, and she
�felt the weight of their eyes on her. I must be as strong as my lady mother. “Your
Grace,” she called out in a soft, tremulous voice.
The height of the Iron Throne gave Joffrey a better vantage point than anyone else in the
hall. He was the first to see her. “Come forward, my lady,” he called out, smiling.
His smile emboldened her, made her feel beautiful and strong. He does love me, he does.
Sansa lifted her head and walked toward him, not too slow and not too fast. She must
not let them see how nervous she was.
“The Lady Sansa, of House Stark,” the herald cried.
She stopped under the throne, at the spot where Ser Barristan’s white cloak lay puddled
on the floor beside his helm and breastplate. “Do you have some business for king and
council, Sansa?” the queen asked from the council table.
“I do.” She knelt on the cloak, so as not to spoil her gown, and looked up at her prince on
his fearsome black throne. “As it please Your Grace, I ask mercy for my father, Lord
Eddard Stark, who was the Hand of the King.” She had practiced the words a hundred
times.
The queen sighed. “Sansa, you disappoint me. What did I tell you about traitor’s blood?”
“Your father has committed grave and terrible crimes, my lady,” Grand Maester Pycelle
intoned.
“Ah, poor sad thing,” sighed Varys. “She is only a babe, my lords, she does not know
what she asks.”
Sansa had eyes only for Joffrey. He must listen to me, he must, she thought. The king
shifted on his seat, “Let her speak,” he commanded. “I want to hear what she says.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Sansa smiled, a shy secret smile, just for him. He was
listening. She knew he would.
“Treason is a noxious weed,” Pycelle declared solemnly. “It must be torn up, root and
stem and seed, lest new traitors sprout from every roadside.”
“Do you deny your father’s crime?” Lord Baelish asked.
“No, my lords.” Sansa knew better than that. “I know he must be punished. All I ask is
�mercy. I know my lord father must regret what he did. He was King Robert’s friend and
he loved him, you all know he loved him. He never wanted to be Hand until the king
asked him. They must have lied to him. Lord Renly or Lord Stannis or . . . or somebody,
they must have lied, otherwise . . . ”
King Joffrey leaned forward, hands grasping the arms of the throne. Broken sword
points fanned out between his fingers. “He said I wasn’t the king. Why did he say that?”
“His leg was broken,” Sansa replied eagerly. “It hurt ever so much, Maester Pycelle was
giving him milk of the poppy, and they say that milk of the poppy fills your head with
clouds. Otherwise he would never have said it.”
Varys said, “A child’s faith . . . such sweet innocence . . . and yet, they say wisdom oft
comes from the mouths of babes.”
“Treason is treason,” Pycelle replied at once.
Joffrey rocked restlessly on the throne. “Mother?”
Cersei Lannister considered Sansa thoughtfully. “If Lord Eddard were to confess his
crime,” she said at last, “we would know he had repented his folly.”
Joffrey pushed himself to his feet. Please, Sansa thought, please, please, be the king I
know you are, good and kind and noble, please. “Do you have any more to say?” he
asked her.
“Only . . . that as you love me, you do me this kindness, my prince,” Sansa said.
King Joffrey looked her up and down. “Your sweet words have moved me,” he said
gallantly, nodding, as if to say all would be well. “I shall do as you ask . . . but first your
father has to confess. He has to confess and say that I’m the king, or there will be no
mercy for him.”
“He will,” Sansa said, heart soaring. “Oh, I know he will.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
EDDARD
The straw on the floor stank of urine. There was no window, no bed, not even a slop
bucket. He remembered walls of pale red stone festooned with patches of nitre, a grey
door of splintered wood, four inches thick and studded with iron. He had seen them,
briefly, a quick glimpse as they shoved him inside. Once the door had slammed shut, he
had seen no more. The dark was absolute. He had as well been blind.
Or dead. Buried with his king. “Ah, Robert,” he murmured as his groping hand touched
a cold stone wall, his leg throbbing with every motion. He remembered the jest the king
had shared in the crypts of Winterfell, as the Kings of Winter looked on with cold stone
eyes. The king eats, Robert had said, and the Hand takes the shit. How he had laughed.
Yet he had gotten it wrong. The king dies, Ned Stark thought, and the Hand is buried.
The dungeon was under the Red Keep, deeper than he dared imagine. He remembered
the old stories about Maegor the Cruel, who murdered all the masons who labored on his
castle, so they might never reveal its secrets.
He damned them all: Littlefinger, Janos Slynt and his gold cloaks, the queen, the
Kingslayer, Pycelle and Varys and Ser Barristan, even Lord Renly, Robert’s own blood,
who had run when he was needed most. Yet in the end he blamed himself. “Fool,” he
cried to the darkness, “thrice-damned blind fool.”
Cersei Lannister’s face seemed to float before him in the darkness. Her hair was full of
sunlight, but there was mockery in her smile. “When you play the game of thrones, you
win or you die,” she whispered. Ned had played and lost, and his men had paid the price
of his folly with their life’s blood.
When he thought of his daughters, he would have wept gladly, but the tears would not
come. Even now, he was a Stark of Winterfell, and his grief and his rage froze hard
inside him.
When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did his best to lie unmoving.
For how long he could not say. There was no sun and no moon. He could not see to mark
the walls. Ned closed his eyes and opened them; it made no difference. He slept and
woke and slept again. He did not know which was more painful, the waking or the
sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams of blood and broken
�promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts
were worse than nightmares. The thought of Cat was as painful as a bed of nettles. He
wondered where she was, what she was doing. He wondered whether he would ever see
her again.
Hours turned to days, or so it seemed. He could feel a dull ache in his shattered leg, an
itch beneath the plaster. When he touched his thigh, the flesh was hot to his fingers. The
only sound was his breathing. After a time, he began to talk aloud, just to hear a voice.
He made plans to keep himself sane, built castles of hope in the dark. Robert’s brothers
were out in the world, raising armies at Dragonstone and Storm’s End. Alyn and Harwin
would return to King’s Landing with the rest of his household guard once they had dealt
with Ser Gregor. Catelyn would raise the north when the word reached her, and the lords
of river and mountain and Vale would join her.
He found himself thinking of Robert more and more. He saw the king as he had been in
the flower of his youth, tall and handsome, his great antlered helm on his head, his
warhammer in hand, sitting his horse like a horned god. He heard his laughter in the
dark, saw his eyes, blue and clear as mountain lakes. “Look at us, Ned,” Robert said.
“Gods, how did we come to this? You here, and me killed by a pig. We won a throne
together . . . ”
I failed you, Robert, Ned thought. He could not say the words. I lied to you, hid the
truth. I let them kill you.
The king heard him. “You stiff-necked fool,” he muttered, “too proud to listen. Can you
eat pride, Stark? Will honor shield your children?” Cracks ran down his face, fissures
opening in the flesh, and he reached up and ripped the mask away. It was not Robert at
all; it was Littlefinger, grinning, mocking him. When he opened his mouth to speak, his
lies turned to pale grey moths and took wing.
Ned was half-asleep when the footsteps came down the hall. At first he thought he
dreamt them; it had been so long since he had heard anything but the sound of his own
voice. Ned was feverish by then, his leg a dull agony, his lips parched and cracked. When
the heavy wooden door creaked open, the sudden light was painful to his eyes.
A gaoler thrust a jug at him. The clay was cool and beaded with moisture. Ned grasped it
with both hands and gulped eagerly. Water ran from his mouth and dripped down
through his beard. He drank until he thought he would be sick. “How long . . . ?” he
asked weakly when he could drink no more.
The gaoler was a scarecrow of a man with a rat’s face and frayed beard, clad in a mail
shirt and a leather half cape. “No talking,” he said as he wrenched the jug from Ned’s
�hands.
“Please,” Ned said, “my daughters . . . ” The door crashed shut. He blinked as the light
vanished, lowered his head to his chest, and curled up on the straw. It no longer stank of
urine and shit. It no longer smelled at all.
He could no longer tell the difference between waking and sleeping. The memory came
creeping upon him in the darkness, as vivid as a dream. It was the year of false spring,
and he was eighteen again, down from the Eyrie to the tourney at Harrenhal. He could
see the deep green of the grass, and smell the pollen on the wind. Warm days and cool
nights and the sweet taste of wine. He remembered Brandon’s laughter, and Robert’s
berserk valor in the melee, the way he laughed as he unhorsed men left and right. He
remembered Jaime Lannister, a golden youth in scaled white armor, kneeling on the
grass in front of the king’s pavilion and making his vows to protect and defend King
Aerys. Afterward, Ser Oswell Whent helped Jaime to his feet, and the White Bull
himself, Lord Commander Ser Gerold Hightower, fastened the snowy cloak of the
Kingsguard about his shoulders. All six White Swords were there to welcome their
newest brother.
Yet when the jousting began, the day belonged to Rhaegar Targaryen. The crown prince
wore the armor he would die in: gleaming black plate with the three-headed dragon of
his House wrought in rubies on the breast. A plume of scarlet silk streamed behind him
when he rode, and it seemed no lance could touch him. Brandon fell to him, and Bronze
Yohn Royce, and even the splendid Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning.
Robert had been jesting with Jon and old Lord Hunter as the prince circled the field
after unhorsing Ser Barristan in the final tilt to claim the champion’s crown. Ned
remembered the moment when all the smiles died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen
urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell, to lay the queen of
beauty’s laurel in Lyanna’s lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.
Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the pale blue
petals the thorns lay hidden. He felt them clawing at his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the
slow trickle of blood run down his fingers, and woke, trembling, in the dark.
Promise me, Ned, his sister had whispered from her bed of blood. She had loved the
scent of winter roses.
“Gods save me,” Ned wept. “I am going mad.”
The gods did not deign to answer.
�Each time the turnkey brought him water, he told himself another day had passed. At
first he would beg the man for some word of his daughters and the world beyond his cell.
Grunts and kicks were his only replies. Later, when the stomach cramps began, he
begged for food instead. It made no matter; he was not fed. Perhaps the Lannisters
meant for him to starve to death. “No,” he told himself. If Cersei had wanted him dead,
he would have been cut down in the throne room with his men. She wanted him alive.
Weak, desperate, yet alive. Catelyn held her brother; she dare not kill him or the Imp’s
life would be forfeit as well.
From outside his cell came the rattle of iron chains. As the door creaked open, Ned put a
hand to the damp wall and pushed himself toward the light. The glare of a torch made
him squint. “Food,” he croaked.
“Wine,” a voice answered. It was not the rat-faced man; this gaoler was stouter, shorter,
though he wore the same leather half cape and spiked steel cap. “Drink, Lord Eddard.”
He thrust a wineskin into Ned’s hands.
The voice was strangely familiar, yet it took Ned Stark a moment to place it. “Varys?” he
said groggily when it came. He touched the man’s face. “I’m not . . . not dreaming this.
You’re here.” The eunuch’s plump cheeks were covered with a dark stubble of beard. Ned
felt the coarse hair with his fingers. Varys had transformed himself into a grizzled
turnkey, reeking of sweat and sour wine. “How did you . . . what sort of magician are
you?”
“A thirsty one,” Varys said. “Drink, my lord.”
Ned’s hands fumbled at the skin. “Is this the same poison they gave Robert?”
“You wrong me,” Varys said sadly. “Truly, no one loves a eunuch. Give me the skin.” He
drank, a trickle of red leaking from the corner of his plump mouth. “Not the equal of the
vintage you offered me the night of the tourney, but no more poisonous than most,” he
concluded, wiping his lips. “Here.”
Ned tried a swallow. “Dregs.” He felt as though he were about to bring the wine back up.
“All men must swallow the sour with the sweet. High lords and eunuchs alike. Your hour
has come, my lord.”
“My daughters . . . ”
“The younger girl escaped Ser Meryn and fled,” Varys told him. “I have not been able to
find her. Nor have the Lannisters. A kindness, there. Our new king loves her not. Your
�older girl is still betrothed to Joffrey. Cersei keeps her close. She came to court a few
days ago to plead that you be spared. A pity you couldn’t have been there, you would
have been touched.” He leaned forward intently. “I trust you realize that you are a dead
man, Lord Eddard?”
“The queen will not kill me,” Ned said. His head swam; the wine was strong, and it had
been too long since he’d eaten. “Cat . . . Cat holds her brother . . . ”
“The wrong brother,” Varys sighed. “And lost to her, in any case. She let the Imp slip
through her fingers. I expect he is dead by now, somewhere in the Mountains of the
Moon.”
“If that is true, slit my throat and have done with it.” He was dizzy from the wine, tired
and heartsick.
“Your blood is the last thing I desire.”
Ned frowned. “When they slaughtered my guard, you stood beside the queen and
watched, and said not a word.”
“And would again. I seem to recall that I was unarmed, unarmored, and surrounded by
Lannister swords.” The eunuch looked at him curiously, tilting his head. “When I was a
young boy, before I was cut, I traveled with a troupe of mummers through the Free
Cities. They taught me that each man has a role to play, in life as well as mummery. So it
is at court. The King’s Justice must be fearsome, the master of coin must be frugal, the
Lord Commander of the Kingsguard must be valiant . . . and the master of whisperers
must be sly and obsequious and without scruple. A courageous informer would be as
useless as a cowardly knight.” He took the wineskin back and drank.
Ned studied the eunuch’s face, searching for truth beneath the mummer’s scars and false
stubble. He tried some more wine. This time it went down easier. “Can you free me from
this pit?”
“I could . . . but will I? No. Questions would be asked, and the answers would lead back
to me.”
Ned had expected no more. “You are blunt.”
“A eunuch has no honor, and a spider does not enjoy the luxury of scruples, my lord.”
“Would you at least consent to carry a message out for me?”
�“That would depend on the message. I will gladly provide you with paper and ink, if you
like. And when you have written what you will, I will take the letter and read it, and
deliver it or not, as best serves my own ends.”
“Your own ends. What ends are those, Lord Varys?”
“Peace,” Varys replied without hesitation. “If there was one soul in King’s Landing who
was truly desperate to keep Robert Baratheon alive, it was me.” He sighed. “For fifteen
years I protected him from his enemies, but I could not protect him from his friends.
What strange fit of madness led you to tell the queen that you had learned the truth of
Joffrey’s birth?”
“The madness of mercy,” Ned admitted.
“Ah,” said Varys. “To be sure. You are an honest and honorable man, Lord Eddard.
Ofttimes I forget that. I have met so few of them in my life.” He glanced around the cell.
“When I see what honesty and honor have won you, I understand why.”
Ned Stark laid his head back against the damp stone wall and closed his eyes. His leg
was throbbing. “The king’s wine . . . did you question Lancel?”
“Oh, indeed. Cersei gave him the wineskins, and told him it was Robert’s favorite
vintage.” The eunuch shrugged. “A hunter lives a perilous life. If the boar had not done
for Robert, it would have been a fall from a horse, the bite of a wood adder, an arrow
gone astray . . . the forest is the abbatoir of the gods. It was not wine that killed the king.
It was your mercy.”
Ned had feared as much. “Gods forgive me.”
“If there are gods,” Varys said, “I expect they will. The queen would not have waited long
in any case. Robert was becoming unruly, and she needed to be rid of him to free her
hands to deal with his brothers. They are quite a pair, Stannis and Renly. The iron
gauntlet and the silk glove.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You have
been foolish, my lord. You ought to have heeded Littlefinger when he urged you to
support Joffrey’s succession.”
“How . . . how could you know of that?”
Varys smiled. “I know, that’s all that need concern you. I also know that on the morrow
the queen will pay you a visit.”
Slowly Ned raised his eyes. “Why?”
�“Cersei is frightened of you, my lord . . . but she has other enemies she fears even more.
Her beloved Jaime is fighting the river lords even now. Lysa Arryn sits in the Eyrie,
ringed in stone and steel, and there is no love lost between her and the queen. In Dorne,
the Martells still brood on the murder of Princess Elia and her babes. And now your son
marches down the Neck with a northern host at his back.”
“Robb is only a boy,” Ned said, aghast.
“A boy with an army,” Varys said. “Yet only a boy, as you say. The king’s brothers are the
ones giving Cersei sleepless nights . . . Lord Stannis in particular. His claim is the true
one, he is known for his prowess as a battle commander, and he is utterly without mercy.
There is no creature on earth half so terrifying as a truly just man. No one knows what
Stannis has been doing on Dragonstone, but I will wager you that he’s gathered more
swords than seashells. So here is Cersei’s nightmare: while her father and brother spend
their power battling Starks and Tullys, Lord Stannis will land, proclaim himself king,
and lop off her son’s curly blond head . . . and her own in the bargain, though I truly
believe she cares more about the boy.”
“Stannis Baratheon is Robert’s true heir,” Ned said. “The throne is his by rights. I would
welcome his ascent.”
Varys tsked. “Cersei will not want to hear that, I promise you. Stannis may win the
throne, but only your rotting head will remain to cheer unless you guard that tongue of
yours. Sansa begged so sweetly, it would be a shame if you threw it all away. You are
being given your life back, if you’ll take it. Cersei is no fool. She knows a tame wolf is of
more use than a dead one.”
“You want me to serve the woman who murdered my king, butchered my men, and
crippled my son?” Ned’s voice was thick with disbelief.
“I want you to serve the realm,” Varys said. “Tell the queen that you will confess your
vile treason, command your son to lay down his sword, and proclaim Joffrey as the true
heir. Offer to denounce Stannis and Renly as faithless usurpers. Our green-eyed lioness
knows you are a man of honor. If you will give her the peace she needs and the time to
deal with Stannis, and pledge to carry her secret to your grave, I believe she will allow
you to take the black and live out the rest of your days on the Wall, with your brother
and that baseborn son of yours.”
The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a sorrow too deep for words. If
only he could see the boy again, sit and talk with him . . . pain shot through his broken
leg, beneath the filthy grey plaster of his cast. He winced, his fingers opening and closing
�helplessly. “Is this your own scheme,” he gasped out at Varys, “or are you in league with
Littlefinger?”
That seemed to amuse the eunuch. “I would sooner wed the Black Goat of Qohor.
Littlefinger is the second most devious man in the Seven Kingdoms. Oh, I feed him
choice whispers, sufficient so that he thinks I am his . . . just as I allow Cersei to believe I
am hers.”
“And just as you let me believe that you were mine. Tell me, Lord Varys, who do you
truly serve?”
Varys smiled thinly. “Why, the realm, my good lord, how ever could you doubt that? I
swear it by my lost manhood. I serve the realm, and the realm needs peace.” He finished
the last swallow of wine, and tossed the empty skin aside. “So what is your answer, Lord
Eddard? Give me your word that you’ll tell the queen what she wants to hear when she
comes calling.”
“If I did, my word would be as hollow as an empty suit of armor. My life is not so
precious to me as that.”
“Pity.” The eunuch stood. “And your daughter’s life, my lord? How precious is that?”
A chill pierced Ned’s heart. “My daughter . . . ”
“Surely you did not think I’d forgotten about your sweet innocent, my lord? The queen
most certainly has not.”
“No,” Ned pleaded, his voice cracking. “Varys, gods have mercy, do as you like with me,
but leave my daughter out of your schemes. Sansa’s no more than a child.”
“Rhaenys was a child too. Prince Rhaegar’s daughter. A precious little thing, younger
than your girls. She had a small black kitten she called Balerion, did you know? I always
wondered what happened to him. Rhaenys liked to pretend he was the true Balerion, the
Black Dread of old, but I imagine the Lannisters taught her the difference between a
kitten and a dragon quick enough, the day they broke down her door.” Varys gave a long
weary sigh, the sigh of a man who carried all the sadness of the world in a sack upon his
shoulders. “The High Septon once told me that as we sin, so do we suffer. If that’s true,
Lord Eddard, tell me . . . why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high
lords play your game of thrones? Ponder it, if you would, while you wait upon the queen.
And spare a thought for this as well: The next visitor who calls on you could bring you
bread and cheese and the milk of the poppy for your pain . . . or he could bring you
Sansa’s head.
�“The choice, my dear lord Hand, is entirely yours.”
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CATELYN
As the host trooped down the causeway through the black bogs of the Neck and spilled
out into the riverlands beyond, Catelyn’s apprehensions grew. She masked her fears
behind a face kept still and stern, yet they were there all the same, growing with every
league they crossed. Her days were anxious, her nights restless, and every raven that
flew overhead made her clench her teeth.
She feared for her lord father, and wondered at his ominous silence. She feared for her
brother Edmure, and prayed that the gods would watch over him if he must face the
Kingslayer in battle. She feared for Ned and her girls, and for the sweet sons she had left
behind at Winterfell. And yet there was nothing she could do for any of them, and so she
made herself put all thought of them aside. You must save your strength for Robb, she
told herself. He is the only one you can help. You must be as fierce and hard as the
north, Catelyn Tully. You must be a Stark for true now, like your son.
Robb rode at the front of the column, beneath the flapping white banner of Winterfell.
Each day he would ask one of his lords to join him, so they might confer as they
marched; he honored every man in turn, showing no favorites, listening as his lord
father had listened, weighing the words of one against the other. He has learned so
much from Ned, she thought as she watched him, but has he learned enough?
The Blackfish had taken a hundred picked men and a hundred swift horses and raced
ahead to screen their movements and scout the way. The reports Ser Brynden’s riders
brought back did little to reassure her. Lord Tywin’s host was still many days to the
south . . . but Walder Frey, Lord of the Crossing, had assembled a force of near four
thousand men at his castles on the Green Fork.
“Late again,” Catelyn murmured when she heard. It was the Trident all over, damn the
man. Her brother Edmure had called the banners; by rights, Lord Frey should have gone
to join the Tully host at Riverrun, yet here he sat.
“Four thousand men,” Robb repeated, more perplexed than angry. “Lord Frey cannot
hope to fight the Lannisters by himself. Surely he means to join his power to ours.”
“Does he?” Catelyn asked. She had ridden forward to join Robb and Robett Glover, his
companion of the day. The vanguard spread out behind them, a slow-moving forest of
�lances and banners and spears. “I wonder. Expect nothing of Walder Frey, and you will
never be surprised.”
“He’s your father’s bannerman.”
“Some men take their oaths more seriously than others, Robb. And Lord Walder was
always friendlier with Casterly Rock than my father would have liked. One of his sons is
wed to Tywin Lannister’s sister. That means little of itself, to be sure. Lord Walder has
sired a great many children over the years, and they must needs marry someone.
Still . . . ”
“Do you think he means to betray us to the Lannisters, my lady?” Robett Glover asked
gravely.
Catelyn sighed. “If truth be told, I doubt even Lord Frey knows what Lord Frey intends
to do. He has an old man’s caution and a young man’s ambition, and has never lacked
for cunning.”
“We must have the Twins, Mother,” Robb said heatedly. “There is no other way across
the river. You know that.”
“Yes. And so does Walder Frey, you can be sure of that.”
That night they made camp on the southern edge of the bogs, halfway between the
kingsroad and the river. It was there Theon Greyjoy brought them further word from her
uncle. “Ser Brynden says to tell you he’s crossed swords with the Lannisters. There are a
dozen scouts who won’t be reporting back to Lord Tywin anytime soon. Or ever.” He
grinned. “Ser Addam Marbrand commands their outriders, and he’s pulling back south,
burning as he goes. He knows where we are, more or less, but the Blackfish vows he will
not know when we split.”
“Unless Lord Frey tells him,” Catelyn said sharply. “Theon, when you return to my uncle,
tell him he is to place his best bowmen around the Twins, day and night, with orders to
bring down any raven they see leaving the battlements. I want no birds bringing word of
my son’s movements to Lord Tywin.”
“Ser Brynden has seen to it already, my lady,” Theon replied with a cocky smile. “A few
more blackbirds, and we should have enough to bake a pie. I’ll save you their feathers for
a hat.”
She ought to have known that Brynden Blackfish would be well ahead of her. “What have
the Freys been doing while the Lannisters burn their fields and plunder their holdfasts?”
�“There’s been some fighting between Ser Addam’s men and Lord Walder’s,” Theon
answered. “Not a day’s ride from here, we found two Lannister scouts feeding the crows
where the Freys had strung them up. Most of Lord Walder’s strength remains massed at
the Twins, though.”
That bore Walder Frey’s seal beyond a doubt, Catelyn thought bitterly; hold back, wait,
watch, take no risk unless forced to it.
“If he’s been fighting the Lannisters, perhaps he does mean to hold to his vows,” Robb
said.
Catelyn was less encouraged. “Defending his own lands is one thing, open battle against
Lord Tywin quite another.”
Robb turned back to Theon Greyjoy. “Has the Blackfish found any other way across the
Green Fork?”
Theon shook his head. “The river’s running high and fast. Ser Brynden says it can’t be
forded, not this far north.”
“I must have that crossing!” Robb declared, fuming. “Oh, our horses might be able to
swim the river, I suppose, but not with armored men on their backs. We’d need to build
rafts to pole our steel across, helms and mail and lances, and we don’t have the trees for
that. Or the time. Lord Tywin is marching north . . . ” He balled his hand into a fist.
“Lord Frey would be a fool to try and bar our way,” Theon Greyjoy said with his
customary easy confidence. “We have five times his numbers. You can take the Twins if
you need to, Robb.”
“Not easily,” Catelyn warned them, “and not in time. While you were mounting your
siege, Tywin Lannister would bring up his host and assault you from the rear.”
Robb glanced from her to Greyjoy, searching for an answer and finding none. For a
moment he looked even younger than his fifteen years, despite his mail and sword and
the stubble on his cheeks. “What would my lord father do?” he asked her.
“Find a way across,” she told him. “Whatever it took.”
The next morning it was Ser Brynden Tully himself who rode back to them. He had put
aside the heavy plate and helm he’d worn as the Knight of the Gate for the lighter leatherand-mail of an outrider, but his obsidian fish still fastened his cloak.
�Her uncle’s face was grave as he swung down off his horse. “There has been a battle
under the walls of Riverrun,” he said, his mouth grim. “We had it from a Lannister
outrider we took captive. The Kingslayer has destroyed Edmure’s host and sent the lords
of the Trident reeling in flight.”
A cold hand clutched at Catelyn’s heart. “And my brother?”
“Wounded and taken prisoner,” Ser Brynden said. “Lord Blackwood and the other
survivors are under siege inside Riverrun, surrounded by Jaime’s host.”
Robb looked fretful. “We must get across this accursed river if we’re to have any hope of
relieving them in time.”
“That will not be easily done,” her uncle cautioned. “Lord Frey has pulled his whole
strength back inside his castles, and his gates are closed and barred.”
“Damn the man,” Robb swore. “If the old fool does not relent and let me cross, he’ll leave
me no choice but to storm his walls. I’ll pull the Twins down around his ears if I have to,
we’ll see how well he likes that!”
“You sound like a sulky boy, Robb,” Catelyn said sharply. “A child sees an obstacle, and
his first thought is to run around it or knock it down. A lord must learn that sometimes
words can accomplish what swords cannot.”
Robb’s neck reddened at the rebuke. “Tell me what you mean, Mother,” he said meekly.
“The Freys have held the crossing for six hundred years, and for six hundred years they
have never failed to exact their toll.”
“What toll? What does he want?”
She smiled. “That is what we must discover.”
“And what if I do not choose to pay this toll?”
“Then you had best retreat back to Moat Cailin, deploy to meet Lord Tywin in
battle . . . or grow wings. I see no other choices.” Catelyn put her heels to her horse and
rode off, leaving her son to ponder her words. It would not do to make him feel as if his
mother were usurping his place. Did you teach him wisdom as well as valor, Ned? she
wondered. Did you teach him how to kneel? The graveyards of the Seven Kingdoms
�were full of brave men who had never learned that lesson.
It was near midday when their vanguard came in sight of the Twins, where the Lords of
the Crossing had their seat.
The Green Fork ran swift and deep here, but the Freys had spanned it many centuries
past and grown rich off the coin men paid them to cross. Their bridge was a massive arch
of smooth grey rock, wide enough for two wagons to pass abreast; the Water Tower rose
from the center of the span, commanding both road and river with its arrow slits,
murder holes, and portcullises. It had taken the Freys three generations to complete
their bridge; when they were done they’d thrown up stout timber keeps on either bank,
so no one might cross without their leave.
The timber had long since given way to stone. The Twins—two squat, ugly, formidable
castles, identical in every respect, with the bridge arching between—had guarded the
crossing for centuries. High curtain walls, deep moats, and heavy oak-and-iron gates
protected the approaches, the bridge footings rose from within stout inner keeps, there
was a barbican and portcullis on either bank, and the Water Tower defended the span
itself.
One glance was sufficient to tell Catelyn that the castle would not be taken by storm. The
battlements bristled with spears and swords and scorpions, there was an archer at every
crenel and arrow slit, the drawbridge was up, the portcullis down, the gates closed and
barred.
The Greatjon began to curse and swear as soon as he saw what awaited them. Lord
Rickard Karstark glowered in silence. “That cannot be assaulted, my lords,” Roose
Bolton announced.
“Nor can we take it by siege, without an army on the far bank to invest the other castle,”
Helman Tallhart said gloomily. Across the deep-running green waters, the western twin
stood like a reflection of its eastern brother. “Even if we had the time. Which, to be sure,
we do not.”
As the northern lords studied the castle, a sally port opened, a plank bridge slid across
the moat, and a dozen knights rode forth to confront them, led by four of Lord Walder’s
many sons. Their banner bore twin towers, dark blue on a field of pale silver-grey. Ser
Stevron Frey, Lord Walder’s heir, spoke for them. The Freys all looked like weasels; Ser
Stevron, past sixty with grandchildren of his own, looked like an especially old and tired
weasel, yet he was polite enough. “My lord father has sent me to greet you, and inquire
as to who leads this mighty host.”
�“I do.” Robb spurred his horse forward. He was in his armor, with the direwolf shield of
Winterfell strapped to his saddle and Grey Wind padding by his side.
The old knight looked at her son with a faint flicker of amusement in his watery grey
eyes, though his gelding whickered uneasily and sidled away from the direwolf. “My lord
father would be most honored if you would share meat and mead with him in the castle
and explain your purpose here.”
His words crashed among the lords bannermen like a great stone from a catapult. Not
one of them approved. They cursed, argued, shouted down each other.
“You must not do this, my lord,” Galbart Glover pleaded with Robb. “Lord Walder is not
to be trusted.”
Roose Bolton nodded. “Go in there alone and you’re his. He can sell you to the
Lannisters, throw you in a dungeon, or slit your throat, as he likes.”
“If he wants to talk to us, let him open his gates, and we will all share his meat and
mead,” declared Ser Wendel Manderly.
“Or let him come out and treat with Robb here, in plain sight of his men and ours,”
suggested his brother, Ser Wylis.
Catelyn Stark shared all their doubts, but she had only to glance at Ser Stevron to see
that he was not pleased by what he was hearing. A few more words and the chance would
be lost. She had to act, and quickly. “I will go,” she said loudly.
“You, my lady?” The Greatjon furrowed his brow.
“Mother, are you certain?” Clearly, Robb was not.
“Never more,” Catelyn lied glibly. “Lord Walder is my father’s bannerman. I have known
him since I was a girl. He would never offer me any harm.” Unless he saw some profit in
it, she added silently, but some truths did not bear saying, and some lies were necessary.
“I am certain my lord father would be pleased to speak to the Lady Catelyn,” Ser Stevron
said. “To vouchsafe for our good intentions, my brother Ser Perwyn will remain here
until she is safely returned to you.”
“He shall be our honored guest,” said Robb. Ser Perwyn, the youngest of the four Freys
in the party, dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to a brother. “I require my
lady mother’s return by evenfall, Ser Stevron,” Robb went on. “It is not my intent to
�linger here long.”
Ser Stevron Frey gave a polite nod. “As you say, my lord.” Catelyn spurred her horse
forward and did not look back. Lord Walder’s sons and envoys fell in around her.
Her father had once said of Walder Frey that he was the only lord in the Seven
Kingdoms who could field an army out of his breeches. When the Lord of the Crossing
welcomed Catelyn in the great hall of the east castle, surrounded by twenty living sons
(minus Ser Perwyn, who would have made twenty-one), thirty-six grandsons, nineteen
great-grandsons, and numerous daughters, granddaughters, bastards, and
grandbastards, she understood just what he had meant.
Lord Walder was ninety, a wizened pink weasel with a bald spotted head, too gouty to
stand unassisted. His newest wife, a pale frail girl of sixteen years, walked beside his
litter when they carried him in. She was the eighth Lady Frey.
“It is a great pleasure to see you again after so many years, my lord,” Catelyn said.
The old man squinted at her suspiciously. “Is it? I doubt that. Spare me your sweet
words, Lady Catelyn, I am too old. Why are you here? Is your boy too proud to come
before me himself? What am I to do with you?”
Catelyn had been a girl the last time she had visited the Twins, but even then Lord
Walder had been irascible, sharp of tongue, and blunt of manner. Age had made him
worse than ever, it would seem. She would need to choose her words with care, and do
her best to take no offense from his.
“Father,” Ser Stevron said reproachfully, “you forget yourself. Lady Stark is here at your
invitation.”
“Did I ask you? You are not Lord Frey yet, not until I die. Do I look dead? I’ll hear no
instructions from you.”
“This is no way to speak in front of our noble guest, Father,” one of his younger sons said.
“Now my bastards presume to teach me courtesy,” Lord Walder complained. “I’ll speak
any way I like, damn you. I’ve had three kings to guest in my life, and queens as well, do
you think I require lessons from the likes of you, Ryger? Your mother was milking goats
the first time I gave her my seed.” He dismissed the red-faced youth with a flick of his
fingers and gestured to two of his other sons. “Danwell, Whalen, help me to my chair.”
They shifted Lord Walder from his litter and carried him to the high seat of the Freys, a
�tall chair of black oak whose back was carved in the shape of two towers linked by a
bridge. His young wife crept up timidly and covered his legs with a blanket. When he
was settled, the old man beckoned Catelyn forward and planted a papery dry kiss on her
hand. “There,” he announced. “Now that I have observed the courtesies, my lady,
perhaps my sons will do me the honor of shutting their mouths. Why are you here?”
“To ask you to open your gates, my lord,” Catelyn replied politely. “My son and his lords
bannermen are most anxious to cross the river and be on their way.”
“To Riverrun?” He sniggered. “Oh, no need to tell me, no need. I’m not blind yet. The old
man can still read a map.”
“To Riverrun,” Catelyn confirmed. She saw no reason to deny it. “Where I might have
expected to find you, my lord. You are still my father’s bannerman, are you not?”
“Heh,” said Lord Walder, a noise halfway between a laugh and a grunt. “I called my
swords, yes I did, here they are, you saw them on the walls. It was my intent to march as
soon as all my strength was assembled. Well, to send my sons. I am well past marching
myself, Lady Catelyn.” He looked around for likely confirmation and pointed to a tall,
stooped man of fifty years. “Tell her, Jared. Tell her that was my intent.”
“It was, my lady,” said Ser Jared Frey, one of his sons by his second wife. “On my honor.”
“Is it my fault that your fool brother lost his battle before we could march?” He leaned
back against his cushions and scowled at her, as if challenging her to dispute his version
of events. “I am told the Kingslayer went through him like an axe through ripe cheese.
Why should my boys hurry south to die? All those who did go south are running north
again.”
Catelyn would gladly have spitted the querulous old man and roasted him over a fire, but
she had only till evenfall to open the bridge. Calmly, she said, “All the more reason that
we must reach Riverrun, and soon. Where can we go to talk, my lord?”
“We’re talking now,” Lord Frey complained. The spotted pink head snapped around.
“What are you all looking at?” he shouted at his kin. “Get out of here. Lady Stark wants
to speak to me in private. Might be she has designs on my fidelity, heh. Go, all of you,
find something useful to do. Yes, you too, woman. Out, out, out.” As his sons and
grandsons and daughters and bastards and nieces and nephews streamed from the hall,
he leaned close to Catelyn and confessed, “They’re all waiting for me to die. Stevron’s
been waiting for forty years, but I keep disappointing him. Heh. Why should I die just so
he can be a lord? I ask you. I won’t do it.”
�“I have every hope that you will live to be a hundred.”
“That would boil them, to be sure. Oh, to be sure. Now, what do you want to say?”
“We want to cross,” Catelyn told him.
“Oh, do you? That’s blunt. Why should I let you?”
For a moment her anger flared. “If you were strong enough to climb your own
battlements, Lord Frey, you would see that my son has twenty thousand men outside
your walls.”
“They’ll be twenty thousand fresh corpses when Lord Tywin gets here,” the old man shot
back. “Don’t you try and frighten me, my lady. Your husband’s in some traitor’s cell
under the Red Keep, your father’s sick, might be dying, and Jaime Lannister’s got your
brother in chains. What do you have that I should fear? That son of yours? I’ll match you
son for son, and I’ll still have eighteen when yours are all dead.”
“You swore an oath to my father,” Catelyn reminded him.
He bobbed his head side to side, smiling. “Oh, yes, I said some words, but I swore oaths
to the crown too, it seems to me. Joffrey’s the king now, and that makes you and your
boy and all those fools out there no better than rebels. If I had the sense the gods gave a
fish, I’d help the Lannisters boil you all.”
“Why don’t you?” she challenged him.
Lord Walder snorted with disdain. “Lord Tywin the proud and splendid, Warden of the
West, Hand of the King, oh, what a great man that one is, him and his gold this and gold
that and lions here and lions there. I’ll wager you, he eats too many beans, he breaks
wind just like me, but you’ll never hear him admit it, oh, no. What’s he got to be so
puffed up about anyway? Only two sons, and one of them’s a twisted little monster. I’ll
match him son for son, and I’ll still have nineteen and a half left when all of his are
dead!” He cackled. “If Lord Tywin wants my help, he can bloody well ask for it.”
That was all Catelyn needed to hear. “I am asking for your help, my lord,” she said
humbly. “And my father and my brother and my lord husband and my sons are asking
with my voice.”
Lord Walder jabbed a bony finger at her face. “Save your sweet words, my lady. Sweet
words I get from my wife. Did you see her? Sixteen she is, a little flower, and her honey’s
only for me. I wager she gives me a son by this time next year. Perhaps I’ll make him
�heir, wouldn’t that boil the rest of them?”
“I’m certain she will give you many sons.”
His head bobbed up and down. “Your lord father did not come to the wedding. An insult,
as I see it. Even if he is dying. He never came to my last wedding either. He calls me the
Late Lord Frey, you know. Does he think I’m dead? I’m not dead, and I promise you, I’ll
outlive him as I outlived his father. Your family has always pissed on me, don’t deny it,
don’t lie, you know it’s true. Years ago, I went to your father and suggested a match
between his son and my daughter. Why not? I had a daughter in mind, sweet girl, only a
few years older than Edmure, but if your brother didn’t warm to her, I had others he
might have had, young ones, old ones, virgins, widows, whatever he wanted. No, Lord
Hoster would not hear of it. Sweet words he gave me, excuses, but what I wanted was to
get rid of a daughter.
“And your sister, that one, she’s full as bad. It was, oh, a year ago, no more, Jon Arryn
was still the King’s Hand, and I went to the city to see my sons ride in the tourney.
Stevron and Jared are too old for the lists now, but Danwell and Hosteen rode, Perwyn
as well, and a couple of my bastards tried the melee. If I’d known how they’d shame me,
I would never have troubled myself to make the journey. Why did I need to ride all that
way to see Hosteen knocked off his horse by that Tyrell whelp? I ask you. The boy’s half
his age, Ser Daisy they call him, something like that. And Danwell was unhorsed by a
hedge knight! Some days I wonder if those two are truly mine. My third wife was a
Crakehall, all of the Crakehall women are sluts. Well, never mind about that, she died
before you were born, what do you care?
“I was speaking of your sister. I proposed that Lord and Lady Arryn foster two of my
grandsons at court, and offered to take their own son to ward here at the Twins. Are my
grandsons unworthy to be seen at the king’s court? They are sweet boys, quiet and
mannerly. Walder is Merrett’s son, named after me, and the other one . . . heh, I don’t
recall . . . he might have been another Walder, they’re always naming them Walder so I’ll
favor them, but his father . . . which one was his father now?” His face wrinkled up.
“Well, whoever he was, Lord Arryn wouldn’t have him, or the other one, and I blame
your lady sister for that. She frosted up as if I’d suggested selling her boy to a mummer’s
show or making a eunuch out of him, and when Lord Arryn said the child was going to
Dragonstone to foster with Stannis Baratheon, she stormed off without a word of regrets
and all the Hand could give me was apologies. What good are apologies? I ask you.”
Catelyn frowned, disquieted. “I had understood that Lysa’s boy was to be fostered with
Lord Tywin at Casterly Rock.”
“No, it was Lord Stannis,” Walder Frey said irritably. “Do you think I can’t tell Lord
�Stannis from Lord Tywin? They’re both bungholes who think they’re too noble to shit,
but never mind about that, I know the difference. Or do you think I’m so old I can’t
remember? I’m ninety and I remember very well. I remember what to do with a woman
too. That wife of mine will give me a son before this time next year, I’ll wager. Or a
daughter, that can’t be helped. Boy or girl, it will be red, wrinkled, and squalling, and
like as not she’ll want to name it Walder or Walda.”
Catelyn was not concerned with what Lady Frey might choose to name her child. “Jon
Arryn was going to foster his son with Lord Stannis, you are quite certain of that?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” the old man said. “Only he died, so what does it matter? You say you
want to cross the river?”
“We do.”
“Well, you can’t!” Lord Walder announced crisply. “Not unless I allow it, and why should
I? The Tullys and the Starks have never been friends of mine.” He pushed himself back
in his chair and crossed his arms, smirking, waiting for her answer.
The rest was only haggling.
A swollen red sun hung low against the western hills when the gates of the castle opened.
The drawbridge creaked down, the portcullis winched up, and Lady Catelyn Stark rode
forth to rejoin her son and his lords bannermen. Behind her came Ser Jared Frey, Ser
Hosteen Frey, Ser Danwell Frey, and Lord Walder’s bastard son Ronel Rivers, leading a
long column of pikemen, rank on rank of shuffling men in blue steel ringmail and silvery
grey cloaks.
Robb galloped out to meet her, with Grey Wind racing beside his stallion. “It’s done,”
she told him. “Lord Walder will grant you your crossing. His swords are yours as well,
less four hundred he means to keep back to hold the Twins. I suggest that you leave four
hundred of your own, a mixed force of archers and swordsmen. He can scarcely object to
an offer to augment his garrison . . . but make certain you give the command to a man
you can trust. Lord Walder may need help keeping faith.”
“As you say, Mother,” Robb answered, gazing at the ranks of pikemen. “Perhaps . . . Ser
Helman Tallhart, do you think?”
“A fine choice.”
“What . . . what did he want of us?”
�“If you can spare a few of your swords, I need some men to escort two of Lord Frey’s
grandsons north to Winterfell,” she told him. “I have agreed to take them as wards. They
are young boys, aged eight years and seven. It would seem they are both named Walder.
Your brother Bran will welcome the companionship of lads near his own age, I should
think.”
“Is that all? Two fosterlings? That’s a small enough price to—”
“Lord Frey’s son Olyvar will be coming with us,” she went on. “He is to serve as your
personal squire. His father would like to see him knighted, in good time.”
“A squire.” He shrugged. “Fine, that’s fine, if he’s—”
“Also, if your sister Arya is returned to us safely, it is agreed that she will marry Lord
Walder’s youngest son, Elmar, when the two of them come of age.”
Robb looked nonplussed. “Arya won’t like that one bit.”
“And you are to wed one of his daughters, once the fighting is done,” she finished. “His
lordship has graciously consented to allow you to choose whichever girl you prefer. He
has a number he thinks might be suitable.”
To his credit, Robb did not flinch. “I see.”
“Do you consent?”
“Can I refuse?”
“Not if you wish to cross.”
“I consent,” Robb said solemnly. He had never seemed more manly to her than he did in
that moment. Boys might play with swords, but it took a lord to make a marriage pact,
knowing what it meant.
They crossed at evenfall as a horned moon floated upon the river. The double column
wound its way through the gate of the eastern twin like a great steel snake, slithering
across the courtyard, into the keep and over the bridge, to issue forth once more from
the second castle on the west bank.
Catelyn rode at the head of the serpent, with her son and her uncle Ser Brynden and Ser
Stevron Frey. Behind followed nine tenths of their horse; knights, lancers, freeriders,
�and mounted bowmen. It took hours for them all to cross. Afterward, Catelyn would
remember the clatter of countless hooves on the drawbridge, the sight of Lord Walder
Frey in his litter watching them pass, the glitter of eyes peering down through the slats
of the murder holes in the ceiling as they rode through the Water Tower.
The larger part of the northern host, pikes and archers and great masses of men-at-arms
on foot, remained upon the east bank under the command of Roose Bolton. Robb had
commanded him to continue the march south, to confront the huge Lannister army
coming north under Lord Tywin.
For good or ill, her son had thrown the dice.
previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
JON
Are you well, Snow?” Lord Mormont asked, scowling.
“Well,” his raven squawked. “Well.”
“I am, my lord,” Jon lied . . . loudly, as if that could make it true. “And you?”
Mormont frowned. “A dead man tried to kill me. How well could I be?” He scratched
under his chin. His shaggy grey beard had been singed in the fire, and he’d hacked it off.
The pale stubble of his new whiskers made him look old, disreputable, and grumpy. “You
do not look well. How is your hand?”
“Healing.” Jon flexed his bandaged fingers to show him. He had burned himself more
badly than he knew throwing the flaming drapes, and his right hand was swathed in silk
halfway to the elbow. At the time he’d felt nothing; the agony had come after. His
cracked red skin oozed fluid, and fearsome blood blisters rose between his fingers, big as
roaches. “The maester says I’ll have scars, but otherwise the hand should be as good as it
was before.”
“A scarred hand is nothing. On the Wall, you’ll be wearing gloves often as not.”
“As you say, my lord.” It was not the thought of scars that troubled Jon; it was the rest of
it. Maester Aemon had given him milk of the poppy, yet even so, the pain had been
hideous. At first it had felt as if his hand were still aflame, burning day and night. Only
plunging it into basins of snow and shaved ice gave any relief at all. Jon thanked the
gods that no one but Ghost saw him writhing on his bed, whimpering from the pain. And
when at last he did sleep, he dreamt, and that was even worse. In the dream, the corpse
he fought had blue eyes, black hands, and his father’s face, but he dared not tell
Mormont that.
“Dywen and Hake returned last night,” the Old Bear said. “They found no sign of your
uncle, no more than the others did.”
“I know.” Jon had dragged himself to the common hall to sup with his friends, and the
failure of the rangers’ search had been all the men had been talking of.
�“You know,” Mormont grumbled. “How is it that everyone knows everything around
here?” He did not seem to expect an answer. “It would seem there were only the two
of . . . of those creatures, whatever they were, I will not call them men. And thank the
gods for that. Any more and . . . well, that doesn’t bear thinking of. There will be more,
though. I can feel it in these old bones of mine, and Maester Aemon agrees. The cold
winds are rising. Summer is at an end, and a winter is coming such as this world has
never seen.”
Winter is coming. The Stark words had never sounded so grim or ominous to Jon as
they did now. “My lord,” he asked hesitantly, “it’s said there was a bird last night . . . ”
“There was. What of it?”
“I had hoped for some word of my father.”
“Father,” taunted the old raven, bobbing its head as it walked across Mormont’s
shoulders. “Father.”
The Lord Commander reached up to pinch its beak shut, but the raven hopped up on his
head, fluttered its wings, and flew across the chamber to light above a window. “Grief
and noise,” Mormont grumbled. “That’s all they’re good for, ravens. Why I put up with
that pestilential bird . . . if there was news of Lord Eddard, don’t you think I would have
sent for you? Bastard or no, you’re still his blood. The message concerned Ser Barristan
Selmy. It seems he’s been removed from the Kingsguard. They gave his place to that
black dog Clegane, and now Selmy’s wanted for treason. The fools sent some watchmen
to seize him, but he slew two of them and escaped.” Mormont snorted, leaving no doubt
of his view of men who’d send gold cloaks against a knight as renowed as Barristan the
Bold. “We have white shadows in the woods and unquiet dead stalking our halls, and a
boy sits the Iron Throne,” he said in disgust.
The raven laughed shrilly. “Boy, boy, boy, boy.”
Ser Barristan had been the Old Bear’s best hope, Jon remembered; if he had fallen, what
chance was there that Mormont’s letter would be heeded? He curled his hand into a fist.
Pain shot through his burned fingers. “What of my sisters?”
“The message made no mention of Lord Eddard or the girls.” He gave an irritated shrug.
“Perhaps they never got my letter. Aemon sent two copies, with his best birds, but who
can say? More like, Pycelle did not deign to reply. It would not be the first time, nor the
last. I fear we count for less than nothing in King’s Landing. They tell us what they want
us to know, and that’s little enough.”
�And you tell me what you want me to know, and that’s less, Jon thought resentfully.
His brother Robb had called the banners and ridden south to war, yet no word of that
had been breathed to him . . . save by Samwell Tarly, who’d read the letter to Maester
Aemon and whispered its contents to Jon that night in secret, all the time saying how he
shouldn’t. Doubtless they thought his brother’s war was none of his concern. It troubled
him more than he could say. Robb was marching and he was not. No matter how often
Jon told himself that his place was here now, with his new brothers on the Wall, he still
felt craven.
“Corn,” the raven was crying. “Corn, corn.”
“Oh, be quiet,” the Old Bear told it. “Snow, how soon does Maester Aemon say you’ll
have use of that hand back?”
“Soon,” Jon replied.
“Good.” On the table between them, Lord Mormont laid a large sword in a black metal
scabbard banded with silver. “Here. You’ll be ready for this, then.”
The raven flapped down and landed on the table, strutting toward the sword, head
cocked curiously. Jon hesitated. He had no inkling what this meant. “My lord?”
“The fire melted the silver off the pommel and burnt the crossguard and grip. Well, dry
leather and old wood, what could you expect? The blade, now . . . you’d need a fire a
hundred times as hot to harm the blade.” Mormont shoved the scabbard across the
rough oak planks. “I had the rest made anew. Take it.”
“Take it,” echoed his raven, preening. “Take it, take it.”
Awkwardly, Jon took the sword in hand. His left hand; his bandaged right was still too
raw and clumsy. Carefully he pulled it from its scabbard and raised it level with his eyes.
The pommel was a hunk of pale stone weighted with lead to balance the long blade. It
had been carved into the likeness of a snarling wolf’s head, with chips of garnet set into
the eyes. The grip was virgin leather, soft and black, as yet unstained by sweat or blood.
The blade itself was a good half foot longer than those Jon was used to, tapered to thrust
as well as slash, with three fullers deeply incised in the metal. Where Ice was a true twohanded greatsword, this was a hand-and-a-halfer, sometimes named a “bastard sword.”
Yet the wolf sword actually seemed lighter than the blades he had wielded before. When
Jon turned it sideways, he could see the ripples in the dark steel where the metal had
been folded back on itself again and again. “This is Valyrian steel, my lord,” he said
wonderingly. His father had let him handle Ice often enough; he knew the look, the feel.
�“It is,” the Old Bear told him. “It was my father’s sword, and his father’s before him. The
Mormonts have carried it for five centuries. I wielded it in my day and passed it on to my
son when I took the black.”
He is giving me his son’s sword. Jon could scarcely believe it. The blade was exquisitely
balanced. The edges glimmered faintly as they kissed the light. “Your son—”
“My son brought dishonor to House Mormont, but at least he had the grace to leave the
sword behind when he fled. My sister returned it to my keeping, but the very sight of it
reminded me of Jorah’s shame, so I put it aside and thought no more of it until we found
it in the ashes of my bedchamber. The original pommel was a bear’s head, silver, yet so
worn its features were all but indistinguishable. For you, I thought a white wolf more
apt. One of our builders is a fair stonecarver.”
When Jon had been Bran’s age, he had dreamed of doing great deeds, as boys always
did. The details of his feats changed with every dreaming, but quite often he imagined
saving his father’s life. Afterward Lord Eddard would declare that Jon had proved
himself a true Stark, and place Ice in his hand. Even then he had known it was only a
child’s folly; no bastard could ever hope to wield a father’s sword. Even the memory
shamed him. What kind of man stole his own brother’s birthright? I have no right to
this, he thought, no more than to Ice. He twitched his burned fingers, feeling a throb of
pain deep under the skin. “My lord, you honor me, but—”
“Spare me your but’s, boy,” Lord Mormont interrupted. “I would not be sitting here were
it not for you and that beast of yours. You fought bravely . . . and more to the point, you
thought quickly. Fire! Yes, damn it. We ought to have known. We ought to have
remembered. The Long Night has come before. Oh, eight thousand years is a good while,
to be sure . . . yet if the Night’s Watch does not remember, who will?”
“Who will,” chimed the talkative raven. “Who will.”
Truly, the gods had heard Jon’s prayer that night; the fire had caught in the dead man’s
clothing and consumed him as if his flesh were candle wax and his bones old dry wood.
Jon had only to close his eyes to see the thing staggering across the solar, crashing
against the furniture and flailing at the flames. It was the face that haunted him most;
surrounded by a nimbus of fire, hair blazing like straw, the dead flesh melting away and
sloughing off its skull to reveal the gleam of bone beneath.
Whatever demonic force moved Othor had been driven out by the flames; the twisted
thing they had found in the ashes had been no more than cooked meat and charred
bone. Yet in his nightmare he faced it again . . . and this time the burning corpse wore
�Lord Eddard’s features. It was his father’s skin that burst and blackened, his father’s
eyes that ran liquid down his cheeks like jellied tears. Jon did not understand why that
should be or what it might mean, but it frightened him more than he could say.
“A sword’s small payment for a life,” Mormont concluded. “Take it, I’ll hear no more of
it, is that understood?”
“Yes, my lord.” The soft leather gave beneath Jon’s fingers, as if the sword were molding
itself to his grip already. He knew he should be honored, and he was, and yet . . .
He is not my father. The thought leapt unbidden to Jon’s mind. Lord Eddard Stark is
my father. I will not forget him, no matter how many swords they give me. Yet he
could scarcely tell Lord Mormont that it was another man’s sword he dreamt of . . .
“I want no courtesies either,” Mormont said, “so thank me no thanks. Honor the steel
with deeds, not words.”
Jon nodded. “Does it have a name, my lord?”
“It did, once. Longclaw, it was called.”
“Claw,” the raven cried. “Claw.”
“Longclaw is an apt name.” Jon tried a practice cut. He was clumsy and uncomfortable
with his left hand, yet even so the steel seemed to flow through the air, as if it had a will
of its own. “Wolves have claws, as much as bears.”
The Old Bear seemed pleased by that. “I suppose they do. You’ll want to wear that over
the shoulder, I imagine. It’s too long for the hip, at least until you’ve put on a few inches.
And you’ll need to work at your two-handed strikes as well. Ser Endrew can show you
some moves, when your burns have healed.”
“Ser Endrew?” Jon did not know the name.
“Ser Endrew Tarth, a good man. He’s on his way from the Shadow Tower to assume the
duties of master-at-arms. Ser Alliser Thorne left yestermorn for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea.”
Jon lowered the sword. “Why?” he said, stupidly.
Mormont snorted. “Because I sent him, why do you think? He’s bringing the hand your
Ghost tore off the end of Jafer Flowers’s wrist. I have commanded him to take ship to
�King’s Landing and lay it before this boy king. That should get young Joffrey’s attention,
I’d think . . . and Ser Alliser’s a knight, highborn, anointed, with old friends at court,
altogether harder to ignore than a glorified crow.”
“Crow.” Jon thought the raven sounded faintly indignant.
“As well,” the Lord Commander continued, ignoring the bird’s protest, “it puts a
thousand leagues twixt him and you without it seeming a rebuke.” He jabbed a finger up
at Jon’s face. “And don’t think this means I approve of that nonsense in the common
hall. Valor makes up for a fair amount of folly, but you’re not a boy anymore, however
many years you’ve seen. That’s a man’s sword you have there, and it will take a man to
wield her. I’ll expect you to act the part, henceforth.”
“Yes, my lord.” Jon slid the sword back into the silver-banded scabbard. If not the blade
he would have chosen, it was nonetheless a noble gift, and freeing him from Alliser
Thorne’s malignance was nobler still.
The Old Bear scratched at his chin. “I had forgotten how much a new beard itches,” he
said. “Well, no help for that. Is that hand of yours healed enough to resume your duties?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Good. The night will be cold, I’ll want hot spice wine. Find me a flagon of red, not too
sour, and don’t skimp on the spices. And tell Hobb that if he sends me boiled mutton
again I’m like to boil him. That last haunch was grey. Even the bird wouldn’t touch it.”
He stroked the raven’s head with his thumb, and the bird made a contented quorking
sound. “Away with you. I’ve work to do.”
The guards smiled at him from their niches as he wound his way down the turret stair,
carrying the sword in his good hand. “Sweet steel,” one man said. “You earned that,
Snow,” another told him. Jon made himself smile back at them, but his heart was not in
it. He knew he should be pleased, yet he did not feel it. His hand ached, and the taste of
anger was in his mouth, though he could not have said who he was angry with or why.
A half dozen of his friends were lurking outside when he left the King’s Tower, where
Lord Commander Mormont now made his residence. They’d hung a target on the
granary doors, so they could seem to be honing their skills as archers, but he knew
lurkers when he saw them. No sooner did he emerge than Pyp called out, “Well, come
about, let’s have a look.”
“At what?” Jon said.
�Toad sidled close. “Your rosy butt cheeks, what else?”
“The sword,” Grenn stated. “We want to see the sword.”
Jon raked them with an accusing look. “You knew.”
Pyp grinned. “We’re not all as dumb as Grenn.”
“You are so,” insisted Grenn. “You’re dumber.”
Halder gave an apologetic shrug. “I helped Pate carve the stone for the pommel,” the
builder said, “and your friend Sam bought the garnets in Mole’s Town.”
“We knew even before that, though,” Grenn said. “Rudge has been helping Donal Noye
in the forge. He was there when the Old Bear brought him the burnt blade.”
“The sword!” Matt insisted. The others took up the chant. “The sword, the sword, the
sword.”
Jon unsheathed Longclaw and showed it to them, turning it this way and that so they
could admire it. The bastard blade glittered in the pale sunlight, dark and deadly.
“Valyrian steel,” he declared solemnly, trying to sound as pleased and proud as he ought
to have felt.
“I heard of a man who had a razor made of Valyrian steel,” declared Toad. “He cut his
head off trying to shave.”
Pyp grinned. “The Night’s Watch is thousands of years old,” he said, “but I’ll wager Lord
Snow’s the first brother ever honored for burning down the Lord Commander’s Tower.”
The others laughed, and even Jon had to smile. The fire he’d started had not, in truth,
burned down that formidable stone tower, but it had done a fair job of gutting the
interior of the top two floors, where the Old Bear had his chambers. No one seemed to
mind that very much, since it had also destroyed Othor’s murderous corpse.
The other wight, the one-handed thing that had once been a ranger named Jafer
Flowers, had also been destroyed, cut near to pieces by a dozen swords . . . but not before
it had slain Ser Jaremy Rykker and four other men. Ser Jaremy had finished the job of
hacking its head off, yet had died all the same when the headless corpse pulled his own
dagger from its sheath and buried it in his bowels. Strength and courage did not avail
much against foemen who would not fall because they were already dead; even arms and
armor offered small protection.
�That grim thought soured Jon’s fragile mood. “I need to see Hobb about the Old Bear’s
supper,” he announced brusquely, sliding Longclaw back into its scabbard. His friends
meant well, but they did not understand. It was not their fault, truly; they had not had to
face Othor, they had not seen the pale glow of those dead blue eyes, had not felt the cold
of those dead black fingers. Nor did they know of the fighting in the riverlands. How
could they hope to comprehend? He turned away from them abruptly and strode off,
sullen. Pyp called after him, but Jon paid him no mind.
They had moved him back to his old cell in tumbledown Hardin’s Tower after the fire,
and it was there he returned. Ghost was curled up asleep beside the door, but he lifted
his head at the sound of Jon’s boots. The direwolf’s red eyes were darker than garnets
and wiser than men. Jon knelt, scratched his ear, and showed him the pommel of the
sword. “Look. It’s you.”
Ghost sniffed at his carved stone likeness and tried a lick. Jon smiled. “You’re the one
deserves an honor,” he told the wolf . . . and suddenly he found himself remembering
how he’d found him, that day in the late summer snow. They had been riding off with
the other pups, but Jon had heard a noise and turned back, and there he was, white fur
almost invisible against the drifts. He was all alone, he thought, apart from the others
in the litter. He was different, so they drove him out.
“Jon?” He looked up. Samwell Tarly stood rocking nervously on his heels. His cheeks
were red, and he was wrapped in a heavy fur cloak that made him look ready for
hibernation.
“Sam.” Jon stood. “What is it? Do you want to see the sword?” If the others had known,
no doubt Sam did too.
The fat boy shook his head. “I was heir to my father’s blade once,” he said mournfully.
“Heartsbane. Lord Randyll let me hold it a few times, but it always scared me. It was
Valyrian steel, beautiful but so sharp I was afraid I’d hurt one of my sisters. Dickon will
have it now.” He wiped sweaty hands on his cloak. “I ah . . . Maester Aemon wants to see
you.”
It was not time for his bandages to be changed. Jon frowned suspiciously. “Why?” he
demanded. Sam looked miserable. That was answer enough. “You told him, didn’t you?”
Jon said angrily. “You told him that you told me.”
“I . . . he . . . Jon, I didn’t want to . . . he asked . . . I mean I think he knew, he sees things
no one else sees . . . ”
�“He’s blind,” Jon pointed out forcefully, disgusted. “I can find the way myself.” He left
Sam standing there, openmouthed and quivering.
He found Maester Aemon up in the rookery, feeding the ravens. Clydas was with him,
carrying a bucket of chopped meat as they shuffled from cage to cage. “Sam said you
wanted me?”
The maester nodded. “I did indeed. Clydas, give Jon the bucket. Perhaps he will be kind
enough to assist me.” The hunched, pink-eyed brother handed Jon the bucket and
scurried down the ladder. “Toss the meat into the cages,” Aemon instructed him. “The
birds will do the rest. “
Jon shifted the bucket to his right hand and thrust his left down into the bloody bits. The
ravens began to scream noisily and fly at the bars, beating at the metal with night-black
wings. The meat had been chopped into pieces no larger than a finger joint. He filled his
fist and tossed the raw red morsels into the cage, and the squawking and squabbling
grew hotter. Feathers flew as two of the larger birds fought over a choice piece. Quickly
Jon grabbed a second handful and threw it in after the first. “Lord Mormont’s raven
likes fruit and corn.”
“He is a rare bird,” the maester said. “Most ravens will eat grain, but they prefer flesh. It
makes them strong, and I fear they relish the taste of blood. In that they are like
men . . . and like men, not all ravens are alike.”
Jon had nothing to say to that. He threw meat, wondering why he’d been summoned. No
doubt the old man would tell him, in his own good time. Maester Aemon was not a man
to be hurried.
“Doves and pigeons can also be trained to carry messages,” the maester went on,
“though the raven is a stronger flyer, larger, bolder, far more clever, better able to defend
itself against hawks . . . yet ravens are black, and they eat the dead, so some godly men
abhor them. Baelor the Blessed tried to replace all the ravens with doves, did you know?”
The maester turned his white eyes on Jon, smiling. “The Night’s Watch prefers ravens.”
Jon’s fingers were in the bucket, blood up to the wrist. “Dywen says the wildlings call us
crows,” he said uncertainty.
“The crow is the raven’s poor cousin. They are both beggars in black, hated and
misunderstood.”
Jon wished he understood what they were talking about, and why. What did he care
about ravens and doves? If the old man had something to say to him, why couldn’t he
�just say it?
“Jon, did you ever wonder why the men of the Night’s Watch take no wives and father
no children?” Maester Aemon asked.
Jon shrugged. “No.” He scattered more meat. The fingers of his left hand were slimy
with blood, and his right throbbed from the weight of the bucket.
“So they will not love,” the old man answered, “for love is the bane of honor, the death of
duty.”
That did not sound right to Jon, yet he said nothing. The maester was a hundred years
old, and a high officer of the Night’s Watch; it was not his place to contradict him.
The old man seemed to sense his doubts. “Tell me, Jon, if the day should ever come
when your lord father must needs choose between honor on the one hand and those he
loves on the other, what would he do?”
Jon hesitated. He wanted to say that Lord Eddard would never dishonor himself, not
even for love, yet inside a small sly voice whispered, He fathered a bastard, where was
the honor in that? And your mother, what of his duty to her, he will not even say her
name. “He would do whatever was right,” he said . . . ringingly, to make up for his
hesitation. “No matter what.”
“Then Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. Most of us are not so strong. What is
honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in
your arms . . . or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words.
We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and
our great tragedy.
“The men who formed the Night’s Watch knew that only their courage shielded the
realm from the darkness to the north. They knew they must have no divided loyalties to
weaken their resolve. So they vowed they would have no wives nor children.
“Yet brothers they had, and sisters. Mothers who gave them birth, fathers who gave
them names. They came from a hundred quarrelsome kingdoms, and they knew times
may change, but men do not. So they pledged as well that the Night’s Watch would take
no part in the battles of the realms it guarded.
“They kept their pledge. When Aegon slew Black Harren and claimed his kingdom,
Harren’s brother was Lord Commander on the Wall, with ten thousand swords to hand.
He did not march. In the days when the Seven Kingdoms were seven kingdoms, not a
�generation passed that three or four of them were not at war. The Watch took no part.
When the Andals crossed the narrow sea and swept away the kingdoms of the First Men,
the sons of the fallen kings held true to their vows and remained at their posts. So it has
always been, for years beyond counting. Such is the price of honor.
“A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our
duty, when there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet
soon or late in every man’s life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must
choose.”
Some of the ravens were still eating, long stringy bits of meat dangling from their beaks.
The rest seemed to be watching him. Jon could feel the weight of all those tiny black
eyes. “And this is my day . . . is that what you’re saying?”
Maester Aemon turned his head and looked at him with those dead white eyes. It was as
if he were seeing right into his heart. Jon felt naked and exposed. He took the bucket in
both hands and flung the rest of the slops through the bars. Strings of meat and blood
flew everywhere, scattering the ravens. They took to the air, shrieking wildly. The
quicker birds snatched morsels on the wing and gulped them down greedily. Jon let the
empty bucket clang to the floor.
The old man laid a withered, spotted hand on his shoulder. “It hurts, boy,” he said softly.
“Oh, yes. Choosing . . . it has always hurt. And always will. I know.”
“You don’t know,” Jon said bitterly. “No one knows. Even if I am his bastard, he’s still
my father . . . ”
Maester Aemon sighed. “Have you heard nothing I’ve told you, Jon? Do you think you
are the first?” He shook his ancient head, a gesture weary beyond words. “Three times
the gods saw fit to test my vows. Once when I was a boy, once in the fullness of my
manhood, and once when I had grown old. By then my strength was fled, my eyes grown
dim, yet that last choice was as cruel as the first. My ravens would bring the news from
the south, words darker than their wings, the ruin of my House, the death of my kin,
disgrace and desolation. What could I have done, old, blind, frail? I was helpless as a
suckling babe, yet still it grieved me to sit forgotten as they cut down my brother’s poor
grandson, and his son, and even the little children . . . ”
Jon was shocked to see the shine of tears in the old man’s eyes. “Who are you?” he asked
quietly, almost in dread.
A toothless smile quivered on the ancient lips. “Only a maester of the Citadel, bound in
service to Castle Black and the Night’s Watch. In my order, we put aside our house
�names when we take our vows and don the collar.” The old man touched the maester’s
chain that hung loosely around his thin, fleshless neck. “My father was Maekar, the First
of his Name, and my brother Aegon reigned after him in my stead. My grandfather
named me for Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, who was his uncle, or his father,
depending on which tale you believe. Aemon, he called me . . . ”
“Aemon . . . Targaryen?” Jon could scarcely believe it.
“Once,” the old man said. “Once. So you see, Jon, I do know . . . and knowing, I will not
tell you stay or go. You must make that choice yourself, and live with it all the rest of
your days. As I have.” His voice fell to a whisper. “As I have . . . ”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
DAENERYS
When the battle was done, Dany rode her silver through the fields of the dead. Her
handmaids and the men of her khas came after, smiling and jesting among themselves.
Dothraki hooves had torn the earth and trampled the rye and lentils into the ground,
while arakhs and arrows had sown a terrible new crop and watered it with blood. Dying
horses lifted their heads and screamed at her as she rode past. Wounded men moaned
and prayed. Jaqqa rhan moved among them, the mercy men with their heavy axes,
taking a harvest of heads from the dead and dying alike. After them would scurry a flock
of small girls, pulling arrows from the corpses to fill their baskets. Last of all the dogs
would come sniffing, lean and hungry, the feral pack that was never far behind the
khalasar.
The sheep had been dead longest. There seemed to be thousands of them, black with
flies, arrow shafts bristling from each carcass. Khal Ogo’s riders had done that, Dany
knew; no man of Drogo’s khalasar would be such a fool as to waste his arrows on sheep
when there were shepherds yet to kill.
The town was afire, black plumes of smoke roiling and tumbling as they rose into a hard
blue sky. Beneath broken walls of dried mud, riders galloped back and forth, swinging
their long whips as they herded the survivors from the smoking rubble. The women and
children of Ogo’s khalasar walked with a sullen pride, even in defeat and bondage; they
were slaves now, but they seemed not to fear it. It was different with the townsfolk. Dany
pitied them; she remembered what terror felt like. Mothers stumbled along with blank,
dead faces, pulling sobbing children by the hand. There were only a few men among
them, cripples and cowards and grandfathers.
Ser Jorah said the people of this country named themselves the Lhazareen, but the
Dothraki called them haesh rakhi, the Lamb Men. Once Dany might have taken them for
Dothraki, for they had the same copper skin and almond-shaped eyes. Now they looked
alien to her, squat and flat-faced, their black hair cropped unnaturally short. They were
herders of sheep and eaters of vegetables, and Khal Drogo said they belonged south of
the river bend. The grass of the Dothraki sea was not meant for sheep.
Dany saw one boy bolt and run for the river. A rider cut him off and turned him, and the
others boxed him in, cracking their whips in his face, running him this way and that.
�One galloped behind him, lashing him across the buttocks until his thighs ran red with
blood. Another snared his ankle with a lash and sent him sprawling. Finally, when the
boy could only crawl, they grew bored of the sport and put an arrow through his back.
Ser Jorah met her outside the shattered gate. He wore a dark green surcoat over his
mail. His gauntlets, greaves, and greathelm were dark grey steel. The Dothraki had
mocked him for a coward when he donned his armor, but the knight had spit insults
right back in their teeth, tempers had flared, longsword had clashed with arakh, and the
rider whose taunts had been loudest had been left behind to bleed to death.
Ser Jorah lifted the visor of his flat-topped greathelm as he rode up. “Your lord husband
awaits you within the town.”
“Drogo took no harm?”
“A few cuts,” Ser Jorah answered, “nothing of consequence. He slew two khals this day.
Khal Ogo first, and then the son, Fogo, who became khal when Ogo fell. His bloodriders
cut the bells from their hair, and now Khal Drogo’s every step rings louder than before.”
Ogo and his son had shared the high bench with her lord husband at the naming feast
where Viserys had been crowned, but that was in Vaes Dothrak, beneath the Mother of
Mountains, where every rider was a brother and all quarrels were put aside. It was
different out in the grass. Ogo’s khalasar had been attacking the town when Khal Drogo
caught him. She wondered what the Lamb Men had thought, when they first saw the
dust of their horses from atop those cracked-mud walls. Perhaps a few, the younger and
more foolish who still believed that the gods heard the prayers of desperate men, took it
for deliverance.
Across the road, a girl no older than Dany was sobbing in a high thin voice as a rider
shoved her over a pile of corpses, facedown, and thrust himself inside her. Other riders
dismounted to take their turns. That was the sort of deliverance the Dothraki brought
the Lamb Men.
I am the blood of the dragon, Daenerys Targaryen reminded herself as she turned her
face away. She pressed her lips together and hardened her heart and rode on toward the
gate.
“Most of Ogo’s riders fled,” Ser Jorah was saying. “Still, there may be as many as ten
thousand captives.”
Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on
Slaver’s Bay. She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war,
�this is what it looks like, this is the price of the Iron Throne.
“I’ve told the khal he ought to make for Meereen,” Ser Jorah said. “They’ll pay a better
price than he’d get from a slaving caravan. Illyrio writes that they had a plague last year,
so the brothels are paying double for healthy young girls, and triple for boys under ten. If
enough children survive the journey, the gold will buy us all the ships we need, and hire
men to sail them.”
Behind them, the girl being raped made a heartrending sound, a long sobbing wail that
went on and on and on. Dany’s hand clenched hard around the reins, and she turned the
silver’s head. “Make them stop,” she commanded Ser Jorah.
“Khaleesi?” The knight sounded perplexed.
“You heard my words,” she said. “Stop them.” She spoke to her khas in the harsh accents
of Dothraki. “Jhogo, Quaro, you will aid Ser Jorah. I want no rape.”
The warriors exchanged a baffled look.
Jorah Mormont spurred his horse closer. “Princess,” he said, “you have a gentle heart,
but you do not understand. This is how it has always been. Those men have shed blood
for the khal. Now they claim their reward.”
Across the road, the girl was still crying, her high singsong tongue strange to Dany’s
ears. The first man was done with her now, and a second had taken his place.
“She is a lamb girl,” Quaro said in Dothraki. “She is nothing, Khaleesi. The riders do her
honor. The Lamb Men lay with sheep, it is known.”
“It is known,” her handmaid Irri echoed.
“It is known,” agreed Jhogo, astride the tall grey stallion that Drogo had given him. “If
her wailing offends your ears, Khaleesi, Jhogo will bring you her tongue.” He drew his
arakh.
“I will not have her harmed,” Dany said. “I claim her. Do as I command you, or Khal
Drogo will know the reason why.”
“Ai, Khaleesi,” Jhogo replied, kicking his horse. Quaro and the others followed his lead,
the bells in their hair chiming.
�“Go with them,” she commanded Ser Jorah.
“As you command.” The knight gave her a curious look. “You are your brother’s sister, in
truth.”
“Viserys?” She did not understand.
“No,” he answered. “Rhaegar.” He galloped off.
Dany heard Jhogo shout. The rapers laughed at him. One man shouted back. Jhogo’s
arakh flashed, and the man’s head went tumbling from his shoulders. Laughter turned
to curses as the horsemen reached for weapons, but by then Quaro and Aggo and
Rakharo were there. She saw Aggo point across the road to where she sat upon her
silver. The riders looked at her with cold black eyes. One spat. The others scattered to
their mounts, muttering.
All the while the man atop the lamb girl continued to plunge in and out of her, so intent
on his pleasure that he seemed unaware of what was going on around him. Ser Jorah
dismounted and wrenched him off with a mailed hand. The Dothraki went sprawling in
the mud, bounced up with a knife in hand, and died with Aggo’s arrow through his
throat. Mormont pulled the girl off the pile of corpses and wrapped her in his bloodspattered cloak. He led her across the road to Dany. “What do you want done with her?”
The girl was trembling, her eyes wide and vague. Her hair was matted with blood.
“Doreah, see to her hurts. You do not have a rider’s look, perhaps she will not fear you.
The rest, with me.” She urged the silver through the broken wooden gate.
It was worse inside the town. Many of the houses were afire, and the jaqqa rhan had
been about their grisly work. Headless corpses filled the narrow, twisty lanes. They
passed other women being raped. Each time Dany reined up, sent her khas to make an
end to it, and claimed the victim as slave. One of them, a thick-bodied, flat-nosed
woman of forty years, blessed Dany haltingly in the Common Tongue, but from the
others she got only flat black stares. They were suspicious of her, she realized with
sadness; afraid that she had saved them for some worse fate.
“You cannot claim them all, child,” Ser Jorah said, the fourth time they stopped, while
the warriors of her khas herded her new slaves behind her.
“I am khaleesi, heir to the Seven Kingdoms, the blood of the dragon,” Dany reminded
him. “It is not for you to tell me what I cannot do.” Across the city, a building collapsed
in a great gout of fire and smoke, and she heard distant screams and the wailing of
frightened children.
�They found Khal Drogo seated before a square windowless temple with thick mud walls
and a bulbous dome like some immense brown onion. Beside him was a pile of heads
taller than he was. One of the short arrows of the Lamb Men stuck through the meat of
his upper arm, and blood covered the left side of his bare chest like a splash of paint. His
three bloodriders were with him.
Jhiqui helped Dany dismount; she had grown clumsy as her belly grew larger and
heavier. She knelt before the khal. “My sun-and-stars is wounded.” The arakh cut was
wide but shallow; his left nipple was gone, and a flap of bloody flesh and skin dangled
from his chest like a wet rag.
“Is scratch, moon of life, from arakh of one bloodrider to Khal Ogo,” Khal Drogo said in
the Common Tongue. “I kill him for it, and Ogo too.” He turned his head, the bells in his
braid ringing softly. “Is Ogo you hear, and Fogo his khalakka, who was khal when I slew
him.”
“No man can stand before the sun of my life,” Dany said, “the father of the stallion who
mounts the world.”
A mounted warrior rode up and vaulted from his saddle. He spoke to Haggo, a stream of
angry Dothraki too fast for Dany to understand. The huge bloodrider gave her a heavy
look before he turned to his khal “This one is Mago, who rides in the khas of Ko Jhaqo.
He says the khaleesi has taken his spoils, a daughter of the lambs who was his to mount.”
Khal Drogo’s face was still and hard, but his black eyes were curious as they went to
Dany. “Tell me the truth of this, moon of my life,” he commanded in Dothraki.
Dany told him what she had done, in his own tongue so the khal would understand her
better, her words simple and direct.
When she was done, Drogo was frowning. “This is the way of war. These women are our
slaves now, to do with as we please.”
“It pleases me to hold them safe,” Dany said, wondering if she had dared too much. “If
your warriors would mount these women, let them take them gently and keep them for
wives. Give them places in the khalasar and let them bear you sons.”
Qotho was ever the cruelest of the bloodriders. It was he who laughed. “Does the horse
breed with the sheep?”
Something in his tone reminded her of Viserys. Dany turned on him angrily. “The
�dragon feeds on horse and sheep alike.”
Khal Drogo smiled. “See how fierce she grows!” he said. “It is my son inside her, the
stallion who mounts the world, filling her with his fire. Ride slowly, Qotho . . . if the
mother does not burn you where you sit, the son will trample you into the mud. And you,
Mago, hold your tongue and find another lamb to mount. These belong to my khaleesi.”
He started to reach out a hand to Daenerys, but as he lifted his arm Drogo grimaced in
sudden pain and turned his head.
Dany could almost feel his agony. The wounds were worse than Ser Jorah had led her to
believe. “Where are the healers?” she demanded. The khalasar had two sorts: barren
women and eunuch slaves. The herbwomen dealt in potions and spells, the eunuchs in
knife, needle, and fire. “Why do they not attend the khal?”
“The khal sent the hairless men away, Khaleesi,” old Cohollo assured her. Dany saw the
bloodrider had taken a wound himself; a deep gash in his left shoulder.
“Many riders are hurt,” Khal Drogo said stubbornly. “Let them be healed first. This
arrow is no more than the bite of a fly, this little cut only a new scar to boast of to my
son.”
Dany could see the muscles in his chest where the skin had been cut away. A trickle of
blood ran from the arrow that pierced his arm. “It is not for Khal Drogo to wait,” she
proclaimed. “Jhogo, seek out these eunuchs and bring them here at once.”
“Silver Lady,” a woman’s voice said behind her, “I can help the Great Rider with his
hurts.”
Dany turned her head. The speaker was one of the slaves she had claimed, the heavy, flatnosed woman who had blessed her.
“The khal needs no help from women who lie with sheep,” barked Qotho. “Aggo, cut out
her tongue.”
Aggo grabbed her hair and pressed a knife to her throat.
Dany lifted a hand. “No. She is mine. Let her speak.”
Aggo looked from her to Qotho. He lowered his knife.
“I meant no wrong, fierce riders.” The woman spoke Dothraki well. The robes she wore
had once been the lightest and finest of woolens, rich with embroidery, but now they
�were mud-caked and bloody and ripped. She clutched the torn cloth of her bodice to her
heavy breasts. “I have some small skill in the healing arts.”
“Who are you?” Dany asked her.
“I am named Mirri Maz Duur. I am godswife of this temple.”
“Maegi,” grunted Haggo, fingering his arakh. His look was dark. Dany remembered the
word from a terrifying story that Jhiqui had told her one night by the cookfire. A maegi
was a woman who lay with demons and practiced the blackest of sorceries, a vile thing,
evil and soulless, who came to men in the dark of night and sucked life and strength
from their bodies.
“I am a healer,” Mirri Maz Duur said.
“A healer of sheeps,” sneered Qotho. “Blood of my blood, I say kill this maegi and wait
for the hairless men.”
Dany ignored the bloodrider’s outburst. This old, homely, thickbodied woman did not
look like a maegi to her. “Where did you learn your healing, Mirri Maz Duur?”
“My mother was godswife before me, and taught me all the songs and spells most
pleasing to the Great Shepherd, and how to make the sacred smokes and ointments from
leaf and root and berry. When I was younger and more fair, I went in caravan to Asshai
by the Shadow, to learn from their mages. Ships from many lands come to Asshai, so I
lingered long to study the healing ways of distant peoples. A moonsinger of the Jogos
Nhai gifted me with her birthing songs, a woman of your own riding people taught me
the magics of grass and corn and horse, and a maester from the Sunset Lands opened a
body for me and showed me all the secrets that hide beneath the skin.”
Ser Jorah Mormont spoke up. “A maester?”
“Marwyn, he named himself,” the woman replied in the Common Tongue. “From the
sea. Beyond the sea. The Seven Lands, he said. Sunset Lands. Where men are iron and
dragons rule. He taught me this speech.”
“A maester in Asshai,” Ser Jorah mused. “Tell me, Godswife, what did this Marwyn wear
about his neck?”
“A chain so tight it was like to choke him, Iron Lord, with links of many metals.”
�The knight looked at Dany. “Only a man trained in the Citadel of Oldtown wears such a
chain,” he said, “and such men do know much of healing.”
“Why should you want to help my khal?”
“All men are one flock, or so we are taught,” replied Mirri Maz Duur. “The Great
Shepherd sent me to earth to heal his lambs, wherever I might find them.”
Qotho gave her a stinging slap. “We are no sheep, maegi.”
“Stop it,” Dany said angrily. “She is mine. I will not have her harmed.”
Khal Drogo grunted. “The arrow must come out, Qotho.”
“Yes, Great Rider,” Mirri Maz Duur answered, touching her bruised face. “And your
breast must be washed and sewn, lest the wound fester.”
“Do it, then,” Khal Drogo commanded.
“Great Rider,” the woman said, “my tools and potions are inside the god’s house, where
the healing powers are strongest.”
“I will carry you, blood of my blood,” Haggo offered.
Khal Drogo waved him away. “I need no man’s help,” he said, in a voice proud and hard.
He stood, unaided, towering over them all. A fresh wave of blood ran down his breast,
from where Ogo’s arakh had cut off his nipple. Dany moved quickly to his side. “I am no
man,” she whispered, “so you may lean on me.” Drogo put a huge hand on her shoulder.
She took some of his weight as they walked toward the great mud temple. The three
bloodriders followed. Dany commanded Ser Jorah and the warriors of her khas to guard
the entrance and make certain no one set the building afire while they were still inside.
They passed through a series of anterooms, into the high central chamber under the
onion. Faint light shone down through hidden windows above. A few torches burnt
smokily from sconces on the walls. Sheepskins were scattered across the mud floor.
“There,” Mirri Maz Duur said, pointing to the altar, a massive blue-veined stone carved
with images of shepherds and their flocks. Khal Drogo lay upon it. The old woman threw
a handful of dried leaves onto a brazier, filling the chamber with fragrant smoke. “Best if
you wait outside,” she told the rest of them.
“We are blood of his blood,” Cohollo said. “Here we wait.”
�Qotho stepped close to Mirri Maz Duur. “Know this, wife of the Lamb God. Harm the
khal and you suffer the same.” He drew his skinning knife and showed her the blade.
“She will do no harm.” Dany felt she could trust this old, plainfaced woman with her flat
nose; she had saved her from the hard hands of her rapers, after all.
“If you must stay, then help,” Mirri told the bloodriders. “The Great Rider is too strong
for me. Hold him still while I draw the arrow from his flesh.” She let the rags of her gown
fall to her waist as she opened a carved chest, and busied herself with bottles and boxes,
knives and needles. When she was ready, she broke off the barbed arrowhead and pulled
out the shaft, chanting in the singsong tongue of the Lhazareen. She heated a flagon of
wine to boiling on the brazier, and poured it over his wounds. Khal Drogo cursed her,
but he did not move. She bound the arrow wound with a plaster of wet leaves and turned
to the gash on his breast, smearing it with a pale green paste before she pulled the flap of
skin back in place. The khal ground his teeth together and swallowed a scream. The
godswife took out a silver needle and a bobbin of silk thread and began to close the flesh.
When she was done she painted the skin with red ointment, covered it with more leaves,
and bound the breast in a ragged piece of lambskin. “You must say the prayers I give you
and keep the lambskin in place for ten days and ten nights,” she said. “There will be
fever, and itching, and a great scar when the healing is done.”
Khal Drogo sat, bells ringing. “I sing of my scars, sheep woman.” He flexed his arm and
scowled.
“Drink neither wine nor the milk of the poppy,” she cautioned him. “Pain you will have,
but you must keep your body strong to fight the poison spirits.”
“I am khal,” Drogo said. “I spit on pain and drink what I like. Cohollo, bring my vest.”
The older man hastened off.
“Before,” Dany said to the ugly Lhazareen woman, “I heard you speak of birthing
songs . . . ”
“I know every secret of the bloody bed, Silver Lady, nor have I ever lost a babe,” Mirri
Maz Duur replied.
“My time is near,” Dany said. “I would have you attend me when he comes, if you would.”
Khal Drogo laughed. “Moon of my life, you do not ask a slave, you tell her. She will do as
you command.” He jumped down from the altar. “Come, my blood. The stallions call,
this place is ashes. It is time to ride.”
�Haggo followed the khal from the temple, but Qotho lingered long enough to favor Mirri
Maz Duur with a stare. “Remember, maegi, as the khal fares, so shall you.”
“As you say, rider,” the woman answered him, gathering up her jars and bottles. “The
Great Shepherd guards the flock.”
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
TYRION
On a hill overlooking the kingsroad, a long trestle table of rough-hewn pine had been
erected beneath an elm tree and covered with a golden cloth. There, beside his pavilion,
Lord Tywin took his evening meal with his chief knights and lords bannermen, his great
crimson-and-gold standard waving overhead from a lofty pike.
Tyrion arrived late, saddlesore, and sour, all too vividly aware of how amusing he must
look as he waddled up the slope to his father. The day’s march had been long and tiring.
He thought he might get quite drunk tonight. It was twilight, and the air was alive with
drifting fireflies.
The cooks were serving the meat course: five suckling pigs, skin seared and crackling, a
different fruit in every mouth. The smell made his mouth water. “My pardons,” he
began, taking his place on the bench beside his uncle.
“Perhaps I’d best charge you with burying our dead, Tyrion,” Lord Tywin said. “If you
are as late to battle as you are to table, the fighting will all be done by the time you
arrive.”
“Oh, surely you can save me a peasant or two, Father,” Tyrion replied. “Not too many, I
wouldn’t want to be greedy.” He filled his wine cup and watched a serving man carve
into the pig. The crisp skin crackled under his knife, and hot juice ran from the meat. It
was the loveliest sight Tyrion had seen in ages.
“Ser Addam’s outriders say the Stark host has moved south from the Twins,” his father
reported as his trencher was filled with slices of pork. “Lord Frey’s levies have joined
them. They are likely no more than a day’s march north of us.”
“Please, Father,” Tyrion said. “I’m about to eat.”
“Does the thought of facing the Stark boy unman you, Tyrion? Your brother Jaime would
be eager to come to grips with him.”
“I’d sooner come to grips with that pig. Robb Stark is not half so tender, and he never
smelled as good.”
�Lord Lefford, the sour bird who had charge of their stores and supplies, leaned forward.
“I hope your savages do not share your reluctance, else we’ve wasted our good steel on
them.”
“My savages will put your steel to excellent use, my lord,” Tyrion replied. When he had
told Lefford he needed arms and armor to equip the three hundred men Ulf had fetched
down out of the foothills, you would have thought he’d asked the man to turn his virgin
daughters over to their pleasure.
Lord Lefford frowned. “I saw that great hairy one today, the one who insisted that he
must have two battle-axes, the heavy black steel ones with twin crescent blades.”
“Shagga likes to kill with either hand,” Tyrion said as a trencher of steaming pork was
laid in front of him.
“He still had that wood-axe of his strapped to his back.”
“Shagga is of the opinion that three axes are even better than two.” Tyrion reached a
thumb and forefinger into the salt dish, and sprinkled a healthy pinch over his meat.
Ser Kevan leaned forward. “We had a thought to put you and your wildlings in the
vanguard when we come to battle.”
Ser Kevan seldom “had a thought” that Lord Tywin had not had first. Tyrion had
skewered a chunk of meat on the point of his dagger and brought it to his mouth. Now
he lowered it. “The vanguard?” he repeated dubiously. Either his lord father had a new
respect for Tyrion’s abilities, or he’d decided to rid himself of his embarrassing get for
good. Tyrion had the gloomy feeling he knew which.
“They seem ferocious enough,” Ser Kevan said.
“Ferocious?” Tyrion realized he was echoing his uncle like a trained bird. His father
watched, judging him, weighing every word. “Let me tell you how ferocious they are.
Last night, a Moon Brother stabbed a Stone Crow over a sausage. So today as we made
camp three Stone Crows seized the man and opened his throat for him. Perhaps they
were hoping to get the sausage back, I couldn’t say. Bronn managed to keep Shagga from
chopping off the dead man’s cock, which was fortunate, but even so Ulf is demanding
blood money, which Conn and Shagga refuse to pay.”
“When soldiers lack discipline, the fault lies with their lord commander,” his father said.
His brother Jaime had always been able to make men follow him eagerly, and die for
�him if need be. Tyrion lacked that gift. He bought loyalty with gold, and compelled
obedience with his name. “A bigger man would be able to put the fear in them, is that
what you’re saying, my lord?”
Lord Tywin Lannister turned to his brother. “If my son’s men will not obey his
commands, perhaps the vanguard is not the place for him. No doubt he would be more
comfortable in the rear, guarding our baggage train.”
“Do me no kindnesses, Father,” he said angrily. “If you have no other command to offer
me, I’ll lead your van.”
Lord Tywin studied his dwarf son. “I said nothing about command. You will serve under
Ser Gregor.”
Tyrion took one bite of pork, chewed a moment, and spit it out angrily. “I find I am not
hungry after all,” he said, climbing awkwardly off the bench. “Pray excuse me, my lords.”
Lord Tywin inclined his head, dismissing him. Tyrion turned and walked away. He was
conscious of their eyes on his back as he waddled down the hill. A great gust of laughter
went up from behind him, but he did not look back. He hoped they all choked on their
suckling pigs.
Dusk had settled, turning all the banners black. The Lannister camp sprawled for miles
between the river and the kingsroad. In amongst the men and the horses and the trees, it
was easy to get lost, and Tyrion did. He passed a dozen great pavilions and a hundred
cookfires. Fireflies drifted amongst the tents like wandering stars. He caught the scent of
garlic sausage, spiced and savory, so tempting it made his empty stomach growl. Away in
the distance, he heard voices raised in some bawdy song. A giggling woman raced past
him, naked beneath a dark cloak, her drunken pursuer stumbling over tree roots.
Farther on, two spearmen faced each other across a little trickle of a stream, practicing
their thrust-and-parry in the fading light, their chests bare and slick with sweat.
No one looked at him. No one spoke to him. No one paid him any mind. He was
surrounded by men sworn to House Lannister, a vast host twenty thousand strong, and
yet he was alone.
When he heard the deep rumble of Shagga’s laughter booming through the dark, he
followed it to the Stone Crows in their small corner of the night. Conn son of Coratt
waved a tankard of ale. “Tyrion Halfman! Come, sit by our fire, share meat with the
Stone Crows. We have an ox.”
“I can see that, Conn son of Coratt.” The huge red carcass was suspended over a roaring
�fire, skewered on a spit the size of a small tree. No doubt it was a small tree. Blood and
grease dripped down into the flames as two Stone Crows turned the meat. “I thank you.
Send for me when the ox is cooked.” From the look of it, that might even be before the
battle. He walked on.
Each clan had its own cookfire; Black Ears did not eat with Stone Crows, Stone Crows
did not eat with Moon Brothers, and no one ate with Burned Men. The modest tent he
had coaxed out of Lord Lefford’s stores had been erected in the center of the four fires.
Tyrion found Bronn sharing a skin of wine with the new servants. Lord Tywin had sent
him a groom and a body servant to see to his needs, and even insisted he take a squire.
They were seated around the embers of a small cookfire. A girl was with them; slim,
dark-haired, no more than eighteen by the look of her. Tyrion studied her face for a
moment, before he spied fishbones in the ashes. “What did you eat?”
“Trout, m’lord,” said his groom. “Bronn caught them.”
Trout, he thought. Suckling pig. Damn my father. He stared mournfully at the bones,
his belly rumbling.
His squire, a boy with the unfortunate name of Podrick Payne, swallowed whatever he
had been about to say. The lad was a distant cousin to Ser Ilyn Payne, the king’s
headsman . . . and almost as quiet, although not for want of a tongue. Tyrion had made
him stick it out once, just to be certain. “Definitely a tongue,” he had said. “Someday you
must learn to use it.”
At the moment, he did not have the patience to try and coax a thought out of the lad,
whom he suspected had been inflicted on him as a cruel jape. Tyrion turned his
attention back to the girl. “Is this her?” he asked Bronn.
She rose gracefully and looked down at him from the lofty height of five feet or more. “It
is, m’lord, and she can speak for herself, if it please you.”
He cocked his head to one side. “I am Tyrion, of House Lannister. Men call me the Imp.”
“My mother named me Shae. Men call me . . . often.”
Bronn laughed, and Tyrion had to smile. “Into the tent, Shae, if you would be so kind.”
He lifted the flap and held it for her. Inside, he knelt to light a candle.
The life of a soldier was not without certain compensations. Wherever you have a camp,
you are certain to have camp followers. At the end of the day’s march, Tyrion had sent
Bronn back to find him a likely whore. “I would prefer one who is reasonably young,
�with as pretty a face as you can find,” he had said. “If she has washed sometime this year,
I shall be glad. If she hasn’t, wash her. Be certain that you tell her who I am, and warn
her of what I am.” Jyck had not always troubled to do that. There was a look the girls got
in their eyes sometimes when they first beheld the lordling they’d been hired to
pleasure . . . a took that Tyrion Lannister did not ever care to see again.
He lifted the candle and looked her over. Bronn had done well enough; she was doe-eyed
and slim, with small firm breasts and a smile that was by turns shy, insolent, and
wicked. He liked that. “Shall I take my gown off, m’lord?” she asked.
“In good time. Are you a maiden, Shae?”
“If it please you, m’lord,” she said demurely.
“What would please me would be the truth of you, girl.”
“Aye, but that will cost you double.”
Tyrion decided they would get along splendidly. “I am a Lannister. Gold I have in plenty,
and you’ll find me generous . . . but I’ll want more from you than what you’ve got
between your legs, though I’ll want that too. You’ll share my tent, pour my wine, laugh at
my jests, rub the ache from my legs after each day’s ride . . . and whether I keep you a
day or a year, for so long as we are together you will take no other men into your bed.”
“Fair enough.” She reached down to the hem of her thin roughspun gown and pulled it
up over her head in one smooth motion, tossing it aside. There was nothing underneath
but Shae. “If he don’t put down that candle, m’lord will burn his fingers.”
Tyrion put down the candle, took her hand in his, and pulled her gently to him. She bent
to kiss him. Her mouth tasted of honey and cloves, and her fingers were deft and
practiced as they found the fastenings of his clothes.
When he entered her, she welcomed him with whispered endearments and small,
shuddering gasps of pleasure. Tyrion suspected her delight was feigned, but she did it so
well that it did not matter. That much truth he did not crave.
He had needed her, Tyrion realized afterward, as she lay quietly in his arms. Her or
someone like her. It had been nigh on a year since he’d lain with a woman, since before
he had set out for Winterfell in company with his brother and King Robert. He could
well die on the morrow or the day after, and if he did, he would sooner go to his grave
thinking of Shae than of his lord father, Lysa Arryn, or the Lady Catelyn Stark.
�He could feel the softness of her breasts pressed against his arm as she lay beside him.
That was a good feeling. A song filled his head. Softly, quietly, he began to whistle.
“What’s that, m’lord?” Shae murmured against him.
“Nothing,” he told her. “A song I learned as a boy, that’s all. Go to sleep, sweetling.”
When her eyes were closed and her breathing deep and steady, Tyrion slid out from
beneath her, gently, so as not to disturb her sleep. Naked, he crawled outside, stepped
over his squire, and walked around behind his tent to make water.
Bronn was seated cross-legged under a chestnut tree, near where they’d tied the horses.
He was honing the edge of his sword, wide awake; the sellsword did not seem to sleep
like other men. “Where did you find her?” Tyrion asked him as he pissed.
“I took her from a knight. The man was loath to give her up, but your name changed his
thinking somewhat . . . that, and my dirk at his throat.”
“Splendid,” Tyrion said dryly, shaking off the last drops. “I seem to recall saying find me
a whore, not make me an enemy.”
“The pretty ones were all claimed,” Bronn said. “I’ll be pleased to take her back if you’d
prefer a toothless drab.”
Tyrion limped closer to where he sat. “My lord father would call that insolence, and send
you to the mines for impertinence.”
“Good for me you’re not your father,” Bronn replied. “I saw one with boils all over her
nose. Would you like her?”
“What, and break your heart?” Tyrion shot back. “I shall keep Shae. Did you perchance
note the name of this knight you took her from? I’d rather not have him beside me in the
battle.”
Bronn rose, cat-quick and cat-graceful, turning his sword in his hand. “You’ll have me
beside you in the battle, dwarf.”
Tyrion nodded. The night air was warm on his bare skin. “See that I survive this battle,
and you can name your reward.”
Bronn tossed the longsword from his right hand to his left, and tried a cut. “Who’d want
�to kill the likes of you?”
“My lord father, for one. He’s put me in the van.”
“I’d do the same. A small man with a big shield. You’ll give the archers fits.”
“I find you oddly cheering,” Tyrion said. “I must be mad.”
Bronn sheathed his sword. “Beyond a doubt.”
When Tyrion returned to his tent, Shae rolled onto her elbow and murmured sleepily, “I
woke and m’lord was gone.”
“M’lord is back now.” He slid in beside her.
Her hand went between his stunted legs, and found him hard. “Yes he is,” she
whispered, stroking him.
He asked her about the man Bronn had taken her from, and she named the minor
retainer of an insignificant lordling. “You need not fear his like, m’lord,” the girl said, her
fingers busy at his cock. “He is a small man.”
“And what am I, pray?” Tyrion asked her. “A giant?”
“Oh, yes,” she purred, “my giant of Lannister.” She mounted him then, and for a time,
she almost made him believe it. Tyrion went to sleep smiling . . .
. . . and woke in darkness to the blare of trumpets. Shae was shaking him by the
shoulder. “M’lord,” she whispered. “Wake up, m’lord. I’m frightened.”
Groggy, he sat up and threw back the blanket. The horns called through the night, wild
and urgent, a cry that said hurry hurry hurry. He heard shouts, the clatter of spears, the
whicker of horses, though nothing yet that spoke to him of fighting. “My lord father’s
trumpets,” he said. “Battle assembly. I thought Stark was yet a day’s march away.”
Shae shook her head, lost. Her eyes were wide and white.
Groaning, Tyrion lurched to his feet and pushed his way outside, shouting for his squire.
Wisps of pale fog drifted through the night, long white fingers off the river. Men and
horses blundered through the predawn chill; saddles were being cinched, wagons
loaded, fires extinguished. The trumpets blew again: hurry hurry hurry. Knights
�vaulted onto snorting coursers while men-at-arms buckled their sword belts as they ran.
When he found Pod, the boy was snoring softly. Tyrion gave him a sharp poke in the ribs
with his toe. “My armor,” he said, “and be quick about it.” Bronn came trotting out of the
mists, already armored and ahorse, wearing his battered halfhelm. “Do you know what’s
happened?” Tyrion asked him.
“The Stark boy stole a march on us,” Bronn said. “He crept down the kingsroad in the
night, and now his host is less than a mile north of here, forming up in battle array.”
Hurry, the trumpets called, hurry hurry hurry.
“See that the clansmen are ready to ride.” Tyrion ducked back inside his tent. “Where are
my clothes?” he barked at Shae. “There. No, the leather, damn it. Yes. Bring me my
boots.”
By the time he was dressed, his squire had laid out his armor, such that it was. Tyrion
owned a fine suit of heavy plate, expertly crafted to fit his misshapen body. Alas, it was
safe at Casterly Rock, and he was not. He had to make do with oddments assembled
from Lord Lefford’s wagons: mail hauberk and coif, a dead knight’s gorget, lobstered
greaves and gauntlets and pointed steel boots. Some of it was ornate, some plain; not a
bit of it matched, or fit as it should. His breastplate was meant for a bigger man; for his
oversize head, they found a huge bucket-shaped greathelm topped with a foot-long
triangular spike.
Shae helped Pod with the buckles and clasps. “If I die, weep for me,” Tyrion told the
whore.
“How will you know? You’ll be dead.”
“I’ll know.”
“I believe you would.” Shae lowered the greathelm down over his head, and Pod fastened
it to his gorget. Tyrion buckled on his belt, heavy with the weight of shortsword and dirk.
By then his groom had brought up his mount, a formidable brown courser armored as
heavily as he was. He needed help to mount; he felt as though he weighed a thousand
stone. Pod handed him up his shield, a massive slab of heavy ironwood banded with
steel. Lastly they gave him his battle-axe. Shae stepped back and looked him over.
“M’lord looks fearsome.”
“M’lord looks a dwarf in mismatched armor,” Tyrion answered sourly, “but I thank you
for the kindness. Podrick, should the battle go against us, see the lady safely home.” He
saluted her with his axe, wheeled his horse about, and trotted off. His stomach was a
�hard knot, so tight it pained him. Behind, his servants hurriedly began to strike his tent.
Pale crimson fingers fanned out to the east as the first rays of the sun broke over the
horizon. The western sky was a deep purple, speckled with stars. Tyrion wondered
whether this was the last sunrise he would ever see . . . and whether wondering was a
mark of cowardice. Did his brother Jaime ever contemplate death before a battle?
A warhorn sounded in the far distance, a deep mournful note that chilled the soul. The
clansmen climbed onto their scrawny mountain horses, shouting curses and rude jokes.
Several appeared to be drunk. The rising sun was burning off the drifting tendrils of fog
as Tyrion led them off. What grass the horses had left was heavy with dew, as if some
passing god had scattered a bag of diamonds over the earth. The mountain men fell in
behind him, each clan arrayed behind its own leaders.
In the dawn light, the army of Lord Tywin Lannister unfolded like an iron rose, thorns
gleaming.
His uncle would lead the center. Ser Kevan had raised his standards above the
kingsroad. Quivers hanging from their belts, the foot archers arrayed themselves into
three long lines, to east and west of the road, and stood calmly stringing their bows.
Between them, pikemen formed squares; behind were rank on rank of men-at-arms with
spear and sword and axe. Three hundred heavy horse surrounded Ser Kevan and the
lords bannermen Lefford, Lydden, and Serrett with all their sworn retainers.
The right wing was all cavalry, some four thousand men, heavy with the weight of their
armor. More than three quarters of the knights were there, massed together like a great
steel fist. Ser Addam Marbrand had the command. Tyrion saw his banner unfurl as his
standardbearer shook it out; a burning tree, orange and smoke. Behind him flew Ser
Flement’s purple unicorn, the brindled boar of Crakehall, the bantam rooster of Swyft,
and more.
His lord father took his place on the hill where he had slept. Around him, the reserve
assembled; a huge force, half mounted and half foot, five thousand strong. Lord Tywin
almost always chose to command the reserve; he would take the high ground and watch
the battle unfold below him, committing his forces when and where they were needed
most.
Even from afar, his lord father was resplendent. Tywin Lannister’s battle armor put his
son Jaime’s gilded suit to shame. His greatcloak was sewn from countless layers of clothof-gold, so heavy that it barely stirred even when he charged, so large that its drape
covered most of his stallion’s hindquarters when he took the saddle. No ordinary clasp
would suffice for such a weight, so the greatcloak was held in place by a matched pair of
miniature lionesses crouching on his shoulders, as if poised to spring. Their mate, a male
�with a magnificent mane, reclined atop Lord Tywin’s greathelm, one paw raking the air
as he roared. All three lions were wrought in gold, with ruby eyes. His armor was heavy
steel plate, enameled in a dark crimson, greaves and gauntlets inlaid with ornate gold
scrollwork. His rondels were golden sunbursts, all his fastenings were gilded, and the
red steel was burnished to such a high sheen that it shone like fire in the light of the
rising sun.
Tyrion could hear the rumble of the foemen’s drums now. He remembered Robb Stark
as he had last seen him, in his father’s high seat in the Great Hall of Winterfell, a sword
naked and shining in his hands. He remembered how the direwolves had come at him
out of the shadows, and suddenly he could see them again, snarling and snapping, teeth
bared in his face. Would the boy bring his wolves to war with him? The thought made
him uneasy.
The northerners would be exhausted after their long sleepless march. Tyrion wondered
what the boy had been thinking. Did he think to take them unawares while they slept?
Small chance of that; whatever else might be said of him, Tywin Lannister was no man’s
fool.
The van was massing on the left. He saw the standard first, three black dogs on a yellow
field. Ser Gregor sat beneath it, mounted on the biggest horse Tyrion had ever seen.
Bronn took one look at him and grinned. “Always follow a big man into battle.”
Tyrion threw him a hard look. “And why is that?”
“They make such splendid targets. That one, he’ll draw the eyes of every bowman on the
field.”
Laughing, Tyrion regarded the Mountain with fresh eyes. “I confess, I had not
considered it in that light.”
Clegane had no splendor about him; his armor was steel plate, dull grey, scarred by hard
use and showing neither sigil nor ornament. He was pointing men into position with his
blade, a two-handed greatsword that Ser Gregor waved about with one hand as a lesser
man might wave a dagger. “Any man runs, I’ll cut him down myself,” he was roaring
when he caught sight of Tyrion. “Imp! Take the left. Hold the river. If you can.”
The left of the left. To turn their flank, the Starks would need horses that could run on
water. Tyrion led his men toward the riverbank. “Look,” he shouted, pointing with his
axe. “The river.” A blanket of pale mist still clung to the surface of the water, the murky
green current swirling past underneath. The shallows were muddy and choked with
reeds. “That river is ours. Whatever happens, keep close to the water. Never lose sight of
�it. Let no enemy come between us and our river. If they dirty our waters, hack off their
cocks and feed them to the fishes.”
Shagga had an axe in either hand. He smashed them together and made them ring.
“Halfman!” he shouted. Other Stone Crows picked up the cry, and the Black Ears and
Moon Brothers as well. The Burned Men did not shout, but they rattled their swords and
spears. “Halfman! Halfman! Halfman!”
Tyrion turned his courser in a circle to look over the field. The ground was rolling and
uneven here; soft and muddy near the river, rising in a gentle slope toward the
kingsroad, stony and broken beyond it, to the cast. A few trees spotted the hillsides, but
most of the land had been cleared and planted. His heart pounded in his chest in time to
the drums, and under his layers of leather and steel his brow was cold with sweat. He
watched Ser Gregor as the Mountain rode up and down the line, shouting and
gesticulating. This wing too was all cavalry, but where the right was a mailed fist of
knights and heavy lancers, the vanguard was made up of the sweepings of the west:
mounted archers in leather jerkins, a swarming mass of undisciplined freeriders and
sellswords, fieldhands on plow horses armed with scythes and their fathers’ rusted
swords, half-trained boys from the stews of Lannisport . . . and Tyrion and his mountain
clansmen.
“Crow food,” Bronn muttered beside him, giving voice to what Tyrion had left unsaid. He
could only nod. Had his lord father taken leave of his senses? No pikes, too few bowmen,
a bare handful of knights, the ill-armed and unarmored, commanded by an unthinking
brute who led with his rage . . . how could his father expect this travesty of a battle to
hold his left?
He had no time to think about it. The drums were so near that the beat crept under his
skin and set his hands to twitching. Bronn drew his longsword, and suddenly the enemy
was there before them, boiling over the tops of the hills, advancing with measured tread
behind a wall of shields and pikes.
Gods be damned, look at them all, Tyrion thought, though he knew his father had more
men on the field. Their captains led them on armored warhorses, standard-bearers
riding alongside with their banners. He glimpsed the bull moose of the Hornwoods, the
Karstark sunburst, Lord Cerwyn’s battle-axe, and the mailed fist of the Glovers . . . and
the twin towers of Frey, blue on grey. So much for his father’s certainty that Lord Walder
would not bestir himself. The white of House Stark was seen everywhere, the grey
direwolves seeming to run and leap as the banners swirled and streamed from the high
staffs. Where is the boy? Tyrion wondered.
A warhorn blew. Haroooooooooooooooooooooooo, it cried, its voice as long and low and
�chilling as a cold wind from the north. The Lannister trumpets answered, da-DA da-DA
da-DAAAAAAAAA, brazen and defiant, yet it seemed to Tyrion that they sounded
somehow smaller, more anxious. He could feel a fluttering in his bowels, a queasy liquid
feeling; he hoped he was not going to die sick.
As the horns died away, a hissing filled the air; a vast flight of arrows arched up from his
right, where the archers stood flanking the road. The northerners broke into a run,
shouting as they came, but the Lannister arrows fell on them like hail, hundreds of
arrows, thousands, and shouts turned to screams as men stumbled and went down. By
then a second flight was in the air, and the archers were fitting a third arrow to their
bowstrings.
The trumpets blared again, da-DAAA da-DAAA da-DA da-DA da-DAAAAAAA. Ser
Gregor waved his huge sword and bellowed a command, and a thousand other voices
screamed back at him. Tyrion put his spurs to his horse and added one more voice to the
cacophony, and the van surged forward. “The river!” he shouted at his clansmen as they
rode. “Remember, hew to the river.” He was still leading when they broke a canter, until
Chella gave a bloodcurdling shriek and galloped past him, and Shagga howled and
followed. The clansmen charged after them, leaving Tyrion in their dust.
A crescent of enemy spearmen had formed ahead, a double hedgehog bristling with
steel, waiting behind tall oaken shields marked with the sunburst of Karstark. Gregor
Clegane was the first to reach them, leading a wedge of armored veterans. Half the
horses shied at the last second, breaking their charge before the row of spears. The
others died, sharp steel points ripping through their chests. Tyrion saw a dozen men go
down. The Mountain’s stallion reared, lashing out with iron-shod hooves as a barbed
spearhead raked across his neck. Maddened, the beast lunged into the ranks. Spears
thrust at him from every side, but the shield wall broke beneath his weight. The
northerners stumbled away from the animal’s death throes. As his horse fell, snorting
blood and biting with his last red breath, the Mountain rose untouched, laying about
him with his two-handed greatsword.
Shagga went bursting through the gap before the shields could close, other Stone Crows
hard behind him. Tyrion shouted, “Burned Men! Moon Brothers! After me!” but most of
them were ahead of him. He glimpsed Timett son of Timett vault free as his mount died
under him in full stride, saw a Moon Brother impaled on a Karstark spear, watched
Conn’s horse shatter a man’s ribs with a kick. A flight of arrows descended on them;
where they came from he could not say, but they fell on Stark and Lannister alike,
rattling off armor or finding flesh. Tyrion lifted his shield and hid beneath it.
The hedgehog was crumbling, the northerners reeling back under the impact of the
mounted assault. Tyrion saw Shagga catch a spearman full in the chest as the fool came
�on at a run, saw his axe shear through mail and leather and muscle and lungs. The man
was dead on his feet, the axehead lodged in his breast, yet Shagga rode on, cleaving a
shield in two with his left-hand battle-axe while the corpse was bouncing and stumbling
bonelessly along on his right. Finally the dead man slid off. Shagga smashed the two
axes together and roared.
By then the enemy was on him, and Tyrion’s battle shrunk to the few feet of ground
around his horse. A man-at-arms thrust at his chest and his axe lashed out, knocking the
spear aside. The man danced back for another try, but Tyrion spurred his horse and rode
right over him. Bronn was surrounded by three foes, but he lopped the head off the first
spear that came at him, and raked his blade across a second man’s face on his backslash.
A thrown spear came hurtling at Tyrion from the left and lodged in his shield with a
woody chunk. He wheeled and raced after the thrower, but the man raised his own
shield over his head. Tyrion circled around him, raining axe blows down on the wood.
Chips of oak went flying, until the northerner lost his feet and slipped, failing flat on his
back with his shield on top of him. He was below the reach of Tyrion’s axe and it was too
much bother to dismount, so he left him there and rode after another man, taking him
from behind with a sweeping downcut that sent a jolt of impact up his arm. That won
him a moment’s respite. Reining up, he looked for the river. There it was, off to the right.
Somehow he had gotten turned around.
A Burned Man rode past, slumped against his horse. A spear had entered his belly and
come out through his back. He was past any help, but when Tyrion saw one of the
northerners run up and make a grab for his reins, he charged.
His quarry met him sword in hand. He was tall and spare, wearing a long chainmail
hauberk and gauntlets of lobstered steel, but he’d lost his helm and blood ran down into
his eyes from a gash across his forehead. Tyrion aimed a swipe at his face, but the tall
man slammed it aside. “Dwarf,” he screamed. “Die.” He turned in a circle as Tyrion rode
around him, hacking at his head and shoulders. Steel rang on steel, and Tyrion soon
realized that the tall man was quicker and stronger than he was. Where in the seven hells
was Bronn? “Die,” the man grunted, chopping at him savagely. Tyrion barely got his
shield up in time, and the wood seemed to explode inward under the force of the blow.
The shattered pieces fell away from his arm. “Die!” the swordsman bellowed, shoving in
close and whanging Tyrion across the temple so hard his head rang. The blade made a
hideous scraping sound as he drew it back over the steel. The tall man grinned . . . until
Tyrion’s destrier bit, quick as a snake, laying his cheek bare to the bone. Then he
screamed. Tyrion buried his axe in his head. “You die,” he told him, and he did.
As he wrenched the blade free, he heard a shout. ‘Eddard!” a voice rang out. “For
Eddard and Winterfell!” The knight came thundering down on him, swinging the spiked
�ball of a morningstar around his head. Their warhorses slammed together before Tyrion
could so much as open his mouth to shout for Bronn. His right elbow exploded with pain
as the spikes punched through the thin metal around the joint. His axe was gone, as fast
as that. He clawed for his sword, but the morningstar was circling again, coming at his
face. A sickening crunch, and he was falling. He did not recall hitting the ground, but
when he looked up there was only sky above him. He rolled onto his side and tried to
find his feet, but pain shuddered through him and the world throbbed. The knight who
had felled him drew up above him. “Tyrion the Imp,” he boomed down. “You are mine.
Do you yield, Lannister?”
Yes, Tyrion thought, but the word caught in his throat. He made a croaking sound and
fought his way to his knees, fumbling for a weapon. His sword, his dirk, anything . . .
“Do you yield?” The knight loomed overhead on his armored warhorse. Man and horse
both seemed immense. The spiked ball swung in a lazy circle. Tyrion’s hands were
numb, his vision blurred, his scabbard empty. “Yield or die,” the knight declared, his flail
whirling faster and faster.
Tyrion lurched to his feet, driving his head into the horse’s belly. The animal gave a
hideous scream and reared. It tried to twist away from the agony, a shower of blood and
viscera poured down over Tyrion’s face, and the horse fell like an avalanche. The next he
knew, his visor was packed with mud and something was crushing his foot. He wriggled
free, his throat so tight he could scarce talk. “ . . . yield . . . ” he managed to croak faintly.
“Yes,” a voice moaned, thick with pain.
Tyrion scraped the mud off his helm so he could see again. The horse had fallen away
from him, onto its rider. The knight’s leg was trapped, the arm he’d used to break his fall
twisted at a grotesque angle. “Yield,” he repeated. Fumbling at his belt with his good
hand, he drew a sword and flung it at Tyrion’s feet. “I yield, my lord.”
Dazed, the dwarf knelt and lifted the blade. Pain hammered through his elbow when he
moved his arm. The battle seemed to have moved beyond him. No one remained on his
part of the field save a large number of corpses. Ravens were already circling and
landing to feed. He saw that Ser Kevan had brought up his center in support of the van;
his huge mass of pikemen had pushed the northerners back against the hills. They were
struggling on the slopes, pikes thrusting against another wall of shields, these oval and
reinforced with iron studs. As he watched, the air filled with arrows again, and the men
behind the oak wall crumbled beneath the murderous fire. “I believe you are losing, ser,”
he told the knight under the horse. The man made no reply.
The sound of hooves coming up behind him made him whirl, though he could scarcely
�lift the sword he held for the agony in his elbow. Brorm reined up and looked down on
him.
“Small use you turned out to be,” Tyrion told him.
“It would seem you did well enough on your own,” Bronn answered. “You’ve lost the
spike off your helm, though.”
Tyrion groped at the top of the greathelm. The spike had snapped off clean. “I haven’t
lost it. I know just where it is. Do you see my horse?”
By the time they found it, the trumpets had sounded again and Lord Tywin’s reserve
came sweeping up along the river. Tyrion watched his father fly past, the crimson-andgold banner of Lannister rippling over his head as he thundered across the field. Five
hundred knights surrounded him, sunlight flashing off the points of their lances. The
remnants of the Stark lines shattered like glass beneath the hammer of their charge.
With his elbow swollen and throbbing inside his armor, Tyrion made no attempt to join
the slaughter. He and Bronn went looking for his men. Many he found among the dead.
Ulf son of Umar lay in a pool of congealing blood, his arm gone at the elbow, a dozen of
his Moon Brothers sprawled around him. Shagga was slumped beneath a tree, riddled
with arrows, Conn’s head in his lap. Tyrion thought they were both dead, but as he
dismounted, Shagga opened his eyes and said, “They have killed Conn son of Coratt.”
Handsome Conn had no mark but for the red stain over his breast, where the spear
thrust had killed him. When Bronn pulled Shagga to his feet, the big man seemed to
notice the arrows for the first time. He plucked them out one by one, cursing the holes
they had made in his layers of mail and leather, and yowling like a babe at the few that
had buried themselves in his flesh. Chella daughter of Cheyk rode up as they were
yanking arrows out of Shagga, and showed them four ears she had taken. Timett they
discovered looting the bodies of the slain with his Burned Men. Of the three hundred
clansmen who had ridden to battle behind Tyrion Lannister, perhaps half had survived.
He left the living to look after the dead, sent Bronn to take charge of his captive knight,
and went alone in search of his father. Lord Tywin was seated by the river, sipping wine
from a jeweled cup as his squire undid the fastenings on his breastplate. “A fine victory,”
Ser Kevan said when he saw Tyrion. “Your wild men fought well.”
His father’s eyes were on him, pale green flecked with gold, so cool they gave Tyrion a
chill. “Did that surprise you, Father?” he asked. “Did it upset your plans? We were
supposed to be butchered, were we not?”
Lord Tywin drained his cup, his face expressionless. “I put the least disciplined men on
�the left, yes. I anticipated that they would break. Robb Stark is a green boy, more like to
be brave than wise. I’d hoped that if he saw our left collapse, he might plunge into the
gap, eager for a rout. Once he was fully committed, Ser Kevan’s pikes would wheel and
take him in the flank, driving him into the river while I brought up the reserve.”
“And you thought it best to place me in the midst of this carnage, yet keep me ignorant
of your plans.”
“A feigned rout is less convincing,” his father said, “and I am not inclined to trust my
plans to a man who consorts with sellswords and savages.”
“A pity my savages ruined your dance.” Tyrion pulled off his steel gauntlet and let it fall
to the ground, wincing at the pain that stabbed up his arm.
“The Stark boy proved more cautious than I expected for one of his years,” Lord Tywin
admitted, “but a victory is a victory. You appear to be wounded.”
Tyrion’s right arm was soaked with blood. “Good of you to notice, Father,” he said
through clenched teeth. “Might I trouble you to send for your maesters? Unless you
relish the notion of having a one-armed dwarf for a son . . . ”
An urgent shout of “Lord Tywin!” turned his father’s head before he could reply. Tywin
Lannister rose to his feet as Ser Addam Marbrand leapt down off his courser. The horse
was lathered and bleeding from the mouth. Ser Addam dropped to one knee, a rangy
man with dark copper hair that fell to his shoulders, armored in burnished bronzed steel
with the fiery tree of his House etched black on his breastplate. “My liege, we have taken
some of their commanders. Lord Cerwyn, Ser Wylis Manderly, Harrion Karstark, four
Freys. Lord Hornwood is dead, and I fear Roose Bolton has escaped us.”
“And the boy?” Lord Tywin asked.
Ser Addam hesitated. “The Stark boy was not with them, my lord. They say he crossed at
the Twins with the great part of his horse, riding hard for Riverrun.”
A green boy, Tyrion remembered, more like to be brave than wise. He would have
laughed, if he hadn’t hurt so much.
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CATELYN
The woods were full of whispers.
Moonlight winked on the tumbling waters of the stream below as it wound its rocky way
along the floor of the valley. Beneath the trees, warhorses whickered softly and pawed at
the moist, leafy ground, while men made nervous jests in hushed voices. Now and again,
she heard the chink of spears, the faint metallic slither of chain mail, but even those
sounds were muffled.
“It should not be long now, my lady,” Hallis Mollen said. He had asked for the honor of
protecting her in the battle to come; it was his right, as Winterfell’s captain of guards,
and Robb had not refused it to him. She had thirty men around her, charged to keep her
unharmed and see her safely home to Winterfell if the fighting went against them. Robb
had wanted fifty; Catelyn had insisted that ten would be enough, that he would need
every sword for the fight. They made their peace at thirty, neither happy with it.
“It will come when it comes,” Catelyn told him. When it came, she knew it would mean
death. Hal’s death perhaps . . . or hers, or Robb’s. No one was safe. No life was certain.
Catelyn was content to wait, to listen to the whispers in the woods and the faint music of
the brook, to feel the warm wind in her hair.
She was no stranger to waiting, after all. Her men had always made her wait. “Watch for
me, little cat,” her father would always tell her, when he rode off to court or fair or battle.
And she would, standing patiently on the battlements of Riverrun as the waters of the
Red Fork and the Tumblestone flowed by. He did not always come when he said he
would, and days would ofttimes pass as Catelyn stood her vigil, peering out between
crenels and through arrow loops until she caught a glimpse of Lord Hoster on his old
brown gelding, trotting along the rivershore toward the landing. “Did you watch for
me?” he’d ask when he bent to bug her. “Did you, little cat?”
Brandon Stark had bid her wait as well. “I shall not be long, my lady,” he had vowed.
“We will be wed on my return.” Yet when the day came at last, it was his brother Eddard
who stood beside her in the sept.
Ned had lingered scarcely a fortnight with his new bride before he too had ridden off to
war with promises on his lips. At least he had left her with more than words; he had
�given her a son. Nine moons had waxed and waned, and Robb had been born in
Riverrun while his father still warred in the south. She had brought him forth in blood
and pain, not knowing whether Ned would ever see him. Her son. He had been so
small . . .
And now it was for Robb that she waited . . . for Robb, and for Jaime Lannister, the
gilded knight who men said had never learned to wait at all. “The Kingslayer is restless,
and quick to anger,” her uncle Brynden had told Robb. And he had wagered their lives
and their best hope of victory on the truth of what he said.
If Robb was frightened, he gave no sign of it. Catelyn watched her son as he moved
among the men, touching one on the shoulder, sharing a jest with another, helping a
third to gentle an anxious horse. His armor clinked softly when he moved. Only his head
was bare. Catelyn watched a breeze stir his auburn hair, so like her own, and wondered
when her son had grown so big. Fifteen, and near as tall as she was.
Let him grow taller, she asked the gods. Let him know sixteen, and twenty, and fifty.
Let him grow as tall as his father, and hold his own son in his arms. Please, please,
please. As she watched him, this tall young man with the new beard and the direwolf
prowling at his heels, all she could see was the babe they had laid at her breast at
Riverrun, so long ago.
The night was warm, but the thought of Riverrun was enough to make her shiver. Where
are they? she wondered. Could her uncle have been wrong? So much rested on the truth
of what he had told them. Robb had given the Blackfish three hundred picked men, and
sent them ahead to screen his march. “Jaime does not know,” Ser Brynden said when he
rode back. “I’ll stake my life on that. No bird has reached him, my archers have seen to
that. We’ve seen a few of his outriders, but those that saw us did not live to tell of it. He
ought to have sent out more. He does not know.”
“How large is his host?” her son asked.
“Twelve thousand foot, scattered around the castle in three separate camps, with the
rivers between,” her uncle said, with the craggy smile she remembered so well. “There is
no other way to besiege Riverrun, yet still, that will be their undoing. Two or three
thousand horse.”
“The Kingslayer has us three to one,” said Galbart Glover.
‘True enough,” Ser Brynden said, “yet there is one thing Ser Jaime lacks.”
“Yes?” Robb asked.
�“Patience.”
Their host was greater than it had been when they left the Twins. Lord Jason Mallister
had brought his power out from Seagard to join them as they swept around the
headwaters of the Blue Fork and galloped south, and others had crept forth as well,
hedge knights and small lords and masterless men-at-arms who had fled north when her
brother Edmure’s army was shattered beneath the walls of Riverrun. They had driven
their horses as hard as they dared to reach this place before Jaime Lannister had word of
their coming, and now the hour was at hand.
Catelyn watched her son mount up. Olyvar Frey held his horse for him, Lord Walder’s
son, two years older than Robb, and ten years younger and more anxious. He strapped
Robb’s shield in place and handed up his helm. When he lowered it over the face she
loved so well, a tall young knight sat on his grey stallion where her son had been. It was
dark among the trees, where the moon did not reach. When Robb turned his head to
look at her, she could see only black inside his visor. “I must ride down the line,
Mother,” he told her. “Father says you should let the men see you before a battle.”
‘Go, then,” she said. “Let them see you.”
‘It will give them courage,” Robb said.
And who will give me courage? she wondered, yet she kept her silence and made herself
smile for him. Robb turned the big grey stallion and walked him slowly away from her,
Grey Wind shadowing his steps. Behind him his battle guard formed up. When he’d
forced Catelyn to accept her protectors, she had insisted that he be guarded as well, and
the lords bannermen had agreed. Many of their sons had clamored for the honor of
riding with the Young Wolf, as they had taken to calling him. Torrhen Karstark and his
brother Eddard were among his thirty, and Patrek Mallister, Smalljon Umber, Daryn
Hornwood, Theon Greyjoy, no less than five of Walder Frey’s vast brood, along with
older men like Ser Wendel Manderly and Robin Flint. One of his companions was even a
woman: Dacey Mormont, Lady Maege’s eldest daughter and heir to Bear Island, a lanky
six-footer who had been given a morningstar at an age when most girls were given dolls.
Some of the other lords muttered about that, but Catelyn would not listen to their
complaints. “This is not about the honor of your houses,” she told them. “This is about
keeping my son alive and whole.”
And if it comes to that, she wondered, will thirty be enough? Will six thousand be
enough?
A bird called faintly in the distance, a high sharp trill that felt like an icy hand on
�Catelyn’s neck. Another bird answered; a third, a fourth. She knew their call well
enough, from her years at Winterfell. Snow shrikes. Sometimes you saw them in the
deep of winter, when the godswood was white and still. They were northern birds.
They are coming, Catelyn thought.
“They’re coming, my lady,” Hal Mollen whispered. He was always a man for stating the
obvious. “Gods be with us.”
She nodded as the woods grew still around them. In the quiet she could hear them, far
off yet moving closer; the tread of many horses, the rattle of swords and spears and
armor, the murmur of human voices, with here a laugh, and there a curse.
Eons seemed to come and go. The sounds grew louder. She heard more laughter, a
shouted command, splashing as they crossed and recrossed the little stream. A horse
snorted. A man swore. And then at last she saw him . . . only for an instant, framed
between the branches of the trees as she looked down at the valley floor, yet she knew it
was him. Even at a distance, Ser Jaime Lannister was unmistakable. The moonlight had
silvered his armor and the gold of his hair, and turned his crimson cloak to black. He
was not wearing a helm.
He was there and he was gone again, his silvery armor obscured by the trees once more.
Others came behind him, long columns of them, knights and sworn swords and
freeriders, three quarters of the Lannister horse.
“He is no man for sitting in a tent while his carpenters build siege towers,” Ser Brynden
had promised. “He has ridden out with his knights thrice already, to chase down raiders
or storm a stubborn holdfast.”
Nodding, Robb had studied the map her uncle had drawn him. Ned had taught him to
read maps. “Raid him here,” he said, pointing. “A few hundred men, no more. Tully
banners. When he comes after you, we will be waiting”—his finger moved an inch to the
left—“here.”
Here was a hush in the night, moonlight and shadows, a thick carpet of dead leaves
underfoot, densely wooded ridges sloping gently down to the streambed, the underbrush
thinning as the ground fell away.
Here was her son on his stallion, glancing back at her one last time and lifting his sword
in salute.
Here was the call of Maege Mormont’s warhorn, a long low blast that rolled down the
�valley from the east, to tell them that the last of Jaime’s riders had entered the trap.
And Grey Wind threw back his head and howled.
The sound seemed to go right through Catelyn Stark, and she found herself shivering. It
was a terrible sound, a frightening sound, yet there was music in it too. For a second she
felt something like pity for the Lannisters below. So this is what death sounds like, she
thought.
HAAroooooooooooooooooooooooo came the answer from the far ridge as the Greatjon
winded his own horn. To east and west, the trumpets of the Mallisters and Freys blew
vengeance. North, where the valley narrowed and bent like a cocked elbow, Lord
Karstark’s warhorns added their own deep, mournful voices to the dark chorus. Men
were shouting and horses rearing in the stream below.
The whispering wood let out its breath all at once, as the bowmen Robb had hidden in
the branches of the trees let fly their arrows and the night erupted with the screams of
men and horses. All around her, the riders raised their lances, and the dirt and leaves
that had buried the cruel bright points fell away to reveal the gleam of sharpened steel.
“Winterfell!” she heard Robb shout as the arrows sighed again. He moved away from her
at a trot, leading his men downhill.
Catelyn sat on her horse, unmoving, with Hal Mollen and her guard around her, and she
waited as she had waited before, for Brandon and Ned and her father. She was high on
the ridge, and the trees hid most of what was going on beneath her. A heartbeat, two,
four, and suddenly it was as if she and her protectors were alone in the wood. The rest
were melted away into the green.
Yet when she looked across the valley to the far ridge, she saw the Greatjon’s riders
emerge from the darkness beneath the trees. They were in a long line, an endless line,
and as they burst from the wood there was an instant, the smallest part of a heartbeat,
when all Catelyn saw was the moonlight on the points of their lances, as if a thousand
willowisps were coming down the ridge, wreathed in silver flame.
Then she blinked, and they were only men, rushing down to kill or die.
Afterward, she could not claim she had seen the battle. Yet she could hear, and the valley
rang with echoes. The crack of a broken lance, the clash of swords, the cries of
“Lannister” and “Winterfell” and “Tully! Riverrun and Tully!” When she realized there
was no more to see, she closed her eyes and listened. The battle came alive around her.
She heard hoofbeats, iron boots splashing in shallow water, the woody sound of swords
on oaken shields and the scrape of steel against steel, the hiss of arrows, the thunder of
�drums, the terrified screaming of a thousand horses. Men shouted curses and begged for
mercy, and got it (or not), and lived (or died). The ridges seemed to play queer tricks
with sound. Once she heard Robb’s voice, as clear as if he’d been standing at her side,
calling, “To me! To me!” And she heard his direwolf, snarling and growling, heard the
snap of those long teeth, the tearing of flesh, shrieks of fear and pain from man and
horse alike. Was there only one wolf? It was hard to be certain.
Little by little, the sounds dwindled and died, until at last there was only the wolf. As a
red dawn broke in the east, Grey Wind began to howl again.
Robb came back to her on a different horse, riding a piebald gelding in the place of the
grey stallion he had taken down into the valley. The wolf’s head on his shield was slashed
half to pieces, raw wood showing where deep gouges had been hacked in the oak, but
Robb himself seemed unhurt. Yet when he came closer, Catelyn saw that his mailed
glove and the sleeve of his surcoat were black with blood. “You’re hurt,” she said.
Robb lifted his hand, opened and closed his fingers. “No,” he said. “This is . . . Torrhen’s
blood, perhaps, or . . . ” He shook his head. “I do not know.”
A mob of men followed him up the slope, dirty and dented and grinning, with Theon and
the Greatjon at their head. Between them they dragged Ser Jaime Lannister. They threw
him down in front of her horse. “The Kingslayer,” Hal announced, unnecessarily.
Lannister raised his head. “Lady Stark,” he said from his knees. Blood ran down one
cheek from a gash across his scalp, but the pale light of dawn had put the glint of gold
back in his hair. “I would offer you my sword, but I seem to have mislaid it.”
“It is not your sword I want, ser,” she told him. “Give me my father and my brother
Edmure. Give me my daughters. Give me my lord husband.”
“I have mislaid them as well, I fear.”
“A pity,” Catelyn said coldly.
“Kill him, Robb,” Theon Greyjoy urged. “Take his head off.”
“No,” her son answered, peeling off his bloody glove. “He’s more use alive than dead.
And my lord father never condoned the murder of prisoners after a battle.”
“A wise man,” Jaime Lannister said, “and honorable.”
“Take him away and put him in irons,” Catelyn said.
�“Do as my lady mother says,” Robb commanded, “and make certain there’s a strong
guard around him. Lord Karstark will want his head on a pike.”
“That he will,” the Greatjon agreed, gesturing. Lannister was led away to be bandaged
and chained.
“Why should Lord Karstark want him dead?” Catelyn asked.
Robb looked away into the woods, with the same brooding look that Ned often got.
“He . . . he killed them . . . ”
“Lord Karstark’s sons,” Galbart Glover explained.
“Both of them,” said Robb. “Torrhen and Eddard. And Daryn Hornwood as well.”
“No one can fault Lannister on his courage,” Glover said. “When he saw that he was lost,
he rallied his retainers and fought his way up the valley, hoping to reach Lord Robb and
cut him down. And almost did.”
“He mislaid his sword in Eddard Karstark’s neck, after he took Torrhen’s hand off and
split Daryn Hornwood’s skull open,” Robb said. “All the time he was shouting for me. If
they hadn’t tried to stop him—”
“—I should then be mourning in place of Lord Karstark,” Catelyn said. “Your men did
what they were sworn to do, Robb. They died protecting their liege lord. Grieve for them.
Honor them for their valor. But not now. You have no time for grief. You may have
lopped the head off the snake, but three quarters of the body is still coiled around my
father’s castle. We have won a battle, not a war.”
“But such a battle!” said Theon Greyjoy eagerly. “My lady, the realm has not seen such a
victory since the Field of Fire. I vow, the Lannisters lost ten men for every one of ours
that fell. We’ve taken close to a hundred knights captive, and a dozen lords bannermen.
Lord Westerling, Lord Banefort, Ser Garth Greenfield, Lord Estren, Ser Tytos Brax,
Mallor the Dornishman . . . and three Lannisters besides Jaime, Lord Tywin’s own
nephews, two of his sister’s sons and one of his dead brother’s . . . ”
“And Lord Tywin?” Catelyn interrupted. “Have you perchance taken Lord Tywin,
Theon?”
“No,” Greyjoy answered, brought up short.
�“Until you do, this war is far from done.”
Robb raised his head and pushed his hair back out of his eyes. “My mother is right. We
still have Riverrun.”
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DAENERYS
The flies circled Khal Drogo slowly, their wings buzzing, a low thrum at the edge of
hearing that filled Dany with dread.
The sun was high and pitiless. Heat shimmered in waves off the stony outcrops of low
hills. A thin finger of sweat trickled slowly between Dany’s swollen breasts. The only
sounds were the steady clop of their horses’ hooves, the rhythmic tingle of the bells in
Drogo’s hair, and the distant voices behind them.
Dany watched the flies.
They were as large as bees, gross, purplish, glistening. The Dothraki called them
bloodflies. They lived in marshes and stagnant pools, sucked blood from man and horse
alike, and laid their eggs in the dead and dying. Drogo hated them. Whenever one came
near him, his hand would shoot out quick as a striking snake to close around it. She had
never seen him miss. He would hold the fly inside his huge fist long enough to hear its
frantic buzzing. Then his fingers would tighten, and when he opened his hand again, the
fly would be only a red smear on his palm.
Now one crept across the rump of his stallion, and the horse gave an angry flick of its tail
to brush it away. The others flitted about Drogo, closer and closer. The khal did not
react. His eyes were fixed on distant brown hills, the reins loose in his hands. Beneath
his painted vest, a plaster of fig leaves and caked blue mud covered the wound on his
breast. The herbwomen had made it for him. Mirri Maz Duur’s poultice had itched and
burned, and he had torn it off six days ago, cursing her for a maegi. The mud plaster was
more soothing, and the herbwomen made him poppy wine as well. He’d been drinking it
heavily these past three days; when it was not poppy wine, it was fermented mare’s milk
or pepper beer.
Yet he scarcely touched his food, and he thrashed and groaned in the night. Dany could
see how drawn his face had become. Rhaego was restless in her belly, kicking like a
stallion, yet even that did not stir Drogo’s interest as it had. Every morning her eyes
found fresh lines of pain on his face when he woke from his troubled sleep. And now this
silence. It was making her afraid. Since they had mounted up at dawn, he had said not a
word. When she spoke, she got no answer but a grunt, and not even that much since
midday.
�One of the bloodflies landed on the bare skin of the khal’s shoulder. Another, circling,
touched down on his neck and crept up toward his mouth. Khal Drogo swayed in the
saddle, bells ringing, as his stallion kept onward at a steady walking pace.
Dany pressed her heels into her silver and rode closer. “My lord,” she said softly. “Drogo.
My sun-and-stars.”
He did not seem to hear. The bloodfly crawled up under his drooping mustache and
settled on his cheek, in the crease beside his nose. Dany gasped, “Drogo.” Clumsily she
reached over and touched his arm.
Khal Drogo reeled in the saddle, tilted slowly, and fell heavily from his horse. The flies
scattered for a heartbeat, and then circled back to settle on him where he lay.
“No,” Dany said, reining up. Heedless of her belly for once, she scrambled off her silver
and ran to him.
The grass beneath him was brown and dry. Drogo cried out in pain as Dany knelt beside
him. His breath rattled harshly in his throat, and he looked at her without recognition.
“My horse,” he gasped. Dany brushed the flies off his chest, smashing one as he would
have. His skin burned beneath her fingers.
The khal’s bloodriders had been following just behind them. She heard Haggo shout as
they galloped up. Cohollo vaulted from his horse. “Blood of my blood,” he said as he
dropped to his knees. The other two kept to their mounts.
“No,” Khal Drogo groaned, struggling in Dany’s arms. “Must ride. Ride. No.”
“He fell from his horse,” Haggo said, staring down. His broad face was impassive, but his
voice was leaden.
“You must not say that,” Dany told him. “We have ridden far enough today. We will
camp here.”
“Here?” Haggo looked around them. The land was brown and sere, inhospitable. “This is
no camping ground.”
“It is not for a woman to bid us halt,” said Qotho, “not even a khaleesi.”
“We camp here,” Dany repeated. “Haggo, tell them Khal Drogo commanded the halt. If
any ask why, say to them that my time is near and I could not continue. Cohollo, bring
�up the slaves, they must put up the khal’s tent at once. Qotho—”
“You do not command me, Khaleesi,” Qotho said.
“Find Mirri Maz Duur,” she told him. The godswife would be walking among the other
Lamb Men, in the long column of slaves. “Bring her to me, with her chest.”
Qotho glared down at her, his eyes hard as flint. “The maegi.” He spat. “This I will not
do.”
“You will,” Dany said, “or when Drogo wakes, he will hear why you defied me.”
Furious, Qotho wheeled his stallion around and galloped off in anger . . . but Dany knew
he would return with Mirri Maz Duur, however little he might like it. The slaves erected
Khal Drogo’s tent beneath a jagged outcrop of black rock whose shadow gave some relief
from the heat of the afternoon sun. Even so, it was stifling under the sandsilk as Irri and
Doreah helped Dany walk Drogo inside. Thick patterned carpets had been laid down
over the ground, and pillows scattered in the corners. Eroeh, the timid girl Dany had
rescued outside the mud walls of the Lamb Men, set up a brazier. They stretched Drogo
out on a woven mat. “No,” he muttered in the Common Tongue. “No, no.” It was all he
said, all he seemed capable of saying.
Doreah unhooked his medallion belt and stripped off his vest and leggings, while Jhiqui
knelt by his feet to undo the laces of his riding sandals. Irri wanted to leave the tent flaps
open to let in the breeze, but Dany forbade it. She would not have any see Drogo this
way, in delirium and weakness. When her khas came up, she posted them outside at
guard. “Admit no one without my leave,” she told Jhogo. “No one.”
Eroeh stared fearfully at Drogo where he lay. “He dies,” she whispered.
Dany slapped her. “The khal cannot die. He is the father of the stallion who mounts the
world. His hair has never been cut. He still wears the bells his father gave him.”
“Khaleesi, “ Jhiqui said, “he fell from his horse.”
Trembling, her eyes full of sudden tears, Dany turned away from them. He fell from his
horse! It was so, she had seen it, and the bloodriders, and no doubt her handmaids and
the men of her khas as well. And how many more? They could not keep it secret, and
Dany knew what that meant. A khal who could not ride could not rule, and Drogo had
fallen from his horse.
“We must bathe him,” she said stubbornly. She must not allow herself to despair. “Irri,
�have the tub brought at once. Doreah, Eroeh, find water, cool water, he’s so hot.” He was
a fire in human skin.
The slaves set up the heavy copper tub in the corner of the tent. When Doreah brought
the first jar of water, Dany wet a length of silk to lay across Drogo’s brow, over the
burning skin. His eyes looked at her, but he did not see. When his lips opened, no words
escaped them, only a moan. “Where is Mirri Maz Duur?” she demanded, her patience
rubbed raw with fear.
“Qotho will find her,” Irri said.
Her handmaids filled the tub with tepid water that stank of sulfur, sweetening it with
jars of bitter oil and handfuls of crushed mint leaves. While the bath was being prepared,
Dany knelt awkwardly beside her lord husband, her belly great with their child within.
She undid his braid with anxious fingers, as she had on the night he’d taken her for the
first time, beneath the stars. His bells she laid aside carefully, one by one. He would
want them again when he was well, she told herself.
A breath of air entered the tent as Aggo poked his head through the silk. “Khaleesi, “ he
said, “the Andal is come, and begs leave to enter.”
“The Andal” was what the Dothraki called Ser Jorah. “Yes,” she said, rising clumsily,
“send him in.” She trusted the knight. He would know what to do if anyone did.
Ser Jorah Mormont ducked through the door flap and waited a moment for his eyes to
adjust to the dimness. In the fierce heat of the south, he wore loose trousers of mottled
sandsilk and open-toed riding sandals that laced up to his knee. His scabbard hung from
a twisted horsehair belt. Under a bleached white vest, he was bare-chested, skin
reddened by the sun. “Talk goes from mouth to ear, all over the khalasar,” he said. “It is
said Khal Drogo fell from his horse.”
“Help him,” Dany pleaded. “For the love you say you bear me, help him now.”
The knight knelt beside her. He looked at Drogo long and hard, and then at Dany. “Send
your maids away.”
Wordlessly, her throat tight with fear, Dany made a gesture. Irri herded the other girls
from the tent.
When they were alone, Ser Jorah drew his dagger. Deftly, with a delicacy surprising in
such a big man, he began to scrape away the black leaves and dried blue mud from
Drogo’s chest. The plaster had caked hard as the mud walls of the Lamb Men, and like
�those walls it cracked easily. Ser Jorah broke the dry mud with his knife, pried the
chunks from the flesh, peeled off the leaves one by one. A foul, sweet smell rose from the
wound, so thick it almost choked her. The leaves were crusted with blood and pus,
Drogo’s breast black and glistening with corruption.
“No,” Dany whispered as tears ran down her cheeks. “No, please, gods hear me, no.”
Khal Drogo thrashed, fighting some unseen enemy. Black blood ran slow and thick from
his open wound.
“Your khal is good as dead, Princess.”
“No, he can’t die, he mustn’t, it was only a cut.” Dany took his large callused hand in her
own small ones, and held it tight between them. “I will not let him die . . . ”
Ser Jorah gave a bitter laugh. “Khaleesi or queen, that command is beyond your power.
Save your tears, child. Weep for him tomorrow, or a year from now. We do not have time
for grief. We must go, and quickly, before he dies.”
Dany was lost. “Go? Where should we go?”
“Asshai, I would say. It lies far to the south, at the end of the known world, yet men say it
is a great port. We will find a ship to take us back to Pentos. It will be a hard journey,
make no mistake. Do you trust your khas? Will they come with us?”
“Khal Drogo commanded them to keep me safe,” Dany replied uncertainly, “but if he
dies . . . ” She touched the swell of her belly. “I don’t understand. Why should we flee? I
am khaleesi. I carry Drogo’s heir. He will be khal after Drogo . . . ”
Ser Jorah frowned. “Princess, hear me. The Dothraki will not follow a suckling babe.
Drogo’s strength was what they bowed to, and only that. When he is gone, Jhaqo and
Pono and the other kos will fight for his place, and this khalasar will devour itself. The
winner will want no more rivals. The boy will be taken from your breast the moment he
is born. They will give him to the dogs . . . ”
Dany hugged herself. “But why?” she cried plaintively. “Why should they kill a little
baby?”
“He is Drogo’s son, and the crones say he will be the stallion who mounts the world. It
was prophesied. Better to kill the child than to risk his fury when he grows to manhood.”
The child kicked inside her, as if he had heard. Dany remembered the story Viserys had
�told her, of what the Usurper’s dogs had done to Rhaegar’s children. His son had been a
babe as well, yet they had ripped him from his mother’s breast and dashed his head
against a wall. That was the way of men. “They must not hurt my son!” she cried. “I will
order my khas to keep him safe, and Drogo’s bloodriders will—”
Ser Jorah held her by the shoulders. “A bloodrider dies with his khal. You know that,
child. They will take you to Vaes Dothrak, to the crones, that is the last duty they owe
him in life . . . when it is done, they will join Drogo in the night lands.”
Dany did not want to go back to Vaes Dothrak and live the rest of her life among those
terrible old women, yet she knew that the knight spoke the truth. Drogo had been more
than her sun-and-stars; he had been the shield that kept her safe. “I will not leave him,”
she said stubbornly, miserably. She took his hand again. “I will not.”
A stirring at the tent flap made Dany turn her head. Mirri Maz Duur entered, bowing
low. Days on the march, trailing behind the khalasar, had left her limping and haggard,
with blistered and bleeding feet and hollows under her eyes. Behind her came Qotho and
Haggo, carrying the godswife’s chest between them. When the bloodriders caught sight
of Drogo’s wound, the chest slipped from Haggo’s fingers and crashed to the floor of the
tent, and Qotho swore an oath so foul it seared the air.
Mirri Maz Duur studied Drogo, her face still and dead. “The wound has festered.”
“This is your work, maegi,” Qotho said. Haggo laid his fist across Mirri’s cheek with a
meaty smack that drove her to the ground. Then he kicked her where she lay.
“Stop it!” Dany screamed.
Qotho pulled Haggo away, saying, “Kicks are too merciful for a maegi. Take her outside.
We will stake her to the earth, to be the mount of every passing man. And when they are
done with her, the dogs will use her as well. Weasels will tear out her entrails and
carrion crows feast upon her eyes. The flies off the river shall lay their eggs in her womb
and drink pus from the ruins of her breasts . . . ” He dug iron-hard fingers into the soft,
wobbly flesh under the godswife’s arm and hauled her to her feet.
“No,” Dany said. “I will not have her harmed.”
Qotho’s lips skinned back from his crooked brown teeth in a terrible mockery of a smile.
“No? You say me no? Better you should pray that we do not stake you out beside your
maegi. You did this, as much as the other.”
Ser Jorah stepped between them, loosening his longsword in its scabbard. “Rein in your
�tongue, bloodrider. The princess is still your khaleesi. “
“Only while the blood-of-my-blood still lives,” Qotho told the knight. “When he dies, she
is nothing.”
Dany felt a tightness inside her. “Before I was khaleesi, I was the blood of the dragon.
Ser Jorah, summon my khas.”
“No,” said Qotho. “We will go. For now . . . Khaleesi. “ Haggo followed him from the tent,
scowling.
“That one means you no good, Princess,” Mormont said. “The Dothraki say a man and
his bloodriders share one life, and Qotho sees it ending. A dead man is beyond fear.”
“No one has died,” Dany said. “Ser Jorah, I may have need of your blade. Best go don
your armor.” She was more frightened than she dared admit, even to herself.
The knight bowed. “As you say.” He strode from the tent.
Dany turned back to Mirri Maz Duur. The woman’s eyes were wary. “So you have saved
me once more.”
“And now you must save him,” Dany said. “Please . . . ”
“You do not ask a slave,” Mirri replied sharply, “you tell her.” She went to Drogo burning
on his mat, and gazed long at his wound. “Ask or tell, it makes no matter. He is beyond a
healer’s skills.” The khal’s eyes were closed. She opened one with her fingers. “He has
been dulling the hurt with milk of the poppy.”
“Yes,” Dany admitted.
“I made him a poultice of firepod and sting-me-not and bound it in a lambskin.”
“It burned, he said. He tore it off. The herbwomen made him a new one, wet and
soothing.”
“It burned, yes. There is great healing magic in fire, even your hairless men know that.”
“Make him another poultice,” Dany begged. “This time I will make certain he wears it.”
“The time for that is past, my lady,” Mirri said. “All I can do now is ease the dark road
�before him, so he might ride painless to the night lands. He will be gone by morning.”
Her words were a knife through Dany’s breast. What had she ever done to make the gods
so cruel? She had finally found a safe place, had finally tasted love and hope. She was
finally going home. And now to lose it all . . . “No,” she pleaded. “Save him, and I will
free you, I swear it. You must know a way . . . some magic, some . . . ”
Mirri Maz Duur sat back on her heels and studied Daenerys through eyes as black as
night. “There is a spell.” Her voice was quiet, scarcely more than a whisper. “But it is
hard, lady, and dark. Some would say that death is cleaner. I learned the way in Asshai,
and paid dear for the lesson. My teacher was a bloodmage from the Shadow Lands.”
Dany went cold all over. “Then you truly are a maegi . . . ”
“Am I?” Mirri Maz Duur smiled. “Only a maegi can save your rider now, Silver Lady.”
“Is there no other way?”
“No other.”
Khal Drogo gave a shuddering gasp.
“Do it,” Dany blurted. She must not be afraid; she was the blood of the dragon. “Save
him.”
“There is a price,” the godswife warned her.
“You’ll have gold, horses, whatever you like.”
“It is not a matter of gold or horses. This is bloodmagic, lady. Only death may pay for
life.”
“Death?” Dany wrapped her arms around herself protectively, rocked back and forth on
her heels. “My death?” She told herself she would die for him, if she must. She was the
blood of the dragon, she would not be afraid. Her brother Rhaegar had died for the
woman he loved.
“No,” Mirri Maz Duur promised. “Not your death, Khaleesi.”
Dany trembled with relief. “Do it.”
�The maegi nodded solemnly. “As you speak, so it shall be done. Call your servants.”
Khal Drogo writhed feebly as Rakharo and Quaro lowered him into the bath. “No,” he
muttered, “no. Must ride.” Once in the water, all the strength seemed to leak out of him.
“Bring his horse,” Mirri Maz Duur commanded, and so it was done. Jhogo led the great
red stallion into the tent. When the animal caught the scent of death, he screamed and
reared, rolling his eyes. It took three men to subdue him.
“What do you mean to do?” Dany asked her.
“We need the blood,” Mirri answered. “That is the way.”
Jhogo edged back, his hand on his arakh. He was a youth of sixteen years, whip-thin,
fearless, quick to laugh, with the faint shadow of his first mustachio on his upper lip. He
fell to his knees before her. “Khaleesi, “ he pleaded, “you must not do this thing. Let me
kill this maegi.”
“Kill her and you kill your khal,” Dany said.
“This is bloodmagic,” he said. “It is forbidden.”
“I am khaleesi, and I say it is not forbidden. In Vaes Dothrak, Khal Drogo slew a stallion
and I ate his heart, to give our son strength and courage. This is the same. The same.”
The stallion kicked and reared as Rakharo, Quaro, and Aggo pulled him close to the tub
where the khal floated like one already dead, pus and blood seeping from his wound to
stain the bathwaters. Mirri Maz Duur chanted words in a tongue that Dany did not
know, and a knife appeared in her hand. Dany never saw where it came from. It looked
old; hammered red bronze, leaf-shaped, its blade covered with ancient glyphs. The
maegi drew it across the stallion’s throat, under the noble head, and the horse screamed
and shuddered as the blood poured out of him in a red rush. He would have collapsed,
but the men of her khas held him up. “Strength of the mount, go into the rider,” Mirri
sang as horse blood swirled into the waters of Drogo’s bath. “Strength of the beast, go
into the man.”
Jhogo looked terrified as he struggled with the stallion’s weight, afraid to touch the dead
flesh, yet afraid to let go as well. Only a horse, Dany thought. If she could buy Drogo’s
life with the death of a horse, she would pay a thousand times over.
When they let the stallion fall, the bath was a dark red, and nothing showed of Drogo but
his face. Mirri Maz Duur had no use for the carcass. “Burn it,” Dany told them. It was
�what they did, she knew. When a man died, his mount was killed and placed beneath
him on the funeral pyre, to carry him to the night lands. The men of her khas dragged
the carcass from the tent. The blood had gone everywhere. Even the sandsilk walls were
spotted with red, and the rugs underfoot were black and wet.
Braziers were lit. Mirri Maz Duur tossed a red powder onto the coals. It gave the smoke a
spicy scent, a pleasant enough smell, yet Eroeh fled sobbing, and Dany was filled with
fear. But she had gone too far to turn back now. She sent her handmaids away. “Go with
them, Silver Lady,” Mirri Maz Duur told her.
“I will stay,” Dany said. “The man took me under the stars and gave life to the child
inside me. I will not leave him.”
“You must. Once I begin to sing, no one must enter this tent. My song will wake powers
old and dark. The dead will dance here this night. No living man must look on them.”
Dany bowed her head, helpless. “No one will enter.” She bent over the tub, over Drogo in
his bath of blood, and kissed him lightly on the brow. “Bring him back to me,” she
whispered to Mirri Maz Duur before she fled.
Outside, the sun was low on the horizon, the sky a bruised red. The khalasar had made
camp. Tents and sleeping mats were scattered as far as the eye could see. A hot wind
blew. Jhogo and Aggo were digging a firepit to burn the dead stallion. A crowd had
gathered to stare at Dany with hard black eyes, their faces like masks of beaten copper.
She saw Ser Jorah Mormont, wearing mail and leather now, sweat beading on his broad,
balding forehead. He pushed his way through the Dothraki to Dany’s side. When he saw
the scarlet footprints her boots had left on the ground, the color seemed to drain from
his face. “What have you done, you little fool?” he asked hoarsely.
“I had to save him.”
“We could have fled,” he said. “I would have seen you safe to Asshai, Princess. There was
no need . . . ”
“Am I truly your princess?” she asked him.
“You know you are, gods save us both.”
“Then help me now.”
Ser Jorah grimaced. “Would that I knew how.”
�Mirri Maz Duur’s voice rose to a high, ululating wail that sent a shiver down Dany’s
back. Some of the Dothraki began to mutter and back away. The tent was aglow with the
light of braziers within. Through the blood-spattered sandsilk, she glimpsed shadows
moving.
Mirri Maz Duur was dancing, and not alone.
Dany saw naked fear on the faces of the Dothraki. “This must not be,” Qotho thundered.
She had not seen the bloodrider return. Haggo and Cohollo were with him. They had
brought the hairless men, the eunuchs who healed with knife and needle and fire.
“This will be,” Dany replied.
“Maegi, “ Haggo growled. And old Cohollo—Cohollo who had bound his life to Drogo’s
on the day of his birth, Cohollo who had always been kind to her—Cohollo spat full in
her face.
“You will die, maegi,” Qotho promised, “but the other must die first.” He drew his arakh
and made for the tent.
“No,” she shouted, “you mustn’t.” She caught him by the shoulder, but Qotho shoved her
aside. Dany fell to her knees, crossing her arms over her belly to protect the child within.
“Stop him,” she commanded her khas, “kill him.”
Rakharo and Quaro stood beside the tent flap. Quaro took a step forward, reaching for
the handle of his whip, but Qotho spun graceful as a dancer, the curved arakh rising. It
caught Quaro low under the arm, the bright sharp steel biting up through leather and
skin, through muscle and rib bone. Blood fountained as the young rider reeled
backward, gasping.
Qotho wrenched the blade free. “Horselord,” Ser Jorah Mormont called. “Try me.” His
longsword slid from its scabbard.
Qotho whirled, cursing. The arakh moved so fast that Quaro’s blood flew from it in a
fine spray, like rain in a hot wind. The longsword caught it a foot from Ser Jorah’s face,
and held it quivering for an instant as Qotho howled in fury. The knight was clad in
chainmail, with gauntlets and greaves of lobstered steel and a heavy gorget around his
throat, but he had not thought to don his helm.
Qotho danced backward, arakh whirling around his head in a shining blur, flickering out
like lightning as the knight came on in a rush. Ser Jorah parried as best he could, but the
�slashes came so fast that it seemed to Dany that Qotho had four arakhs and as many
arms. She heard the crunch of sword on mail, saw sparks fly as the long curved blade
glanced off a gauntlet. Suddenly it was Mormont stumbling backward, and Qotho
leaping to the attack. The left side of the knight’s face ran red with blood, and a cut to the
hip opened a gash in his mail and left him limping. Qotho screamed taunts at him,
calling him a craven, a milk man, a eunuch in an iron suit. “You die now!” he promised,
arakh shivering through the red twilight. Inside Dany’s womb, her son kicked wildly.
The curved blade slipped past the straight one and bit deep into the knight’s hip where
the mail gaped open.
Mormont grunted, stumbled. Dany felt a sharp pain in her belly, a wetness on her
thighs. Qotho shrieked triumph, but his arakh had found bone, and for half a heartbeat
it caught.
It was enough. Ser Jorah brought his longsword down with all the strength left him,
through flesh and muscle and bone, and Qotho’s forearm dangled loose, flopping on a
thin cord of skin and sinew. The knight’s next cut was at the Dothraki’s ear, so savage
that Qotho’s face seemed almost to explode.
The Dothraki were shouting, Mirri Maz Duur wailing inside the tent like nothing human,
Quaro pleading for water as he died. Dany cried out for help, but no one heard. Rakharo
was fighting Haggo, arakh dancing with arakh until Jhogo’s whip cracked, loud as
thunder, the lash coiling around Haggo’s throat. A yank, and the bloodrider stumbled
backward, losing his feet and his sword. Rakharo sprang forward, howling, swinging his
arakh down with both hands through the top of Haggo’s head. The point caught between
his eyes, red and quivering. Someone threw a stone, and when Dany looked, her
shoulder was torn and bloody. “No,” she wept, “no, please, stop it, it’s too high, the price
is too high.” More stones came flying. She tried to crawl toward the tent, but Cohollo
caught her. Fingers in her hair, he pulled her head back and she felt the cold touch of his
knife at her throat. “My baby,” she screamed, and perhaps the gods heard, for as quick as
that, Cohollo was dead. Aggo’s arrow took him under the arm, to pierce his lungs and
heart.
When at last Daenerys found the strength to raise her head, she saw the crowd
dispersing, the Dothraki stealing silently back to their tents and sleeping mats. Some
were saddling horses and riding off. The sun had set. Fires burned throughout the
khalasar, great orange blazes that crackled with fury and spit embers at the sky. She
tried to rise, and agony seized her and squeezed her like a giant’s fist. The breath went
out of her; it was all she could do to gasp. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur’s voice was like a
funeral dirge. Inside the tent, the shadows whirled.
An arm went under her waist, and then Ser Jorah was lifting her off her feet. His face
�was sticky with blood, and Dany saw that half his ear was gone. She convulsed in his
arms as the pain took her again, and heard the knight shouting for her handmaids to
help him. Are they all so afraid? She knew the answer. Another pain grasped her, and
Dany bit back a scream. It felt as if her son had a knife in each hand, as if he were
hacking at her to cut his way out. “Doreah, curse you,” Ser Jorah roared. “Come here.
Fetch the birthing women.”
“They will not come. They say she is accursed.”
“They’ll come or I’ll have their heads.”
Doreah wept. “They are gone, my lord.”
“The maegi,” someone else said. Was that Aggo? “Take her to the maegi.”
No, Dany wanted to say, no, not that, you mustn’t, but when she opened her mouth, a
long wail of pain escaped, and the sweat broke over her skin. What was wrong with
them, couldn’t they see? Inside the tent the shapes were dancing, circling the brazier and
the bloody bath, dark against the sandsilk, and some did not look human. She glimpsed
the shadow of a great wolf, and another like a man wreathed in flames.
“The Lamb Woman knows the secrets of the birthing bed,” Irri said. “She said so, I heard
her.”
“Yes,” Doreah agreed, “I heard her too.”
No, she shouted, or perhaps she only thought it, for no whisper of sound escaped her
lips. She was being carried. Her eyes opened to gaze up at a flat dead sky, black and
bleak and starless. Please, no. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur’s voice grew louder, until it
filled the world. The shapes! she screamed. The dancers!
Ser Jorah carried her inside the tent.
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ARYA
The scent of hot bread drifting from the shops along the Street of Flour was sweeter than
any perfume Arya had ever smelled. She took a deep breath and stepped closer to the
pigeon. It was a plump one, speckled brown, busily pecking at a crust that had fallen
between two cobblestones, but when Arya’s shadow touched it, it took to the air.
Her stick sword whistled out and caught it two feet off the ground, and it went down in a
flurry of brown feathers. She was on it in the blink of an eye, grabbing a wing as the
pigeon flapped and fluttered. It pecked at her hand. She grabbed its neck and twisted
until she felt the bone snap.
Compared with catching cats, pigeons were easy.
A passing septon was looking at her askance. “Here’s the best place to find pigeon,” Arya
told him as she brushed herself off and picked up her fallen stick sword. “They come for
the crumbs.” He hurried away.
She tied the pigeon to her belt and started down the street. A man was pushing a load of
tarts by on a two-wheeled cart; the smells sang of blueberries and lemons and apricots.
Her stomach made a hollow rumbly noise. “Could I have one?” she heard herself say. “A
lemon, or . . . or any kind.”
The pushcart man looked her up and down. Plainly he did not like what he saw. “Three
coppers.”
Arya tapped her wooden sword against the side of her boot. “I’ll trade you a fat pigeon,”
she said.
“The Others take your pigeon,” the pushcart man said.
The tarts were still warm from the oven. The smells were making her mouth water, but
she did not have three coppers . . . or one. She gave the pushcart man a look,
remembering what Syrio had told her about seeing. He was short, with a little round
belly, and when he moved he seemed to favor his left leg a little. She was just thinking
that if she snatched a tart and ran he would never be able to catch her when he said,
“You be keepin’ your filthy hands off. The gold cloaks know how to deal with thieving
�little gutter rats, that they do.”
Arya glanced warily behind her. Two of the City Watch were standing at the mouth of an
alley. Their cloaks hung almost to the ground, the heavy wool dyed a rich gold; their mail
and boots and gloves were black. One wore a longsword at his hip, the other an iron
cudgel. With a last wistful glance at the tarts, Arya edged back from the cart and hurried
off. The gold cloaks had not been paying her any special attention, but the sight of them
tied her stomach in knots. Arya had been staying as far from the castle as she could get,
yet even from a distance she could see the heads rotting atop the high red walls. Flocks
of crows squabbled noisily over each head, thick as flies. The talk in Flea Bottom was
that the gold cloaks had thrown in with the Lannisters, their commander raised to a
lord, with lands on the Trident and a seat on the king’s council.
She had also heard other things, scary things, things that made no sense to her. Some
said her father had murdered King Robert and been slain in turn by Lord Renly. Others
insisted that Renly had killed the king in a drunken quarrel between brothers. Why else
should he have fled in the night like a common thief? One story said the king had been
killed by a boar while hunting, another that he’d died eating a boar, stuffing himself so
full that he’d ruptured at the table. No, the king had died at table, others said, but only
because Varys the Spider poisoned him. No, it had been the queen who poisoned him.
No, he had died of a pox. No, he had choked on a fish bone.
One thing all the stories agreed on: King Robert was dead. The bells in the seven towers
of the Great Sept of Baelor had tolled for a day and a night, the thunder of their grief
rolling across the city in a bronze tide. They only rang the bells like that for the death of
a king, a tanner’s boy told Arya.
All she wanted was to go home, but leaving King’s Landing was not so easy as she had
hoped. Talk of war was on every lip, and gold cloaks were as thick on the city walls as
fleas on . . . well, her, for one. She had been sleeping in Flea Bottom, on rooftops and in
stables, wherever she could find a place to lie down, and it hadn’t taken her long to learn
that the district was well named.
Every day since her escape from the Red Keep, Arya had visited each of the seven city
gates in turn. The Dragon Gate, the Lion Gate, and the Old Gate were closed and barred.
The Mud Gate and the Gate of the Gods were open, but only to those who wanted to
enter the city; the guards let no one out. Those who were allowed to leave left by the
King’s Gate or the Iron Gate, but Lannister men-at-arms in crimson cloaks and lioncrested helms manned the guard posts there. Spying down from the roof of an inn by the
King’s Gate, Arya saw them searching wagons and carriages, forcing riders to open their
saddlebags, and questioning everyone who tried to pass on foot.
�Sometimes she thought about swimming the river, but the Blackwater Rush was wide
and deep, and everyone agreed that its currents were wicked and treacherous. She had
no coin to pay a ferryman or take passage on a ship.
Her lord father had taught her never to steal, but it was growing harder to remember
why. If she did not get out soon, she would have to take her chances with the gold cloaks.
She hadn’t gone hungry much since she learned to knock down birds with her stick
sword, but she feared so much pigeon was making her sick. A couple she’d eaten raw,
before she found Flea Bottom.
In the Bottom there were pot-shops along the alleys where huge tubs of stew had been
simmering for years, and you could trade half your bird for a heel of yesterday’s bread
and a “bowl o’ brown,” and they’d even stick the other half in the fire and crisp it up for
you, so long as you plucked the feathers yourself. Arya would have given anything for a
cup of milk and a lemon cake, but the brown wasn’t so bad. It usually had barley in it,
and chunks of carrot and onion and turnip, and sometimes even apple, with a film of
grease swimming on top. Mostly she tried not to think about the meat. Once she had
gotten a piece of fish.
The only thing was, the pot-shops were never empty, and even as she bolted down her
food, Arya could feel them watching. Some of them stared at her boots or her cloak, and
she knew what they were thinking. With others, she could almost feel their eyes crawling
under her leathers; she didn’t know what they were thinking, and that scared her even
more. A couple times, she was followed out into the alleys and chased, but so far no one
had been able to catch her.
The silver bracelet she’d hoped to sell had been stolen her first night out of the castle,
along with her bundle of good clothes, snatched while she slept in a burnt-out house off
Pig Alley. All they left her was the cloak she had been huddled in, the leathers on her
back, her wooden practice sword . . . and Needle. She’d been lying on top of Needle, or
else it would have been gone too; it was worth more than all the rest together. Since then
Arya had taken to walking around with her cloak draped over her right arm, to conceal
the blade at her hip. The wooden sword she carried in her left hand, out where
everybody could see it, to scare off robbers, but there were men in the pot-shops who
wouldn’t have been scared off if she’d had a battle-axe. It was enough to make her lose
her taste for pigeon and stale bread. Often as not, she went to bed hungry rather than
risk the stares.
Once she was outside the city, she would find berries to pick, or orchards she might raid
for apples and cherries. Arya remembered seeing some from the kingsroad on the
journey south. And she could dig for roots in the forest, even run down some rabbits. In
the city, the only things to run down were rats and cats and scrawny dogs. The potshops
�would give you a fistful of coppers for a litter of pups, she’d heard, but she didn’t like to
think about that.
Down below the Street of Flour was a maze of twisting alleys and cross streets. Arya
scrambled through the crowds, trying to put distance between her and the gold cloaks.
She had learned to keep to the center of the street. Sometimes she had to dodge wagons
and horses, but at least you could see them coming. If you walked near the buildings,
people grabbed you. In some alleys you couldn’t help but brush against the walls; the
buildings leaned in so close they almost met.
A whooping gang of small children went running past, chasing a rolling hoop. Arya
stared at them with resentment, remembering the times she’d played at hoops with Bran
and Jon and their baby brother Rickon. She wondered how big Rickon had grown, and
whether Bran was sad. She would have given anything if Jon had been here to call her
“little sister” and muss her hair. Not that it needed mussing. She’d seen her reflection in
puddles, and she didn’t think hair got any more mussed than hers.
She had tried talking to the children she saw in the street, hoping to make a friend who
would give her a place to sleep, but she must have talked wrong or something. The little
ones only looked at her with quick, wary eyes and ran away if she came too close. Their
big brothers and sisters asked questions Arya couldn’t answer, called her names, and
tried to steal from her. Only yesterday, a scrawny barefoot girl twice her age had
knocked her down and tried to pull the boots off her feet, but Arya gave her a crack on
her ear with her stick sword that sent her off sobbing and bleeding.
A gull wheeled overhead as she made her way down the hill toward Flea Bottom. Arya
glanced at it thoughtfully, but it was well beyond the reach of her stick. It made her think
of the sea. Maybe that was the way out. Old Nan used to tell stories of boys who stowed
away on trading galleys and sailed off into all kinds of adventures. Maybe Arya could do
that too. She decided to visit the riverfront. It was on the way to the Mud Gate anyway,
and she hadn’t checked that one today.
The wharfs were oddly quiet when Arya got there. She spied another pair of gold cloaks,
walking side by side through the fish market, but they never so much as looked at her.
Half the stalls were empty, and it seemed to her that there were fewer ships at dock than
she remembered. Out on the Blackwater, three of the king’s war galleys moved in
formation, gold-painted hulls splitting the water as their oars rose and fell. Arya watched
them for a bit, then began to make her way along the river.
When she saw the guardsmen on the third pier, in grey woolen cloaks trimmed with
white satin, her heart almost stopped in her chest. The sight of Winterfell’s colors
brought tears to her eyes. Behind them, a sleek three-banked trading galley rocked at her
�moorings. Arya could not read the name painted on the hull; the words were strange,
Myrish, Braavosi, perhaps even High Valyrian. She grabbed a passing longshoreman by
the sleeve. “Please,” she said, “what ship is this?”
“She’s the Wind Witch, out of Myr,” the man said.
“She’s still here,” Arya blurted. The longshoreman gave her a queer look, shrugged, and
walked away. Arya ran toward the pier. The Wind Witch was the ship Father had hired
to take her home . . . still waiting! She’d imagined it had sailed ages ago.
Two of the guardsmen were dicing together while the third walked rounds, his hand on
the pommel of his sword. Ashamed to let them see her crying like a baby, she stopped to
rub at her eyes. Her eyes her eyes her eyes, why did . . .
Look with your eyes, she heard Syrio whisper.
Arya looked. She knew all of her father’s men. The three in the grey cloaks were
strangers. “You,” the one walking rounds called out. “What do you want here, boy?” The
other two looked up from their dice.
It was all Arya could do not to bolt and run, but she knew that if she did, they would be
after her at once. She made herself walk closer. They were looking for a girl, but he
thought she was a boy. She’d be a boy, then. “Want to buy a pigeon?” She showed him
the dead bird.
“Get out of here,” the guardsman said.
Arya did as he told her. She did not have to pretend to be frightened. Behind her, the
men went back to their dice.
She could not have said how she got back to Flea Bottom, but she was breathing hard by
the time she reached the narrow crooked unpaved streets between the hills. The Bottom
had a stench to it, a stink of pigsties and stables and tanner’s sheds, mixed in with the
sour smell of winesinks and cheap whorehouses. Arya wound her way through the maze
dully. It was not until she caught a whiff of bubbling brown coming through a pot-shop
door that she realized her pigeon was gone. It must have slipped from her belt as she
ran, or someone had stolen it and she’d never noticed. For a moment she wanted to cry
again. She’d have to walk all the way back to the Street of Flour to find another one that
plump.
Far across the city, bells began to ring.
�Arya glanced up, listening, wondering what the ringing meant this time.
“What’s this now?” a fat man called from the pot-shop.
“The bells again, gods ha’mercy,” wailed an old woman.
A red-haired whore in a wisp of painted silk pushed open a second-story window. “Is it
the boy king that’s died now?” she shouted down, leaning out over the street. “Ah, that’s
a boy for you, they never last long.” As she laughed, a naked man slid his arms around
her from behind, biting her neck and rubbing the heavy white breasts that hung loose
beneath her shift.
“Stupid slut,” the fat man shouted up. “The king’s not dead, that’s only summoning bells.
One tower tolling. When the king dies, they ring every bell in the city.”
“Here, quit your biting, or I’ll ring your bells,” the woman in the window said to the man
behind her, pushing him off with an elbow. “So who is it died, if not the king?”
“It’s a summoning,” the fat man repeated.
Two boys close to Arya’s age scampered past, splashing through a puddle. The old
woman cursed them, but they kept right on going. Other people were moving too,
heading up the hill to see what the noise was about. Arya ran after the slower boy.
“Where you going?” she shouted when she was right behind him. “What’s happening?”
He glanced back without slowing. “The gold cloaks is carryin’ him to the sept.”
“Who?” she yelled, running hard.
“The Hand! They’ll be taking his head off, Buu says.”
A passing wagon had left a deep rut in the street. The boy leapt over, but Arya never saw
it. She tripped and fell, face first, scraping her knee open on a stone and smashing her
fingers when her hands hit the hard-packed earth. Needle tangled between her legs. She
sobbed as she struggled to her knees. The thumb of her left hand was covered with
blood. When she sucked on it, she saw that half the thumbnail was gone, ripped off in
her fall. Her hands throbbed, and her knee was all bloody too.
“Make way!” someone shouted from the cross street. “Make way for my lords of
Redwyne!” It was all Arya could do to get out of the road before they ran her down, four
guardsmen on huge horses, pounding past at a gallop. They wore checked cloaks, blueand-burgundy. Behind them, two young lordlings rode side by side on a pair of chestnut
�mares alike as peas in a pod. Arya had seen them in the bailey a hundred times; the
Redwyne twins, Ser Horas and Ser Hobber, homely youths with orange hair and square,
freckled faces. Sansa and Jeyne Poole used to call them Ser Horror and Ser Slobber, and
giggle whenever they caught sight of them. They did not look funny now.
Everyone was moving in the same direction, all in a hurry to see what the ringing was all
about. The bells seemed louder now, clanging, calling. Arya joined the stream of people.
Her thumb hurt so bad where the nail had broken that it was all she could do not to cry.
She bit her lip as she limped along, listening to the excited voices around her.
“—the King’s Hand, Lord Stark. They’re carrying him up to Baelor’s Sept.”
“I heard he was dead.”
“Soon enough, soon enough. Here, I got me a silver stag says they lop his head off.”
“Past time, the traitor.” The man spat.
Arya struggled to find a voice. “He never—” she started, but she was only a child and
they talked right over her.
“Fool! They ain’t neither going to lop him. Since when do they knick traitors on the steps
of the Great Sept?”
“Well, they don’t mean to anoint him no knight. I heard it was Stark killed old King
Robert. Slit his throat in the woods, and when they found him, he stood there cool as you
please and said it was some old boar did for His Grace.”
“Ah, that’s not true, it was his own brother did him, that Renly, him with his gold
antlers.”
“You shut your lying mouth, woman. You don’t know what you’re saying, his lordship’s a
fine true man.”
By the time they reached the Street of the Sisters, they were packed in shoulder to
shoulder. Arya let the human current carry her along, up to the top of Visenya’s Hill. The
white marble plaza was a solid mass of people, all yammering excitedly at each other and
straining to get closer to the Great Sept of Baelor. The bells were very loud here.
Arya squirmed through the press, ducking between the legs of horses and clutching tight
to her sword stick. From the middle of the crowd, all she could see were arms and legs
�and stomachs, and the seven slender towers of the sept looming overhead. She spotted a
wood wagon and thought to climb up on the back where she might be able to see, but
others had the same idea. The teamster cursed at them and drove them off with a crack
of his whip.
Arya grew frantic. Forcing her way to the front of the crowd, she was shoved up against
the stone of a plinth. She looked up at Baelor the Blessed, the septon king. Sliding her
stick sword through her belt, Arya began to climb. Her broken thumbnail left smears of
blood on the painted marble, but she made it up, and wedged herself in between the
king’s feet.
That was when she saw her father.
Lord Eddard stood on the High Septon’s pulpit outside the doors of the sept, supported
between two of the gold cloaks. He was dressed in a rich grey velvet doublet with a white
wolf sewn on the front in beads, and a grey wool cloak trimmed with fur, but he was
thinner than Arya had ever seen him, his long face drawn with pain. He was not standing
so much as being held up; the cast over his broken leg was grey and rotten.
The High Septon himself stood behind him, a squat man, grey with age and ponderously
fat, wearing long white robes and an immense crown of spun gold and crystal that
wreathed his head with rainbows whenever he moved.
Clustered around the doors of the sept, in front of the raised marble pulpit, were a knot
of knights and high lords. Joffrey was prominent among them, his raiment all crimson,
silk and satin patterned with prancing stags and roaring lions, a gold crown on his head.
His queen mother stood beside him in a black mourning gown slashed with crimson, a
veil of black diamonds in her hair. Arya recognized the Hound, wearing a snowy white
cloak over his dark grey armor, with four of the Kingsguard around him. She saw Varys
the eunuch gliding among the lords in soft slippers and a patterned damask robe, and
she thought the short man with the silvery cape and pointed beard might be the one who
had once fought a duel for Mother.
And there in their midst was Sansa, dressed in sky-blue silk, with her long auburn hair
washed and curled and silver bracelets on her wrists. Arya scowled, wondering what her
sister was doing here, why she looked so happy.
A long line of gold-cloaked spearmen held back the crowd, commanded by a stout man
in elaborate armor, all black lacquer and gold filigree. His cloak had the metallic
shimmer of true cloth-of-gold.
When the bell ceased to toll, a quiet slowly settled across the great plaza, and her father
�lifted his head and began to speak, his voice so thin and weak she could scarcely make
him out. People behind her began to shout out, “What?” and “Louder!” The man in the
black-and-gold armor stepped up behind Father and prodded him sharply. You leave
him alone! Arya wanted to shout, but she knew no one would listen. She chewed her lip.
Her father raised his voice and began again. “I am Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and
Hand of the King,” he said more loudly, his voice carrying across the plaza, “and I come
before you to confess my treason in the sight of gods and men.”
“No,” Arya whimpered. Below her, the crowd began to scream and shout. Taunts and
obscenities filled the air. Sansa had hidden her face in her hands.
Her father raised his voice still higher, straining to be heard. “I betrayed the faith of my
king and the trust of my friend, Robert,” he shouted. “I swore to defend and protect his
children, yet before his blood was cold, I plotted to depose and murder his son and seize
the throne for myself. Let the High Septon and Baelor the Beloved and the Seven bear
witness to the truth of what I say: Joffrey Baratheon is the one true heir to the Iron
Throne, and by the grace of all the gods, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of
the Realm.”
A stone came sailing out of the crowd. Arya cried out as she saw her father hit. The gold
cloaks kept him from falling. Blood ran down his face from a deep gash across his
forehead. More stones followed. One struck the guard to Father’s left. Another went
clanging off the breastplate of the knight in the black-and-gold armor. Two of the
Kingsguard stepped in front of Joffrey and the queen, protecting them with their shields.
Her hand slid beneath her cloak and found Needle in its sheath. She tightened her
fingers around the grip, squeezing as hard as she had ever squeezed anything. Please,
gods, keep him safe, she prayed. Don’t let them hurt my father.
The High Septon knelt before Joffrey and his mother. “As we sin, so do we suffer,” he
intoned, in a deep swelling voice much louder than Father’s. “This man has confessed
his crimes in the sight of gods and men, here in this holy place.” Rainbows danced
around his head as he lifted his hands in entreaty. “The gods are just, yet Blessed Baelor
taught us that they are also merciful. What shall be done with this traitor, Your Grace?”
A thousand voices were screaming, but Arya never heard them. Prince Joffrey . . . no,
King Joffrey . . . stepped out from behind the shields of his Kingsguard. “My mother bids
me let Lord Eddard take the black, and Lady Sansa has begged mercy for her father.” He
looked straight at Sansa then, and smiled, and for a moment Arya thought that the gods
had heard her prayer, until Joffrey turned back to the crowd and said, “But they have the
soft hearts of women. So long as I am your king, treason shall never go unpunished. Ser
�Ilyn, bring me his head!”
The crowd roared, and Arya felt the statue of Baelor rock as they surged against it. The
High Septon clutched at the king’s cape, and Varys came rushing over waving his arms,
and even the queen was saying something to him, but Joffrey shook his head. Lords and
knights moved aside as he stepped through, tall and fleshless, a skeleton in iron mail, the
King’s Justice. Dimly, as if from far off, Arya heard her sister scream. Sansa had fallen to
her knees, sobbing hysterically. Ser Ilyn Payne climbed the steps of the pulpit.
Arya wriggled between Baelor’s feet and threw herself into the crowd, drawing Needle.
She landed on a man in a butcher’s apron, knocking him to the ground. Immediately
someone slammed into her back and she almost went down herself. Bodies closed in
around her, stumbling and pushing, trampling on the poor butcher. Arya slashed at
them with Needle.
High atop the pulpit, Ser Ilyn Payne gestured and the knight in black-and-gold gave a
command. The gold cloaks flung Lord Eddard to the marble, with his head and chest out
over the edge.
“Here, you!” an angry voice shouted at Arya, but she bowled past, shoving people aside,
squirming between them, slamming into anyone in her way. A hand fumbled at her leg
and she hacked at it, kicked at shins. A woman stumbled and Arya ran up her back,
cutting to both sides, but it was no good, no good, there were too many people, no
sooner did she make a hole than it closed again. Someone buffeted her aside. She could
still hear Sansa screaming.
Ser Ilyn drew a two-handed greatsword from the scabbard on his back. As he lifted the
blade above his head, sunlight seemed to ripple and dance down the dark metal, glinting
off an edge sharper than any razor. Ice, she thought, he has Ice! Her tears streamed
down her face, blinding her.
And then a hand shot out of the press and closed round her arm like a wolf trap, so hard
that Needle went flying from her hand. Arya was wrenched off her feet. She would have
fallen if he hadn’t held her up, as easy as if she were a doll. A face pressed close to hers,
long black hair and tangled beard and rotten teeth. “Don’t look!” a thick voice snarled at
her.
“I . . . I . . . I . . . ” Arya sobbed.
The old man shook her so hard her teeth rattled. “Shut your mouth and close your eyes,
boy.” Dimly, as if from far away, she heard a . . . a noise . . . a soft sighing sound, as if a
million people had let out their breath at once. The old man’s fingers dug into her arm,
�stiff as iron. “Look at me. Yes, that’s the way of it, at me.” Sour wine perfumed his
breath. “Remember, boy?”
It was the smell that did it. Arya saw the matted greasy hair, the patched, dusty black
cloak that covered his twisted shoulders, the hard black eyes squinting at her. And she
remembered the black brother who had come to visit her father.
“Know me now, do you? There’s a bright boy.” He spat. “They’re done here. You’ll be
coming with me, and you’ll be keeping your mouth shut.” When she started to reply, he
shook her again, even harder. “Shut, I said.”
The plaza was beginning to empty. The press dissolved around them as people drifted
back to their lives. But Arya’s life was gone. Numb, she trailed along beside . . . Yoren,
yes, his name is Yoren. She did not recall him finding Needle, until he handed the sword
back to her. “Hope you can use that, boy.”
“I’m not—” she started.
He shoved her into a doorway, thrust dirty fingers through her hair, and gave it a twist,
yanking her head back. “—not a smart boy, that what you mean to say?”
He had a knife in his other hand.
As the blade flashed toward her face, Arya threw herself backward, kicking wildly,
wrenching her head from side to side, but he had her by the hair, so strong, she could
feel her scalp tearing, and on her lips the salt taste of tears.
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�previous | Table of Contents | next
BRAN
The oldest were men grown, seventeen and eighteen years from the day of their naming.
One was past twenty. Most were younger, sixteen or less.
Bran watched them from the balcony of Maester Luwin’s turret, listening to them grunt
and strain and curse as they swung their staves and wooden swords. The yard was alive
to the clack of wood on wood, punctuated all too often by thwacks and yowls of pain
when a blow struck leather or flesh. Ser Rodrik strode among the boys, face reddening
beneath his white whiskers, muttering at them one and all. Bran had never seen the old
knight look so fierce. “No,” he kept saying. “No. No. No.”
“They don’t fight very well,” Bran said dubiously. He scratched Summer idly behind the
ears as the direwolf tore at a haunch of meat. Bones crunched between his teeth.
“For a certainty,” Maester Luwin agreed with a deep sigh. The maester was peering
through his big Myrish lens tube, measuring shadows and noting the position of the
comet that hung low in the morning sky. “Yet given time . . . Ser Rodrik has the truth of
it, we need men to walk the walls. Your lord father took the cream of his guard to King’s
Landing, and your brother took the rest, along with all the likely lads for leagues around.
Many will not come back to us, and we must needs find the men to take their places.”
Bran stared resentfully at the sweating boys below. “If I still had my legs, I could beat
them all.” He remembered the last time he’d held a sword in his hand, when the king
had come to Winterfell. It was only a wooden sword, yet he’d knocked Prince Tommen
down half a hundred times. “Ser Rodrik should teach me to use a poleaxe. If I had a
poleaxe with a big long haft, Hodor could be my legs. We could be a knight together.”
“I think that . . . unlikely,” Maester Luwin said. “Bran, when a man fights, his arms and
legs and thoughts must be as one.”
Below in the yard, Ser Rodrik was yelling. “You fight like a goose. He pecks you and you
peck him harder. Parry! Block the blow. Goose fighting will not suffice. If those were
real swords, the first peck would take your arm off!” One of the other boys laughed, and
the old knight rounded on him. “You laugh. You. Now that is gall. You fight like a
hedgehog . . . ”
�“There was a knight once who couldn’t see,” Bran said stubbornly, as Ser Rodrik went on
below. “Old Nan told me about him. He had a long staff with blades at both ends and he
could spin it in his hands and chop two men at once.”
“Symeon Star-Eyes,” Luwin said as he marked numbers in a book. “When he lost his
eyes, he put star sapphires in the empty sockets, or so the singers claim. Bran, that is
only a story, like the tales of Florian the Fool. A fable from the Age of Heroes.” The
maester tsked. “You must put these dreams aside, they will only break your heart.”
The mention of dreams reminded him. “I dreamed about the crow again last night. The
one with three eyes. He flew into my bedchamber and told me to come with him, so I
did. We went down to the crypts. Father was there, and we talked. He was sad.”
“And why was that?” Luwin peered through his tube.
“It was something to do about Jon, I think.” The dream had been deeply disturbing,
more so than any of the other crow dreams. “Hodor won’t go down into the crypts.”
The maester had only been half listening, Bran could tell. He lifted his eye from the tube,
blinking. “Hodor won’t . . . ”
“Go down into the crypts. When I woke, I told him to take me down, to see if Father was
truly there. At first he didn’t know what I was saying, but I got him to the steps by telling
him to go here and go there, only then he wouldn’t go down. He just stood on the top
step and said ‘Hodor,’ like he was scared of the dark, but I had a torch. It made me so
mad I almost gave him a swat in the head, like Old Nan is always doing.” He saw the way
the maester was frowning and hurriedly added, “I didn’t, though.”
“Good. Hodor is a man, not a mule to be beaten.”
“In the dream I flew down with the crow, but I can’t do that when I’m awake,” Bran
explained.
“Why would you want to go down to the crypts?”
“I told you. To look for Father.”
The maester tugged at the chain around his neck, as he often did when he was
uncomfortable. “Bran, sweet child, one day Lord Eddard will sit below in stone, beside
his father and his father’s father and all the Starks back to the old Kings in the
North . . . but that will not be for many years, gods be good. Your father is a prisoner of
the queen in King’s Landing. You will not find him in the crypts.”
�“He was there last night. I talked to him.”
“Stubborn boy,” the maester sighed, setting his book aside. “Would you like to go see?”
“I can’t. Hodor won’t go, and the steps are too narrow and twisty for Dancer.”
“I believe I can solve that difficulty.”
In place of Hodor, the wildling woman Osha was summoned. She was tall and tough and
uncomplaining, willing to go wherever she was commanded. “I lived my life beyond the
Wall, a hole in the ground won’t fret me none, m’lords,” she said.
“Summer, come,” Bran called as she lifted him in wiry-strong arms. The direwolf left his
bone and followed as Osha carried Bran across the yard and down the spiral steps to the
cold vault under the earth. Maester Luwin went ahead with a torch. Bran did not even
mind—too badly—that she carried him in her arms and not on her back. Ser Rodrik had
ordered Osha’s chain struck off, since she had served faithfully and well since she had
been at Winterfell. She still wore the heavy iron shackles around her ankles—a sign that
she was not yet wholly trusted—but they did not hinder her sure strides down the steps.
Bran could not recall the last time he had been in the crypts. It had been before, for
certain. When he was little, he used to play down here with Robb and Jon and his sisters.
He wished they were here now; the vault might not have seemed so dark and scary.
Summer stalked out in the echoing gloom, then stopped, lifted his head, and sniffed the
chill dead air. He bared his teeth and crept backward, eyes glowing golden in the light of
the maester’s torch. Even Osha, hard as old iron, seemed uncomfortable. “Grim folk, by
the look of them,” she said as she eyed the long row of granite Starks on their stone
thrones.
“They were the Kings of Winter,” Bran whispered. Somehow it felt wrong to talk too
loudly in this place.
Osha smiled. “Winter’s got no king. If you’d seen it, you’d know that, summer boy.”
“They were the Kings in the North for thousands of years,” Maester Luwin said, lifting
the torch high so the light shone on the stone faces. Some were hairy and bearded,
shaggy men fierce as the wolves that crouched by their feet. Others were shaved clean,
their features gaunt and sharp-edged as the iron longswords across their laps. “Hard
men for a hard time. Come.” He strode briskly down the vault, past the procession of
stone pillars and the endless carved figures. A tongue of flame trailed back from the
�upraised torch as he went.
The vault was cavernous, longer than Winterfell itself, and Jon had told him once that
there were other levels underneath, vaults even deeper and darker where the older kings
were buried. It would not do to lose the light. Summer refused to move from the steps,
even when Osha followed the torch, Bran in her arms.
“Do you recall your history, Bran?” the maester said as they walked. “Tell Osha who they
were and what they did, if you can.”
He looked at the passing faces and the tales came back to him. The maester had told him
the stories, and Old Nan had made them come alive. “That one is Jon Stark. When the
sea raiders landed in the east, he drove them out and built the castle at White Harbor.
His son was Rickard Stark, not my father’s father but another Rickard, he took the Neck
away from the Marsh King and married his daughter. Theon Stark’s the real thin one
with the long hair and the skinny beard. They called him the ‘Hungry Wolf,’ because he
was always at war. That’s a Brandon, the tall one with the dreamy face, he was Brandon
the Shipwright, because he loved the sea. His tomb is empty. He tried to sail west across
the Sunset Sea and was never seen again. His son was Brandon the Burner, because he
put the torch to all his father’s ships in grief. There’s Rodrik Stark, who won Bear Island
in a wrestling match and gave it to the Mormonts. And that’s Torrhen Stark, the King
Who Knelt. He was the last King in the North and the first Lord of Winterfell, after he
yielded to Aegon the Conqueror. Oh, there, he’s Cregan Stark. He fought with Prince
Aemon once, and the Dragonknight said he’d never faced a finer swordsman.” They were
almost at the end now, and Bran felt a sadness creeping over him. “And there’s my
grandfather, Lord Rickard, who was beheaded by Mad King Aerys. His daughter Lyanna
and his son Brandon are in the tombs beside him. Not me, another Brandon, my father’s
brother. They’re not supposed to have statues, that’s only for the lords and the kings, but
my father loved them so much he had them done.”
“The maid’s a fair one,” Osha said.
“Robert was betrothed to marry her, but Prince Rhaegar carried her off and raped her,”
Bran explained. “Robert fought a war to win her back. He killed Rhaegar on the Trident
with his hammer, but Lyanna died and he never got her back at all.”
“A sad tale,” said Osha, “but those empty holes are sadder.”
“Lord Eddard’s tomb, for when his time comes,” Maester Luwin said. “Is this where you
saw your father in your dream, Bran?”
“Yes.” The memory made him shiver. He looked around the vault uneasily, the hairs on
�the back of his neck bristling. Had he heard a noise? Was there someone here?
Maester Luwin stepped toward the open sepulchre, torch in hand. “As you see, he’s not
here. Nor will he be, for many a year. Dreams are only dreams, child.” He thrust his arm
into the blackness inside the tomb, as into the mouth of some great beast. “Do you see?
It’s quite empt—”
The darkness sprang at him, snarling.
Bran saw eyes like green fire, a flash of teeth, fur as black as the pit around them.
Maester Luwin yelled and threw up his hands. The torch went flying from his fingers,
caromed off the stone face of Brandon Stark, and tumbled to the statue’s feet, the flames
licking up his legs. In the drunken shifting torchlight, they saw Luwin struggling with
the direwolf, beating at his muzzle with one hand while the jaws closed on the other.
“Summer!” Bran screamed.
And Summer came, shooting from the dimness behind them, a leaping shadow. He
slammed into Shaggydog and knocked him back, and the two direwolves rolled over and
over in a tangle of grey and black fur, snapping and biting at each other, while Maester
Luwin struggled to his knees, his arm torn and bloody. Osha propped Bran up against
Lord Rickard’s stone wolf as she hurried to assist the maester. In the light of the
guttering torch, shadow wolves twenty feet tall fought on the wall and roof.
“Shaggy,” a small voice called. When Bran looked up, his little brother was standing in
the mouth of Father’s tomb. With one final snap at Summer’s face, Shaggydog broke off
and bounded to Rickon’s side. “You let my father be,” Rickon warned Luwin. “You let
him be.”
“Rickon,” Bran said softly. “Father’s not here.”
“Yes he is. I saw him.” Tears glistened on Rickon’s face. “I saw him last night.”
“In your dream . . . ?”
Rickon nodded. “You leave him. You leave him be. He’s coming home now, like he
promised. He’s coming home.”
Bran had never seen Maester Luwin took so uncertain before. Blood dripped down his
arm where Shaggydog had shredded the wool of his sleeve and the flesh beneath. “Osha,
the torch,” he said, biting through his pain, and she snatched it up before it went out.
Soot stains blackened both legs of his uncle’s likeness. “That . . . that beast,” Luwin went
�on, “is supposed to be chained up in the kennels.”
Rickon patted Shaggydog’s muzzle, damp with blood. “I let him loose. He doesn’t like
chains.” He licked at his fingers.
“Rickon,” Bran said, “would you like to come with me?”
“No. I like it here.”
“It’s dark here. And cold.”
“I’m not afraid. I have to wait for Father.”
“You can wait with me,” Bran said. “We’ll wait together, you and me and our wolves.”
Both of the direwolves were licking wounds now, and would bear close watching.
“Bran,” the maester said firmly, “I know you mean well, but Shaggydog is too wild to run
loose. I’m the third man he’s savaged. Give him the freedom of the castle and it’s only a
question of time before he kills someone. The truth is hard, but the wolf has to be
chained, or . . . &rdquo He hesitated
. . . or killed, Bran thought, but what he said was, “He was not made for chains. We will
wait in your tower, all of us.”
“That is quite impossible,” Maester Luwin said.
Osha grinned. “The boy’s the lordling here, as I recall.” She handed Luwin back his torch
and scooped Bran up into her arms again. “The maester’s tower it is.”
“Will you come, Rickon?”
His brother nodded. “If Shaggy comes too,” he said, running after Osha and Bran, and
there was nothing Maester Luwin could do but follow, keeping a wary eye on the wolves.
Maester Luwin’s turret was so cluttered that it seemed to Bran a wonder that he ever
found anything. Tottering piles of books covered tables and chairs, rows of stoppered
jars lined the shelves, candle stubs and puddles of dried wax dotted the furniture, the
bronze Myrish lens tube sat on a tripod by the terrace door, star charts hung from the
walls, shadow maps lay scattered among the rushes, papers, quills, and pots of inks were
everywhere, and all of it was spotted with droppings from the ravens in the rafters. Their
strident quorks drifted down from above as Osha washed and cleaned and bandaged the
�maester’s wounds, under Luwin’s terse instruction. “This is folly,” the small grey man
said while she dabbed at the wolf bites with a stinging ointment. “I agree that it is odd
that both you boys dreamed the same dream, yet when you stop to consider it, it’s only
natural. You miss your lord father, and you know that he is a captive. Fear can fever a
man’s mind and give him queer thoughts. Rickon is too young to comprehend—”
“I’m four now,” Rickon said. He was peeking through the lens tube at the gargoyles on
the First Keep. The direwolves sat on opposite sides of the large round room, licking
their wounds and gnawing on bones.
“—too young, and—ooh, seven hells, that burns, no, don’t stop, more. Too young, as I
say, but you, Bran, you’re old enough to know that dreams are only dreams.”
“Some are, some aren’t.” Osha poured pale red firemilk into a long gash. Luwin gasped.
“The children of the forest could tell you a thing or two about dreaming.”
Tears were streaming down the maester’s face, yet he shook his head doggedly. “The
children . . . live only in dreams. Now. Dead and gone. Enough, that’s enough. Now the
bandages. Pads and then wrap, and make it tight, I’ll be bleeding.”
“Old Nan says the children knew the songs of the trees, that they could fly like birds and
swim like fish and talk to the animals,” Bran said. “She says that they made music so
beautiful that it made you cry like a little baby just to hear it.”
“And all this they did with magic,” Maester Luwin said, distracted. “I wish they were
here now. A spell would heal my arm less painfully, and they could talk to Shaggydog
and tell him not to bite.” He gave the big black wolf an angry glance out of the corner of
his eye. “Take a lesson, Bran. The man who trusts in spells is dueling with a glass sword.
As the children did. Here, let me show you something.” He stood abruptly, crossed the
room, and returned with a green jar in his good hand. “Have a look at these,” he said as
he pulled the stopper and shook out a handful of shiny black arrowheads.
Bran picked one up. “It’s made of glass.” Curious, Rickon drifted closer to peer over the
table.
“Dragonglass,” Osha named it as she sat down beside Luwin, bandagings in hand.
“Obsidian,” Maester Luwin insisted, holding out his wounded arm. “Forged in the fires
of the gods, far below the earth. The children of the forest hunted with that, thousands of
years ago. The children worked no metal. In place of mail, they wore long shirts of
woven leaves and bound their legs in bark, so they seemed to melt into the wood. In
place of swords, they carried blades of obsidian.”
�“And still do.” Osha placed soft pads over the bites on the maester’s forearm and bound
them tight with long strips of linen.
Bran held the arrowhead up close. The black glass was slick and shiny. He thought it
beautiful. “Can I keep one?”
“As you wish,” the maester said.
“I want one too,” Rickon said. “I want four. I’m four.”
Luwin made him count them out. “Careful, they’re still sharp. Don’t cut yourself.”
“Tell me about the children,” Bran said. It was important.
“What do you wish to know?”
“Everything.”
Maester Luwin tugged at his chain collar where it chafed against his neck. “They were
people of the Dawn Age, the very first, before kings and kingdoms,” he said. “In those
days, there were no castles or holdfasts, no cities, not so much as a market town to be
found between here and the sea of Dorne. There were no men at all. Only the children of
the forest dwelt in the lands we now call the Seven Kingdoms.
“They were a people dark and beautiful, small of stature, no taller than children even
when grown to manhood. They lived in the depths of the wood, in caves and crannogs
and secret tree towns. Slight as they were, the children were quick and graceful. Male
and female hunted together, with weirwood bows and flying snares. Their gods were the
gods of the forest, stream, and stone, the old gods whose names are secret. Their wise
men were called greenseers, and carved strange faces in the weirwoods to keep watch on
the woods. How long the children reigned here or where they came from, no man can
know.
“But some twelve thousand years ago, the First Men appeared from the east, crossing the
Broken Arm of Dorne before it was broken. They came with bronze swords and great
leathern shields, riding horses. No horse had ever been seen on this side of the narrow
sea. No doubt the children were as frightened by the horses as the First Men were by the
faces in the trees. As the First Men carved out holdfasts and farms, they cut down the
faces and gave them to the fire. Horror-struck, the children went to war. The old songs
say that the greenseers used dark magics to make the seas rise and sweep away the land,
shattering the Arm, but it was too late to close the door. The wars went on until the earth
�ran red with blood of men and children both, but more children than men, for men were
bigger and stronger, and wood and stone and obsidian make a poor match for bronze.
Finally the wise of both races prevailed, and the chiefs and heroes of the First Men met
the greenseers and wood dancers amidst the weirwood groves of a small island in the
great lake called Gods Eye.
“There they forged the Pact. The First Men were given the coastlands, the high plains
and bright meadows, the mountains and bogs, but the deep woods were to remain
forever the children’s, and no more weirwoods were to be put to the axe anywhere in the
realm. So the gods might bear witness to the signing, every tree on the island was given a
face, and afterward, the sacred order of green men was formed to keep watch over the
Isle of Faces.
“The Pact began four thousand years of friendship between men and children. In time,
the First Men even put aside the gods they had brought with them, and took up the
worship of the secret gods of the wood. The signing of the Pact ended the Dawn Age, and
began the Age of Heroes.”
Bran’s fist curled around the shiny black arrowhead. “But the children of the forest are
all gone now, you said.”
“Here, they are,” said Osha, as she bit off the end of the last bandage with her teeth.
“North of the Wall, things are different. That’s where the children went, and the giants,
and the other old races.”
Maester Luwin sighed. “Woman, by rights you ought to be dead or in chains. The Starks
have treated you more gently than you deserve. It is unkind to repay them for their
kindness by filling the boys’ heads with folly.”
“Tell me where they went,” Bran said. “I want to know.”
“Me too,” Rickon echoed.
“Oh, very well,” Luwin muttered. “So long as the kingdoms of the First Men held sway,
the Pact endured, all through the Age of Heroes and the Long Night and the birth of the
Seven Kingdoms, yet finally there came a time, many centuries later, when other peoples
crossed the narrow sea.
“The Andals were the first, a race of tall, fair-haired warriors who came with steel and
fire and the seven-pointed star of the new gods painted on their chests. The wars lasted
hundreds of years, but in the end the six southron kingdoms all fell before them. Only
here, where the King in the North threw back every army that tried to cross the Neck,
�did the rule of the First Men endure. The Andals burnt out the weirwood groves, hacked
down the faces, slaughtered the children where they found them, and everywhere
proclaimed the triumph of the Seven over the old gods. So the children fled north—”
Summer began to howl.
Maester Luwin broke off, startled. When Shaggydog bounded to his feet and added his
voice to his brother’s, dread clutched at Bran’s heart. “It’s coming,” he whispered, with
the certainty of despair. He had known it since last night, he realized, since the crow had
led him down into the crypts to say farewell. He had known it, but he had not believed.
He had wanted Maester Luwin to be right. The crow, he thought, the three-eyed
crow . . .
The howling stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Summer padded across the tower
floor to Shaggydog, and began to lick at a mat of bloody fur on the back of his brother’s
neck. From the window came a flutter of wings.
A raven landed on the grey stone sill, opened its beak, and gave a harsh, raucous rattle of
distress.
Rickon began to cry. His arrowheads fell from his hand one by one and clattered on the
floor. Bran pulled him close and hugged him.
Maester Luwin stared at the black bird as if it were a scorpion with feathers. He rose,
slow as a sleepwalker, and moved to the window. When he whistled, the raven hopped
onto his bandaged forearm. There was dried blood on its wings. “A hawk,” Luwin
murmured, “perhaps an owl. Poor thing, a wonder it got through.” He took the letter
from its leg.
Bran found himself shivering as the maester unrolled the paper. “What is it?” he said,
holding his brother all the harder.
“You know what it is, boy,” Osha said, not unkindly. She put her hand on his head.
Maester Luwin looked up at them numbly, a small grey man with blood on the sleeve of
his grey wool robe and tears in his bright grey eyes. “My lords,” he said to the sons, in a
voice gone hoarse and shrunken, “we . . . we shall need to find a stonecarver who knew
his likeness well . . . ”
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SANSA
In the tower room at the heart of Maegor’s Holdfast, Sansa gave herself to the darkness.
She drew the curtains around her bed, slept, woke weeping, and slept again. When she
could not sleep she lay under her blankets shivering with grief. Servants came and went,
bringing meals, but the sight of food was more than she could bear. The dishes piled up
on the table beneath her window, untouched and spoiling, until the servants took them
away again.
Sometimes her sleep was leaden and dreamless, and she woke from it more tired than
when she had closed her eyes. Yet those were the best times, for when she dreamed, she
dreamed of Father. Waking or sleeping, she saw him, saw the gold cloaks fling him
down, saw Ser Ilyn striding forward, unsheathing Ice from the scabbard on his back, saw
the moment . . . the moment when . . . she had wanted to look away, she had wanted to,
her legs had gone out from under her and she had fallen to her knees, yet somehow she
could not turn her head, and all the people were screaming and shouting, and her prince
had smiled at her, he’d smiled and she’d felt safe, but only for a heartbeat, until he said
those words, and her father’s legs . . . that was what she remembered, his legs, the way
they’d jerked when Ser Ilyn . . . when the sword . . .
Perhaps I will die too, she told herself, and the thought did not seem so terrible to her. If
she flung herself from the window, she could put an end to her suffering, and in the
years to come the singers would write songs of her grief. Her body would lie on the
stones below, broken and innocent, shaming all those who had betrayed her. Sansa went
so far as to cross the bedchamber and throw open the shutters . . . but then her courage
left her, and she ran back to her bed, sobbing.
The serving girls tried to talk to her when they brought her meals, but she never
answered them. Once Grand Maester Pycelle came with a box of flasks and bottles, to
ask if she was ill. He felt her brow, made her undress, and touched her all over while her
bedmaid held her down. When he left he gave her a potion of honeywater and herbs and
told her to drink a swallow every night. She drank it all right then and went back to sleep.
She dreamt of footsteps on the tower stair, an ominous scraping of leather on stone as a
man climbed slowly toward her bedchamber, step by step. All she could do was huddle
behind her door and listen, trembling, as he came closer and closer. It was Ser Ilyn
�Payne, she knew, coming for her with Ice in his hand, coming to take her head. There
was no place to run, no place to hide, no way to bar the door. Finally the footsteps
stopped and she knew he was just outside, standing there silent with his dead eyes and
his long pocked face. That was when she realized she was naked. She crouched down,
trying to cover herself with her hands, as her door began to swing open, creaking, the
point of the greatsword poking through . . .
She woke murmuring, “Please, please, I’ll be good, I’ll be good, please don’t,” but there
was no one to hear.
When they finally came for her in truth, Sansa never heard their footsteps. It was Joffrey
who opened her door, not Ser Ilyn but the boy who had been her prince. She was in bed,
curled up tight, her curtains drawn, and she could not have said if it was noon or
midnight. The first thing she heard was the slam of the door. Then her bed hangings
were yanked back, and she threw up a hand against the sudden light and saw them
standing over her.
“You will attend me in court this afternoon,” Joffrey said. “See that you bathe and dress
as befits my betrothed.” Sandor Clegane stood at his shoulder in a plain brown doublet
and green mantle, his burned face hideous in the morning light. Behind them were two
knights of the Kingsguard in long white satin cloaks.
Sansa drew her blanket up to her chin to cover herself. “No,” she whimpered,
“please . . . leave me be.”
“If you won’t rise and dress yourself, my Hound will do it for you,” Joffrey said.
“I beg of you, my prince . . . ”
“I’m king now. Dog, get her out of bed.”
Sandor Clegane scooped her up around the waist and lifted her off the featherbed as she
struggled feebly. Her blanket fell to the floor. Underneath she had only a thin bedgown
to cover her nakedness. “Do as you’re bid, child,” Clegane said. “Dress.” He pushed her
toward her wardrobe, almost gently.
Sansa backed away from them. “I did as the queen asked, I wrote the letters, I wrote
what she told me. You promised you’d be merciful. Please, let me go home. I won’t do
any treason, I’ll be good, I swear it, I don’t have traitor’s blood, I don’t. I only want to go
home.” Remembering her courtesies, she lowered her head. “As it please you,” she
finished weakly.
�“It does not please me,” Joffrey said. “Mother says I’m still to marry you, so you’ll stay
here, and you’ll obey.”
“I don’t want to marry you,” Sansa wailed. “You chopped off my father’s head!”
“He was a traitor. I never promised to spare him, only that I’d be merciful, and I was. If
he hadn’t been your father, I would have had him torn or flayed, but I gave him a clean
death.”
Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded crimson
doublet patterned with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar that framed his
face. She wondered how she could ever have thought him handsome. His lips were as
soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and his eyes were vain and cruel. “I
hate you,” she whispered.
King Joffrey’s face hardened. “My mother tells me that it isn’t fitting that a king should
strike his wife. Ser Meryn.”
The knight was on her before she could think, yanking back her hand as she tried to
shield her face and backhanding her across the ear with a gloved fist. Sansa did not
remember failing, yet the next she knew she was sprawled on one knee amongst the
rushes. Her head was ringing. Ser Meryn Trant stood over her, with blood on the
knuckles of his white silk glove.
“Will you obey now, or shall I have him chastise you again?”
Sansa’s ear felt numb. She touched it, and her fingertips came away wet and red.
“I . . . as . . . as you command, my lord.”
“Your Grace,” Joffrey corrected her. “I shall look for you in court.” He turned and left.
Ser Meryn and Ser Arys followed him out, but Sandor Clegane lingered long enough to
yank her roughly to her feet. “Save yourself some pain, girl, and give him what he wants.”
“What . . . what does he want? Please, tell me.”
“He wants you to smile and smell sweet and be his lady love,” the Hound rasped. “He
wants to hear you recite all your pretty little words the way the septa taught you. He
wants you to love him . . . and fear him.”
After he was gone, Sansa sank back onto the rushes, staring at the wall until two of her
bedmaids crept timidly into the chamber. “I will need hot water for my bath, please,” she
�told them, “and perfume, and some powder to hide this bruise.” The right side of her
face was swollen and beginning to ache, but she knew Joffrey would want her to be
beautiful.
The hot water made her think of Winterfell, and she took strength from that. She had
not washed since the day her father died, and she was startled at how filthy the water
became. Her maids sluiced the blood off her face, scrubbed the dirt from her back,
washed her hair and brushed it out until it sprang back in thick auburn curls. Sansa did
not speak to them, except to give them commands; they were Lannister servants, not her
own, and she did not trust them. When the time came to dress, she chose the green silk
gown that she had worn to the tourney. She recalled how gallant Joff had been to her
that night at the feast. Perhaps it would make him remember as well, and treat her more
gently.
She drank a glass of buttermilk and nibbled at some sweet biscuits as she waited, to
settle her stomach. It was midday when Ser Meryn returned. He had donned his white
armor; a shirt of enameled scales chased with gold, a tall helm with a golden sunburst
crest, greaves and gorget and gauntlet and boots of gleaming plate, a heavy wool cloak
clasped with a golden lion. His visor had been removed from his helm, to better show his
dour face; pouchy bags under his eyes, a wide sour mouth, rusty hair spotted with grey.
“My lady,” he said, bowing, as if he had not beaten her bloody only three hours past.
“His Grace has instructed me to escort you to the throne room.”
“Did he instruct you to hit me if I refused to come?”
“Are you refusing to come, my lady?” The look he gave her was without expression. He
did not so much as glance at the bruise he had left her.
He did not hate her, Sansa realized; neither did he love her. He felt nothing for her at all.
She was only a . . . a thing to him. “No,” she said, rising. She wanted to rage, to hurt him
as he’d hurt her, to warn him that when she was queen she would have him exiled if he
ever dared strike her again . . . but she remembered what the Hound had told her, so all
she said was, “I shall do whatever His Grace commands.”
“As I do,” he replied.
“Yes . . . but you are no true knight, Ser Meryn.”
Sandor Clegane would have laughed at that, Sansa knew. Other men might have cursed
her, warned her to keep silent, even begged for her forgiveness. Ser Meryn Trant did
none of these. Ser Meryn Trant simply did not care.
�The balcony was deserted save for Sansa. She stood with her head bowed, fighting to
hold back her tears, while below Joffrey sat on his Iron Throne and dispensed what it
pleased him to call justice. Nine cases out of ten seemed to bore him; those he allowed
his council to handle, squirming restlessly while Lord Baelish, Grand Maester Pycelle, or
Queen Cersei resolved the matter. When he did choose to make a ruling, though, not
even his queen mother could sway him.
A thief was brought before him and he had Ser Ilyn chop his hand off, right there in
court. Two knights came to him with a dispute about some land, and he decreed that
they should duel for it on the morrow. “To the death,” he added. A woman fell to her
knees to plead for the head of a man executed as a traitor. She had loved him, she said,
and she wanted to see him decently buried. “If you loved a traitor, you must be a traitor
too,” Joffrey said. Two gold cloaks dragged her off to the dungeons.
Frog-faced Lord Slynt sat at the end of the council table wearing a black velvet doublet
and a shiny cloth-of-gold cape, nodding with approval every time the king pronounced a
sentence. Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her
father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him, wishing that some hero would
throw him down and cut off his head. But a voice inside her whispered, There are no
heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very hall. “Life
is not a song, sweetling,” he’d told her. “You may learn that one day to your sorrow.” In
life, the monsters win, she told herself, and now it was the Hound’s voice she heard, a
cold rasp, metal on stone. “Save yourself some pain, girl, and give him what he wants.”
The last case was a plump tavern singer, accused of making a song that ridiculed the late
King Robert. Joff commanded them to fetch his woodharp and ordered him to perform
the song for the court. The singer wept and swore he would never sing that song again,
but the king insisted. It was sort of a funny song, all about Robert fighting with a pig.
The pig was the boar who’d killed him, Sansa knew, but in some verses it almost
sounded as if he were singing about the queen. When the song was done, Joffrey
announced that he’d decided to be merciful. The singer could keep either his fingers or
his tongue. He would have a day to make his choice. Janos Slynt nodded.
That was the final business of the afternoon, Sansa saw with relief, but her ordeal was
not yet done. When the herald’s voice dismissed the court, she fled the balcony, only to
find Joffrey waiting for her at the base of the curving stairs. The Hound was with him,
and Ser Meryn as well. The young king examined her critically, top to bottom. “You look
much better than you did.”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Sansa said. Hollow words, but they made him nod and smile.
“Walk with me,” Joffrey commanded, offering her his arm. She had no choice but to take
�it. The touch of his hand would have thrilled her once; now it made her flesh crawl. “My
name day will be here soon,” Joffrey said as they slipped out the rear of the throne room.
“There will be a great feast, and gifts. What are you going to give me?”
“I . . . I had not thought, my lord.”
“Your Grace,” he said sharply. “You truly are a stupid girl, aren’t you? My mother says
so.”
“She does?” After all that had happened, his words should have lost their power to hurt
her, yet somehow they had not. The queen had always been so kind to her.
“Oh, yes. She worries about our children, whether they’ll be stupid like you, but I told
her not to trouble herself.” The king gestured, and Ser Meryn opened a door for them.
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she murmured. The Hound was right, she thought, I am only
a little bird, repeating the words they taught me. The sun had fallen below the western
wall, and the stones of the Red Keep glowed dark as blood.
“I’ll get you with child as soon as you’re able,” Joffrey said as he escorted her across the
practice yard. “If the first one is stupid, I’ll chop off your head and find a smarter wife.
When do you think you’ll be able to have children?”
Sansa could not look at him, he shamed her so. “Septa Mordane says most . . . most
highborn girls have their flowering at twelve or thirteen.”
Joffrey nodded. “This way.” He led her into the gatehouse, to the base of the steps that
led up to the battlements.
Sansa jerked back away from him, trembling. Suddenly she knew where they were going.
“No,” she said, her voice a frightened gasp. “Please, no, don’t make me, I beg you . . . ”
Joffrey pressed his lips together. “I want to show you what happens to traitors.”
Sansa shook her head wildly. “I won’t. I won’t.”
“I can have Ser Meryn drag you up,” he said. “You won’t like that. You had better do
what I say.” Joffrey reached for her, and Sansa cringed away from him, backing into the
Hound.
“Do it, girl,” Sandor Clegane told her, pushing her back toward the king. His mouth
�twitched on the burned side of his face and Sansa could almost hear the rest of it. He’ll
have you up there no matter what, so give him what he wants.
She forced herself to take King Joffrey’s hand. The climb was something out of a
nightmare; every step was a struggle, as if she were pulling her feet out of ankle-deep
mud, and there were more steps than she would have believed, a thousand thousand
steps, and horror waiting on the ramparts.
From the high battlements of the gatehouse, the whole world spread out below them.
Sansa could see the Great Sept of Baelor on Visenya’s hill, where her father had died. At
the other end of the Street of the Sisters stood the fire-blackened ruins of the Dragonpit.
To the west, the swollen red sun was half-hidden behind the Gate of the Gods. The salt
sea was at her back, and to the south was the fish market and the docks and the swirling
torrent of the Blackwater Rush. And to the north . . .
She turned that way, and saw only the city, streets and alleys and hills and bottoms and
more streets and more alleys and the stone of distant walls. Yet she knew that beyond
them was open country, farms and fields and forests, and beyond that, north and north
and north again, stood Winterfell.
“What are you looking at?” Joffrey said. “This is what I wanted you to see, right here.”
A thick stone parapet protected the outer edge of the rampart, reaching as high as
Sansa’s chin, with crenellations cut into it every five feet for archers. The heads were
mounted between the crenels, along the top of the wall, impaled on iron spikes so they
faced out over the city. Sansa had noted them the moment she’d stepped out onto the
wallwalk, but the river and the bustling streets and the setting sun were ever so much
prettier. He can make me look at the heads, she told herself, but he can’t make me see
them.
“This one is your father,” he said. “This one here. Dog, turn it around so she can see him.”
Sandor Clegane took the head by the hair and turned it. The severed head had been
dipped in tar to preserve it longer. Sansa looked at it calmly, not seeing it at all. It did
not really look like Lord Eddard, she thought; it did not even look real. “How long do I
have to look?”
Joffrey seemed disappointed. “Do you want to see the rest?” There was a long row of
them.
“If it please Your Grace.”
�Joffrey marched her down the wallwalk, past a dozen more heads and two empty spikes.
“I’m saving those for my uncle Stannis and my uncle Renly,” he explained. The other
heads had been dead and mounted much longer than her father. Despite the tar, most
were long past being recognizable. The king pointed to one and said, “That’s your septa
there,” but Sansa could not even have told that it was a woman. The jaw had rotted off
her face, and birds had eaten one ear and most of a cheek.
Sansa had wondered what had happened to Septa Mordane, although she supposed she
had known all along. “Why did you kill her?” she asked. “She was godsworn . . . ”
“She was a traitor.” Joffrey looked pouty; somehow she was upsetting him. “You haven’t
said what you mean to give me for my name day. Maybe I should give you something
instead, would you like that?”
“If it please you, my lord,” Sansa said.
When he smiled, she knew he was mocking her. “Your brother is a traitor too, you
know.” He turned Septa Mordane’s head back around. “I remember your brother from
Winterfell. My dog called him the lord of the wooden sword. Didn’t you, dog?”
“Did I?” the Hound replied. “I don’t recall.”
Joffrey gave a petulant shrug. “Your brother defeated my uncle Jaime. My mother says it
was treachery and deceit. She wept when she heard. Women are all weak, even her,
though she pretends she isn’t. She says we need to stay in King’s Landing in case my
other uncles attack, but I don’t care. After my name day feast, I’m going to raise a host
and kill your brother myself. That’s what I’ll give you, Lady Sansa. Your brother’s head.”
A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, “Maybe my brother will
give me your head.”
Joffrey scowled. “You must never mock me like that. A true wife does not mock her lord.
Ser Meryn, teach her.”
This time the knight grasped her beneath the jaw and held her head still as he struck her.
He hit her twice, left to right, and harder, right to left. Her lip split and blood ran down
her chin, to mingle with the salt of her tears.
“You shouldn’t be crying all the time,” Joffrey told her. “You’re more pretty when you
smile and laugh.”
Sansa made herself smile, afraid that he would have Ser Meryn hit her again if she did
�not, but it was no good, the king still shook his head. “Wipe off the blood, you’re all
messy.”
The outer parapet came up to her chin, but along the inner edge of the walk was nothing,
nothing but a long plunge to the bailey seventy or eighty feet below. All it would take was
a shove, she told herself. He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with
those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It
wouldn’t even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn’t matter at all.
“Here, girl.” Sandor Clegane knelt before her, between her and Joffrey. With a delicacy
surprising in such a big man, he dabbed at the blood welling from her broken lip.
The moment was gone. Sansa lowered her eyes. “Thank you,” she said when he was
done. She was a good girl, and always remembered her courtesies.
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DAENERYS
Wings shadowed her fever dreams.
“You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?”
She was walking down a long hall beneath high stone arches. She could not look behind
her, must not look behind her. There was a door ahead of her, tiny with distance, but
even from afar, she saw that it was painted red. She walked faster, and her bare feet left
bloody footprints on the stone.
“You don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?”
She saw sunlight on the Dothraki sea, the living plain, rich with the smells of earth and
death. Wind stirred the grasses, and they rippled like water. Drogo held her in strong
arms, and his hand stroked her sex and opened her and woke that sweet wetness that
was his alone, and the stars smiled down on them, stars in a daylight sky. “Home,” she
whispered as he entered her and filled her with his seed, but suddenly the stars were
gone, and across the blue sky swept the great wings, and the world took flame.
“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?”
Ser Jorah’s face was drawn and sorrowful. “Rhaegar was the last dragon,” he told her.
He warmed translucent hands over a glowing brazier where stone eggs smouldered red
as coals. One moment he was there and the next he was fading, his flesh colorless, less
substantial than the wind. “The last dragon,” he whispered, thin as a wisp, and was gone.
She felt the dark behind her, and the red door seemed farther away than ever.
“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon, do you?”
Viserys stood before her, screaming. “The dragon does not beg, slut. You do not
command the dragon. I am the dragon, and I will be crowned.” The molten gold trickled
down his face like wax, burning deep channels in his flesh. “I am the dragon and I will
be crowned!” he shrieked, and his fingers snapped like snakes, biting at her nipples,
pinching, twisting, even as his eyes burst and ran like jelly down seared and blackened
cheeks.
�“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon . . . ”
The red door was so far ahead of her, and she could feel the icy breath behind, sweeping
up on her. If it caught her she would die a death that was more than death, howling
forever alone in the darkness. She began to run.
“ . . . don’t want to wake the dragon . . . ”
She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and
proud, with Drogo’s copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like
almonds. And he smiled for her and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he
opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his heart burning through his chest, and
in an instant he was gone, consumed like a moth by a candle, turned to ash. She wept for
her child, the promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to steam as
they touched her skin.
“ . . . want to wake the dragon . . . ”
Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were
swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white,
and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade. “Faster,” they cried, “faster,
faster.” She raced, her feet melting the stone wherever they touched. “Faster!” the ghosts
cried as one, and she screamed and threw herself forward. A great knife of pain ripped
down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood
and saw the shadow of wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew.
“ . . . wake the dragon . . . ”
The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close, the hall was a blur around
her, the cold receding behind. And now the stone was gone and she flew across the
Dothraki sea, high and higher, the green rippling beneath, and all that lived and
breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She could smell home, she could
see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and great stone houses and arms to keep
her warm, there. She threw open the door.
“ . . . the dragon . . . ”
And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire
glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. “The last dragon,” Ser Jorah’s
voice whispered faintly. “The last, the last.” Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face
within was her own.
�After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and the
whisperings of stars.
She woke to the taste of ashes.
“No,” she moaned, “no, please.”
“Khaleesi?” Jhiqui hovered over her, a frightened doe.
The tent was drenched in shadow, still and close. Flakes of ash drifted upward from a
brazier, and Dany followed them with her eyes through the smoke hole above. Flying,
she thought. I had wings, I was flying. But it was only a dream. “Help me,” she
whispered, struggling to rise. “Bring me . . . ” Her voice was raw as a wound, and she
could not think what she wanted. Why did she hurt so much? It was as if her body had
been torn to pieces and remade from the scraps. “I want . . . ”
“Yes, Khaleesi.” Quick as that Jhiqui was gone, bolting from the tent, shouting. Dany
needed . . . something . . . someone . . . what? It was important, she knew. It was the only
thing in the world that mattered. She rolled onto her side and got an elbow under her,
fighting the blanket tangled about her legs. It was so hard to move. The world swam
dizzily. I have to . . .
They found her on the carpet, crawling toward her dragon eggs. Ser Jorah Mormont
lifted her in his arms and carried her back to her sleeping silks, while she struggled
feebly against him. Over his shoulder she saw her three handmaids, Jhogo with his little
wisp of mustache, and the flat broad face of Mirri Maz Duur. “I must,” she tried to tell
them, “I have to . . . ”
“ . . . sleep, Princess,” Ser Jorah said.
“No,” Dany said. “Please. Please.”
“Yes.” He covered her with silk, though she was burning. “Sleep and grow strong again,
Khaleesi. Come back to us.” And then Mirri Maz Duur was there, the maegi, tipping a
cup against her lips. She tasted sour milk, and something else, something thick and
bitter. Warm liquid ran down her chin. Somehow she swallowed. The tent grew dimmer,
and sleep took her again. This time she did not dream. She floated, serene and at peace,
on a black sea that knew no shore.
After a time—a night, a day, a year, she could not say—she woke again. The tent was
dark, its silken walls flapping like wings when the wind gusted outside. This time Dany
did not attempt to rise. “Irri,” she called, “Jhiqui. Doreah.” They were there at once. “My
�throat is dry,” she said, “so dry,” and they brought her water. It was warm and flat, yet
Dany drank it eagerly, and sent Jhiqui for more. Irri dampened a soft cloth and stroked
her brow. “I have been sick,” Dany said. The Dothraki girl nodded. “How long?” The
cloth was soothing, but Irri seemed so sad, it frightened her. “Long,” she whispered.
When Jhiqui returned with more water, Mirri Maz Duur came with her, eyes heavy from
sleep. “Drink,” she said, lifting Dany’s head to the cup once more, but this time it was
only wine. Sweet, sweet wine. Dany drank, and lay back, listening to the soft sound of
her own breathing. She could feel the heaviness in her limbs, as sleep crept in to fill her
up once more. “Bring me . . . ” she murmured, her voice slurred and drowsy. “Bring . . . I
want to hold . . . ”
“Yes?” the maegi asked. “What is it you wish, Khaleesi?”
“Bring me . . . egg . . . dragon’s egg . . . please . . . ” Her lashes turned to lead, and she was
too weary to hold them up.
When she woke the third time, a shaft of golden sunlight was pouring through the smoke
hole of the tent, and her arms were wrapped around a dragon’s egg. It was the pale one,
its scales the color of butter cream, veined with whorls of gold and bronze, and Dany
could feel the heat of it. Beneath her bedsilks, a fine sheen of perspiration covered her
bare skin. Dragondew, she thought. Her fingers trailed lightly across the surface of the
shell, tracing the wisps of gold, and deep in the stone she felt something twist and
stretch in response. It did not frighten her. All her fear was gone, burned away.
Dany touched her brow. Under the film of sweat, her skin was cool to the touch, her
fever gone. She made herself sit. There was a moment of dizziness, and the deep ache
between her thighs. Yet she felt strong. Her maids came running at the sound of her
voice. “Water,” she told them, “a flagon of water, cold as you can find it. And fruit, I
think. Dates.”
“As you say, Khaleesi.”
“I want Ser Jorah,” she said, standing. Jhiqui brought a sandsilk robe and draped it over
her shoulders. “And a warm bath, and Mirri Maz Duur, and . . . ” Memory came back to
her all at once, and she faltered. “Khal Drogo,” she forced herself to say, watching their
faces with dread. “Is he&mdash?”
“The khal lives,” Irri answered quietly . . . yet Dany saw a darkness in her eyes when she
said the words, and no sooner had she spoken than she rushed away to fetch water.
She turned to Doreah. “Tell me.”
�“I . . . I shall bring Ser Jorah,” the Lysene girl said, bowing her head and fleeing the tent.
Jhiqui would have run as well, but Dany caught her by the wrist and held her captive.
“What is it? I must know. Drogo . . . and my child.” Why had she not remembered the
child until now? “My son . . . Rhaego . . . where is he? I want him.”
Her handmaid lowered her eyes. “The boy . . . he did not live, Khaleesi.” Her voice was a
frightened whisper.
Dany released her wrist. My son is dead, she thought as Jhiqui left the tent. She had
known somehow. She had known since she woke the first time to Jhiqui’s tears. No, she
had known before she woke. Her dream came back to her, sudden and vivid, and she
remembered the tall man with the copper skin and long silver-gold braid, bursting into
flame.
She should weep, she knew, yet her eyes were dry as ash. She had wept in her dream,
and the tears had turned to steam on her cheeks. All the grief has been burned out of
me, she told herself. She felt sad, and yet . . . she could feel Rhaego receding from her, as
if he had never been.
Ser Jorah and Mirri Maz Duur entered a few moments later, and found Dany standing
over the other dragon’s eggs, the two still in their chest. It seemed to her that they felt as
hot as the one she had slept with, which was passing strange. “Ser Jorah, come here,”
she said. She took his hand and placed it on the black egg with the scarlet swirls. “What
do you feel?”
“Shell, hard as rock.” The knight was wary. “Scales.”
“Heat?”
“No. Cold stone.” He took his hand away. “Princess, are you well? Should you be up,
weak as you are?”
“Weak? I am strong, Jorah.” To please him, she reclined on a pile of cushions. “Tell me
how my child died.”
“He never lived, my princess. The women say . . . ” He faltered, and Dany saw how the
flesh hung loose on him, and the way he limped when he moved.
“Tell me. Tell me what the women say.”
He turned his face away. His eyes were haunted. “They say the child was . . . ”
�She waited, but Ser Jorah could not say it. His face grew dark with shame. He looked
half a corpse himself.
“Monstrous,” Mirri Maz Duur finished for him. The knight was a powerful man, yet
Dany understood in that moment that the maegi was stronger, and crueler, and
infinitely more dangerous. “Twisted. I drew him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard,
blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the wings of a bat. When I
touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of graveworms and
the stink of corruption. He had been dead for years.”
Darkness, Dany thought. The terrible darkness sweeping up behind to devour her. If she
looked back she was lost. “My son was alive and strong when Ser Jorah carried me into
this tent,” she said. “I could feel him kicking, fighting to be born.”
“That may be as it may be,” answered Mirri Maz Duur, “yet the creature that came forth
from your womb was as I said. Death was in that tent, Khaleesi.”
“Only shadows,” Ser Jorah husked, but Dany could hear the doubt in his voice. “I saw,
maegi. I saw you, alone, dancing with the shadows. “
“The grave casts long shadows, Iron Lord,” Mirri said. “Long and dark, and in the end no
light can hold them back.”
Ser Jorah had killed her son, Dany knew. He had done what he did for love and loyalty,
yet he had carried her into a place no living man should go and fed her baby to the
darkness. He knew it too; the grey face, the hollow eyes, the limp. “The shadows have
touched you too, Ser Jorah,” she told him. The knight made no reply. Dany turned to the
godswife. “You warned me that only death could pay for life. I thought you meant the
horse.”
“No,” Mirri Maz Duur said. “That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the price.”
Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. “The price was paid,” Dany said. “The horse,
my child, Quaro and Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid and paid and paid.”
She rose from her cushions. “Where is Khal Drogo? Show him to me, godswife, maegi,
bloodmage, whatever you are. Show me Khal Drogo. Show me what I bought with my
son’s life.”
“As you command, Khaleesi,” the old woman said. “Come, I will take you to him.”
Dany was weaker than she knew. Ser Jorah slipped an arm around her and helped her
�stand. “Time enough for this later, my princess,” he said quietly.
“I would see him now, Ser Jorah.”
After the dimness of the tent, the world outside was blinding bright. The sun burned like
molten gold, and the land was seared and empty. Her handmaids waited with fruit and
wine and water, and Jhogo moved close to help Ser Jorah support her. Aggo and
Rakharo stood behind. The glare of sun on sand made it hard to see more, until Dany
raised her hand to shade her eyes. She saw the ashes of a fire, a few score horses milling
listlessly and searching for a bite of grass, a scattering of tents and bedrolls. A small
crowd of children had gathered to watch her, and beyond she glimpsed women going
about their work, and withered old men staring at the flat blue sky with tired eyes,
swatting feebly at bloodflies. A count might show a hundred people, no more. Where the
other forty thousand had made their camp, only the wind and dust lived now.
“Drogo’s khalasar is gone,” she said.
“A khal who cannot ride is no khal,” said Jhogo.
“The Dothraki follow only the strong,” Ser Jorah said. “I am sorry, my princess. There
was no way to hold them. Ko Pono left first, naming himself Khal Pono, and many
followed him. Jhaqo was not long to do the same. The rest slipped away night by night,
in large bands and small. There are a dozen new khalasars on the Dothraki sea, where
once there was only Drogo’s.”
“The old remain,” said Aggo. “The frightened, the weak, and the sick. And we who swore.
We remain.”
“They took Khal Drogo’s herds, Khaleesi,” Rakharo said. “We were too few to stop them.
It is the right of the strong to take from the weak. They took many slaves as well, the
khal’s and yours, yet they left some few.”
“Eroeh?” asked Dany, remembering the frightened child she had saved outside the city
of the Lamb Men.
“Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo’s bloodrider now,” said Jhogo. “He mounted her
high and low and gave her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other bloodriders. They
were six. When they were done with her, they cut her throat.”
“It was her fate, Khaleesi,” said Aggo.
If I look back I am lost. “It was a cruel fate,” Dany said, “yet not so cruel as Mago’s will
�be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god
and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the
World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they
showed Eroeh.”
The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. “Khaleesi, “ the handmaid Irri explained, as
if to a child, “Jhaqo is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back.”
She lifted her head. “And I am Daenerys Stormhorn, Daenerys of House Targaryen, of
the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I
am the dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die screaming. Now bring
me to Khal Drogo.”
He was lying on the bare red earth, staring up at the sun.
A dozen bloodflies had settled on his body, though he did not seem to feel them. Dany
brushed them away and knelt beside him. His eyes were wide open but did not see, and
she knew at once that he was blind. When she whispered his name, he did not seem to
hear. The wound on his breast was as healed as it would ever be, the scar that covered it
grey and red and hideous.
“Why is he out here alone, in the sun?” she asked them.
“He seems to like the warmth, Princess,” Ser Jorah said. “His eyes follow the sun, though
he does not see it. He can walk after a fashion. He will go where you lead him, but no
farther. He will eat if you put food in his mouth, drink if you dribble water on his lips.”
Dany kissed her sun-and-stars gently on the brow, and stood to face Mirri Maz Duur.
“Your spells are costly, maegi.”
“He lives,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “You asked for life. You paid for life.”
“This is not life, for one who was as Drogo was. His life was laughter, and meat roasting
over a firepit, and a horse between his legs. His life was an arakh in his hand and his
bells ringing in his hair as he rode to meet an enemy. His life was his bloodriders, and
me, and the son I was to give him.”
Mirri Maz Duur made no reply.
“When will he be as he was?” Dany demanded.
�“When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,” said Mirri Maz Duur. “When the
seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens
again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before.”
Dany gestured at Ser Jorah and the others. “Leave us. I would speak with this maegi
alone.” Mormont and the Dothraki withdrew. “You knew,” Dany said when they were
gone. She ached, inside and out, but her fury gave her strength. “You knew what I was
buying, and you knew the price, and yet you let me pay it.”
“It was wrong of them to burn my temple,” the heavy, flat-nosed woman said placidly.
“That angered the Great Shepherd.”
“This was no god’s work,” Dany said coldly. If I look back I am lost. “You cheated me.
You murdered my child within me.”
“The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now. His khalasar shall trample
no nations into dust.”
“I spoke for you,” she said, anguished. “I saved you.”
“Saved me?” The Lhazareen woman spat. “Three riders had taken me, not as a man
takes a woman but from behind, as a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when you
rode past. How then did you save me? I saw my god’s house burn, where I had healed
good men beyond counting. My home they burned as well, and in the street I saw piles of
heads. I saw the head of a baker who made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved
from deadeye fever, only three moons past. I heard children crying as the riders drove
them off with their whips. Tell me again what you saved.”
“Your life.”
Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. “Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all
the rest is gone.”
Dany called out for the men of her khas and bid them take Mirri Maz Duur and bind her
hand and foot, but the maegi smiled at her as they carried her off, as if they shared a
secret. A word, and Dany could have her head off . . . yet then what would she have? A
head? If life was worthless, what was death?
They led Khal Drogo back to her tent, and Dany commanded them to fill a tub, and this
time there was no blood in the water. She bathed him herself, washing the dirt and the
dust from his arms and chest, cleaning his face with a soft cloth, soaping his long black
hair and combing the knots and tangles from it till it shone again as she remembered. It
�was well past dark before she was done, and Dany was exhausted. She stopped for drink
and food, but it was all she could do to nibble at a fig and keep down a mouthful of
water. Sleep would have been a release, but she had slept enough . . . too long, in truth.
She owed this night to Drogo, for all the nights that had been, and yet might be.
The memory of their first ride was with her when she led him out into the darkness, for
the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man’s life must be done beneath
the open sky. She told herself that there were powers stronger than hatred, and spells
older and truer than any the maegi had learned in Asshai. The night was black and
moonless, but overhead a million stars burned bright. She took that for an omen.
No soft blanket of grass welcomed them here, only the hard dusty ground, bare and
strewn with stones. No trees stirred in the wind, and there was no stream to soothe her
fears with the gentle music of water. Dany told herself that the stars would be enough.
“Remember, Drogo,” she whispered. “Remember our first ride together, the day we wed.
Remember the night we made Rhaego, with the khalasar all around us and your eyes on
my face. Remember how cool and clean the water was in the Womb of the World.
Remember, my sun-and-stars. Remember, and come back to me.”
The birth had left her too raw and torn to take him inside of her, as she would have
wanted, but Doreah had taught her other ways. Dany used her hands, her mouth, her
breasts. She raked him with her nails and covered him with kisses and whispered and
prayed and told him stories, and by the end she had bathed him with her tears. Yet
Drogo did not feel, or speak, or rise.
And when the bleak dawn broke over an empty horizon, Dany knew that he was truly
lost to her. “When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east,” she said sadly. “When
the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When my womb quickens
again, and I bear a living child. Then you will return, my sun-and-stars, and not before.”
Never, the darkness cried, never never never.
Inside the tent Dany found a cushion, soft silk stuffed with feathers. She clutched it to
her breasts as she walked back out to Drogo, to her sun-and-stars. If I look back I am
lost. It hurt even to walk, and she wanted to sleep, to sleep and not to dream.
She knelt, kissed Drogo on the lips, and pressed the cushion down across his face.
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TYRION
They have my son,” Tywin Lannister said.
“They do, my lord.” The messenger’s voice was dulled by exhaustion. On the breast of his
torn surcoat, the brindled boar of Crakehall was half-obscured by dried blood.
One of your sons, Tyrion thought. He took a sip of wine and said not a word, thinking of
Jaime. When he lifted his arm, pain shot through his elbow, reminding him of his own
brief taste of battle. He loved his brother, but he would not have wanted to be with him
in the Whispering Wood for all the gold in Casterly Rock.
His lord father’s assembled captains and bannermen had fallen very quiet as the courier
told his tale. The only sound was the crackle and hiss of the log burning in the hearth at
the end of the long, drafty common room.
After the hardships of the long relentless drive south, the prospect of even a single night
in an inn had cheered Tyrion mightily . . . though he rather wished it had not been this
inn again, with all its memories. His father had set a grueling pace, and it had taken its
toll. Men wounded in the battle kept up as best they could or were abandoned to fend for
themselves. Every morning they left a few more by the roadside, men who went to sleep
never to wake. Every afternoon a few more collapsed along the way. And every evening a
few more deserted, stealing off into the dusk. Tyrion had been half-tempted to go with
them.
He had been upstairs, enjoying the comfort of a featherbed and the warmth of Shae’s
body beside him, when his squire had woken him to say that a rider had arrived with
dire news of Riverrun. So it had all been for nothing. The rush south, the endless forced
marches, the bodies left beside the road . . . all for naught. Robb Stark had reached
Riverrun days and days ago.
“How could this happen?” Ser Harys Swyft moaned. “How? Even after the Whispering
Wood, you had Riverrun ringed in iron, surrounded by a great host . . . what madness
made Ser Jaime decide to split his men into three separate camps? Surely he knew how
vulnerable that would leave them?”
Better than you, you chinless craven, Tyrion thought. Jaime might have lost Riverrun,
�but it angered him to hear his brother slandered by the likes of Swyft, a shameless
lickspittle whose greatest accomplishment was marrying his equally chinless daughter to
Ser Kevan, and thereby attaching himself to the Lannisters.
“I would have done the same,” his uncle responded, a good deal more calmly than Tyrion
might have. “You have never seen Riverrun, Ser Harys, or you would know that Jaime
had little choice in the matter. The castle is situated at the end of the point of land where
the Tumblestone flows into the Red Fork of the Trident. The rivers form two sides of a
triangle, and when danger threatens, the Tullys open their sluice gates upstream to
create a wide moat on the third side, turning Riverrun into an island. The walls rise
sheer from the water, and from their towers the defenders have a commanding view of
the opposite shores for many leagues around. To cut off all the approaches, a besieger
must needs place one camp north of the Tumblestone, one south of the Red Fork, and a
third between the rivers, west of the moat. There is no other way, none.”
“Ser Kevan speaks truly, my lords,” the courier said. “We’d built palisades of sharpened
stakes around the camps, yet it was not enough, not with no warning and the rivers
cutting us off from each other. They came down on the north camp first. No one was
expecting an attack. Marq Piper had been raiding our supply trains, but he had no more
than fifty men. Ser Jaime had gone out to deal with them the night before . . . well, with
what we thought was them. We were told the Stark host was east of the Green Fork,
marching south . . . ”
“And your outriders?” Ser Gregor Clegane’s face might have been hewn from rock. The
fire in the hearth gave a somber orange cast to his skin and put deep shadows in the
hollows of his eyes. “They saw nothing? They gave you no warning?”
The bloodstained messenger shook his head. “Our outriders had been vanishing. Marq
Piper’s work, we thought. The ones who did come back had seen nothing.”
“A man who sees nothing has no use for his eyes,” the Mountain declared. “Cut them out
and give them to your next outrider. Tell him you hope that four eyes might see better
than two . . . and if not, the man after him will have six.”
Lord Tywin Lannister turned his face to study Ser Gregor. Tyrion saw a glimmer of gold
as the light shone off his father’s pupils, but he could not have said whether the look was
one of approval or disgust. Lord Tywin was oft quiet in council, preferring to listen
before he spoke, a habit Tyrion himself tried to emulate. Yet this silence was
uncharacteristic even for him, and his wine was untouched.
“You said they came at night,” Ser Kevan prompted.
�The man gave a weary nod. “The Blackfish led the van, cutting down our sentries and
clearing away the palisades for the main assault. By the time our men knew what was
happening, riders were pouring over the ditch banks and galloping through the camp
with swords and torches in hand. I was sleeping in the west camp, between the rivers.
When we heard the fighting and saw the tents being fired, Lord Brax led us to the rafts
and we tried to pole across, but the current pushed us downstream and the Tullys
started flinging rocks at us with the catapults on their walls. I saw one raft smashed to
kindling and three others overturned, men swept into the river and drowned . . . and
those who did make it across found the Starks waiting for them on the riverbanks.”
Ser Flement Brax wore a silver-and-purple tabard and the look of a man who cannot
comprehend what he has just heard. “My lord father—”
“Sorry, my lord,” the messenger said. “Lord Brax was clad in plate-and-mail when his
raft overturned. He was very gallant.”
He was a fool, Tyrion thought, swirling his cup and staring down into the winy depths.
Crossing a river at night on a crude raft, wearing armor, with an enemy waiting on the
other side—if that was gallantry, he would take cowardice every time. He wondered if
Lord Brax had felt especially gallant as the weight of his steel pulled him under the black
water.
“The camp between the rivers was overrun as well,” the messenger was saying. “While
we were trying to cross, more Starks swept in from the west, two columns of armored
horse. I saw Lord Umber’s giant-in-chains and the Mallister eagle, but it was the boy
who led them, with a monstrous wolf running at his side. I wasn’t there to see, but it’s
said the beast killed four men and ripped apart a dozen horses. Our spearmen formed up
a shieldwall and held against their first charge, but when the Tullys saw them engaged,
they opened the gates of Riverrun and Tytos Blackwood led a sortie across the
drawbridge and took them in the rear.”
“Gods save us,” Lord Lefford swore.
“Greatjon Umber fired the siege towers we were building, and Lord Blackwood found
Ser Edmure Tully in chains among the other captives, and made off with them all. Our
south camp was under the command of Ser Forley Prester. He retreated in good order
when he saw that the other camps were lost, with two thousand spears and as many
bowmen, but the Tyroshi sellsword who led his freeriders struck his banners and went
over to the foe.”
“Curse the man.” His uncle Kevan sounded more angry than surprised. “I warned Jaime
not to trust that one. A man who fights for coin is loyal only to his purse.”
�Lord Tywin wove his fingers together under his chin. Only his eyes moved as he listened.
His bristling golden side-whiskers framed a face so still it might have been a mask, but
Tyrion could see tiny beads of sweat dappling his father’s shaven head.
“How could it happen?” Ser Harys Swyft wailed again. “Ser Jaime taken, the siege
broken . . . this is a catastrophe!”
Ser Addam Marbrand said, “I am sure we are all grateful to you for pointing out the
obvious, Ser Harys. The question is, what shall we do about it?”
“What can we do? Jaime’s host is all slaughtered or taken or put to flight, and the Starks
and the Tullys sit squarely across our line of supply. We are cut off from the west! They
can march on Casterly Rock if they so choose, and what’s to stop them? My lords, we are
beaten. We must sue for peace.”
“Peace?” Tyrion swirled his wine thoughtfully, took a deep draft, and hurled his empty
cup to the floor, where it shattered into a thousand pieces. “There’s your peace, Ser
Harys. My sweet nephew broke it for good and all when he decided to ornament the Red
Keep with Lord Eddard’s head. You’ll have an easier time drinking wine from that cup
than you will convincing Robb Stark to make peace now. He’s winning . . . or hadn’t you
noticed?”
“Two battles do not make a war,” Ser Addam insisted. “We are far from lost. I should
welcome the chance to try my own steel against this Stark boy.”
“Perhaps they would consent to a truce, and allow us to trade our prisoners for theirs,”
offered Lord Lefford.
“Unless they trade three-for-one, we still come out light on those scales,” Tyrion said
acidly. “And what are we to offer for my brother? Lord Eddard’s rotting head?”
“I had heard that Queen Cersei has the Hand’s daughters,” Lefford said hopefully. “If we
give the lad his sisters back . . . ”
Ser Addam snorted disdainfully. “He would have to be an utter ass to trade Jaime
Lannister’s life for two girls.”
“Then we must ransom Ser Jaime, whatever it costs,” Lord Lefford said.
Tyrion rolled his eyes. “If the Starks feel the need for gold, they can melt down Jaime’s
armor.”
�“if we ask for a truce, they will think us weak,” Ser Addarn argued. “We should march on
them at once.”
“Surely our friends at court could be prevailed upon to join us with fresh troops,” said
Ser Harys. “And someone might return to Casterly Rock to raise a new host.”
Lord Tywin Lannister rose to his feet. “They have my son,” he said once more, in a voice
that cut through the babble like a sword through suet. “Leave me. All of you.”
Ever the soul of obedience, Tyrion rose to depart with the rest, but his father gave him a
look. “Not you, Tyrion. Remain. And you as well, Kevan. The rest of you, out.”
Tyrion eased himself back onto the bench, startled into speechlessness. Ser Kevan
crossed the room to the wine casks. “Uncle,” Tyrion called, “if you would be so kind—”
“Here.” His father offered him his cup, the wine untouched.
Now Tyrion truly was nonplussed. He drank.
Lord Tywin seated himself. “You have the right of it about Stark. Alive, we might have
used Lord Eddard to forge a peace with Winterfell and Riverrun, a peace that would
have given us the time we need to deal with Robert’s brothers. Dead . . . ” His hand
curled into a fist. “Madness. Rank madness.”
“Joff’s only a boy,” Tyrion pointed out. “At his age, I committed a few follies of my own.”
His father gave him a sharp look. “I suppose we ought to be grateful that he has not yet
married a whore.”
Tyrion sipped at his wine, wondering how Lord Tywin would look if he flung the cup in
his face.
“Our position is worse than you know,” his father went on. “It would seem we have a
new king.”
Ser Kevan looked poleaxed. “A new—who? What have they done to Joffrey?”
The faintest flicker of distaste played across Lord Tywin’s thin lips. “Nothing . . . yet. My
grandson still sits the Iron Throne, but the eunuch has heard whispers from the south.
Renly Baratheon wed Margaery Tyrell at Highgarden this fortnight past, and now he has
claimed the crown. The bride’s father and brothers have bent the knee and sworn him
�their swords.”
“Those are grave tidings.” When Ser Kevan frowned, the furrows in his brow grew deep
as canyons.
“My daughter commands us to ride for King’s Landing at once, to defend the Red Keep
against King Renly and the Knight of Flowers.” His mouth tightened. “Commands us,
mind you. In the name of the king and council.”
“How is King Joffrey taking the news?” Tyrion asked with a certain black amusement.
“Cersei has not seen fit to tell him yet,” Lord Tywin said. “She fears he might insist on
marching against Renly himself.”
“With what army?” Tyrion asked. “You don’t plan to give him this one, I hope?”
“He talks of leading the City Watch,” Lord Tywin said.
“If he takes the Watch, he’ll leave the city undefended,” Ser Kevan said. “And with Lord
Stannis on Dragonstone . . . ”
“Yes.” Lord Tywin looked down at his son. “I had thought you were the one made for
motley, Tyrion, but it would appear that I was wrong.”
“Why, Father,” said Tyrion, “that almost sounds like praise.” He leaned forward intently.
“What of Stannis? He’s the elder, not Renly. How does he feel about his brother’s claim?”
His father frowned. “I have felt from the beginning that Stannis was a greater danger
than all the others combined. Yet he does nothing. Oh, Varys hears his whispers. Stannis
is building ships, Stannis is hiring sellswords, Stannis is bringing a shadowbinder from
Asshai. What does it mean? Is any of it true?” He gave an irritated shrug. “Kevan, bring
us the map.”
Ser Kevan did as he was bid. Lord Tywin unrolled the leather, smoothing it flat. “Jaime
has left us in a bad way. Roose Bolton and the remnants of his host are north of us. Our
enemies hold the Twins and Moat Cailin. Robb Stark sits to the west, so we cannot
retreat to Lannisport and the Rock unless we choose to give battle. Jaime is taken, and
his army for all purposes has ceased to exist. Thoros of Myr and Beric Dondarrion
continue to plague our foraging parties. To our east we have the Arryns, Stannis
Baratheon sits on Dragonstone, and in the south Highgarden and Storm’s End are
calling their banners.”
�Tyrion smiled crookedly. “Take heart, Father. At least Rhaegar Targaryen is still dead.”
“I had hoped you might have more to offer us than japes, Tyrion,” Lord Tywin Lannister
said.
Ser Kevan frowned over the map, forehead creasing. “Robb Stark will have Edmure Tully
and the lords of the Trident with him now. Their combined power may exceed our own.
And with Roose Bolton behind us . . . Tywin, if we remain here, I fear we might be
caught between three armies.”
“I have no intention of remaining here. We must finish our business with young Lord
Stark before Renly Baratheon can march from Highgarden. Bolton does not concern me.
He is a wary man, and we made him warier on the Green Fork. He will be slow to give
pursuit. So . . . on the morrow, we make for Harrenhal. Kevan, I want Ser Addam’s
outriders to screen our movements. Give him as many men as he requires, and send
them out in groups of four. I will have no vanishings.”
“As you say, my lord, but . . . why Harrenhal? That is a grim, unlucky place. Some call it
cursed.”
“Let them,” Lord Tywin said. “Unleash Ser Gregor and send him before us with his
reavers. Send forth Vargo Hoat and his freeriders as well, and Ser Amory Lorch. Each is
to have three hundred horse. Tell them I want to see the riverlands afire from the Gods
Eye to the Red Fork.”
“They will burn, my lord,” Ser Kevan said, rising. “I shall give the commands.” He bowed
and made for the door.
When they were alone, Lord Tywin glanced at Tyrion. “Your savages might relish a bit of
rapine. Tell them they may ride with Vargo Hoat and plunder as they like—goods, stock,
women, they may take what they want and burn the rest.”
“Telling Shagga and Timett how to pillage is like telling a rooster how to crow,” Tyrion
commented, “but I should prefer to keep them with me.” Uncouth and unruly they might
be, yet the wildlings were his, and he trusted them more than any of his father’s men. He
was not about to hand them over.
“Then you had best learn to control them. I will not have the city plundered.”
“The city?” Tyrion was lost. “What city would that be?”
“King’s Landing. I am sending you to court.”
�It was the last thing Tyrion Lannister would ever have anticipated.
He reached for his wine, and considered for a moment as he sipped. “And what am I to
do there?”
“Rule,” his father said curtly
Tyrion hooted with laughter. “My sweet sister might have a word or two to say about
that!”
“Let her say what she likes. Her son needs to be taken in hand before he ruins us all. I
blame those jackanapes on the council—our friend Petyr, the venerable Grand Maester,
and that cockless wonder Lord Varys. What sort of counsel are they giving Joffrey when
he lurches from one folly to the next? Whose notion was it to make this Janos Slynt a
lord? The man’s father was a butcher, and they grant him Harrenhal. Harrenhal, that
was the seat of kings! Not that he will ever set foot inside it, if I have a say. I am told he
took a bloody spear for his sigil. A bloody cleaver would have been my choice.” His father
had not raised his voice, yet Tyrion could see the anger in the gold of his eyes. “And
dismissing Selmy, where was the sense in that? Yes, the man was old, but the name of
Barristan the Bold still has meaning in the realm. He lent honor to any man he served.
Can anyone say the same of the Hound? You feed your dog bones under the table, you do
not seat him beside you on the high bench.” He pointed a finger at Tyrion’s face. “If
Cersei cannot curb the boy, you must. And if these councillors are playing us false . . . ”
Tyrion knew. “Spikes,” he sighed. “Heads. Walls.”
“I see you have taken a few lessons from me.”
“More than you know, Father,” Tyrion answered quietly. He finished his wine and set
the cup aside, thoughtful. A part of him was more pleased than he cared to admit.
Another part was remembering the battle upriver, and wondering if he was being sent to
hold the left again. “Why me?” he asked, cocking his head to one side. “Why not my
uncle? Why not Ser Addam or Ser Flement or Lord Serrett? Why not a . . . bigger man?”
Lord Tywin rose abruptly. “You are my son.”
That was when he knew. You have given him up for lost, he thought. You bloody
bastard, you think Jaime’s good as dead, so I’m all you have left. Tyrion wanted to slap
him, to spit in his face, to draw his dagger and cut the heart out of him and see if it was
made of old hard gold, the way the smallfolks said. Yet he sat there, silent and still.
�The shards of the broken cup crunched beneath his father’s heels as Lord Tywin crossed
the room. “One last thing,” he said at the door. “You will not take the whore to court.”
Tyrion sat alone in the common room for a long while after his father was gone. Finally
he climbed the steps to his cozy garret beneath the bell tower. The ceiling was low, but
that was scarcely a drawback for a dwarf. From the window, he could see the gibbet his
father had erected in the yard. The innkeep’s body turned slowly on its rope whenever
the night wind gusted. Her flesh had grown as thin and ragged as Lannister hopes.
Shae murmured sleepily and rolled toward him when he sat on the edge of the
featherbed. He slid his hand under the blanket and cupped a soft breast, and her eyes
opened. “M’lord,” she said with a drowsy smile.
When he felt her nipple stiffen, Tyrion kissed her. “I have a mind to take you to King’s
Landing, sweetling,” he whispered.
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JON
The mare whickered softly as Jon Snow tightened the cinch. “Easy, sweet lady,” he said
in a soft voice, quieting her with a touch. Wind whispered through the stable, a cold dead
breath on his face, but Jon paid it no mind. He strapped his roll to the saddle, his
scarred fingers stiff and clumsy. “Ghost,” he called softly, “to me.” And the wolf was
there, eyes like embers.
“Jon, please. You must not do this.”
He mounted, the reins in his hand, and wheeled the horse around to face the night.
Samwell Tarly stood in the stable door, a full moon peering over his shoulder. He threw
a giant’s shadow, immense and black. “Get out of my way, Sam.”
“Jon, you can’t,” Sam said. “I won’t let you.”
“I would sooner not hurt you,” Jon told him. “Move aside, Sam, or I’ll ride you down.”
“You won’t. You have to listen to me. Please . . . ”
Jon put his spurs to horseflesh, and the mare bolted for the door. For an instant Sam
stood his ground, his face as round and pale as the moon behind him, his mouth a
widening O of surprise. At the last moment, when they were almost on him, he jumped
aside as Jon had known he would, stumbled, and fell. The mare leapt over him, out into
the night.
Jon raised the hood of his heavy cloak and gave the horse her head. Castle Black was
silent and still as he rode out, with Ghost racing at his side. Men watched from the Wall
behind him, he knew, but their eyes were turned north, not south. No one would see him
go, no one but Sam Tarly, struggling back to his feet in the dust of the old stables. He
hoped Sam hadn’t hurt himself, falling like that. He was so heavy and so ungainly, it
would be just like him to break a wrist or twist his ankle getting out of the way. “I
warned him,” Jon said aloud. “It was nothing to do with him, anyway.” He flexed his
burned hand as he rode, opening and closing the scarred fingers. They still pained him,
but it felt good to have the wrappings off.
Moonlight silvered the hills as he followed the twisting ribbon of the kingsroad. He
�needed to get as far from the Wall as he could before they realized he was gone. On the
morrow he would leave the road and strike out overland through field and bush and
stream to throw off pursuit, but for the moment speed was more important than
deception. It was not as though they would not guess where he was going.
The Old Bear was accustomed to rise at first light, so Jon had until dawn to put as many
leagues as he could between him and the Wall . . . if Sam Tarly did not betray him. The
fat boy was dutiful and easily frightened, but he loved Jon like a brother. If questioned,
Sam would doubtless tell them the truth, but Jon could not imagine him braving the
guards in front of the King’s Tower to wake Mormont from sleep.
When Jon did not appear to fetch the Old Bear’s breakfast from the kitchen, they’d look
in his cell and find Longclaw on the bed. It had been hard to abandon it, but Jon was not
so lost to honor as to take it with him. Even Jorah Mormont had not done that, when he
fled in disgrace. Doubtless Lord Mormont would find someone more worthy of the
blade. Jon felt bad when he thought of the old man. He knew his desertion would be salt
in the still-raw wound of his son’s disgrace. That seemed a poor way to repay him for his
trust, but it couldn’t be helped. No matter what he did, Jon felt as though he were
betraying someone.
Even now, he did not know if he was doing the honorable thing. The southron had it
easier. They had their septons to talk to, someone to tell them the gods’ will and help
sort out right from wrong. But the Starks worshiped the old gods, the nameless gods,
and if the heart trees heard, they did not speak.
When the last lights of Castle Black vanished behind him, Jon slowed his mare to a walk.
He had a long journey ahead and only the one horse to see him through. There were
holdfasts and farming villages along the road south where he might be able to trade the
mare for a fresh mount when he needed one, but not if she were injured or blown.
He would need to find new clothes soon; most like, he’d need to steal them. He was clad
in black from head to heel; high leather riding boots, roughspun breeches and tunic,
sleeveless leather jerkin, and heavy wool cloak. His longsword and dagger were sheathed
in black moleskin, and the hauberk and coif in his saddlebag were black ringmail. Any
bit of it could mean his death if he were taken. A stranger wearing black was viewed with
cold suspicion in every village and holdfast north of the Neck, and men would soon be
watching for him. Once Maester Aemon’s ravens took flight, Jon knew he would find no
safe haven. Not even at Winterfell. Bran might want to let him in, but Maester Luwin
had better sense. He would bar the gates and send Jon away, as he should. Better not to
call there at all.
Yet he saw the castle clear in his mind’s eye, as if he had left it only yesterday; the
�towering granite walls, the Great Hall with its smells of smoke and dog and roasting
meat, his father’s solar, the turret room where he had slept. Part of him wanted nothing
so much as to hear Bran laugh again, to sup on one of Gage’s beef-and-bacon pies, to
listen to Old Nan tell her tales of the children of the forest and Florian the Fool.
But he had not left the Wall for that; he had left because he was after all his father’s son,
and Robb’s brother. The gift of a sword, even a sword as fine as Longclaw, did not make
him a Mormont. Nor was he Aemon Targaryen. Three times the old man had chosen,
and three times he had chosen honor, but that was him. Even now, Jon could not decide
whether the maester had stayed because he was weak and craven, or because he was
strong and true. Yet he understood what the old man had meant, about the pain of
choosing; he understood that all too well.
Tyrion Lannister had claimed that most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it,
but Jon was done with denials. He was who he was; Jon Snow, bastard and oathbreaker,
motherless, friendless, and damned. For the rest of his life—however long that might be
—he would be condemned to be an outsider, the silent man standing in the shadows who
dares not speak his true name. Wherever he might go throughout the Seven Kingdoms,
he would need to live a lie, lest every man’s hand be raised against him. But it made no
matter, so long as he lived long enough to take his place by his brother’s side and help
avenge his father.
He remembered Robb as he had last seen him, standing in the yard with snow melting in
his auburn hair. Jon would have to come to him in secret, disguised. He tried to imagine
the look on Robb’s face when he revealed himself. His brother would shake his head and
smile, and he’d say . . . he’d say . . .
He could not see the smile. Hard as he tried, he could not see it. He found himself
thinking of the deserter his father had beheaded the day they’d found the direwolves.
“You said the words,” Lord Eddard had told him. “You took a vow, before your brothers,
before the old gods and the new.” Desmond and Fat Tom had dragged the man to the
stump. Bran’s eyes had been wide as saucers, and Jon had to remind him to keep his
pony in hand. He remembered the look on Father’s face when Theon Greyjoy brought
forth Ice, the spray of blood on the snow, the way Theon had kicked the head when it
came rolling at his feet.
He wondered what Lord Eddard might have done if the deserter had been his brother
Benjen instead of that ragged stranger. Would it have been any different? It must,
surely, surely . . . and Robb would welcome him, for a certainty. He had to, or else . . .
It did not bear thinking about. Pain throbbed, deep in his fingers, as he clutched the
reins. Jon put his heels into his horse and broke into a gallop, racing down the
�kingsroad, as if to outrun his doubts. Jon was not afraid of death, but he did not want to
die like that, trussed and bound and beheaded like a common brigand. If he must perish,
let it be with a sword in his hand, fighting his father’s killers. He was no true Stark, had
never been one . . . but he could die like one. Let them say that Eddard Stark had
fathered four sons, not three.
Ghost kept pace with them for almost half a mile, red tongue lolling from his mouth.
Man and horse alike lowered their heads as he asked the mare for more speed. The wolf
slowed, stopped, watching, his eyes glowing red in the moonlight. He vanished behind,
but Jon knew he would follow, at his own pace.
Scattered lights flickered through the trees ahead of him, on both sides of the road:
Mole’s Town. A dog barked as he rode through, and he heard a mule’s raucous haw from
the stable, but otherwise the village was still. Here and there the glow of hearth fires
shone through shuttered windows, leaking between wooden slats, but only a few.
Mole’s Town was bigger than it seemed, but three quarters of it was under the ground, in
deep warm cellars connected by a maze of tunnels. Even the whorehouse was down
there, nothing on the surface but a wooden shack no bigger than a privy, with a red
lantern hung over the door. On the Wall, he’d heard men call the whores “buried
treasures.” He wondered whether any of his brothers in black were down there tonight,
mining. That was oathbreaking too, yet no one seemed to care.
Not until he was well beyond the village did Jon slow again. By then both he and the
mare were damp with sweat. He dismounted, shivering, his burned hand aching. A bank
of melting snow lay under the trees, bright in the moonlight, water trickling off to form
small shallow pools. Jon squatted and brought his hands together, cupping the runoff
between his fingers. The snowmelt was icy cold. He drank, and splashed some on his
face, until his cheeks tingled. His fingers were throbbing worse than they had in days,
and his head was pounding too. I am doing the right thing, he told himself, so why do I
feel so bad?
The horse was well lathered, so Jon took the lead and walked her for a while. The road
was scarcely wide enough for two riders to pass abreast, its surface cut by tiny streams
and littered with stone. That run had been truly stupid, an invitation to a broken neck.
Jon wondered what had gotten into him. Was he in such a great rush to die?
Off in the trees, the distant scream of some frightened animal made him look up. His
mare whinnied nervously. Had his wolf found some prey? He cupped his hands around
his mouth. “Ghost!” he shouted. “Ghost, to me.” The only answer was a rush of wings
behind him as an owl took flight.
�Frowning, Jon continued on his way. He led the mare for half an hour, until she was dry.
Ghost did not appear. Jon wanted to mount up and ride again, but he was concerned
about his missing wolf. “Ghost,” he called again. “Where are you? To me! Ghost!”
Nothing in these woods could trouble a direwolf, even a half-grown direwolf,
unless . . . no, Ghost was too smart to attack a bear, and if there was a wolf pack
anywhere close Jon would have surely heard them howling.
He should eat, he decided. Food would settle his stomach and give Ghost the chance to
catch up. There was no danger yet; Castle Black still slept. In his saddlebag, he found a
biscuit, a piece of cheese, and a small withered brown apple. He’d brought salt beef as
well, and a rasher of bacon he’d filched from the kitchens, but he would save the meat
for the morrow. After it was gone he’d need to hunt, and that would slow him.
Jon sat under the trees and ate his biscuit and cheese while his mare grazed along the
kingsroad. He kept the apple for last. It had gone a little soft, but the flesh was still tart
and juicy. He was down to the core when he heard the sounds: horses, and from the
north. Quickly Jon leapt up and strode to his mare. Could he outrun them? No, they
were too close, they’d hear him for a certainty, and if they were from Castle Black . . .
He led the mare off the road, behind a thick stand of grey-green sentinels. “Ouiet now,”
he said in a hushed voice, crouching down to peer through the branches. If the gods were
kind, the riders would pass by. Likely as not, they were only smallfolk from Mole’s Town,
farmers on their way to their fields, although what they were doing out in the middle of
the night . . .
He listened to the sound of hooves growing steadily louder as they trotted briskly down
the kingsroad. From the sound, there were five or six of them at the least. Their voices
drifted through the trees.
“ . . . certain he came this way?”
“We can’t be certain.”
“He could have ridden east, for all you know. Or left the road to cut through the woods.
That’s what I’d do.”
“In the dark? Stupid. If you didn’t fall off your horse and break your neck, you’d get lost
and wind up back at the Wall when the sun came up.”
“I would not.” Grenn sounded peeved. “I’d just ride south, you can tell south by the
stars.”
�“What if the sky was cloudy?” Pyp asked.
“Then I wouldn’t go.”
Another voice broke in. “You know where I’d be if it was me? I’d be in Mole’s Town,
digging for buried treasure.” Toad’s shrill laughter boomed through the trees. Jon’s mare
snorted.
“Keep quiet, all of you,” Haider said. “I thought I heard something.”
“Where? I didn’t hear anything.” The horses stopped.
“You can’t hear yourself fart.”
“I can too,” Grenn insisted.
“Quiet!”
They all fell silent, listening. Jon found himself holding his breath. Sam, he thought. He
hadn’t gone to the Old Bear, but he hadn’t gone to bed either, he’d woken the other boys.
Damn them all. Come dawn, if they were not in their beds, they’d be named deserters
too. What did they think they were doing?
The hushed silence seemed to stretch on and on. From where Jon crouched, he could see
the legs of their horses through the branches. Finally Pyp spoke up. “What did you hear?”
“I don’t know,” Haider admitted. “A sound, I thought it might have been a horse but . . . ”
“There’s nothing here.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jon glimpsed a pale shape moving through the trees. Leaves
rustled, and Ghost came bounding out of the shadows, so suddenly that Jon’s mare
started and gave a whinny. “There!” Halder shouted.
“I heard it too!”
“Traitor,” Jon told the direwolf as he swung up into the saddle. He turned the mare’s
head to slide off through the trees, but they were on him before he had gone ten feet.
“Jon!” Pyp shouted after him.
�“Pull up,” Grenn said. “You can’t outrun us all.”
Jon wheeled around to face them, drawing his sword. “Get back. I don’t wish to hurt you,
but I will if I have to.”
“One against seven?” Halder gave a signal. The boys spread out, surrounding him.
“What do you want with me?” Jon demanded.
“We want to take you back where you belong,” Pyp said.
“I belong with my brother.”
“We’re your brothers now,” Grenn said.
“They’ll cut off your head if they catch you, you know,” Toad put in with a nervous laugh.
“This is so stupid, it’s like something the Aurochs would do.”
“I would not,” Grenn said. “I’m no oathbreaker. I said the words and I meant them.”
“So did I,” Jon told them. “Don’t you understand? They murdered my father. It’s war,
my brother Robb is fighting in the riverlands—”
“We know,” said Pyp solemnly. “Sam told us everything.”
“We’re sorry about your father,” Grenn said, “but it doesn’t matter. Once you say the
words, you can’t leave, no matter what.”
“I have to,” Jon said fervently.
“You said the words,” Pyp reminded him. “Now my watch begins, you said it. It shall
not end until my death.”
“I shall live and die at my post,” Grenn added, nodding.
“You don’t have to tell me the words, I know them as well as you do.” He was angry now.
Why couldn’t they let him go in peace? They were only making it harder.
“I am the sword in the darkness,” Halder intoned.
“The watcher on the walls,” piped Toad.
�Jon cursed them all to their faces. They took no notice. Pyp spurred his horse closer,
reciting, “I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the
horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men.”
“Stay back,” Jon warned him, brandishing his sword. “I mean it, Pyp.” They weren’t even
wearing armor, he could cut them to pieces if he had to.
Matthar had circled behind him. He joined the chorus. “I pledge my life and honor to
the Night’s Watch.”
Jon kicked his mare, spinning her in a circle. The boys were all around him now, closing
from every side.
“For this night . . . ” Halder trotted in from the left.
“ . . . and all the nights to come,” finished Pyp. He reached over for Jon’s reins. “So here
are your choices. Kill me, or come back with me.”
Jon lifted his sword . . . and lowered it, helpless. “Damn you,” he said. “Damn you all.”
“Do we have to bind your hands, or will you give us your word you’ll ride back peaceful?”
asked Halder.
“I won’t run, if that’s what you mean.” Ghost moved out from under the trees and Jon
glared at him. “Small help you were,” he said. The deep red eyes looked at him
knowingly.
“We had best hurry,” Pyp said. “If we’re not back before first light, the Old Bear will have
all our heads.”
Of the ride back, Jon Snow remembered little. It seemed shorter than the journey south,
perhaps because his mind was elsewhere. Pyp set the pace, galloping, walking, trotting,
and then breaking into another gallop. Mole’s Town came and went, the red lantern over
the brothel long extinguished. They made good time. Dawn was still an hour off when
Jon glimpsed the towers of Castle Black ahead of them, dark against the pale immensity
of the Wall. It did not seem like home this time.
They could take him back, Jon told himself, but they could not make him stay. The war
would not end on the morrow, or the day after, and his friends could not watch him day
and night. He would bide his time, make them think he was content to remain
here . . . and then, when they had grown lax, he would be off again. Next time he would
�avoid the kingsroad. He could follow the Wall east, perhaps all the way to the sea, a
longer route but a safer one. Or even west, to the mountains, and then south over the
high passes. That was the wildling’s way, hard and perilous, but at least no one wouid
follow him. He wouldn’t stray within a hundred leagues of Winterfell or the kingsroad.
Samwell Tarly awaited them in the old stables, slumped on the ground against a bale of
hay, too anxious to sleep. He rose and brushed himself off. “I . . . I’m glad they found
you, Jon.”
“I’m not,” Jon said, dismounting.
Pyp hopped off his horse and looked at the lightening sky with disgust. “Give us a hand
bedding down the horses, Sam,” the small boy said. “We have a long day before us, and
no sleep to face it on, thanks to Lord Snow.”
When day broke, Jon walked to the kitchens as he did every dawn. Three-Finger Hobb
said nothing as he gave him the Old Bear’s breakfast. Today it was three brown eggs
boiled hard, with fried bread and ham steak and a bowl of wrinkled plums. Jon carried
the food back to the King’s Tower. He found Mormont at the window seat, writing. His
raven was walking back and forth across his shoulders, muttering, “Corn, corn, corn.”
The bird shrieked when Jon entered. “Put the food on the table,” the Old Bear said,
glancing up. “I’ll have some beer.”
Jon opened a shuttered window, took the flagon of beer off the outside ledge, and filled a
horn. Hobb had given him a lemon, still cold from the Wall. Jon crushed it in his fist.
The juice trickled through his fingers. Mormont drank lemon in his beer every day, and
claimed that was why he still had his own teeth.
“Doubtless you loved your father,” Mormont said when Jon brought him his horn. “The
things we love destroy us every time, lad. Remember when I told you that?”
“I remember,” Jon said sullenly. He did not care to talk of his father’s death, not even to
Mormont.
“See that you never forget it. The hard truths are the ones to hold tight. Fetch me my
plate. Is it ham again? So be it. You look weary. Was your moonlight ride so tiring?”
Jon’s throat was dry. “You know?”
“Know,” the raven echoed from Mormont’s shoulder. “Know.”
The Old Bear snorted. “Do you think they chose me Lord Commander of the Night’s
�Watch because I’m dumb as a stump, Snow? Aemon told me you’d go. I told him you’d
be back. I know my men . . . and my boys too. Honor set you on the kingsroad . . . and
honor brought you back.”
“My friends brought me back,” Jon said.
“Did I say it was your honor?” Mormont inspected his plate.
“They killed my father. Did you expect me to do nothing?”
“If truth be told, we expected you to do just as you did.” Mormont tried a plum, spit out
the pit. “I ordered a watch kept over you., You were seen leaving. If your brothers had
not fetched you back, you would have been taken along the way, and not by friends.
Unless you have a horse with wings like a raven. Do you?”
“No.” Jon felt like a fool.
“Pity, we could use a horse like that.”
Jon stood tall. He told himself that he would die well; that much he could do, at the
least. “I know the penalty for desertion, my lord. I’m not afraid to die.”
“Die!” the raven cried.
“Nor live, I hope,” Mormont said, cutting his ham with a dagger and feeding a bite to the
bird. “You have not deserted—yet. Here you stand. If we beheaded every boy who rode to
Mole’s Town in the night, only ghosts would guard the Wall. Yet maybe you mean to flee
again on the morrow, or a fortnight from now. Is that it? Is that your hope, boy?”
Jon kept silent.
“I thought so.” Mormont peeled the shell off a boiled egg. “Your father is dead, lad. Do
you think you can bring him back?”
“No,” he answered, sullen.
“Good,” Mormont said. “We’ve seen the dead come back, you and me, and it’s not
something I care to see again.” He ate the egg in two bites and flicked a bit of shell out
from between his teeth. “Your brother is in the field with all the power of the north
behind him. Any one of his lords bannermen commands more swords than you’ll find in
all the Night’s Watch. Why do you imagine that they need your help? Are you such a
�mighty warrior, or do you carry a grumkin in your pocket to magic up your sword?”
Jon had no answer for him. The raven was pecking at an egg, breaking the shell. Pushing
his beak through the hole, he pulled out morsels of white and yoke.
The Old Bear sighed. “You are not the only one touched by this war. Like as not, my
sister is marching in your brother’s host, her and those daughters of hers, dressed in
men’s mail. Maege is a hoary old snark, stubborn, short-tempered, and willful. Truth be
told, I can hardly stand to be around the wretched woman, but that does not mean my
love for her is any less than the love you bear your half sisters.” Frowning, Mormont
took his last egg and squeezed it in his fist until the shell crunched. “Or perhaps it does.
Be that as it may, I’d still grieve if she were slain, yet you don’t see me running off. I said
the words, just as you did. My place is here . . . where is yours, boy?”
I have no place, Jon wanted to say, I’m a bastard, I have no rights, no name, no mother,
and now not even a father. The words would not come. “I don’t know.”
“I do,” said Lord Commander Mormont. “The cold winds are rising, Snow. Beyond the
Wall, the shadows lengthen. Cotter Pyke writes of vast herds of elk, streaming south and
east toward the sea, and mammoths as well. He says one of his men discovered huge,
misshapen footprints not three leagues from Eastwatch. Rangers from the Shadow
Tower have found whole villages abandoned, and at night Ser Denys says they see fires
in the mountains, huge blazes that burn from dusk till dawn. Quorin Halfhand took a
captive in the depths of the Gorge, and the man swears that Mance Rayder is massing all
his people in some new, secret stronghold he’s found, to what end the gods only know.
Do you think your uncle Benjen was the only ranger we’ve lost this past year?”
“Ben Jen,” the raven squawked, bobbing its head, bits of egg dribbling from its beak.
“Ben Jen. Ben Jen.”
“No,” Jon said. There had been others. Too many.
“Do you think your brother’s war is more important than ours?” the old man barked.
Jon chewed his lip. The raven flapped its wings at him. “War, war, war, war,” it sang.
“It’s not,” Mormont told him. “Gods save us, boy, you’re not blind and you’re not stupid.
When dead men come hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits the Iron
Throne?”
“No.” Jon had not thought of it that way.
�“Your lord father sent you to us, Jon. Why, who can say?”
“Why? Why? Why?” the raven called.
“All I know is that the blood of the First Men flows in the veins of the Starks. The First
Men built the Wall, and it’s said they remember things otherwise forgotten. And that
beast of yours . . . he led us to the wights, warned you of the dead man on the steps. Ser
Jaremy would doubtless call that happenstance, yet Ser Jaremy is dead and I’m not.”
Lord Mormont stabbed a chunk of ham with the point of his dagger. “I think you were
meant to be here, and I want you and that wolf of yours with us when we go beyond the
Wall.”
His words sent a chill of excitement down Jon’s back. “Beyond the Wall?”
“You heard me. I mean to find Ben Stark, alive or dead.” He chewed and swallowed. “I
will not sit here meekly and wait for the snows and the ice winds. We must know what is
happening. This time the Night’s Watch will ride in force, against the King-beyond-theWall, the Others, and anything else that may be out there. I mean to command them
myself.” He pointed his dagger at Jon’s chest. “By custom, the Lord Commander’s
steward is his squire as well . . . but I do not care to wake every dawn wondering if you’ve
run off again. So I will have an answer from you, Lord Snow, and I will have it now. Are
you a brother of the Night’s Watch . . . or only a bastard boy who wants to play at war?”
Jon Snow straightened himself and took a long deep breath. Forgive me, Father. Robb,
Arya, Bran . . . forgive me, I cannot help you. He has the truth of it. This is my place. “I
am . . . yours, my lord. Your man. I swear it. I will not run again.”
The Old Bear snorted. “Good. Now go put on your sword.”
previous | Table of Contents | next
�previous | Table of Contents | next
CATELYN
It seemed a thousand years ago that Catelyn Stark had carried her infant son out of
Riverrun, crossing the Tumblestone in a small boat to begin their journey north to
Winterfell. And it was across the Tumblestone that they came home now, though the boy
wore plate and mail in place of swaddling clothes.
Robb sat in the bow with Grey Wind, his hand resting on his direwolf s head as the
rowers pulled at their oars. Theon Greyjoy was with him. Her uncle Brynden would
come behind in the second boat, with the Greatjon and Lord Karstark.
Catelyn took a place toward the stern. They shot down the Tumblestone, letting the
strong current push them past the looming Wheel Tower. The splash and rumble of the
great waterwheel within was a sound from her girlhood that brought a sad smile to
Catelyn’s face. From the sandstone walls of the castle, soldiers and servants shouted
down her name, and Robb’s, and “Winterfell!” From every rampart waved the banner of
House Tully: a leaping trout, silver, against a rippling blue-and-red field. It was a
stirring sight, yet it did not lift her heart. She wondered if indeed her heart would ever
lift again. Oh, Ned . . .
Below the Wheel Tower, they made a wide turn and knifed through the churning water.
The men put their backs into it. The wide arch of the Water Gate came into view, and she
heard the creak of heavy chains as the great iron portcullis was winched upward. It rose
slowly as they approached, and Catelyn saw that the lower half of it was red with rust.
The bottom foot dripped brown mud on them as they passed underneath, the barbed
spikes mere inches above their heads. Catelyn gazed up at the bars and wondered how
deep the rust went and how well the portcullis would stand up to a ram and whether it
ought to be replaced. Thoughts like that were seldom far from her mind these days.
They passed beneath the arch and under the walls, moving from sunlight to shadow and
back into sunlight. Boats large and small were tied up all around them, secured to iron
rings set in the stone. Her father’s guards waited on the water stair with her brother. Ser
Edmure Tully was a stocky young man with a shaggy head of auburn hair and a fiery
beard. His breastplate was scratched and dented from battle, his blue-and-red cloak
stained by blood and smoke. At his side stood the Lord Tytos Blackwood, a hard pike of a
man with close-cropped salt-and-pepper whiskers and a hook nose. His bright yellow
armor was inlaid with jet in elaborate vine-and-leaf patterns, and a cloak sewn from
�raven feathers draped his thin shoulders. It had been Lord Tytos who led the sortie that
plucked her brother from the Lannister camp.
“Bring them in,” Ser Edmure commanded. Three men scrambled down the stairs kneedeep in the water and pulled the boat close with long hooks. When Grey Wind bounded
out, one of them dropped his pole and lurched back, stumbling and sitting down
abruptly in the river. The others laughed, and the man got a sheepish look on his face.
Theon Greyjoy vaulted over the side of the boat and lifted Catelyn by the waist, setting
her on a dry step above him as water lapped around his boots.
Edmure came down the steps to embrace her. “Sweet sister,” he murmured hoarsely. He
had deep blue eyes and a mouth made for smiles, but he was not smiling now. He looked
worn and tired, battered by battle and haggard from strain. His neck was bandaged
where he had taken a wound. Catelyn hugged him fiercely.
“Your grief is mine, Cat,” he said when they broke apart. “When we heard about Lord
Eddard . . . the Lannisters will pay, I swear it, you will have your vengeance.”
“Will that bring Ned back to me?” she said sharply. The wound was still too fresh for
softer words. She could not think about Ned now. She would not. It would not do. She
had to be strong. “All that will keep. I must see Father.”
“He awaits you in his solar,” Edmure said.
“Lord Hoster is bedridden, my lady,” her father’s steward explained. When had that
good man grown so old and grey? “He instructed me to bring you to him at once.”
“I’ll take her.” Edmure escorted her up the water stair and across the lower bailey, where
Petyr Baelish and Brandon Stark had once crossed swords for her favor. The massive
sandstone walls of the keep loomed above them. As they pushed through a door between
two guardsmen in fish-crest helms, she asked, “How bad is he?” dreading the answer
even as she said the words.
Edmure’s look was somber. “He will not be with us long, the maesters say. The pain
is . . . constant, and grievous.”
A blind rage filled her, a rage at all the world; at her brother Edmure and her sister Lysa,
at the Lannisters, at the maesters, at Ned and her father and the monstrous gods who
would take them both away from her. “You should have told me,” she said. “You should
have sent word as soon as you knew.”
“He forbade it. He did not want his enemies to know that he was dying. With the realm
�so troubled, he feared that if the Lannisters suspected how frail he was . . . ”
“ . . . they might attack?” Catelyn finished, hard. It was your doing, yours, a voice
whispered inside her. If you had not taken it upon yourself to seize the dwarf . . .
They climbed the spiral stair in silence.
The keep was three-sided, like Riverrun itself, and Lord Hoster’s solar was triangular as
well, with a stone balcony that jutted out to the east like the prow of some great
sandstone ship. From there the lord of the castle could look down on his walls and
battlements, and beyond, to where the waters met. They had moved her father’s bed out
onto the balcony. “He likes to sit in the sun and watch the rivers,” Edmure explained.
“Father, see who I’ve brought. Cat has come to see you . . . ”
Hoster Tully had always been a big man; tall and broad in his youth, portly as he grew
older. Now he seemed shrunken, the muscle and meat melted off his bones. Even his
face sagged. The last time Catelyn had seen him, his hair and beard had been brown,
well streaked with grey. Now they had gone white as snow.
His eyes opened to the sound of Edmure’s voice. “Little cat,” he murmured in a voice
thin and wispy and wracked by pain. “My little cat.” A tremulous smile touched his face
as his hand groped for hers. “I watched for you . . . ”
“I shall leave you to talk,” her brother said, kissing their lord father gently on the brow
before he withdrew.
Catelyn knelt and took her father’s hand in hers. It was a big hand, but fleshless now, the
bones moving loosely under the skin, all the strength gone from it. “You should have told
me,” she said. “A rider, a raven . . . ”
“Riders are taken, questioned,” he answered. “Ravens are brought down . . . ” A spasm of
pain took him, and his fingers clutched hers hard. “The crabs are in my
belly . . . pinching, always pinching. Day and night. They have fierce claws, the crabs.
Maester Vyman makes me dreamwine, milk of the poppy . . . I sleep a lot . . . but I
wanted to be awake to see you, when you came. I was afraid . . . when the Lannisters
took your brother, the camps all around us . . . was afraid I would go, before I could see
you again . . . I was afraid . . . ”
“I’m here, Father,” she said. “With Robb, my son. He’ll want to see you too.”
“Your boy,” he whispered. “He had my eyes, I remember . . . ”
�“He did, and does. And we’ve brought you Jaime Lannister, in irons. Riverrun is free
again, Father.”
Lord Hoster smiled. “I saw. Last night, when it began, I told them . . . had to see. They
carried me to the gatehouse . . . watched from the battlements. Ah, that was
beautiful . . . the torches came in a wave, I could hear the cries floating across the
river . . . sweet cries . . . when that siege tower went up, gods . . . would have died then,
and glad, if only I could have seen you children first. Was it your boy who did it? Was it
your Robb?”
“Yes,” Catelyn said, fiercely proud. “It was Robb . . . and Brynden. Your brother is here
as well, my lord.”
“Him.” Her father’s voice was a faint whisper. “The Blackfish . . . came back? From the
Vale?”
“Yes.”
“And Lysa?” A cool wind moved through his thin white hair. “Gods be good, your
sister . . . did she come as well?”
He sounded so full of hope and yearning that it was hard to tell the truth. “No. I’m
sorry . . . ”
“Oh.” His face fell, and some light went out of his eyes. “I’d hoped I would have liked to
see her, before . . . ”
“She’s with her son, in the Eyrie.”
Lord Hoster gave a weary nod. “Lord Robert now, poor Arryn’s gone . . . I
remember . . . why did she not come with you?”
“She is frightened, my lord. In the Eyrie she feels safe.” She kissed his wrinkled brow.
“Robb will be waiting. Will you see him? And Brynden?”
“Your son,” he whispered. “Yes. Cat’s child . . . he had my eyes, I remember. When he
was born. Bring him . . . yes.”
“And your brother?”
Her father glanced out over the rivers. “Blackfish,” he said. “Has he wed yet? Taken
�some . . . girl to wife?”
Even on his deathbed, Catelyn thought sadly. “He has not wed. You know that, Father.
Nor will he ever.”
“I told him . . . commanded him. Marry! I was his lord. He knows. My right, to make his
match. A good match. A Redwyne. Old House. Sweet girl, pretty . . . freckles . . . Bethany,
yes. Poor child. Still waiting. Yes. Still . . . ”
“Bethany Redwyne wed Lord Rowan years ago,” Catelyn reminded him. “She has three
children by him.”
“Even so,” Lord Hoster muttered. “Even so. Spit on the girl. The Redwynes. Spit on me.
His lord, his brother . . . that Blackfish. I had other offers. Lord Bracken’s girl. Walder
Frey . . . any of three, he said . . . Has he wed? Anyone? Anyone?”
“No one,” Catelyn said, “yet he has come many leagues to see you, fighting his way back
to Riverrun. I would not be here now, if Ser Brynden had not helped us.”
“He was ever a warrior,” her father husked. “That he could do. Knight of the Gate, yes.”
He leaned back and closed his eyes, inutterably weary. “Send him. Later. I’ll sleep now.
Too sick to fight. Send him up later, the Blackfish . . . ”
Catelyn kissed him gently, smoothed his hair, and left him there in the shade of his keep,
with his rivers flowing beneath. He was asleep before she left the solar.
When she returned to the lower bailey, Ser Brynden Tully stood on the water stairs with
wet boots, talking with the captain of Riverrun’s guards. He came to her at once. “Is he—”
“Dying,” she said. “As we feared.”
Her uncle’s craggy face showed his pain plain. He ran his fingers through his thick grey
hair. “Will he see me?”
She nodded. “He says he is too sick to fight.”
Brynden Blackfish chuckled. “I am too old a soldier to believe that. Hoster will be
chiding me about the Redwyne girl even as we light his funeral pyre, damn his bones.”
Catelyn smiled, knowing it was true. “I do not see Robb.”
�“He went with Greyjoy to the hall, I believe.”
Theon Greyjoy was seated on a bench in Riverrun’s Great Hall, enjoying a horn of ale
and regaling her father’s garrison with an account of the slaughter in the Whispering
Wood. “Some tried to flee, but we’d pinched the valley shut at both ends, and we rode
out of the darkness with sword and lance. The Lannisters must have thought the Others
themselves were on them when that wolf of Robb’s got in among them. I saw him tear
one man’s arm from his shoulder, and their horses went mad at the scent of him. I
couldn’t tell you how many men were thrown—”
“Theon,” she interrupted, “where might I find my son?”
“Lord Robb went to visit the godswood, my lady.”
It was what Ned would have done. He is his father’s son as much as mine, I must
remember. Oh, gods, Ned . . .
She found Robb beneath the green canopy of leaves, surrounded by tall redwoods and
great old elms, kneeling before the heart tree, a slender weirwood with a face more sad
than fierce. His longsword was before him, the point thrust in the earth, his gloved
hands clasped around the hilt. Around him others knelt: Greatjon Umber, Rickard
Karstark, Maege Mormont, Galbart Glover, and more. Even Tytos Blackwood was
among them, the great raven cloak fanned out behind him. These are the ones who keep
the old gods, she realized. She asked herself what gods she kept these days, and could
not find an answer.
It would not do to disturb them at their prayers. The gods must have their due . . . even
cruel gods who would take Ned from her, and her lord father as well. So Catelyn waited.
The river wind moved through the high branches, and she could see the Wheel Tower to
her right, ivy crawling up its side. As she stood there, all the memories came flooding
back to her. Her father had taught her to ride amongst these trees, and that was the elm
that Edmure had fallen from when he broke his arm, and over there, beneath that
bower, she and Lysa had played at kissing with Petyr.
She had not thought of that in years. How young they all had been—she no older than
Sansa, Lysa younger than Arya, and Petyr younger still, yet eager. The girls had traded
him between them, serious and giggling by turns. It came back to her so vividly she
could almost feel his sweaty fingers on her shoulders and taste the mint on his breath.
There was always mint growing in the godswood, and Petyr had liked to chew it. He had
been such a bold little boy, always in trouble. “He tried to put his tongue in my mouth,”
Catelyn had confessed to her sister afterward, when they were alone. “He did with me
too,” Lysa had whispered, shy and breathless. “I liked it.”
�Robb got to his feet slowly and sheathed his sword, and Catelyn found herself wondering
whether her son had ever kissed a girl in the godswood. Surely he must have. She had
seen Jeyne Poole giving him moist-eyed glances, and some of the serving girls, even ones
as old as eighteen . . . he had ridden in battle and killed men with a sword, surely he had
been kissed. There were tears in her eyes. She wiped them away angrily.
“Mother,” Robb said when he saw her standing there. “We must call a council. There are
things to be decided.”
“Your grandfather would like to see you,” she said. “Robb, he’s very sick.”
“Ser Edmure told me. I am sorry, Mother . . . for Lord Hoster and for you. Yet first we
must meet. We’ve had word from the south. Renly Baratheon has claimed his brother’s
crown.”
“Renly?” she said, shocked. “I had thought, surely it would be Lord Stannis . . . ”
“So did we all, my lady,” Galbart Glover said.
The war council convened in the Great Hall, at four long trestle tables arranged in a
broken square. Lord Hoster was too weak to attend, asleep on his balcony, dreaming of
the sun on the rivers of his youth. Edmure sat in the high seat of the Tullys, with
Brynden Blackfish at his side, and his father’s bannermen arrayed to right and left and
along the side tables. Word of the victory at Riverrun had spread to the fugitive lords of
the Trident, drawing them back. Karyl Vance came in, a lord now, his father dead
beneath the Golden Tooth. Ser Marq Piper was with him, and they brought a Darry, Ser
Raymun’s son, a lad no older than Bran. Lord Jonos Bracken arrived from the ruins of
Stone Hedge, glowering and blustering, and took a seat as far from Tytos Blackwood as
the tables would permit.
The northern lords sat opposite, with Catelyn and Robb facing her brother across the
tables. They were fewer. The Greatjon sat at Robb’s left hand, and then Theon Greyjoy;
Galbart Glover and Lady Mormont were to the right of Catelyn. Lord Rickard Karstark,
gaunt and hollow-eyed in his grief, took his seat like a man in a nightmare, his long
beard uncombed and unwashed. He had left two sons dead in the Whispering Wood,
and there was no word of the third, his eldest, who had led the Karstark spears against
Tywin Lannister on the Green Fork.
The arguing raged on late into the night. Each lord had a right to speak, and speak they
did . . . and shout, and curse, and reason, and cajole, and jest, and bargain, and slam
tankards on the table, and threaten, and walk out, and return sullen or smiling. Catelyn
�sat and listened to it all.
Roose Bolton had re-formed the battered remnants of their other host at the mouth of
the causeway. Ser Helman Tallhart and Walder Frey still held the Twins. Lord Tywin’s
army had crossed the Trident, and was making for Harrenhal. And there were two kings
in the realm. Two kings, and no agreement.
Many of the lords bannermen wanted to march on Harrenhal at once, to meet Lord
Tywin and end Lannister power for all time. Young, hot-tempered Marq Piper urged a
strike west at Casterly Rock instead. Still others counseled patience. Riverrun sat
athwart the Lannister supply lines, Jason Mallister pointed out; let them bide their time,
denying Lord Tywin fresh levies and provisions while they strengthened their defenses
and rested their weary troops. Lord Blackwood would have none of it. They should finish
the work they began in the Whispering Wood. March to Harrenhal and bring Roose
Bolton’s army down as well. What Blackwood urged, Bracken opposed, as ever; Lord
Jonos Bracken rose to insist they ought pledge their fealty to King Renly, and move
south to join their might to his.
“Renly is not the king,” Robb said. It was the first time her son had spoken. Like his
father, he knew how to listen.
“You cannot mean to hold to Joffrey, my lord,” Galbart Glover said. “He put your father
to death.”
“That makes him evil,” Robb replied. “I do not know that it makes Renly king. Joffrey is
still Robert’s eldest trueborn son, so the throne is rightfully his by all the laws of the
realm. Were he to die, and I mean to see that he does, he has a younger brother.
Tommen is next in line after Joffrey.”
“Tommen is no less a Lannister,” Ser Marq Piper snapped.
“As you say,” said Robb, troubled. “Yet if neither one is king, still, how could it be Lord
Renly? He’s Robert’s younger brother. Bran can’t be Lord of Winterfell before me, and
Renly can’t be king before Lord Stannis.”
Lady Mormont agreed. “Lord Stannis has the better claim.”
“Renly is crowned,” said Marq Piper. “Highgarden and Storm’s End support his claim,
and the Dornishmen will not be laggardly. If Winterfell and Riverrun add their strength
to his, he will have five of the seven great houses behind him. Six, if the Arryns bestir
themselves! Six against the Rock! My lords, within the year, we will have all their heads
on pikes, the queen and the boy king, Lord Tywin, the Imp, the Kingslayer, Ser Kevan,
�all of them! That is what we shall win if we join with King Renly. What does Lord
Stannis have against that, that we should cast it all aside?”
“The right,” said Robb stubbornly. Catelyn thought he sounded eerily like his father as
he said it.
“So you mean us to declare for Stannis?” asked Edmure.
“I don’t know,” said Robb. “I prayed to know what to do, but the gods did not answer.
The Lannisters killed my father for a traitor, and we know that was a lie, but if Joffrey is
the lawful king and we fight against him, we will be traitors.”
“My lord father would urge caution,” aged Ser Stevron said, with the weaselly smile of a
Frey. “Wait, let these two kings play their game of thrones. When they are done fighting,
we can bend our knees to the victor, or oppose him, as we choose. With Renly arming,
likely Lord Tywin would welcome a truce . . . and the safe return of his son. Noble lords,
allow me to go to him at Harrenhal and arrange good terms and ransoms . . . ”
A roar of outrage drowned out his voice. “Craven!” the Greatjon thundered. “Begging for
a truce will make us seem weak,” declared Lady Mormont. “Ransoms be damned, we
must not give up the Kingslayer,” shouted Rickard Karstark.
“Why not a peace?” Catelyn asked.
The lords looked at her, but it was Robb’s eyes she felt, his and his alone. “My lady, they
murdered my lord father, your husband,” he said grimly. He unsheathed his longsword
and laid it on the table before him, the bright steel on the rough wood. “This is the only
peace I have for Lannisters.”
The Greatjon bellowed his approval, and other men added their voices, shouting and
drawing swords and pounding their fists on the table. Catelyn waited until they had
quieted. “My lords,” she said then, “Lord Eddard was your liege, but I shared his bed and
bore his children. Do you think I love him any less than you?” Her voice almost broke
with her grief, but Catelyn took a long breath and steadied herself. “Robb, if that sword
could bring him back, I should never let you sheathe it until Ned stood at my side once
more . . . but he is gone, and hundred Whispering Woods will not change that. Ned is
gone, and Daryn Hornwood, and Lord Karstark’s valiant sons, and many other good
men besides, and none of them will return to us. Must we have more deaths still?”
“You are a woman, my lady,” the Greatjon rumbled in his deep voice. “Women do not
understand these things.”
�“You are the gentle sex,” said Lord Karstark, with the lines of grief fresh on his face. “A
man has a need for vengeance.”
“Give me Cersei Lannister, Lord Karstark, and you would see how gentle a woman can
be,” Catelyn replied. “Perhaps I do not understand tactics and strategy . . . but I
understand futility. We went to war when Lannister armies were ravaging the riverlands,
and Ned was a prisoner, falsely accused of treason. We fought to defend ourselves, and
to win my lord’s freedom.
“Well, the one is done, and the other forever beyond our reach. I will mourn for Ned
until the end of my days, but I must think of the living. I want my daughters back, and
the queen holds them still. If I must trade our four Lannisters for their two Starks, I will
call that a bargain and thank the gods. I want you safe, Robb, ruling at Winterfell from
your father’s seat. I want you to live your life, to kiss a girl and wed a woman and father a
son. I want to write an end to this. I want to go home, my lords, and weep for my
husband.”
The hall was very quiet when Catelyn finished speaking.
“Peace,” said her uncle Brynden. “Peace is sweet, my lady . . . but on what terms? It is no
good hammering your sword into a plowshare if you must forge it again on the morrow.”
“What did Torrhen and my Eddard die for, if I am to return to Karhold with nothing but
their bones?” asked Rickard Karstark.
“Aye,” said Lord Bracken. “Gregor Clegane laid waste to my fields, slaughtered my
smallfolk, and left Stone Hedge a smoking ruin. Am I now to bend the knee to the ones
who sent him? What have we fought for, if we are to put all back as it was before?”
Lord Blackwood agreed, to Catelyn’s surprise and dismay. “And if we do make peace
with King Joffrey, are we not then traitors to King Renly? What if the stag should prevail
against the lion, where would that leave us?”
“Whatever you may decide for yourselves, I shall never call a Lannister my king,”
declared Marq Piper.
“Nor I!” yelled the little Darry boy. “I never will!”
Again the shouting began. Catelyn sat despairing. She had come so close, she thought.
They had almost listened, almost . . . but the moment was gone. There would be no
peace, no chance to heal, no safety. She looked at her son, watched him as he listened to
the lords debate, frowning, troubled, yet wedded to his war. He had pledged himself to
�marry a daughter of Walder Frey, but she saw his true bride plain before her now: the
sword he had laid on the table.
Catelyn was thinking of her girls, wondering if she would ever see them again, when the
Greatjon lurched to his feet.
“MY LORDS!” he shouted, his voice booming off the rafters. “Here is what I say to these
two kings!” He spat. “ Renly Baratheon is nothing to me, nor Stannis neither. Why
should they rule over me and mine, from some flowery seat in Highgarden or Dorne?
What do they know of the Wall or the wolfswood or the barrows of the First Men? Even
their gods are wrong. The Others take the Lannisters too, I’ve had a bellyful of them.” He
reached back over his shoulder and drew his immense two-handed greatsword. “Why
shouldn’t we rule ourselves again? It was the dragons we married, and the dragons are
all dead!” He pointed at Robb with the blade. “There sits the only king I mean to bow my
knee to, m’lords,” he thundered. “The King in the North!”
And he knelt, and laid his sword at her son’s feet.
“I’ll have peace on those terms,” Lord Karstark said. “They can keep their red castle and
their iron chair as well.” He eased his longsword from its scabbard. “The King in the
North!” he said, kneeling beside the Greatjon.
Maege Mormont stood. “The King of Winter!” she declared, and laid her spiked mace
beside the swords. And the river lords were rising too, Blackwood and Bracken and
Mallister, houses who had never been ruled from Winterfell, yet Catelyn watched them
rise and draw their blades, bending their knees and shouting the old words that had not
been heard in the realm for more than three hundred years, since Aegon the Dragon had
come to make the Seven Kingdoms one . . . yet now were heard again, ringing from the
timbers of her father’s hall:
“The King in the North!”
“The King in the North!”
“THE KING IN THE NORTH!”
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DAENERYS
The land was red and dead and parched, and good wood was hard to come by. Her
foragers returned with gnarled cottonwoods, purple brush, sheaves of brown grass. They
took the two straightest trees, hacked the limbs and branches from them, skinned off
their bark, and split them, laying the logs in a square. Its center they filled with straw,
brush, bark shavings, and bundles of dry grass. Rakharo chose a stallion from the small
herd that remained to them; he was not the equal of Khal Drogo’s red, but few horses
were. In the center of the square, Aggo fed him a withered apple and dropped him in an
instant with an axe blow between the eyes.
Bound hand and foot, Mirri Maz Duur watched from the dust with disquiet in her black
eyes. “It is not enough to kill a horse,” she told Dany. “By itself, the blood is nothing. You
do not have the words to make a spell, nor the wisdom to find them. Do you think
bloodmagic is a game for children? You call me maegi as if it were a curse, but all it
means is wise. You are a child, with a child’s ignorance. Whatever you mean to do, it will
not work. Loose me from these bonds and I will help you.”
“I am tired of the maegi’s braying,” Dany told Jhogo. He took his whip to her, and after
that the godswife kept silent.
Over the carcass of the horse, they built a platform of hewn logs; trunks of smaller trees
and limbs from the greater, and the thickest straightest branches they could find. They
laid the wood east to west, from sunrise to sunset. On the platform they piled Khal
Drogo’s treasures: his great tent, his painted vests, his saddles and harness, the whip his
father had given him when he came to manhood, the arakh he had used to slay Khal Ogo
and his son, a mighty dragonbone bow. Aggo would have added the weapons Drogo’s
bloodriders had given Dany for bride gifts as well, but she forbade it. “Those are mine,”
she told him, “and I mean to keep them.” Another layer of brush was piled about the
khal’s treasures, and bundles of dried grass scattered over them.
Ser Jorah Mormont drew her aside as the sun was creeping toward its zenith.
“Princess . . . ” he began.
“Why do you call me that?” Dany challenged him. “My brother Viserys was your king,
was he not?”
�“He was, my lady.”
“Viserys is dead. I am his heir, the last blood of House Targaryen. Whatever was his is
mine now.”
“My . . . queen,” Ser Jorah said, going to one knee. “My sword that was his is yours,
Dacnerys. And my heart as well, that never belonged to your brother. I am only a knight,
and I have nothing to offer you but exile, but I beg you, hear me. Let Khal Drogo go. You
shall not be alone. I promise you, no man shall take you to Vaes Dothrak unless you wish
to go. You need not join the dosh khaleen. Come east with me. Yi Ti, Qarth, the Jade Sea,
Asshai by the Shadow. We will see all the wonders yet unseen, and drink what wines the
gods see fit to serve us. Please, Khaleesi. I know what you intend. Do not. Do not.”
“I must,” Dany told him. She touched his face, fondly, sadly. “You do not understand.”
“I understand that you loved him,” Ser Jorah said in a voice thick with despair. “I loved
my lady wife once, yet I did not die with her. You are my queen, my sword is yours, but
do not ask me to stand aside as you climb on Drogo’s pyre. I will not watch you burn.”
“Is that what you fear?” Dany kissed him lightly on his broad forehead. “I am not such a
child as that, sweet ser.”
“You do not mean to die with him? You swear it, my queen?”
“I swear it,” she said in the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms that by rights were
hers.
The third level of the platform was woven of branches no thicker than a finger, and
covered with dry leaves and twigs. They laid them north to south, from ice to fire, and
piled them high with soft cushions and sleeping silks. The sun had begun to lower
toward the west by the time they were done. Dany called the Dothraki around her. Fewer
than a hundred were left. How many had Aegon started with? she wondered. It did not
matter.
“You will be my khalasar,” she told them. “I see the faces of slaves. I free you. Take off
your collars. Go if you wish, no one shall harm you. If you stay, it will be as brothers and
sisters, husbands and wives.” The black eyes watched her, wary, expressionless. “I see
the children, women, the wrinkled faces of the aged. I was a child yesterday. Today I am
a woman. Tomorrow I will be old. To each of you I say, give me your hands and your
hearts, and there will always be a place for you.” She turned to the three young warriors
of her khas. “Jhogo, to you I give the silver-handled whip that was my bride gift, and
name you ko, and ask your oath, that you will live and die as blood of my blood, riding at
�my side to keep me safe from harm.”
Jhogo took the whip from her hands, but his face was confused. “Khaleesi, “ he said
hesitantly, “this is not done. It would shame me, to be bloodrider to a woman.”
“Aggo,” Dany called, paying no heed to Jhogo’s words. If I look back I am lost. “To you I
give the dragonbone bow that was my bride gift.” It was double-curved, shiny black and
exquisite, taller than she was. “I name you ko, and ask your oath, that you should live
and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm.”
Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes. “I cannot say these words. Only a man can
lead a khalasar or name a ko.”
“Rakharo,” Dany said, turning away from the refusal, “you shall have the great arakh
that was my bride gift, with hilt and blade chased in gold. And you too I name my ko,
and ask that you live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe
from harm.”
“You are khaleesi,” Rakharo said, taking the arakh. “I shall ride at your side to Vaes
Dothrak beneath the Mother of Mountains, and keep you safe from harm until you take
your place with the crones of the dosh khaleen. No more can I promise.”
She nodded, as calmly as if she had not heard his answer, and turned to the last of her
champions. “Ser Jorah Mormont,” she said, “first and greatest of my knights, I have no
bride gift to give you, but I swear to you, one day you shall have from my hands a
longsword like none the world has ever seen, dragon-forged and made of Valyrian steel.
And I would ask for your oath as well.”
“You have it, my queen,” Ser Jorah said, kneeling to lay his sword at her feet. “I vow to
serve you, to obey you, to die for you if need be.”
“Whatever may come?”
“Whatever may come.”
“I shall hold you to that oath. I pray you never regret the giving of it.” Dany lifted him to
his feet. Stretching on her toes to reach his lips, she kissed the knight gently and said,
“You are the first of my Queensguard.”
She could feel the eyes of the khalasar on her as she entered her tent. The Dothraki were
muttering and giving her strange sideways looks from the corners of their dark almond
eyes. They thought her mad, Dany realized. Perhaps she was. She would know soon
�enough. If I look back I am lost.
Her bath was scalding hot when Irri helped her into the tub, but Dany did not flinch or
cry aloud. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Jhiqui had scented the water with
the oils she had found in the market in Vaes Dothrak; the steam rose moist and fragrant.
Doreah washed her hair and combed it out, working loose the mats and tangles. Irri
scrubbed her back. Dany closed her eyes and let the smell and the warmth enfold her.
She could feel the heat soaking through the soreness between her thighs. She shuddered
when it entered her, and her pain and stiffness seemed to dissolve. She floated.
When she was clean, her handmaids helped her from the water. Irri and Jhiqui fanned
her dry, while Doreah brushed her hair until it fell like a river of liquid silver down her
back. They scented her with spiceflower and cinnamon; a touch on each wrist, behind
her ears, on the tips of her milk-heavy breasts. The last dab was for her sex. Irri’s finger
felt as light and cool as a lover’s kiss as it slid softly up between her lips.
Afterward, Dany sent them all away, so she might prepare Khal Drogo for his final ride
into the night lands. She washed his body clean and brushed and oiled his hair, running
her fingers through it for the last time, feeling the weight of it, remembering the first
time she had touched it, the night of their wedding ride. His hair had never been cut.
How many men could die with their hair uncut? She buried her face in it and inhaled the
dark fragrance of the oils. He smelled like grass and warm earth, like smoke and semen
and horses. He smelled like Drogo. Forgive me, sun of my life, she thought. Forgive me
for all I have done and all I must do. I paid the price, my star, but it was too high, too
high . . .
Dany braided his hair and slid the silver rings onto his mustache and hung his bells one
by one. So many bells, gold and silver and bronze. Bells so his enemies would hear him
coming and grow weak with fear. She dressed him in horsehair leggings and high boots,
buckling a belt heavy with gold and silver medallions about his waist. Over his scarred
chest she slipped a painted vest, old and faded, the one Drogo had loved best. For herself
she chose loose sandsilk trousers, sandals that laced halfway up her legs, and a vest like
Drogo’s.
The sun was going down when she called them back to carry his body to the pyre. The
Dothraki watched in silence as Jhogo and Aggo bore him from the tent. Dany walked
behind them. They laid him down on his cushions and silks, his head toward the Mother
of Mountains far to the northeast.
“Oil,” she commanded, and they brought forth the jars and poured them over the pyre,
soaking the silks and the brush and the bundles of dry grass, until the oil trickled from
beneath the logs and the air was rich with fragrance. “Bring my eggs,” Dany commanded
�her handmaids. Something in her voice made them run.
Ser Jorah took her arm. “My queen, Drogo will have no use for dragon’s eggs in the night
lands. Better to sell them in Asshai. Sell one and we can buy a ship to take us back to the
Free Cities. Sell all three and you will be a wealthy woman all your days.”
“They were not given to me to sell,” Dany told him.
She climbed the pyre herself to place the eggs around her sun-and-stars. The black
beside his heart, under his arm. The green beside his head, his braid coiled around it.
The cream-and-gold down between his legs. When she kissed him for the last time, Dany
could taste the sweetness of the oil on his lips.
As she climbed down off the pyre, she noticed Mirri Maz Duur watching her. “You are
mad,” the godswife said hoarsely.
“Is it so far from madness to wisdom?” Dany asked. “Ser Jorah, take this maegi and bind
her to the pyre.”
“To the . . . my queen, no, hear me . . . ”
“Do as I say.” Still he hesitated, until her anger flared. “You swore to obey me, whatever
might come. Rakharo, help him.”
The godswife did not cry out as they dragged her to Khal Drogo’s pyre and staked her
down amidst his treasures. Dany poured the oil over the woman’s head herself. “I thank
you, Mirri Maz Duur,” she said, “for the lessons you have taught me.”
“You will not hear me scream,” Mirri responded as the oil dripped from her hair and
soaked her clothing.
“I will,” Dany said, “but it is not your screams I want, only your life. I remember what
you told me. Only death can pay for life.” Mirri Maz Duur opened her mouth, but made
no reply. As she stepped away, Dany saw that the contempt was gone from the maegi’s
flat black eyes; in its place was something that might have been fear. Then there was
nothing to be done but watch the sun and look for the first star.
When a horselord dies, his horse is slain with him, so he might ride proud into the night
lands. The bodies are burned beneath the open sky, and the khal rises on his fiery steed
to take his place among the stars. The more fiercely the man burned in life, the brighter
his star will shine in the darkness.
�Jhogo spied it first. “There,” he said in a hushed voice. Dany looked and saw it, low in
the east. The first star was a comet, burning red. Bloodred; fire red; the dragon’s tail. She
could not have asked for a stronger sign.
Dany took the torch from Aggo’s hand and thrust it between the logs. The oil took the
fire at once, the brush and dried grass a heartbeat later. Tiny flames went darting up the
wood like swift red mice, skating over the oil and leaping from bark to branch to leaf. A
rising heat puffed at her face, soft and sudden as a lover’s breath, but in seconds it had
grown too hot to bear. Dany stepped backward. The wood crackled, louder and louder.
Mirri Maz Duur began to sing in a shrill, ululating voice. The flames whirled and
writhed, racing each other up the platform. The dusk shimmered as the air itself seemed
to liquefy from the heat. Dany heard logs spit and crack. The fires swept over Mirri Maz
Duur. Her song grew louder, shriller . . . then she gasped, again and again, and her song
became a shuddering wail, thin and high and full of agony.
And now the flames reached her Drogo, and now they were all around him. His clothing
took fire, and for an instant the khal was clad in wisps of floating orange silk and tendrils
of curling smoke, grey and greasy. Dany’s lips parted and she found herself holding her
breath. Part of her wanted to go to him as Ser Jorah had feared, to rush into the flames
to beg for his forgiveness and take him inside her one last time, the fire melting the flesh
from their bones until they were as one, forever.
She could smell the odor of burning flesh, no different than horseflesh roasting in a
firepit. The pyre roared in the deepening dusk like some great beast, drowning out the
fainter sound of Mirri Maz Duur’s screaming and sending up long tongues of flame to
lick at the belly of the night. As the smoke grew thicker, the Dothraki backed away,
coughing. Huge orange gouts of fire unfurled their banners in that hellish wind, the logs
hissing and cracking, glowing cinders rising on the smoke to float away into the dark like
so many newborn fireflies. The heat beat at the air with great red wings, driving the
Dothraki back, driving off even Mormont, but Dany stood her ground. She was the blood
of the dragon, and the fire was in her.
She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she took a step closer to the
conflagration, but the brazier had not been hot enough. The flames writhed before her
like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and singing and spinning their
yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, alive with
heat. Dany opened her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. This is a wedding,
too, she thought. Mirri Maz Duur had fallen silent. The godswife thought her a child, but
children grow, and children learn.
Another step, and Dany could feel the heat of the sand on the soles of her feet, even
through her sandals. Sweat ran down her thighs and between her breasts and in rivulets
�over her cheeks, where tears had once run. Ser Jorah was shouting behind her, but he
did not matter anymore, only the fire mattered. The flames were so beautiful, the
loveliest things she had ever seen, each one a sorcerer robed in yellow and orange and
scarlet, swirling long smoky cloaks. She saw crimson firelions and great yellow serpents
and unicorns made of pale blue flame; she saw fish and foxes and monsters, wolves and
bright birds and flowering trees, each more beautiful than the last. She saw a horse, a
great grey stallion limned in smoke, its flowing mane a nimbus of blue flame. Yes, my
love, my sun-and-stars, yes, mount now, ride now.
Her vest had begun to smolder, so Dany shrugged it off and let it fall to the ground. The
painted leather burst into sudden flame as she skipped closer to the fire, her breasts bare
to the blaze, streams of milk flowing from her red and swollen nipples. Now, she
thought, now, and for an instant she glimpsed Khal Drogo before her, mounted on his
smoky stallion, a flaming lash in his hand. He smiled, and the whip snaked down at the
pyre, hissing.
She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. The platform of wood and brush and
grass began to shift and collapse in upon itself. Bits of burning wood slid down at her,
and Dany was showered with ash and cinders. And something else came crashing down,
bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet; a chunk of curved rock, pale and veined with
gold, broken and smoking. The roaring filled the world, yet dimly through the firefall
Dany heard women shriek and children cry out in wonder.
Only death can pay for life.
And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and the smoke stirred and
whirled around her and the pyre shifted, the logs exploding as the fire touched their
secret hearts. She heard the screams of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki
raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah calling her name and cursing. No, she
wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear for me. The fire is mine. I am
Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of dragons, mother of dragons, don’t
you see? Don’t you SEE? With a belch of flame and smoke that reached thirty feet into
the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped forward
into the firestorm, calling to her children.
The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world.
When the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to walk upon, Ser Jorah
Mormont found her amidst the ashes, surrounded by blackened logs and bits of glowing
ember and the burnt bones of man and woman and stallion. She was naked, covered
with soot, her clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair all crisped away . . . yet she was
unhurt.
�The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the green-and-bronze at the
right. Her arms cradled them close. The black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her
shoulders, its long sinuous neck coiled under her chin. When it saw Jorah, it raised its
head and looked at him with eyes as red as coals.
Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came up behind him. Jhogo
was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his
face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my
blood,” Rakharo shouted.
And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki, men and
women and children, and Dany had only to look at their eyes to know that they were
hers now, today and tomorrow and forever, hers as they had never been Drogo’s.
As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its
mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices
to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in
hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.
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HOUSE BARATHEON
The youngest of the Great Houses, born during the Wars of Conquest. Its
founder, Orys Baratheon, was rumored to be Aegon the Dragon’s bastard
brother. Orys rose through the ranks to become one of Aegon’s fiercest
commanders. When he defeated and slew Argilac the Arrogant, the last
Storm King, Aegon rewarded him with Argilac’s castle, lands, and daughter.
Orys took the girl to bride, and adopted the banner, honors, and words of
her line. The Baratheon sigil is a crowned stag, black, on a golden field.
Their words are Ours is the Fury.
KING ROBERT BARATHEON, the First of His Name,
—his wife, QUEEN CERSEI, of House Lannister,
—their children:
—PRINCE JOFFREY, heir to the Iron Throne, twelve,
—PRINCESS MYRCELLA, a girl of eight,
—PRINCE TOMMEN, a boy of seven,
—his brothers:
—STANNIS BARATHEON, Lord of Dragonstone,
—his wife, LADY SELYSE of House Florent,
—their daughter, SHIREEN, a girl of nine,
—RENLY BARATHEON, Lord of Storm’s End,
—his small council:
—GRAND MAESTER PYCELLE,
�—LORD PETYR BAELISH, called LITTLEFINGER, master of coin,
—LORD STANNIS BARATHEON, master of ships,
—LORD RENLY BARATHEON, master of laws,
—SER BARRISTAN SELMY, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard,
—VARYS, a eunuch, called the Spider, master of whisperers,
—his court and retainers:
—SER ILYN PAYNE, the King’s Justice, a headsman,
—SANDOR CLEGANE, called the Hound, sworn shield to Prince
Joffrey,
—JANOS SLYNT, a commoner, commander of the City Watch of
King’s Landing,
—JALABAR XHO, an exile prince from the Summer Isles,
—MOON BOY, a jester and fool,
—LANCEL and TYREK LANNISTER, squires to the king, the queen’s
cousins,
—SER ARON SANTAGAR, master-at-arms,
—his Kingsguard:
—SER BARRISTAN SELMY, Lord Commander,
—SER JAIME LANNISTER, called the Kingslayer,
—SER BOROS BLOUNT,
—SER MERYN TRANT,
—SER ARYS OAKHEART,
�—SER PRESTON GREENFIELD,
—SER MANDON MOORE,
The principal houses sworn to Storm’s End are Selmy, Wylde, Trant,
Penrose, Errol, Estermont, Tarth, Swann, Dondarrion, Caron.
The principal houses sworn to Dragonstone are Celtigar, Velaryon, Seaworth,
Bar Emmon, and Sunglass.
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HOUSE STARK
The Starks trace their descent from Brandon the Builder and the ancient
Kings of Winter. For thousands of years they ruled from Winterfell as Kings
in the North, until Torrhen Stark, the King Who Knelt, chose to swear fealty
to Aegon the Dragon rather than give battle. Their blazon is a grey direwolf
on an ice-white field. The Stark words are Winter Is Coming.
EDDARD STARK, Lord of Winterfell, Warden of the North,
—his wife, LADY CATELYN, of House Tully,
—their children:
—ROBB, the heir to Winterfell, fourteen years of age,
—SANSA, the eldest daughter, eleven,
—ARYA, the younger daughter, a girl of nine,
—BRANDON, called Bran, seven,
—RICKON, a boy of three,
—his bastard son, JON SNOW, a boy of fourteen,
—his ward, THEON GREYJOY, heir to the Iron Islands,
—his siblings:
—{BRANDON}, his elder brother, murdered by the command of
Aerys II Targaryen,
—{LYANNA}, his younger sister, died in the mountains of Dorne,
—BENJEN, his younger brother, a man of the Night’s Watch,
�—his household:
—MAESTER LUWIN, counsellor, healer, and tutor,
—VAYON POOLE, steward of Winterfell,
—JEYNE, his daughter, Sansa’s closest friend,
—JORY CASSEL, captain of the guard,
—HALLIS MOLLEN, DESMOND, JACKS, PORTHER, QUENT, ALYN,
TOMARD, VARLY, HEWARD, CAYN, WYL, guardsmen,
—SER RODRIK CASSEL, master-at-arms, Jory’s uncle,
—BETH, his young daughter,
—SEPTA MORDANE, tutor to Lord Eddard’s daughters,
—SEPTON CHAYLE, keeper of the castle sept and library,
—HULLEN, master of horse,
—his son, HARWIN, a guardsman,
—JOSETH, a stableman and horse trainer,
—FARLEN, kennelmaster,
—OLD NAN, storyteller, once a wet nurse,
—HODOR, her great-grandson, a simpleminded stableboy,
—GAGE, the cook,
—MIKKEN, smith and armorer,
—his principal lords and bannermen,
—SER HELMAN TALLHART,
�—RICKARD KARSTARK, Lord of Karhold,
—ROOSE BOLTON, Lord of the Dreadfort,
—JON UMBER, called the Greatjon,
—GALBART AND ROBETT GLOVER,
—WYMAN MANDERLY, Lord of White Harbor,
—MAEGE MORMONT, the Lady of Bear Island,
The principal houses sworn to Winterfell are Karstark, Umber, Flint,
Mormont, Hornwood, Cerwyn, Reed, Manderly, Glover, Tallhart, Bolton.
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HOUSE LANNISTER
Fair-haired, tall, and handsome, the Lannisters are the blood of Andal
adventurers who carved out a mighty kingdom in the western hills and
valleys. Through the female line they claim descent from Lann the Clever,
the legendary trickster of the Age of Heroes. The gold of Casterly Rock and
the Golden Tooth has made them the wealthiest of the Great Houses. Their
sigil is a golden lion upon a crimson field. The Lannister words are Hear Me
Roar!
TYWIN LANNISTER, Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the West, Shield of
Lannisport,
—his wife, {LADY JOANNA}, a cousin, died in childbed,
—their children:
—SER JAIME, called the Kingslayer, heir to Casterly Rock, a twin to
Cersei,
—QUEEN CERSEI, wife of King Robert I Baratheon, a twin to Jaime,
—TYRION, called the Imp, a dwarf,
—his siblings:
—SER KEVAN, his eldest brother,
—his wife, DORNA, of House Swyft,
—their eldest son, LANCEL, squire to the king,
—their twin sons, WILLEM and MARTYN,
—their infant daughter, JANEI,
—GENNA, his sister, wed to Ser Emmon Frey,
�—their son, SER CLEOS FREY,
—their son, TION FREY, a squire,
—{SER TYGETT}, his second brother, died of a pox,
—his widow, DARLESSA, of House Marbrand,
—their son, TYREK, squire to the king,
—{GERION}, his youngest brother, lost at sea,
—his bastard daughter, JOY, a girl of ten,
—their cousin, SER STAFFORD LANNISTER, brother to the late
Lady Joanna,
—his daughters, CERENNA and MYRIELLE,
—his son, SER DAVEN LANNISTER,
—his counselor, MAESTER CREYLEN,
—his chief knights and lords bannermen:
—LORD LEO LEFFORD,
—SER ADDAM MARBRAND,
—SER GREGOR CLEGANE, the Mountain That Rides,
—SER HARYS SWYFT, father by marriage to Ser Kevan,
—LORD ANDROX BRAX,
—SER FORLEY PRESTER,
—SER AMORY LOACH,
—VARGO HOAT, of the Free City of Qohor, a sellsword,
�Principal houses sworn to Casterly Rock are Payne, Swyft, Marbrand,
Lydden, Banefort, Lefford, Crakehall, Serrett, Broom, Clegane, Prester, and
Westerling.
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HOUSE ARRYN
The Arryns are descended from the Kings of Mountain and Vale, one of the
oldest and purest lines of Andal nobility. Their sigil is the moon-and-falcon,
white, upon a sky-blue field. The Arryn words are As High As Honor.
{JON ARRYN}, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, Warden of the
East, Hand of the King, recently deceased,
—his first wife, {LADY JEYNE, of House Royce}, died in childbed, her
daughter stillborn,
—his second wife, {LADY ROWENA, of House Arryn}, his cousin, died
of a winter chill, childless,
—his third wife and widow, LADY LYSA, of House Tully,
—their son:
—ROBERT ARRYN, a sickly boy of six years, now Lord of the Eyrie
and Defender of the Vale,
—their retainers and household:
—MAESTER COLEMON, counselor, healer, and tutor,
—SER VARDIS EGEN, captain of the guard,
—SER BRYNDEN TULLY, called the Blackfish, Knight of the Gate
and uncle to Lady Lysa,
—LORD NESTOR ROYCE, High Steward of the Vale,
—SER ALBAR ROYCE, his son,
—MYA STONE, a bastard girl in his service,
�—LORD EON HUNTER, suitor to Lady Lysa,
—SER LYN CORBRAY, suitor to Lady Lysa,
—MYCHEL REDFORT, his squire,
—LADY ANYA WAYNWOOD, a widow,
—SER MORTON WAYNWOOD, her son, suitor to Lady Lysa,
—SER DONNEL WAYNWOOD, her son,
—MORD, a brutal gaoler,
The principal houses sworn to the Eyrie are Royce, Baelish, Egen,
Waynwood, Hunter, Redfort, Corbray, Belmore, Melcolm, and Hersy.
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HOUSE TULLY
The Tullys never reigned as kings, though they held rich lands and the great
castle at Riverrun for a thousand years. During the Wars of Conquest, the
riverlands belonged to Harren the Black, King of the Isles. Harren’s
grandfather, King Harwyn Hardhand, had taken the Trident from Arrec the
Storm King, whose ancestors had conquered all the way to the Neck three
hundred years earlier, slaying the last of the old River Kings. A vain and
bloody tyrant, Harren the Black was little loved by those he ruled, and many
of the river lords deserted him to join Aegon’s army. First among those was
Edmyn Tully of Riverrun. When Harren and his line perished in the burning
of Harrenhal, Aegon rewarded House Tully by raising Lord Edmyn to
dominion over the lands of the Trident and requiring the other river lords to
swear him fealty. The Tully sigil is a leaping trout, silver, on a field of
rippling blue and red. The Tully words are Family, Duty, Honor.
HOSTER TULLY, Lord of Riverrun,
—his wife, {LADY MINISA, of House Whent}, died in childbed,
—their children:
—CATELYN, the eldest daughter, wed to Lord Eddard Stark,
—LYSA, the younger daughter, wed to Lord Jon Arryn,
—SER EDMURE, heir to Riverrun,
—his brother, SER BRYNDEN, called the Blackfish,
—his household:
—MAESTER VYMAN, counselor, healer, and tutor,
—SER DESMOND GRELL, master-at-arms,
—SER ROBIN RYGER, captain of the guard,
�—UTHERYDES WAYN, steward of Riverrun,
—his knights and lords bannermen:
—JASON MALLISTER, Lord of Seagate,
—PATREK MALLISTER, his son and heir,
—WALDER FREY, Lord of the Crossing,
—his numerous sons, grandsons, and bastards,
—JONOS BRACKEN, Lord of the Stone Hedge,
—TYTOS BLACKWOOD, Lord of Raventree,
—SER RAYMUN DARRY,
—SER KARYL VANCE,
—SER MARQ PIPER,
—SHELLA WHENT, Lady of Harrenhal,
—SER WILLIS WODE, a knight in her service,
Lesser houses sworn to Riverrun include Darry, Frey, Mallister, Bracken,
Blackwood, Whent, Ryger, Piper, Vance.
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HOUSE TYRELL
The Tyrells rose to power as stewards to the Kings of the Reach, whose
domains included the fertile plains of the southwest from the Dornish
marches and Blackwater Rush to the shores of the Sunset Sea. Through the
female line they claim descent from Garth Greenhand, gardener king of the
First Men, who wore a crown of vines and flowers and made the land bloom.
When King Mern, last of the old line, perished on the Field of Fire, his
steward Harlen Tyrell surrendered Highgarden to Aegon Targaryen, pledging
fealty. Aegon granted him the castle and dominion over the Reach. The
Tyrell sigil is a golden rose on a grass-green field. Their words are Growing
Strong
MACE TYRELL, Lord of Highgarden, Warden of the South, Defender of the
Marches, High Marshal of the Reach,
—his wife, LADY ALERIE, of House Hightower of Oldtown,
—their children:
—WILLAS, their eldest son, heir to Highgarden,
—SER GARLAN, called the Gallant, their second son,
—SER LORAS, the Knight of Flowers, their youngest son,
—MARGAERY, their daughter, a maid of fourteen years,
—his widowed mother, LADY OLENNA of House Redwyne, called the
Queen of Thorns,
—his sisters:
—MINA, web to Lord Paxter Redwyne,
—JANNA, wed to Ser Jon Fossoway,
�—his uncles:
—GARTH, called the Gross, Lord Seneschal of Highgarden,
—his bastard sons, GARSE and GARRETT FLOWERS,
—SER MORYN, Lord Commander of the City Watch of Oldtown,
—MAESTER GORMON, a scholar of the Citadel,
—his household:
—MAESTER LOMYS, counselor, healer, and tutor,
—IGON VYRWEL, captain of the guard,
—SER VORTIMER CRANE, master-at-arms,
—his knights and lords bannermen:
—PAXTER REDWYNE, Lord of the Arbor,
—his wife, LADY MINA, of House Tyrell,
—their children:
—SER HORAS, mocked as Horror, twin to Hobber,
—SER HOBBER, mocked as Slobber, twin to Horas,
—DESMERA, a maid of fifteen,
—RANDYLL TARLY, Lord of Horn Hill,
—SAMWELL, his elder son, of the Night’s Watch,
—DICKON, his younger son, heir to Horn Hill,
—ARWYN OAKHEART, Lady of Old Oak,
—MATHIS ROWAN, Lord of Goldengrove,
�—LEYTON HIGHTOWER, Voice of Oldtown, Lord of the Port,
—SER JON FOSSOWAY,
Principal houses sworn to Highgarden are Vrywel, Florent, Oakheart,
Hightower, Crane, Tarly, Redwyne, Rowan, Fossoway, and Mullendore.
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HOUSE GREYJOY
The Greyjoys of Pyke claim descent from the Grey King of the Age of
Heroes. Legend says the Grey King ruled not only the western isles but the
sea itself, and took a mermaid to wife.
For thousands of years, raiders from the Iron Islands—called “ironmen” by
those they plundered—were the terrors of the seas, sailing as far as the Port
of Ibben and the Summer Isles. They prided themselves on their fierceness
in battle and their sacred freedoms. Each island had its own “salt king” and
“rock king.” The High King of the Isles was chosen from among their
number, until King Urron made the throne hereditary by murdering the other
kings when they assembled for a choosing. Urron’s own line was
extinguished a thousand years later when the Andals swept over the islands.
The Greyjoys, like other island lords, intermarried with the conquerors.
The Iron Kings extended their rule far beyond the isles themselves, carving
kingdoms out of the mainland with fire and sword. King Qhored could
truthfully boast that his writ ran “wherever men can smell salt water or hear
the crash of waves.” In later centuries, Qhored’s descendants lost the Arbor,
Oldtown, Bear Island, and much of the western shore. Still, come the Wars
of Conquest, King Harren the Black ruled all the lands between the
mountains, from the Neck to the Blackwater Rush. When Harren and his
sons perished in the fall of Harrenhal, Aegon Targaryen granted the
riverlands to House Tully, and allowed the surviving lords of the Iron Islands
to revive their ancient custom and choose who should have the primacy
among them. They chose Lord Vickon Greyjoy of Pyke.
The Greyjoy sigil is a golden kraken upon a black field. Their words are We
Do Not Sow.
BALON GREYJOY, Lord of the Iron Islands, King of Salt and Rock, Son of
the Sea Wind, Lord Reaper of Pyke.
—his wife, LADY ALANNYS, of House Harlaw,
—their children:
�—{RODRIK}, their eldest son, slain at Seagard during Greyjoy’s
Rebellion,
—{MARON}, their second son, slain on the walls of Pyke during
Greyjoy’s Rebellion,
—ASHA, their daughter, captain of the Black Wind,
—THEON, their sole surviving son, heir to Pyke, a ward of Lord
Eddard Stark,
—his brothers:
—EURON, called Crow’s Eye, captain of the Silence, an outlaw,
pirate, and raider,
—VICTARION, Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet,
—AERON, called Damphair, a priest of the Drowned God,
Lesser houses sworn to Pyke include Harlaw, Stonehouse, Merlyn, Sunderly,
Botley, Tawney, Wynch, Goodbrother.
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HOUSE MARTELL
Nymeria, the warrior queen of the Rhoyne, brought her ten thousand ships
to land in Dorne, the southernmost of the Seven Kingdoms, and took Lord
Mors Martell to husband. With her help, he vanquished his rivals to rule all
Dorne. The Rhoynar influence remains strong. Thus Dornish rulers style
themselves “Prince” rather than “King.” Under Dornish law, lands and titles
pass to the eldest child, not the eldest male. Dorne, alone of the Seven
Kingdoms, was never conquered by Aegon the Dragon. It was not
permanently joined to the realm until two hundred years later, and then by
marriage and treaty, not the sword. Peaceable King Daeron II succeeded
where the warriors had failed by wedding the Dornish princess Myriah and
giving his own sister in marriage to the reigning Prince of Dorne. The Martell
banner is a red sun pierced by a golden spear. Their words are Unbowed,
Unbent, Unbroken.
DORAN NYMEROS MARTELL, Lord of Sunspear, Prince of Dorne,
—his wife, MELLARIO, of the Free City of Norvos,
—their children:
—PRINCESS ARIANNE, their eldest daughter, heir to Sunspear,
—PRINCE QUENTYN, their eldest son,
—PRINCE TRYSTANE, their younger son,
—his siblings:
—his sister, {PRINCESS ELIA}, wed to Prince Rhaegar Targaryen,
slain during the Sack of King’s Landing,
—their children:
—{PRINCESS RHAENYS}, a young girl, slain during the Sack
of King’s Landing,
�—{PRINCE AEGON}, a babe, slain during the Sack of King’s
Landing,
—his brother, PRINCE OBERYN, the Red Viper,
—his household:
—AREO HOTAH, a Norvashi sellsword, captain of guards,
—MAESTER CALEOTTE, counselor, healer, and tutor,
—his knights and lords bannermen:
—EDRIC DAYNE, Lord of Starfall,
The principal houses sworn to Sunspear include Jordayne, Santagar,
Allyrion, Toland, Yronwood, Wyl, Fowler, and Dayne.
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The Old Dynasty
HOUSE TARGARYEN
The Targaryens are the blood of the dragon, descended from the high lords
of the ancient Freehold of Valyria, their heritage proclaimed in a striking
(some say inhuman) beauty, with lilac or indigo or violet eyes and hair of
silver-gold or platinum white.
Aegon the Dragon’s ancestors escaped the Doom of Valyria and the chaos
and slaughter that followed to settle on Dragonstone, a rocky island in the
narrow sea. It was from there that Aegon and his sisters sailed to conquer
the Seven Kingdoms. To preserve the blood royal and keep it pure, House
Targaryen has often followed the Valyrian custom of wedding brother to
sister. Aegon himself took both his sisters to wife, and fathered sons on
each. The Targaryen banner is a three-headed dragon, red on black, the
three heads representing Aegon and his sisters. The Targaryen words are
Fire and Blood.
THE TARGARYEN SUCCESSION
dated by years after Aegon’s Landing
1-37
Aegon I
Aegon the Conqueror, Aegon the Dragon,
37-42
Aenys I
son of Aegon and Rhaenys,
42-48
Maegor I
Maegor the Cruel, son of Aegon and Visenya,
48-103
�Jaehaerys I
the Old King, the Conciliator, Aenys’ son,
103-129
Viserys I
grandson to Jaehaerys,
129-131
Aegon II
eldest son of Viserys,
[Aegon II’s ascent was disputed by his sister Rhaenyra, a year his elder. Both
perished in the war between them, called by singers the Dance of the Dragons.]
131-157
Aegon III
the Dragonbane, Rhaenyra’s son,
[The last of the Targaryen dragons died during the reign of Aegon III.]
157-161
Daeron I
the Young Dragon, the Boy King, eldest son of Aegon III,
[Daeron conquered Dorne, but was unable to hold it, and died young.]
161-171
Baelor I
the Beloved, the Blessed, septon and king, second son of Aegon III,
171-172
Viserys II
fourth son of Aegon III,
172-184
Aegon IV
the Unworthy, eldest son of Viserys,
[His younger brother, Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, was champion and some
say lover to Queen Naerys.]
184-209
Daeron II
Queen Naerys’ son, by Aegon or Aemon,
[Daeron brought Dorne into the realm by wedding the Dornish princess Myriah.]
209-221
�Aerys I
second son to Daeron II (left no issue),
221-233
Maekar I
fourth son of Daeron II,
233-259
Aegon V
the Unlikely, Maekar’s fourth son,
259-262
Jaehaerys II
second son of Aegon the Unlikely,
262-283
Aerys II
the Mad King, only son to Jaehaerys,
Therein the line of the dragon kings ended, when Aerys II was dethroned
and killed, along with his heir, the crown prince Rhaegar Targaryen, slain by
Robert Baratheon on the Trident.
THE LAST TARGARYENS
{KING AERYS TARGARYEN}, the Second of His Name, slain by Jaime
Lannister during the Sack of King’s Landing,
—his sister and wife, {QUEEN RHAELLA} of House Targaryen, died in
childbed on Dragonstone,
—their children:
—{PRINCE RHAEGAR}, heir to the Iron Throne, slain by Robert
Baratheon on the Trident,
—his wife, {PRINCESS ELIA} of House Martell, slain during the
Sack of King’s Landing,
—their children:
�—{PRINCESS RHAENYS}, a young girl, slain during the sack
of King’s Landing,
—{PRINCE AEGON}, a babe, slain during the sack of King’s
Landing,
—PRINCE VISERYS, styling himself Viserys, the Third of His Name,
Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, called the Beggar King,
—PRINCESS DAENERYS, called Daenerys Stormborn, a maid of
thirteen years.
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
CHAPTER ONE
THE BOY WHO LIVED
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.
Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.
The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs. Potter was Mrs. Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbors would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that.
When Mr. and Mrs. Dursley woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Mr. Dursley hummed as he picked out his most boring tie for work, and Mrs. Dursley gossiped away happily as she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his high chair.
None of them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the window.
At half past eight, Mr. Dursley picked up his briefcase, pecked Mrs. Dursley on the cheek, and tried to kiss Dudley good-bye but missed, because Dudley was now having a tantrum and throwing his cereal at the walls. “Little tyke,” chortled Mr. Dursley as he left the house. He got into his car and backed out of number four’s drive.
It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something peculiar — a cat reading a map. For a second, Mr. Dursley didn’t realize what he had seen — then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat standing on the corner of Privet Drive, but there wasn’t a map in sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the light. Mr. Dursley blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr. Dursley drove around the corner and up the road, he watched the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Privet Drive — no, looking at the sign; cats couldn’t read maps or signs. Mr. Dursley gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove toward town he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was hoping to get that day.
But on the edge of town, drills were driven out of his mind by something else. As he sat in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn’t help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. Mr. Dursley couldn’t bear people who dressed in funny clothes — the getups you saw on young people! He supposed this was some stupid new fashion. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing quite close by. They were whispering excitedly together. Mr. Dursley was enraged to see that a couple of them weren’t young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and wearing an emerald-green cloak! The nerve of him! But then it struck Mr. Dursley that this was probably some silly stunt — these people were obviously collecting for something…
yes, that would be it. The traffic moved on and a few minutes later, Mr. Dursley arrived in the Grunnings parking lot, his mind back on drills.
Mr. Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his office on the ninth floor. If he hadn’t, he might have found it harder to concentrate on drills that morning. He didn’t see the owls swoop ing past in broad daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed open- mouthed as owl after owl sped overhead. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr. Dursley, however, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a bit more. He was in a very good mood until lunchtime, when he thought he’d stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a bun from the bakery.
He’d forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn’t know why, but they made him uneasy. This bunch were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he caught a few words of what they were saying.
“The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I heard yes, their son, Harry”
Mr. Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but thought better of it.
He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his telephone, and had almost finished dialing his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver back down and stroked his mustache, thinking… no, he was being stupid. Potter wasn’t such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a son called Harry. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure his nephew was called Harry. He’d never even seen the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or Harold. There was no point in worrying Mrs. Dursley; she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn’t blame her — if he’d had a sister like that… but all the same, those people in cloaks…
He found it a lot harder to concentrate on drills that afternoon and when he left the building at five o’clock, he was still so worried that he walked straight into someone just outside the door.
“Sorry,” he grunted, as the tiny old man stumbled and almost fell. It was a few seconds before Mr. Dursley realized that the man was wearing a violet cloak. He didn’t seem at all upset at being almost knocked to the ground. On the contrary, his face split into a wide smile and he said in a squeaky voice that made passersby stare, “Don’t be sorry, my dear sir, for nothing could upset me today! Rejoice, for You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even Muggles like yourself should be celebrating, this happy, happy day!”
And the old man hugged Mr. Dursley around the middle and walked off.
Mr. Dursley stood rooted to the spot. He had been hugged by a complete stranger. He also thought he had been called a Muggle, whatever that was. He was rattled. He hurried to his car and set off for home, hoping he was imagining things, which he had never hoped before, because he didn’t approve of imagination.
As he pulled into the driveway of number four, the first thing he saw — and it didn’t improve his mood — was the tabby cat he’d spotted that morning. It was now sitting on his garden wall. He was sure it was the same one; it had the same markings around its eyes.
“Shoo!” said Mr. Dursley loudly. The cat didn’t move. It just gave him a stern look. Was this normal cat behavior? Mr. Dursley wondered. Trying to pull himself together, he let himself into the house. He was still determined not to mention anything to his wife.
Mrs. Dursley had had a nice, normal day. She told him over dinner all about Mrs. Next Door’s problems with her daughter and how Dudley had learned a new word (“Won’t!”). Mr. Dursley tried to act normally. When Dudley had been put to bed, he went into the living room in time to catch the last report on the evening news: “And finally, bird-watchers everywhere have reported that the nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Although owls normally hunt at night and are hardly ever seen in daylight, there have been hundreds of sightings of these birds flying in every direction since sunrise. Experts are unable to explain why the owls have suddenly changed their sleeping pattern.” The newscaster allowed himself a grin.
“Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim McGuffin with the weather. Going to be any more showers of owls tonight, Jim?”
“Well, Ted,” said the weatherman, “I don’t know about that, but it’s not only the owls that have been acting oddly today. Viewers as far apart as Kent, Yorkshire, and Dundee have been phoning in to tell me that instead of the rain I promised yesterday, they’ve had a downpour of shooting stars! Perhaps people have been celebrating Bonfire Night early — it’s not until next week, folks! But I can promise a wet night tonight.”
Mr. Dursley sat frozen in his armchair. Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls flying by daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all over the place? And a whisper, a whisper about the Potters…
Mrs. Dursley came into the living room carrying two cups of tea. It was no good. He’d have to say something to her. He cleared his throat nervously. “Er — Petunia, dear — you haven’t heard from your sister lately, have you?”
As he had expected, Mrs. Dursley looked shocked and angry. After all, they normally pretended she didn’t have a sister.
“No,” she said sharply. “Why?”
“Funny stuff on the news,” Mr. Dursley mumbled. “Owls… shooting stars… and there were a lot of funny-looking people in town today…”
“So?” snapped Mrs. Dursley.
“Well, I just thought… maybe… it was something to do with… you know… her crowd.”
Mrs. Dursley sipped her tea through pursed lips. Mr. Dursley wondered whether he dared tell her he’d heard the name “Potter.” He decided he didn’t dare. Instead he said, as casually as he could, “Their son — he’d be about Dudley’s age now, wouldn’t he?”
“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Dursley stiffly.
“What’s his name again? Howard, isn’t it?”
“Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Dursley, his heart sinking horribly. “Yes, I quite agree.”
He didn’t say another word on the subject as they went upstairs to bed.
While Mrs. Dursley was in the bathroom, Mr. Dursley crept to the bedroom window and peered down into the front garden. The cat was still there.
It was staring down Privet Drive as though it were waiting for something.
Was he imagining things? Could all this have anything to do with the Potters? If it did… if it got out that they were related to a pair of — well, he didn’t think he could bear it.
The Dursleys got into bed. Mrs. Dursley fell asleep quickly but Mr. Dursley lay awake, turning it all over in his mind. His last, comforting thought before he fell asleep was that even if the Potters were involved, there was no reason for them to come near him and Mrs. Dursley. The Potters knew very well what he and Petunia thought about them and their kind…. He couldn’t see how he and Petunia could get mixed up in anything that might be going on — he yawned and turned over — it couldn’t affect them….
How very wrong he was.
Mr. Dursley might have been drifting into an uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall outside was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was sitting as still as a statue, its eyes fixed unblinkingly on the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn’t so much as quiver when a car door slammed on the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all.
A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appeared so suddenly and silently you’d have thought he’d just popped out of the ground. The cat’s tail twitched and its eyes narrowed.
Nothing like this man had ever been seen on Privet Drive. He was tall, thin, and very old, judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak that swept the ground, and high-heeled, buckled boots.
His blue eyes were light, bright, and sparkling behind half-moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. This man’s name was Albus Dumbledore.
Albus Dumbledore didn’t seem to realize that he had just arrived in a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realize he was being watched, because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered, “I should have known.”
He found what he was looking for in his inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in the air, and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. He clicked it again — the next lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve times he clicked the Put-Outer, until the only lights left on the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance, which were the eyes of the cat watching him. If anyone looked out of their window now, even beady-eyed Mrs. Dursley, they wouldn’t be able to see anything that was happening down on the pavement. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off down the street toward number four, where he sat down on the wall next to the cat. He didn’t look at it, but after a moment he spoke to it.
“Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall.”
He turned to smile at the tabby, but it had gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather severe-looking woman who was wearing square glasses exactly the shape of the markings the cat had had around its eyes. She, too, was wearing a cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair was drawn into a tight bun. She looked distinctly ruffled.
“How did you know it was me?” she asked.
“My dear Professor, I ‘ve never seen a cat sit so stiffly.”
“You’d be stiff if you’d been sitting on a brick wall all day,” said Professor McGonagall.
“All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here.”
Professor McGonagall sniffed angrily.
“Oh yes, everyone’s celebrating, all right,” she said impatiently.
“You’d think they’d be a bit more careful, but no — even the Muggles have noticed something’s going on. It was on their news.” She jerked her head back at the Dursleys’ dark living-room window. “I heard it. Flocks of owls… shooting stars…. Well, they’re not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent — I’ll bet that was Dedalus Diggle. He never had much sense.”
“You can’t blame them,” said Dumbledore gently. “We’ve had precious little to celebrate for eleven years.”
“I know that,” said Professor McGonagall irritably. “But that’s no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle clothes, swapping rumors.”
She threw a sharp, sideways glance at Dumbledore here, as though hoping he was going to tell her something, but he didn’t, so she went on. “A fine thing it would be if, on the very day YouKnow-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?”
“It certainly seems so,” said Dumbledore. “We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a lemon drop?”
“A what?”
“A lemon drop. They’re a kind of Muggle sweet I’m rather fond of”
“No, thank you,” said Professor McGonagall coldly, as though she didn’t think this was the moment for lemon drops. “As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone -”
“My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this ‘You- Know-Who’ nonsense — for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort.” Professor McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore, who was unsticking two lemon drops, seemed not to notice. “It all gets so confusing if we keep saying ‘You-Know-Who.’ I have never seen any reason to be frightened of saying Voldemort’s name.
“I know you haven ‘t, said Professor McGonagall, sounding half exasperated, half admiring. “But you’re different. Everyone knows you’re the only one You-Know- oh, all right, Voldemort, was frightened of.”
“You flatter me,” said Dumbledore calmly. “Voldemort had powers I will never have.”
“Only because you’re too — well — noble to use them.”
“It’s lucky it’s dark. I haven’t blushed so much since Madam Pomfrey told me she liked my new earmuffs.”
Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and said, “The owls are nothing next to the rumors that are flying around. You know what everyone’s saying? About why he’s disappeared? About what finally stopped him?”
It seemed that Professor McGonagall had reached the point she was most anxious to discuss, the real reason she had been waiting on a cold, hard wall all day, for neither as a cat nor as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore with such a piercing stare as she did now. It was plain that whatever “everyone” was saying, she was not going to believe it until Dumbledore told her it was true. Dumbledore, however, was choosing another lemon drop and did not answer.
“What they’re saying,” she pressed on, “is that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric’s Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumor is that Lily and James Potter are — are — that they’re — dead. ì
Dumbledore bowed his head. Professor McGonagall gasped.
“Lily and James… I can’t believe it… I didn’t want to believe it…
Oh, Albus…”
Dumbledore reached out and patted her on the shoulder. “I know… I know…” he said heavily.
Professor McGonagall’s voice trembled as she went on. “That’s not all.
They’re saying he tried to kill the Potter’s son, Harry. But — he couldn’t. He couldn’t kill that little boy. No one knows why, or how, but they’re saying that when he couldn’t kill Harry Potter, Voldemort’s power somehow broke — and that’s why he’s gone.
Dumbledore nodded glumly.
“It’s — it’s true?” faltered Professor McGonagall. “After all he’s done… all the people he’s killed… he couldn’t kill a little boy? It’s just astounding… of all the things to stop him… but how in the name of heaven did Harry survive?”
“We can only guess,” said Dumbledore. “We may never know.”
Professor McGonagall pulled out a lace handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes beneath her spectacles. Dumbledore gave a great sniff as he took a golden watch from his pocket and examined it. It was a very odd watch.
It had twelve hands but no numbers; instead, little planets were moving around the edge. It must have made sense to Dumbledore, though, because he put it back in his pocket and said, “Hagrid’s late. I suppose it was he who told you I’d be here, by the way?”
“Yes,” said Professor McGonagall. “And I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you’re here, of all places?”
“I’ve come to bring Harry to his aunt and uncle. They’re the only family he has left now.”
“You don’t mean — you can’t mean the people who live here?” cried Professor McGonagall, jumping to her feet and pointing at number four.
“Dumbledore — you can’t. I’ve been watching them all day. You couldn’t find two people who are less like us. And they’ve got this son — I saw him kicking his mother all the way up the street, screaming for sweets.
Harry Potter come and live here!”
“It’s the best place for him,” said Dumbledore firmly. “His aunt and uncle will be able to explain everything to him when he’s older. I’ve written them a letter.”
“A letter?” repeated Professor McGonagall faintly, sitting back down on the wall. “Really, Dumbledore, you think you can explain all this in a letter? These people will never understand him! He’ll be famous — a legend — I wouldn’t be surprised if today was known as Harry Potter day in the future — there will be books written about Harry — every child in our world will know his name!”
“Exactly,” said Dumbledore, looking very seriously over the top of his half-moon glasses. “It would be enough to turn any boy’s head. Famous before he can walk and talk! Famous for something he won’t even remember! CarA you see how much better off he’ll be, growing up away from all that until he’s ready to take it?”
Professor McGonagall opened her mouth, changed her mind, swallowed, and then said, “Yes — yes, you’re right, of course. But how is the boy getting here, Dumbledore?” She eyed his cloak suddenly as though she thought he might be hiding Harry underneath it.
“Hagrid’s bringing him.”
“You think it — wise — to trust Hagrid with something as important as this?”
I would trust Hagrid with my life,” said Dumbledore.
“I’m not saying his heart isn’t in the right place,” said Professor McGonagall grudgingly, “but you can’t pretend he’s not careless. He does tend to — what was that?”
A low rumbling sound had broken the silence around them. It grew steadily louder as they looked up and down the street for some sign of a headlight; it swelled to a roar as they both looked up at the sky — and a huge motorcycle fell out of the air and landed on the road in front of them.
If the motorcycle was huge, it was nothing to the man sitting astride it. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. He looked simply too big to be allowed, and so wild – long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid most of his face, he had hands the size of trash can lids, and his feet in their leather boots were like baby dolphins. In his vast, muscular arms he was holding a bundle of blankets.
“Hagrid,” said Dumbledore, sounding relieved. “At last. And where did you get that motorcycle?”
“Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore, sit,” said the giant, climbing carefully off the motorcycle as he spoke. “Young Sirius Black lent it to me. I’ve got him, sir.”
“No problems, were there?”
“No, sir — house was almost destroyed, but I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin’ around. He fell asleep as we was flyin’ over Bristol.”
Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall bent forward over the bundle of blankets. Inside, just visible, was a baby boy, fast asleep. Under a tuft of jet-black hair over his forehead they could see a curiously shaped cut, like a bolt of lightning.
“Is that where -?” whispered Professor McGonagall.
“Yes,” said Dumbledore. “He’ll have that scar forever.”
“Couldn’t you do something about it, Dumbledore?”
“Even if I could, I wouldn’t. Scars can come in handy. I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground. Well — give him here, Hagrid — we’d better get this over with.”
Dumbledore took Harry in his arms and turned toward the Dursleys’ house.
“Could I — could I say good-bye to him, sir?” asked Hagrid. He bent his great, shaggy head over Harry and gave him what must have been a very scratchy, whiskery kiss. Then, suddenly, Hagrid let out a howl like a wounded dog.
“Shhh!” hissed Professor McGonagall, “you’ll wake the Muggles!”
“S-s-sorry,” sobbed Hagrid, taking out a large, spotted handkerchief and burying his face in it. “But I c-c-can’t stand it — Lily an’ James dead — an’ poor little Harry off ter live with Muggles -”
“Yes, yes, it’s all very sad, but get a grip on yourself, Hagrid, or we’ll be found,” Professor McGonagall whispered, patting Hagrid gingerly on the arm as Dumbledore stepped over the low garden wall and walked to the front door. He laid Harry gently on the doorstep, took a letter out of his cloak, tucked it inside Harry’s blankets, and then came back to the other two. For a full minute the three of them stood and looked at the little bundle; Hagrid’s shoulders shook, Professor McGonagall blinked furiously, and the twinkling light that usually shone from Dumbledore’s eyes seemed to have gone out.
“Well,” said Dumbledore finally, “that’s that. We’ve no business staying here. We may as well go and join the celebrations.”
“Yeah,” said Hagrid in a very muffled voice, “I’ll be takin’ Sirius his bike back. G’night, Professor McGonagall — Professor Dumbledore, sir.”
Wiping his streaming eyes on his jacket sleeve, Hagrid swung himself onto the motorcycle and kicked the engine into life; with a roar it rose into the air and off into the night.
“I shall see you soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall,” said Dumbledore, nodding to her. Professor McGonagall blew her nose in reply.
Dumbledore turned and walked back down the street. On the corner he stopped and took out the silver Put-Outer. He clicked it once, and twelve balls of light sped back to their street lamps so that Privet Drive glowed suddenly orange and he could make out a tabby cat slinking around the corner at the other end of the street. He could just see the bundle of blankets on the step of number four.
“Good luck, Harry,” he murmured. He turned on his heel and with a swish of his cloak, he was gone.
A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours’ time by Mrs. Dursley’s scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley… He couldn’t know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: “To Harry Potter — the boy who lived!”
CHAPTER TWO
THE VANISHING GLASS
Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their nephew on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number four on the Dursleys’ front door; it crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Dursley had seen that fateful news report about the owls. Only the photographs on the mantelpiece really showed how much time had passed.
Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-colored bonnets — but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother.
The room held no sign at all that another boy lived in the house, too.
Yet Harry Potter was still there, asleep at the moment, but not for long. His Aunt Petunia was awake and it was her shrill voice that made the first noise of the day.
“Up! Get up! Now!”
Harry woke with a start. His aunt rapped on the door again.
“Up!” she screeched. Harry heard her walking toward the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the stove. He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having. It had been a good one. There had been a flying motorcycle in it. He had a funny feeling he’d had the same dream before.
His aunt was back outside the door.
“Are you up yet?” she demanded.
“Nearly,” said Harry.
“Well, get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon. And don’t you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy’s birthday.”
Harry groaned.
“What did you say?” his aunt snapped through the door.
“Nothing, nothing…”
Dudley’s birthday — how could he have forgotten? Harry got slowly out of bed and started looking for socks. He found a pair under his bed and, after pulling a spider off one of them, put them on. Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.
When he was dressed he went down the hall into the kitchen. The table was almost hidden beneath all Dudley’s birthday presents. It looked as though Dudley had gotten the new computer he wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike. Exactly why Dudley wanted a racing bike was a mystery to Harry, as Dudley was very fat and hated exercise — unless of course it involved punching somebody. Dudley’s favorite punching bag was Harry, but he couldn’t often catch him. Harry didn’t look it, but he was very fast.
Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age. He looked even smaller and skinnier than he really was because all he had to wear were old clothes of Dudley’s, and Dudley was about four times bigger than he was. Harry had a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair, and bright green eyes. He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose. The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning. He had had it as long as he could remember, and the first question he could ever remember asking his Aunt Petunia was how he had gotten it.
“In the car crash when your parents died,” she had said. “And don’t ask questions.”
Don’t ask questions — that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys.
Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen as Harry was turning over the bacon.
“Comb your hair!” he barked, by way of a morning greeting.
About once a week, Uncle Vernon looked over the top of his newspaper and shouted that Harry needed a haircut. Harry must have had more haircuts than the rest of the boys in his class put together, but it made no difference, his hair simply grew that way — all over the place.
Harry was frying eggs by the time Dudley arrived in the kitchen with his mother. Dudley looked a lot like Uncle Vernon. He had a large pink face, not much neck, small, watery blue eyes, and thick blond hair that lay smoothly on his thick, fat head. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel — Harry often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig.
Harry put the plates of egg and bacon on the table, which was difficult as there wasn’t much room. Dudley, meanwhile, was counting his presents.
His face fell.
“Thirty-six,” he said, looking up at his mother and father. “That’s two less than last year.”
“Darling, you haven’t counted Auntie Marge’s present, see, it’s here under this big one from Mommy and Daddy.”
“All right, thirty-seven then,” said Dudley, going red in the face.
Harry, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, began wolfing down his bacon as fast as possible in case Dudley turned the table over.
Aunt Petunia obviously scented danger, too, because she said quickly, “And we’ll buy you another two presents while we’re out today. How’s that, popkin? Two more presents. Is that all right” Dudley thought for a moment. It looked like hard work. Finally he said slowly, “So I’ll have thirty … thirty…”
“Thirty-nine, sweetums,” said Aunt Petunia.
“Oh.” Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel. “All right then.”
Uncle Vernon chuckled. “Little tyke wants his money’s worth, just like his father. ‘Atta boy, Dudley!” He ruffled Dudley’s hair.
At that moment the telephone rang and Aunt Petunia went to answer it while Harry and Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap the racing bike, a video camera, a remote control airplane, sixteen new computer games, and a VCR. He was ripping the paper off a gold wristwatch when Aunt Petunia came back from the telephone looking both angry and worried.
“Bad news, Vernon,” she said. “Mrs. Figg’s broken her leg. She can’t take him.” She jerked her head in Harry’s direction.
Dudley’s mouth fell open in horror, but Harry’s heart gave a leap. Every year on Dudley’s birthday, his parents took him and a friend out for the day, to adventure parks, hamburger restaurants, or the movies. Every year, Harry was left behind with Mrs. Figg, a mad old lady who lived two streets away. Harry hated it there. The whole house smelled of cabbage and Mrs. Figg made him look at photographs of all the cats she’d ever owned.
“Now what?” said Aunt Petunia, looking furiously at Harry as though he’d planned this. Harry knew he ought to feel sorry that Mrs. Figg had broken her leg, but it wasn’t easy when he reminded himself it would be a whole year before he had to look at Tibbles, Snowy, Mr. Paws, and Tufty again.
“We could phone Marge,” Uncle Vernon suggested.
“Don’t be silly, Vernon, she hates the boy.”
The Dursleys often spoke about Harry like this, as though he wasn’t there — or rather, as though he was something very nasty that couldn’t understand them, like a slug.
“What about what’s-her-name, your friend — Yvonne?”
“On vacation in Majorca,” snapped Aunt Petunia.
“You could just leave me here,” Harry put in hopefully (he’d be able to watch what he wanted on television for a change and maybe even have a go on Dudley’s computer).
Aunt Petunia looked as though she’d just swallowed a lemon.
“And come back and find the house in ruins?” she snarled.
“I won’t blow up the house,” said Harry, but they weren’t listening.
“I suppose we could take him to the zoo,” said Aunt Petunia slowly, “…
and leave him in the car….”
“That car’s new, he’s not sitting in it alone….”
Dudley began to cry loudly. In fact, he wasn’t really crying — it had been years since he’d really cried — but he knew that if he screwed up his face and wailed, his mother would give him anything he wanted.
“Dinky Duddydums, don’t cry, Mummy won’t let him spoil your special day!” she cried, flinging her arms around him.
“I… don’t… want… him… t-t-to come!” Dudley yelled between huge, pretend sobs. “He always sp- spoils everything!” He shot Harry a nasty grin through the gap in his mother’s arms.
Just then, the doorbell rang — “Oh, good Lord, they’re here!” said Aunt Petunia frantically — and a moment later, Dudley’s best friend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother. Piers was a scrawny boy with a face like a rat. He was usually the one who held people’s arms behind their backs while Dudley hit them. Dudley stopped pretending to cry at once.
Half an hour later, Harry, who couldn’t believe his luck, was sitting in the back of the Dursleys’ car with Piers and Dudley, on the way to the zoo for the first time in his life. His aunt and uncle hadn’t been able to think of anything else to do with him, but before they’d left, Uncle Vernon had taken Harry aside.
“I’m warning you,” he had said, putting his large purple face right up close to Harry’s, “I’m warning you now, boy — any funny business, anything at all — and you’ll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas.”
“I’m not going to do anything,” said Harry, “honestly..
But Uncle Vernon didn’t believe him. No one ever did.
The problem was, strange things often happened around Harry and it was just no good telling the Dursleys he didn’t make them happen.
Once, Aunt Petunia, tired of Harry coming back from the barbers looking as though he hadn’t been at all, had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut his hair so short he was almost bald except for his bangs, which she left “to hide that horrible scar.” Dudley had laughed himself silly at Harry, who spent a sleepless night imagining school the next day, where he was already laughed at for his baggy clothes and taped glasses.
Next morning, however, he had gotten up to find his hair exactly as it had been before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off He had been given a week in his cupboard for this, even though he had tried to explain that he couldn’t explain how it had grown back so quickly.
Another time, Aunt Petunia had been trying to force him into a revolting old sweater of Dudley’s (brown with orange puff balls) — The harder she tried to pull it over his head, the smaller it seemed to become, until finally it might have fitted a hand puppet, but certainly wouldn’t fit Harry. Aunt Petunia had decided it must have shrunk in the wash and, to his great relief, Harry wasn’t punished.
On the other hand, he’d gotten into terrible trouble for being found on the roof of the school kitchens. Dudley’s gang had been chasing him as usual when, as much to Harry’s surprise as anyone else’s, there he was sitting on the chimney. The Dursleys had received a very angry letter from Harry’s headmistress telling them Harry had been climbing school buildings. But all he’d tried to do (as he shouted at Uncle Vernon through the locked door of his cupboard) was jump behind the big trash cans outside the kitchen doors. Harry supposed that the wind must have caught him in mid- jump.
But today, nothing was going to go wrong. It was even worth being with Dudley and Piers to be spending the day somewhere that wasn’t school, his cupboard, or Mrs. Figg’s cabbage-smelling living room.
While he drove, Uncle Vernon complained to Aunt Petunia. He liked to complain about things: people at work, Harry, the council, Harry, the bank, and Harry were just a few of his favorite subjects. This morning, it was motorcycles.
“… roaring along like maniacs, the young hoodlums,” he said, as a motorcycle overtook them.
I had a dream about a motorcycle,” said Harry, remembering suddenly. “It was flying.”
Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at Harry, his face like a gigantic beet with a mustache: “MOTORCYCLES DON’T FLY!”
Dudley and Piers sniggered.
I know they don’t,” said Harry. “It was only a dream.”
But he wished he hadn’t said anything. If there was one thing the Dursleys hated even more than his asking questions, it was his talking about anything acting in a way it shouldn’t, no matter if it was in a dream or even a cartoon — they seemed to think he might get dangerous ideas.
It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families. The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance and then, because the smiling lady in the van had asked Harry what he wanted before they could hurry him away, they bought him a cheap lemon ice pop. It wasn’t bad, either, Harry thought, licking it as they watched a gorilla scratching its head who looked remarkably like Dudley, except that it wasn’t blond.
Harry had the best morning he’d had in a long time. He was careful to walk a little way apart from the Dursleys so that Dudley and Piers, who were starting to get bored with the animals by lunchtime, wouldn’t fall back on their favorite hobby of hitting him. They ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a tantrum because his knickerbocker glory didn’t have enough ice cream on top, Uncle Vernon bought him another one and Harry was allowed to finish the first.
Harry felt, afterward, that he should have known it was all too good to last.
After lunch they went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in there, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon’s car and crushed it into a trash can — but at the moment it didn’t look in the mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.
Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown coils.
“Make it move,” he whined at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn’t budge.
“Do it again,” Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on.
“This is boring,” Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.
Harry moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself — no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you up; at least he got to visit the rest of the house.
The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Harry’s.
It winked.
Harry stared. Then he looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching. They weren’t. He looked back at the snake and winked, too.
The snake jerked its head toward Uncle Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Harry a look that said quite plainly: “I get that all the time.
“I know,” Harry murmured through the glass, though he wasn’t sure the snake could hear him. “It must be really annoying.”
The snake nodded vigorously.
“Where do you come from, anyway?” Harry asked.
The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Harry peered at it.
Boa Constrictor, Brazil.
“Was it nice there?”
The boa constrictor jabbed its tail at the sign again and Harry read on: This specimen was bred in the zoo. “Oh, I see — so you’ve never been to Brazil?”
As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout behind Harry made both of them jump.
“DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT IT’S DOING!”
Dudley came waddling toward them as fast as he could.
“Out of the way, you,” he said, punching Harry in the ribs. Caught by surprise, Harry fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened — one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror.
Harry sat up and gasped; the glass front of the boa constrictor’s tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor. People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits.
As the snake slid swiftly past him, Harry could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, “Brazil, here I come…. Thanksss, amigo.”
The keeper of the reptile house was in shock.
“But the glass,” he kept saying, “where did the glass go?”
The zoo director himself made Aunt Petunia a cup of strong, sweet tea while he apologized over and over again. Piers and Dudley could only gibber. As far as Harry had seen, the snake hadn’t done anything except snap playfully at their heels as it passed, but by the time they were all back in Uncle Vernon’s car, Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But worst of all, for Harry at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, “Harry was talking to it, weren’t you, Harry?”
Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Harry. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, “Go — cupboard — stay — no meals,” before he collapsed into a chair, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.
Harry lay in his dark cupboard much later, wishing he had a watch. He didn’t know what time it was and he couldn’t be sure the Dursleys were asleep yet. Until they were, he couldn’t risk sneaking to the kitchen for some food.
He’d lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as he could remember, ever since he’d been a baby and his parents had died in that car crash. He couldn’t remember being in the car when his parents had died. Sometimes, when he strained his memory during long hours in his cupboard, he came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burn- ing pain on his forehead. This, he supposed, was the crash, though he couldn’t imagine where all the green light came from. He couldn’t remember his parents at all. His aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course he was forbidden to ask questions. There were no photographs of them in the house.
When he had been younger, Harry had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened; the Dursleys were his only family. Yet sometimes he thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Harry furiously if he knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second Harry tried to get a closer look.
At school, Harry had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley’s gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley’s gang.
CHAPTER THREE
THE LETTERS FROM NO ONE
The escape of the Brazilian boa constrictor earned Harry his longest-ever punishment. By the time he was allowed out of his cupboard again, the summer holidays had started and Dudley had already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and, first time out on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs. Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches.
Harry was glad school was over, but there was no escaping Dudley’s gang, who visited the house every single day. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader. The rest of them were all quite happy to join in Dudley’s favorite sport: Harry Hunting.
This was why Harry spent as much time as possible out of the house, wandering around and thinking about the end of the holidays, where he could see a tiny ray of hope. When September came he would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in his life, he wouldn’t be with Dudley. Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon’s old private school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there too. Harry, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local public school. Dudley thought this was very funny.
“They stuff people’s heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall,”
he told Harry. “Want to come upstairs and practice?”
“No, thanks,” said Harry. “The poor toilet’s never had anything as horrible as your head down it — it might be sick.” Then he ran, before Dudley could work out what he’d said.
One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, leaving Harry at Mrs. Figg’s. Mrs. Figg wasn ‘t as bad as usual. It turned out she’d broken her leg tripping over one of her cats, and she didn’t seem quite as fond of them as before. She let Harry watch television and gave him a bit of chocolate cake that tasted as though she’d had it for several years.
That evening, Dudley paraded around the living room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Smeltings’ boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called boaters. They also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren’t looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life.
As he looked at Dudley in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Vernon said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn’t believe it was her Ickle Dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up. Harry didn’t trust himself to speak. He thought two of his ribs might already have cracked from trying not to laugh.
There was a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when Harry went in for breakfast. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. He went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in gray water.
“What’s this?” he asked Aunt Petunia. Her lips tightened as they always did if he dared to ask a question.
“Your new school uniform,” she said.
Harry looked in the bowl again.
“Oh,” he said, “I didn’t realize it had to be so wet.”
“DotA be stupid,” snapped Aunt Petunia. “I’m dyeing some of Dudley’s old things gray for you. It’ll look just like everyone else’s when I’ve finished.”
Harry seriously doubted this, but thought it best not to argue. He sat down at the table and tried not to think about how he was going to look on his first day at Stonewall High — like he was wearing bits of old elephant skin, probably.
Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Harry’s new uniform. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table.
They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.
“Get the mail, Dudley,” said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.
“Make Harry get it.”
“Get the mail, Harry.”
“Make Dudley get it.”
“Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley.”
Harry dodged the Smelting stick and went to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon’s sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and — a letter for Harry.
Harry picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends, no other relatives — he didn’t belong to the library, so he’d never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake: Mr. H. Potter The Cupboard under the Stairs 4 Privet Drive Little Whinging Surrey The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp.
Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H.
“Hurry up, boy!” shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. “What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?” He chuckled at his own joke.
Harry went back to the kitchen, still staring at his letter. He handed Uncle Vernon the bill and the postcard, sat down, and slowly began to open the yellow envelope.
Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and flipped over the postcard.
“Marge’s ill,” he informed Aunt Petunia. “Ate a funny whelk. –.”
“Dad!” said Dudley suddenly. “Dad, Harry’s got something!”
Harry was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of his hand by Uncle Vernon.
“That’s mine!” said Harry, trying to snatch it back.
“Who’d be writing to you?” sneered Uncle Vernon, shaking the letter open with one hand and glancing at it. His face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn’t stop there. Within seconds it was the grayish white of old porridge.
“P-P-Petunia!” he gasped.
Dudley tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Vernon held it high out of his reach. Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise.
“Vernon! Oh my goodness — Vernon!”
They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Harry and Dudley were still in the room. Dudley wasn’t used to being ignored. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his Smelting stick.
“I want to read that letter,” he said loudly. want to read it,” said Harry furiously, “as it’s mine.”
“Get out, both of you,” croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope.
Harry didn’t move.
I WANT MY LETTER!” he shouted.
“Let me see it!” demanded Dudley.
“OUT!” roared Uncle Vernon, and he took both Harry and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. Harry and Dudley promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Dudley won, so Harry, his glasses dangling from one ear, lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor.
“Vernon,” Aunt Petunia was saying in a quivering voice, “look at the address — how could they possibly know where he sleeps? You don’t think they’re watching the house?”
“Watching — spying — might be following us,” muttered Uncle Vernon wildly.
“But what should we do, Vernon? Should we write back? Tell them we don’t want –”
Harry could see Uncle Vernon’s shiny black shoes pacing up and down the kitchen.
“No,” he said finally. “No, we’ll ignore it. If they don’t get an answer… Yes, that’s best… we won’t do anything….
“But –”
“I’m not having one in the house, Petunia! Didn’t we swear when we took him in we’d stamp out that dangerous nonsense?”
That evening when he got back from work, Uncle Vernon did something he’d never done before; he visited Harry in his cupboard.
“Where’s my letter?” said Harry, the moment Uncle Vernon had squeezed through the door. “Who’s writing to me?”
“No one. it was addressed to you by mistake,” said Uncle Vernon shortly.
“I have burned it.”
“It was not a mistake,” said Harry angrily, “it had my cupboard on it.”
“SILENCE!” yelled Uncle Vernon, and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling. He took a few deep breaths and then forced his face into a smile, which looked quite painful.
“Er — yes, Harry — about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking… you’re really getting a bit big for it… we think it might be nice if you moved into Dudley’s second bedroom.
“Why?” said Harry.
“Don’t ask questions!” snapped his uncle. “Take this stuff upstairs, now.”
The Dursleys’ house had four bedrooms: one for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, one for visitors (usually Uncle Vernon’s sister, Marge), one where Dudley slept, and one where Dudley kept all the toys and things that wouldn’t fit into his first bedroom. It only took Harry one trip upstairs to move everything he owned from the cupboard to this room. He sat down on the bed and stared around him. Nearly everything in here was broken. The month-old video camera was lying on top of a small, working tank Dudley had once driven over the next door neighbor’s dog; in the corner was Dudley’s first-ever television set, which he’d put his foot through when his favorite program had been canceled; there was a large birdcage, which had once held a parrot that Dudley had swapped at school for a real air rifle, which was up on a shelf with the end all bent because Dudley had sat on it. Other shelves were full of books. They were the only things in the room that looked as though they’d never been touched.
From downstairs came the sound of Dudley bawling at his mother, I don’t want him in there… I need that room… make him get out….”
Harry sighed and stretched out on the bed. Yesterday he’d have given anything to be up here. Today he’d rather be back in his cupboard with that letter than up here without it.
Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Dudley was in shock. He’d screamed, whacked his father with his Smelting stick, been sick on purpose, kicked his mother, and thrown his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and he still didn’t have his room back. Harry was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing he’d opened the letter in the hall. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept looking at each other darkly.
When the mail arrived, Uncle Vernon, who seemed to be trying to be nice to Harry, made Dudley go and get it. They heard him banging things with his Smelting stick all the way down the hall. Then he shouted, “There’s another one! ‘Mr. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive –‘ì
With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall, Harry right behind him. Uncle Vernon had to wrestle Dudley to the ground to get the letter from him, which was made difficult by the fact that Harry had grabbed Uncle Vernon around the neck from behind. After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the Smelting stick, Uncle Vernon straightened up, gasping for breath, with Harry’s letter clutched in his hand.
“Go to your cupboard — I mean, your bedroom,” he wheezed at Harry.
“Dudley — go — just go.”
Harry walked round and round his new room. Someone knew he had moved out of his cupboard and they seemed to know he hadn’t received his first letter. Surely that meant they’d try again? And this time he’d make sure they didn’t fail. He had a plan.
The repaired alarm clock rang at six o’clock the next morning. Harry turned it off quickly and dressed silently. He mustn’t wake the Dursleys. He stole downstairs without turning on any of the lights.
He was going to wait for the postman on the corner of Privet Drive and get the letters for number four first. His heart hammered as he crept across the dark hall toward the front door — Harry leapt into the air; he’d trodden on something big and squashy on the doormat — something alive! Lights clicked on upstairs and to his horror Harry realized that the big, squashy something had been his uncle’s face. Uncle Vernon had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Harry didn’t do exactly what he’d been trying to do. He shouted at Harry for about half an hour and then told him to go and make a cup of tea. Harry shuffled miserably off into the kitchen and by the time he got back, the mail had arrived, right into Uncle Vernon’s lap.
Harry could see three letters addressed in green ink.
I want –” he began, but Uncle Vernon was tearing the letters into pieces before his eyes. Uncle Vernon didnt go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot.
“See,” he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, “if they can’t deliver them they’ll just give up.”
“I’m not sure that’ll work, Vernon.”
“Oh, these people’s minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they’re not like you and me,” said Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.
On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Harry. As they couldn’t go through the mail slot they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom.
Uncle Vernon stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”
as he worked, and jumped at small noises.
On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Twenty-four letters to Harry found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in her food processor.
“Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?” Dudley asked Harry in amazement.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy.
“No post on Sundays,” he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, “no damn letters today –”
Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Harry leapt into the air trying to catch one.
“Out! OUT!”
Uncle Vernon seized Harry around the waist and threw him into the hall.
When Aunt Petunia and Dudley had run out with their arms over their faces, Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. They could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.
“That does it,” said Uncle Vernon, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts out of his mustache at the same time. I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We’re going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!”
He looked so dangerous with half his mustache missing that no one dared argue. Ten minutes later they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding toward the highway.
Dudley was sniffling in the back seat; his father had hit him round the head for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, VCR, and computer in his sports bag.
They drove. And they drove. Even Aunt Petunia didn’t dare ask where they were going. Every now and then Uncle Vernon would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while. “Shake’em off… shake ’em off,” he would mutter whenever he did this.
They didn’t stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Dudley was howling. He’d never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he’d missed five television programs he’d wanted to see, and he’d never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.
Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Dudley and Harry shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Dudley snored but Harry stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering….
They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.
“‘Scuse me, but is one of you Mr. H. Potter? Only I got about an ‘undred of these at the front desk.”
She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address: Mr. H. Potter Room 17 Railview Hotel Cokeworth Harry made a grab for the letter but Uncle Vernon knocked his hand out of the way. The woman stared.
“I’ll take them,” said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.
Wouldn’t it be better just to go home, dear?” Aunt Petunia suggested timidly, hours later, but Uncle Vernon didn’t seem to hear her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, and off they went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a plowed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.
“Daddy’s gone mad, hasn’t he?” Dudley asked Aunt Petunia dully late that afternoon. Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared.
It started to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dud ley sniveled.
“It’s Monday,” he told his mother. “The Great Humberto’s on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television. ì
Monday. This reminded Harry of something. If it was Monday — and you could usually count on Dudley to know the days the week, because of television — then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Harry’s eleventh birthday. Of course, his birthdays were never exactly fun — last year, the Dursleys had given him a coat hanger and a pair of Uncle Vernon’s old socks.
Still, you weren’t eleven every day.
Uncle Vernon was back and he was smiling. He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn’t answer Aunt Petunia when she asked what he’d bought.
“Found the perfect place!” he said. “Come on! Everyone out!”
It was very cold outside the car. Uncle Vernon was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine. One thing was certain, there was no television in there.
“Storm forecast for tonight!” said Uncle Vernon gleefully, clapping his hands together. “And this gentleman’s kindly agreed to lend us his boat!”
A toothless old man came ambling up to them, pointing, with a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-gray water below them.
“I’ve already got us some rations,” said Uncle Vernon, “so all aboard!”
It was freezing in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces. After what seemed like hours they reached the rock, where Uncle Vernon, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down house.
The inside was horrible; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.
Uncle Vernon’s rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas. He tried to start a fire but the empty chip bags just smoked and shriveled up.
“Could do with some of those letters now, eh?” he said cheerfully.
He was in a very good mood. Obviously he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver mail. Harry privately agreed, though the thought didn’t cheer him up at all.
As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Harry was left to find the softest bit of floor he could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.
The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Harry couldn’t sleep. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, his stomach rumbling with hunger. Dudley’s snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight. The lighted dial of Dudley’s watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Harry he’d be eleven in ten minutes’ time. He lay and watched his birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all, wondering where the letter writer was now.
Five minutes to go. Harry heard something creak outside. He hoped the roof wasn’t going to fall in, although he might be warmer if it did.
Four minutes to go. Maybe the house in Privet Drive would be so full of letters when they got back that he’d be able to steal one somehow.
Three minutes to go. Was that the sea, slapping hard on the rock like that? And (two minutes to go) what was that funny crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea? One minute to go and he’d be eleven. Thirty seconds… twenty … ten…
nine — maybe he’d wake Dudley up, just to annoy him — three… two…
one…
BOOM.
The whole shack shivered and Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE KEEPER OF THE KEYS
BOOM. They knocked again. Dudley jerked awake. “Where’s the cannon?” he said stupidly.
There was a crash behind them and Uncle Vernon came skidding into the room. He was holding a rifle in his hands — now they knew what had been in the long, thin package he had brought with them.
“Who’s there?” he shouted. “I warn you — I’m armed!”
There was a pause. Then ñ
SMASH!
The door was hit with such force that it swung clean off its hinges and with a deafening crash landed flat on the floor.
A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the hair.
The giant squeezed his way into the hut, stooping so that his head just brushed the ceiling. He bent down, picked up the door, and fitted it easily back into its frame. The noise of the storm outside dropped a little. He turned to look at them all.
“Couldn’t make us a cup o’ tea, could yeh? It’s not been an easy journey…”
He strode over to the sofa where Dudley sat frozen with fear.
“Budge up, yeh great lump,” said the stranger.
Dudley squeaked and ran to hide behind his mother, who was crouching, terrified, behind Uncle Vernon.
“An’ here’s Harry!” said the giant.
Harry looked up into the fierce, wild, shadowy face and saw that the beetle eyes were crinkled in a smile.
“Las’ time I saw you, you was only a baby,” said the giant. “Yeh look a lot like yet dad, but yeh’ve got yet mom’s eyes.”
Uncle Vernon made a funny rasping noise.
I demand that you leave at once, sit!” he said. “You are breaking and entering!”
“Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune,” said the giant; he reached over the back of the sofa, jerked the gun out of Uncle Vernon’s hands, bent it into a knot as easily as if it had been made of rubber, and threw it into a corner of the room.
Uncle Vernon made another funny noise, like a mouse being trodden on.
“Anyway — Harry,” said the giant, turning his back on the Dursleys, “a very happy birthday to yeh. Got summat fer yeh here — I mighta sat on it at some point, but it’ll taste all right.”
From an inside pocket of his black overcoat he pulled a slightly squashed box. Harry opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing.
Harry looked up at the giant. He meant to say thank you, but the words got lost on the way to his mouth, and what he said instead was, “Who are you?”
The giant chuckled.
“True, I haven’t introduced meself. Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts.”
He held out an enormous hand and shook Harry’s whole arm.
“What about that tea then, eh?” he said, rubbing his hands together.
“I’d not say no ter summat stronger if yeh’ve got it, mind.”
His eyes fell on the empty grate with the shriveled chip bags in it and he snorted. He bent down over the fireplace; they couldn’t see what he was doing but when he drew back a second later, there was a roaring fire there. It filled the whole damp hut with flickering light and Harry felt the warmth wash over him as though he’d sunk into a hot bath.
The giant sat back down on the sofa, which sagged under his weight, and began taking all sorts of things out of the pockets of his coat: a copper kettle, a squashy package of sausages, a poker, a teapot, several chipped mugs, and a bottle of some amber liquid that he took a swig from before starting to make tea. Soon the hut was full of the sound and smell of sizzling sausage. Nobody said a thing while the giant was working, but as he slid the first six fat, juicy, slightly burnt sausages from the poker, Dudley fidgeted a little. Uncle Vernon said sharply, “Don’t touch anything he gives you, Dudley.”
The giant chuckled darkly.
“Yet great puddin’ of a son don’ need fattenin’ anymore, Dursley, don’ worry.”
He passed the sausages to Harry, who was so hungry he had never tasted anything so wonderful, but he still couldn’t take his eyes off the giant. Finally, as nobody seemed about to explain anything, he said, “I’m sorry, but I still don’t really know who you are.”
The giant took a gulp of tea and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Call me Hagrid,” he said, “everyone does. An’ like I told yeh, I’m Keeper of Keys at Hogwarts — yeh’ll know all about Hogwarts, o’ course.
“Er — no,” said Harry.
Hagrid looked shocked.
“Sorry,” Harry said quickly.
“Sony?” barked Hagrid, turning to stare at the Dursleys, who shrank back into the shadows. “It’ s them as should be sorry! I knew yeh weren’t gettin’ yer letters but I never thought yeh wouldn’t even know abou’ Hogwarts, fer cryin’ out loud! Did yeh never wonder where yet parents learned it all?”
“All what?” asked Harry.
“ALL WHAT?” Hagrid thundered. “Now wait jus’ one second!”
He had leapt to his feet. In his anger he seemed to fill the whole hut.
The Dursleys were cowering against the wall.
“Do you mean ter tell me,” he growled at the Dursleys, “that this boy — this boy! — knows nothin’ abou’ — about ANYTHING?”
Harry thought this was going a bit far. He had been to school, after all, and his marks weren’t bad.
“I know some things,” he said. “I can, you know, do math and stuff.” But Hagrid simply waved his hand and said, “About our world, I mean. Your world. My world. Yer parents’ world.”
“What world?”
Hagrid looked as if he was about to explode.
“DURSLEY!” he boomed.
Uncle Vernon, who had gone very pale, whispered something that sounded like “Mimblewimble.” Hagrid stared wildly at Harry.
“But yeh must know about yet mom and dad,” he said. “I mean, they’re famous. You’re famous.”
“What? My — my mom and dad weren’t famous, were they?”
“Yeh don’ know… yeh don’ know…” Hagrid ran his fingers through his hair, fixing Harry with a bewildered stare.
“Yeh don’ know what yeh are?” he said finally.
Uncle Vernon suddenly found his voice.
“Stop!” he commanded. “Stop right there, sit! I forbid you to tell the boy anything!”
A braver man than Vernon Dursley would have quailed under the furious look Hagrid now gave him; when Hagrid spoke, his every syllable trembled with rage.
“You never told him? Never told him what was in the letter Dumbledore left fer him? I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An’ you’ve kept it from him all these years?”
“Kept what from me?” said Harry eagerly.
“STOP! I FORBID YOU!” yelled Uncle Vernon in panic.
Aunt Petunia gave a gasp of horror.
“Ah, go boil yet heads, both of yeh,” said Hagrid. “Harry — yet a wizard.”
There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard.
“– a what?” gasped Harry.
“A wizard, o’ course,” said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, “an’ a thumpin’ good’un, I’d say, once yeh’ve been trained up a bit. With a mum an’ dad like yours, what else would yeh be? An’ I reckon it’s abou’ time yeh read yer letter.”
Harry stretched out his hand at last to take the yellowish envelope, addressed in emerald green to Mr. H. Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock, The Sea. He pulled out the letter and read: HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE (Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards) Dear Mr. Potter, We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.
Yours sincerely, Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress Questions exploded inside Harry’s head like fireworks and he couldn’t decide which to ask first. After a few minutes he stammered, “What does it mean, they await my owl?”
“Gallopin’ Gorgons, that reminds me,” said Hagrid, clapping a hand to his forehead with enough force to knock over a cart horse, and from yet another pocket inside his overcoat he pulled an owl — a real, live, rather ruffled-looking owl — a long quill, and a roll of parchment.
With his tongue between his teeth he scribbled a note that Harry could read upside down: Dear Professor Dumbledore, Given Harry his letter.
Taking him to buy his things tomorrow.
Weather’s horrible. Hope you’re Well.
Hagrid Hagrid rolled up the note, gave it to the owl, which clamped it in its beak, went to the door, and threw the owl out into the storm. Then he came back and sat down as though this was as normal as talking on the telephone.
Harry realized his mouth was open and closed it quickly.
“Where was I?” said Hagrid, but at that moment, Uncle Vernon, still ashen-faced but looking very angry, moved into the firelight.
“He’s not going,” he said.
Hagrid grunted.
“I’d like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him,” he said.
“A what?” said Harry, interested.
“A Muggle,” said Hagrid, “it’s what we call nonmagic folk like thern.
An’ it’s your bad luck you grew up in a family o’ the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on.”
“We swore when we took him in we’d put a stop to that rubbish,” said Uncle Vernon, “swore we’d stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!”
“You knew?” said Harry. “You knew I’m a — a wizard?”
“Knew!” shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. “Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school-and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!”
She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years.
“Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you’d be just the same, just as strange, just as — as — abnormal — and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!”
Harry had gone very white. As soon as he found his voice he said, “Blown up? You told me they died in a car crash!”
“CAR CRASH!” roared Hagrid, jumping up so angrily that the Dursleys scuttled back to their corner. “How could a car crash kill Lily an’ James Potter? It’s an outrage! A scandal! Harry Potter not knowin’ his own story when every kid in our world knows his name!” “But why? What happened?” Harry asked urgently.
The anger faded from Hagrid’s face. He looked suddenly anxious.
“I never expected this,” he said, in a low, worried voice. “I had no idea, when Dumbledore told me there might be trouble gettin’ hold of yeh, how much yeh didn’t know. Ah, Harry, I don’ know if I’m the right person ter tell yeh — but someone 3 s gotta — yeh can’t go off ter Hogwarts not knowin’.”
He threw a dirty look at the Dursleys.
“Well, it’s best yeh know as much as I can tell yeh — mind, I can’t tell yeh everythin’, it’s a great myst’ry, parts of it….”
He sat down, stared into the fire for a few seconds, and then said, “It begins, I suppose, with — with a person called — but it’s incredible yeh don’t know his name, everyone in our world knows –”
“Who? ì
“Well — I don’ like sayin’ the name if I can help it. No one does.”
“Why not?”
“Gulpin’ gargoyles, Harry, people are still scared. Blimey, this is difficult. See, there was this wizard who went… bad. As bad as you could go. Worse. Worse than worse. His name was…”
Hagrid gulped, but no words came out.
“Could you write it down?” Harry suggested.
“Nah -can’t spell it. All right — Voldemort. ” Hagrid shuddered. “Don’ make me say it again. Anyway, this — this wizard, about twenty years ago now, started lookin’ fer followers. Got ’em, too — some were afraid, some just wanted a bit o’ his power, ’cause he was gettin’ himself power, all right. Dark days, Harry. Didn’t know who ter trust, didn’t dare get friendly with strange wizards or witches… terrible things happened. He was takin’ over. ‘Course, some stood up to him — an’ he killed ’em. Horribly. One o’ the only safe places left was Hogwarts. Reckon Dumbledore’s the only one You-Know-Who was afraid of.
Didn’t dare try takin’ the school, not jus’ then, anyway.
“Now, yer mum an’ dad were as good a witch an’ wizard as I ever knew.
Head boy an’ girl at Hogwarts in their day! Suppose the myst’ry is why You-Know-Who never tried to get ’em on his side before… probably knew they were too close ter Dumbledore ter want anythin’ ter do with the Dark Side.
“Maybe he thought he could persuade ’em… maybe he just wanted ’em outta the way. All anyone knows is, he turned up in the village where you was all living, on Halloween ten years ago. You was just a year old.
He came ter yer house an’ — an’ –”
Hagrid suddenly pulled out a very dirty, spotted handkerchief and blew his nose with a sound like a foghorn.
“Sorry,” he said. “But it’s that sad — knew yer mum an’ dad, an’ nicer people yeh couldn’t find — anyway…”
“You-Know-Who killed ’em. An’ then — an’ this is the real myst’ry of the thing — he tried to kill you, too. Wanted ter make a clean job of it, I suppose, or maybe he just liked killin’ by then. But he couldn’t do it. Never wondered how you got that mark on yer forehead? That was no ordinary cut. That’s what yeh get when a Powerful, evil curse touches yeh — took care of yer mum an’ dad an’ yer house, even — but it didn’t work on you, an’ that’s why yer famous, Harry. No one ever lived after he decided ter kill ’em, no one except you, an’ he’d killed some o’ the best witches an’ wizards of the age — the McKinnons, the Bones, the Prewetts — an’ you was only a baby, an’ you lived.”
Something very painful was going on in Harry’s mind. As Hagrid’s story came to a close, he saw again the blinding flash of green light, more clearly than he had ever remembered it before — and he remembered something else, for the first time in his life: a high, cold, cruel laugh.
Hagrid was watching him sadly.
“Took yeh from the ruined house myself, on Dumbledore’s orders. Brought yeh ter this lot…”
“Load of old tosh,” said Uncle Vernon. Harry jumped; he had almost forgotten that the Dursleys were there. Uncle Vernon certainly seemed to have got back his courage. He was glaring at Hagrid and his fists were clenched.
“Now, you listen here, boy,” he snarled, “I accept there’s something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn’t have cured — and as for all this about your parents, well, they were weirdos, no denying it, and the world’s better off without them in my opinion — asked for all they got, getting mixed up with these wizarding types — just what I expected, always knew they’d come to a sticky end –”
But at that moment, Hagrid leapt from the sofa and drew a battered pink umbrella from inside his coat. Pointing this at Uncle Vernon like a sword, he said, “I’m warning you, Dursley -I’m warning you — one more word… ì
In danger of being speared on the end of an umbrella by a bearded giant, Uncle Vernon’s courage failed again; he flattened himself against the wall and fell silent.
“That’s better,” said Hagrid, breathing heavily and sitting back down on the sofa, which this time sagged right down to the floor.
Harry, meanwhile, still had questions to ask, hundreds of them.
“But what happened to Vol–, sorry — I mean, You-Know-Who?”
“Good question, Harry. Disappeared. Vanished. Same night he tried ter kill you. Makes yeh even more famous. That’s the biggest myst’ry, see…
he was gettin’ more an’ more powerful — why’d he go? “Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die. Some say he’s still out there, bidin’ his time, like, but I don’ believe it. People who was on his side came back ter ours. Some of ’em came outta kinda trances. Don~ reckon they could’ve done if he was comin’ back.
“Most of us reckon he’s still out there somewhere but lost his powers.
Too weak to carry on. ‘Cause somethin’ about you finished him, Harry.
There was somethin’ goin’ on that night he hadn’t counted on — I dunno what it was, no one does — but somethin’ about you stumped him, all right.”
Hagrid looked at Harry with warmth and respect blazing in his eyes, but Harry, instead of feeling pleased and proud, felt quite sure there had been a horrible mistake. A wizard? Him? How could he possibly be? He’d spent his life being clouted by Dudley, and bullied by Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon; if he was really a wizard, why hadn’t they been turned into warty toads every time they’d tried to lock him in his cupboard? If he’d once defeated the greatest sorcerer in the world, how come Dudley had always been able to kick him around like a football? “Hagrid,” he said quietly, “I think you must have made a mistake. I don’t think I can be a wizard.”
To his surprise, Hagrid chuckled.
“Not a wizard, eh? Never made things happen when you was scared or angry?”
Harry looked into the fire. Now he came to think about it… every odd thing that had ever made his aunt and uncle furious with him had happened when he, Harry, had been upset or angry… chased by Dudley’s gang, he had somehow found himself out of their reach… dreading going to school with that ridiculous haircut, he’d managed to make it grow back… and the very last time Dudley had hit him, hadn’t he got his revenge, without even realizing he was doing it? Hadn’t he set a boa constrictor on him? Harry looked back at Hagrid, smiling, and saw that Hagrid was positively beaming at him.
“See?” said Hagrid. “Harry Potter, not a wizard — you wait, you’ll be right famous at Hogwarts.”
But Uncle Vernon wasn’t going to give in without a fight.
“Haven’t I told you he’s not going?” he hissed. “He’s going to Stonewall High and he’ll be grateful for it. I’ve read those letters and he needs all sorts of rubbish — spell books and wands and –”
“If he wants ter go, a great Muggle like you won’t stop him,” growled Hagrid. “Stop Lily an’ James Potter’ s son goin’ ter Hogwarts! Yer mad.
His name’s been down ever since he was born. He’s off ter the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. Seven years there and he won’t know himself. He’ll be with youngsters of his own sort, fer a change, an’ he’ll be under the greatest headmaster Hogwarts ever had Albus Dumbled–”
“I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL To TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!”
yelled Uncle Vernon.
But he had finally gone too far. Hagrid seized his umbrella and whirled it over his head, “NEVER,” he thundered, “- INSULT- ALBUS- DUMBLEDOREIN- FRONT- OF- ME!”
He brought the umbrella swishing down through the air to point at Dudley — there was a flash of violet light, a sound like a firecracker, a sharp squeal, and the next second, Dudley was dancing on the spot with his hands clasped over his fat bottom, howling in pain. When he turned his back on them, Harry saw a curly pig’s tail poking through a hole in his trousers.
Uncle Vernon roared. Pulling Aunt Petunia and Dudley into the other room, he cast one last terrified look at Hagrid and slammed the door behind them.
Hagrid looked down at his umbrella and stroked his beard.
“Shouldn’ta lost me temper,” he said ruefully, “but it didn’t work anyway. Meant ter turn him into a pig, but I suppose he was so much like a pig anyway there wasn’t much left ter do.”
He cast a sideways look at Harry under his bushy eyebrows.
“Be grateful if yeh didn’t mention that ter anyone at Hogwarts,” he said. “I’m — er — not supposed ter do magic, strictly speakin’. I was allowed ter do a bit ter follow yeh an’ get yer letters to yeh an’ stuff — one o’ the reasons I was so keen ter take on the job “Why aren’t you supposed to do magic?” asked Harry.
“Oh, well — I was at Hogwarts meself but I — er — got expelled, ter tell yeh the truth. In me third year. They snapped me wand in half an’ everything. But Dumbledore let me stay on as gamekeeper. Great man, Dumbledore.” “Why were you expelled?”
“It’s gettin’ late and we’ve got lots ter do tomorrow,” said Hagrid loudly. “Gotta get up ter town, get all yer books an’ that.”
He took off his thick black coat and threw it to Harry.
“You can kip under that,” he said. “Don’ mind if it wriggles a bit, I think I still got a couple o’ dormice in one o’ the pockets.”
CHAPTER FIVE
DIAGON ALLEY
Harry woke early the next morning. Although he could tell it was daylight, he kept his eyes shut tight.
“It was a dream, he told himself firmly. “I dreamed a giant called Hagrid came to tell me I was going to a school for wizards. When I open my eyes I’ll be at home in my cupboard.”
There was suddenly a loud tapping noise.
And there’s Aunt Petunia knocking on the door, Harry thought, his heart sinking. But he still didn’t open his eyes. It had been such a good dream.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“All right,” Harry mumbled, “I’m getting up.”
He sat up and Hagrid’s heavy coat fell off him. The hut was full of sunlight, the storm was over, Hagrid himself was asleep on the collapsed sofa, and there was an owl rapping its claw on the window, a newspaper held in its beak.
Harry scrambled to his feet, so happy he felt as though a large balloon was swelling inside him. He went straight to the window and jerked it open. The owl swooped in and dropped the newspaper on top of Hagrid, who didn’t wake up. The owl then fluttered onto the floor and began to attack Hagrid’s coat.
“Don’t do that.”
Harry tried to wave the owl out of the way, but it snapped its beak fiercely at him and carried on savaging the coat.
“Hagrid!” said Harry loudly. “There’s an owl “Pay him,” Hagrid grunted into the sofa.
“What?”
“He wants payin’ fer deliverin’ the paper. Look in the pockets.”
Hagrid’s coat seemed to be made of nothing but pockets — bunches of keys, slug pellets, balls of string, peppermint humbugs, teabags…
finally, Harry pulled out a handful of strange-looking coins.
“Give him five Knuts,” said Hagrid sleepily.
“Knuts?”
“The little bronze ones.”
Harry counted out five little bronze coins, and the owl held out his leg so Harry could put the money into a small leather pouch tied to it. Then he flew off through the open window.
Hagrid yawned loudly, sat up, and stretched.
“Best be Off, Harry, lots ter do today, gotta get up ter London an’ buy all yer stuff fer school.”
Harry was turning over the wizard coins and looking at them. He had just thought of something that made him feel as though the happy balloon inside him had got a puncture.
“Um — Hagrid?”
“Mm?” said Hagrid, who was pulling on his huge boots.
“I haven’t got any money — and you heard Uncle Vernon last night … he won’t pay for me to go and learn magic.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Hagrid, standing up and scratching his head. “D’yeh think yer parents didn’t leave yeh anything?”
“But if their house was destroyed –”
“They didn’ keep their gold in the house, boy! Nah, first stop fer us is Gringotts. Wizards’ bank. Have a sausage, they’re not bad cold — an’ I wouldn’ say no teh a bit o’ yer birthday cake, neither.”
“Wizards have banks?”
“Just the one. Gringotts. Run by goblins.”
Harry dropped the bit of sausage he was holding.
“Goblins?”
“Yeah — so yeh’d be mad ter try an’ rob it, I’ll tell yeh that. Never mess with goblins, Harry. Gringotts is the safest place in the world fer anything yeh want ter keep safe — ‘cept maybe Hogwarts. As a matter o’ fact, I gotta visit Gringotts anyway. Fer Dumbledore. Hogwarts business.” Hagrid drew himself up proudly. “He usually gets me ter do important stuff fer him. Fetchin’ you gettin’ things from Gringotts — knows he can trust me, see.
“Got everythin’? Come on, then.”
Harry followed Hagrid out onto the rock. The sky was quite clear now and the sea gleamed in the sunlight. The boat Uncle Vernon had hired was still there, with a lot of water in the bottom after the storm.
“How did you get here?” Harry asked, looking around for another boat.
“Flew,” said Hagrid.
“Flew?”
“Yeah — but we’ll go back in this. Not s’pposed ter use magic now I’ve got yeh.”
They settled down in the boat, Harry still staring at Hagrid, trying to imagine him flying.
“Seems a shame ter row, though,” said Hagrid, giving Harry another of his sideways looks. “If I was ter — er — speed things up a bit, would yeh mind not mentionin’ it at Hogwarts?”
“Of course not,” said Harry, eager to see more magic. Hagrid pulled out the pink umbrella again, tapped it twice on the side of the boat, and they sped off toward land.
“Why would you be mad to try and rob Gringotts?” Harry asked.
“Spells — enchantments,” said Hagrid, unfolding his newspaper as he spoke. “They say there’s dragons guardin’ the highsecurity vaults. And then yeh gotta find yer way — Gringotts is hundreds of miles under London, see. Deep under the Underground. Yeh’d die of hunger tryin’ ter get out, even if yeh did manage ter get yer hands on summat.”
Harry sat and thought about this while Hagrid read his newspaper, the Daily Prophet. Harry had learned from Uncle Vernon that people liked to be left alone while they did this, but it was very difficult, he’d never had so many questions in his life.
“Ministry o’ Magic messin’ things up as usual,” Hagrid muttered, turning the page.
“There’s a Ministry of Magic?” Harry asked, before he could stop himself.
“‘Course,” said Hagrid. “They wanted Dumbledore fer Minister, 0 ‘ course, but he’d never leave Hogwarts, so old Cornelius Fudge got the job. Bungler if ever there was one. So he pelts Dumbledore with owls every morning, askin’ fer advice.”
“But what does a Ministry of Magic do?”
“Well, their main job is to keep it from the Muggles that there’s still witches an’ wizards up an’ down the country.”
“Why?”
“Why? Blimey, Harry, everyone’d be wantin’ magic solutions to their problems. Nah, we’re best left alone.”
At this moment the boat bumped gently into the harbor wall. Hagrid folded up his newspaper, and they clambered up the stone steps onto the street.
Passersby stared a lot at Hagrid as they walked through the little town to the station. Harry couldn’t blame them. Not only was Hagrid twice as tall as anyone else, he kept pointing at perfectly ordinary things like parking meters and saying loudly, “See that, Harry? Things these Muggles dream up, eh?”
“Hagrid,” said Harry, panting a bit as he ran to keep up, “did you say there are dragons at Gringotts?”
“Well, so they say,” said Hagrid. “Crikey, I’d like a dragon.”
“You’d like one?”
“Wanted one ever since I was a kid — here we go.”
They had reached the station. There was a train to London in five minutes’ time. Hagrid, who didn’t understand “Muggle money,” as he called it, gave the bills to Harry so he could buy their tickets.
People stared more than ever on the train. Hagrid took up two seats and sat knitting what looked like a canary-yellow circus tent.
“Still got yer letter, Harry?” he asked as he counted stitches. Harry took the parchment envelope out of his pocket.
“Good,” said Hagrid. “There’s a list there of everything yeh need.”
Harry unfolded a second piece of paper he hadn’t noticed the night before, and read: HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY UNIFORM First-year students will require: 1. Three sets of plain work robes (black) 2. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear 3. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar) 4. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings) Please note that all pupils’ clothes should carry name tags COURSE BOOKS All students should have a copy of each of the following: The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling A Beginners’ Guide to Transfiguration by Emetic Switch One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble OTHER EQUIPMENT wand cauldron (pewter, standard size 2) set glass or crystal phials telescope set brass scales Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS “Can we buy all this in London?” Harry wondered aloud.
“If yeh know where to go,” said Hagrid.
Harry had never been to London before. Although Hagrid seemed to know where he was going, he was obviously not used to getting there in an ordinary way. He got stuck in the ticket barrier on the Underground, and complained loudly that the seats were too small and the trains too slow.
“I don’t know how the Muggles manage without magic,” he said as they climbed a broken-down escalator that led up to a bustling road lined with shops.
Hagrid was so huge that he parted the crowd easily; all Harry had to do was keep close behind him. They passed book shops and music stores, hamburger restaurants and cinemas, but nowhere that looked as if it could sell you a magic wand. This was just an ordinary street full of ordinary people. Could there really be piles of wizard gold buried miles beneath them? Were there really shops that sold spell books and broomsticks? Might this not all be some huge joke that the Dursleys had cooked up? If Harry hadn’t known that the Dursleys had no sense of humor, he might have thought so; yet somehow, even though everything Hagrid had told him so far was unbelievable, Harry couldn’t help trusting him.
“This is it,” said Hagrid, coming to a halt, “the Leaky Cauldron. It’s a famous place.”
It was a tiny, grubby-looking pub. If Hagrid hadn’t pointed it out, Harry wouldn’t have noticed it was there. The people hurrying by didn’t glance at it. Their eyes slid from the big book shop on one side to the record shop on the other as if they couldn’t see the Leaky Cauldron at all. In fact, Harry had the most peculiar feeling that only he and Hagrid could see it. Before he could mention this, Hagrid had steered him inside.
For a famous place, it was very dark and shabby. A few old women were sitting in a corner, drinking tiny glasses of sherry. One of them was smoking a long pipe. A little man in a top hat was talking to the old bartender, who was quite bald and looked like a toothless walnut. The low buzz of chatter stopped when they walked in. Everyone seemed to know Hagrid; they waved and smiled at him, and the bartender reached for a glass, saying, “The usual, Hagrid?”
“Can’t, Tom, I’m on Hogwarts business,” said Hagrid, clapping his great hand on Harry’s shoulder and making Harry’s knees buckle.
“Good Lord,” said the bartender, peering at Harry, “is this — can this be –?”
The Leaky Cauldron had suddenly gone completely still and silent.
“Bless my soul,” whispered the old bartender, “Harry Potter… what an honor.”
He hurried out from behind the bar, rushed toward Harry and seized his hand, tears in his eyes.
“Welcome back, Mr. Potter, welcome back.”
Harry didn’t know what to say. Everyone was looking at him. The old woman with the pipe was puffing on it without realizing it had gone out.
Hagrid was beaming.
Then there was a great scraping of chairs and the next moment, Harry found himself shaking hands with everyone in the Leaky Cauldron.
“Doris Crockford, Mr. Potter, can’t believe I’m meeting you at last.”
“So proud, Mr. Potter, I’m just so proud.”
“Always wanted to shake your hand — I’m all of a flutter.”
“Delighted, Mr. Potter, just can’t tell you, Diggle’s the name, Dedalus Diggle.”
“I’ve seen you before!” said Harry, as Dedalus Diggle’s top hat fell off in his excitement. “You bowed to me once in a shop.”
“He remembers!” cried Dedalus Diggle, looking around at everyone. “Did you hear that? He remembers me!” Harry shook hands again and again — Doris Crockford kept coming back for more.
A pale young man made his way forward, very nervously. One of his eyes was twitching.
“Professor Quirrell!” said Hagrid. “Harry, Professor Quirrell will be one of your teachers at Hogwarts.”
“P-P-Potter,” stammered Professor Quirrell, grasping Harry’s hand, “c-can’t t-tell you how p- pleased I am to meet you.”
“What sort of magic do you teach, Professor Quirrell?”
“D-Defense Against the D-D-Dark Arts,” muttered Professor Quirrell, as though he’d rather not think about it. “N-not that you n-need it, eh, P-P-Potter?” He laughed nervously. “You’ll be g-getting all your equipment, I suppose? I’ve g-got to p-pick up a new b-book on vampires, m-myself.” He looked terrified at the very thought.
But the others wouldn’t let Professor Quirrell keep Harry to himself. It took almost ten minutes to get away from them all. At last, Hagrid managed to make himself heard over the babble.
“Must get on — lots ter buy. Come on, Harry.”
Doris Crockford shook Harry’s hand one last time, and Hagrid led them through the bar and out into a small, walled courtyard, where there was nothing but a trash can and a few weeds.
Hagrid grinned at Harry.
“Told yeh, didn’t I? Told yeh you was famous. Even Professor Quirrell was tremblin’ ter meet yeh — mind you, he’s usually tremblin’.”
“Is he always that nervous?”
“Oh, yeah. Poor bloke. Brilliant mind. He was fine while he was studyin’ outta books but then he took a year off ter get some firsthand experience…. They say he met vampires in the Black Forest, and there was a nasty bit o’ trouble with a hag — never been the same since.
Scared of the students, scared of his own subject now, where’s me umbrella?”
Vampires? Hags? Harry’s head was swimming. Hagrid, meanwhile, was counting bricks in the wall above the trash can.
“Three up… two across he muttered. “Right, stand back, Harry.”
He tapped the wall three times with the point of his umbrella.
The brick he had touched quivered — it wriggled — in the middle, a small hole appeared — it grew wider and wider — a second later they were facing an archway large enough even for Hagrid, an archway onto a cobbled street that twisted and turned out of sight.
“Welcome,” said Hagrid, “to Diagon Alley.”
He grinned at Harry’s amazement. They stepped through the archway. Harry looked quickly over his shoulder and saw the archway shrink instantly back into solid wall.
The sun shone brightly on a stack of cauldrons outside the nearest shop.
Cauldrons — All Sizes – Copper, Brass, Pewter, Silver — Self-Stirring — Collapsible, said a sign hanging over them.
“Yeah, you’ll be needin’ one,” said Hagrid, “but we gotta get yer money first.”
Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, “Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they’re mad….”
A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium — Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys of about Harry’s age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. “Look,” Harry heard one of them say, “the new Nimbus Two Thousand — fastest ever –” There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels’ eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon….
“Gringotts,” said Hagrid.
They had reached a snowy white building that towered over the other little shops. Standing beside its burnished bronze doors, wearing a uniform of scarlet and gold, was – “Yeah, that’s a goblin,” said Hagrid quietly as they walked up the white stone steps toward him. The goblin was about a head shorter than Harry.
He had a swarthy, clever face, a pointed beard and, Harry noticed, very long fingers and feet. He bowed as they walked inside. Now they were facing a second pair of doors, silver this time, with words engraved upon them: Enter, stranger, but take heed Of what awaits the sin of greed, For those who take, but do not earn, Must pay most dearly in their turn.
So if you seek beneath our floors A treasure that was never yours, Thief, you have been warned, beware Of finding more than treasure there.
“Like I said, Yeh’d be mad ter try an’ rob it,” said Hagrid.
A pair of goblins bowed them through the silver doors and they were in a vast marble hall. About a hundred more goblins were sitting on high stools behind a long counter, scribbling in large ledgers, weighing coins in brass scales, examining precious stones through eyeglasses.
There were too many doors to count leading off the hall, and yet more goblins were showing people in and out of these. Hagrid and Harry made for the counter.
“Morning,” said Hagrid to a free goblin. “We’ve come ter take some money outta Mr. Harry Potter’s safe.”
“You have his key, Sir?”
“Got it here somewhere,” said Hagrid, and he started emptying his pockets onto the counter, scattering a handful of moldy dog biscuits over the goblin’s book of numbers. The goblin wrinkled his nose. Harry watched the goblin on their right weighing a pile of rubies as big as glowing coals.
“Got it,” said Hagrid at last, holding up a tiny golden key.
The goblin looked at it closely.
“That seems to be in order.”
“An’ I’ve also got a letter here from Professor Dumbledore,” said Hagrid importantly, throwing out his chest. “It’s about the YouKnow-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen.”
The goblin read the letter carefully.
“Very well,” he said, handing it back to Hagrid, “I will have Someone take you down to both vaults. Griphook!”
Griphook was yet another goblin. Once Hagrid had crammed all the dog biscuits back inside his pockets, he and Harry followed Griphook toward one of the doors leading off the hall.
“What’s the You-Know-What in vault seven hundred and thirteen?” Harry asked.
“Can’t tell yeh that,” said Hagrid mysteriously. “Very secret. Hogwarts business. Dumbledore’s trusted me. More’n my job’s worth ter tell yeh that.”
Griphook held the door open for them. Harry, who had expected more marble, was surprised. They were in a narrow stone passageway lit with flaming torches. It sloped steeply downward and there were little railway tracks on the floor. Griphook whistled and a small cart came hurtling up the tracks toward them. They climbed in — Hagrid with some difficulty — and were off.
At first they just hurtled through a maze of twisting passages. Harry tried to remember, left, right, right, left, middle fork, right, left, but it was impossible. The rattling cart seemed to know its own way, because Griphook wasn’t steering.
Harry’s eyes stung as the cold air rushed past them, but he kept them wide open. Once, he thought he saw a burst of fire at the end of a passage and twisted around to see if it was a dragon, but too late – – they plunged even deeper, passing an underground lake where huge stalactites and stalagmites grew from the ceiling and floor.
I never know,” Harry called to Hagrid over the noise of the cart, “what’s the difference between a stalagmite and a stalactite?”
“Stalagmite’s got an ‘m’ in it,” said Hagrid. “An’ don’ ask me questions just now, I think I’m gonna be sick.”
He did look very green, and when the cart stopped at last beside a small door in the passage wall, Hagrid got out and had to lean against the wall to stop his knees from trembling.
Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of green smoke came billowing out, and as it cleared, Harry gasped. Inside were mounds of gold coins. Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze Knuts.
“All yours,” smiled Hagrid.
All Harry’s — it was incredible. The Dursleys couldn’t have known about this or they’d have had it from him faster than blinking. How often had they complained how much Harry cost them to keep? And all the time there had been a small fortune belonging to him, buried deep under London.
Hagrid helped Harry pile some of it into a bag.
“The gold ones are Galleons,” he explained. “Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle, it’s easy enough. Right, that should be enough fer a couple o’ terms, we’ll keep the rest safe for yeh.” He turned to Griphook. “Vault seven hundred and thirteen now, please, and can we go more slowly?”
“One speed only,” said Griphook.
They were going even deeper now and gathering speed. The air became colder and colder as they hurtled round tight corners. They went rattling over an underground ravine, and Harry leaned over the side to try to see what was down at the dark bottom, but Hagrid groaned and pulled him back by the scruff of his neck.
Vault seven hundred and thirteen had no keyhole.
“Stand back,” said Griphook importantly. He stroked the door gently with one of his long fingers and it simply melted away.
“If anyone but a Gringotts goblin tried that, they’d be sucked through the door and trapped in there,” said Griphook.
“How often do you check to see if anyone’s inside?” Harry asked.
“About once every ten years,” said Griphook with a rather nasty grin.
Something really extraordinary had to be inside this top security vault, Harry was sure, and he leaned forward eagerly, expecting to see fabulous jewels at the very least — but at first he thought it was empty. Then he noticed a grubby little package wrapped up in brown paper lying on the floor. Hagrid picked it up and tucked it deep inside his coat. Harry longed to know what it was, but knew better than to ask.
“Come on, back in this infernal cart, and don’t talk to me on the way back, it’s best if I keep me mouth shut,” said Hagrid.
One wild cart ride later they stood blinking in the sunlight outside Gringotts. Harry didn’t know where to run first now that he had a bag full of money. He didn’t have to know how many Galleons there were to a pound to know that he was holding more money than he’d had in his whole life — more money than even Dudley had ever had.
“Might as well get yer uniform,” said Hagrid, nodding toward Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions. “Listen, Harry, would yeh mind if I slipped off fer a pick-me-up in the Leaky Cauldron? I hate them Gringotts carts.” He did still look a bit sick, so Harry entered Madam Malkin’s shop alone, feeling nervous.
Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve.
“Hogwarts, clear?” she said, when Harry started to speak. “Got the lot here — another young man being fitted up just now, in fact. ì
In the back of the shop, a boy with a pale, pointed face was standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up his long black robes. Madam Malkin stood Harry on a stool next to him) slipped a long robe over his head, and began to pin it to the right length.
“Hello,” said the boy, “Hogwarts, too?”
“Yes,” said Harry.
“My father’s next door buying my books and mother’s up the street looking at wands,” said the boy. He had a bored, drawling voice. “Then I’m going to drag them off to took at racing brooms. I don’t see why first years can’t have their own. I think I’ll bully father into getting me one and I’ll smuggle it in somehow.”
Harry was strongly reminded of Dudley.
“Have you got your own broom?” the boy went on.
“No,” said Harry.
“Play Quidditch at all?”
“No,” Harry said again, wondering what on earth Quidditch could be.
“I do — Father says it’s a crime if I’m not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. Know what house you’ll be in yet?”
“No,” said Harry, feeling more stupid by the minute.
“Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I’ll be in Slytherin, all our family have been — imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” “Mmm,” said Harry, wishing he could say something a bit more interesting.
“I say, look at that man!” said the boy suddenly, nodding toward the front window. Hagrid was standing there, grinning at Harry and pointing at two large ice creams to show he couldn’t come in.
“That’s Hagrid,” said Harry, pleased to know something the boy didn’t.
“He works at Hogwarts.”
“Oh,” said the boy, “I’ve heard of him. He’s a sort of servant, isn’t he?”
“He’s the gamekeeper,” said Harry. He was liking the boy less and less every second.
“Yes, exactly. I heard he’s a sort of savage — lives in a hut on the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed.”
“I think he’s brilliant,” said Harry coldly.
“Do you?” said the boy, with a slight sneer. “Why is he with you? Where are your parents?”
“They’re dead,” said Harry shortly. He didn’t feel much like going into the matter with this boy.
“Oh, sorry,” said the other,. not sounding sorry at all. “But they were our kind, weren’t they?”
“They were a witch and wizard, if that’s what you mean.”
“I really don’t think they should let the other sort in, do you? They’re just not the same, they’ve never been brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families.
What’s your surname, anyway?”
But before Harry could answer, Madam Malkin said, “That’s you done, my dear,” and Harry, not sorry for an excuse to stop talking to the boy, hopped down from the footstool.
“Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose,” said the drawling boy.
Harry was rather quiet as he ate the ice cream Hagrid had bought him (chocolate and raspberry with chopped nuts).
“What’s up?” said Hagrid.
“Nothing,” Harry lied. They stopped to buy parchment and quills. Harry cheered up a bit when he found a bottle of ink that changed color as you wrote. When they had left the shop, he said, “Hagrid, what’s Quidditch?”
“Blimey, Harry, I keep forgettin’ how little yeh know — not knowin’ about Quidditch!”
“Don’t make me feel worse,” said Harry. He told Hagrid about the pate boy in Madam Malkin’s.
“–and he said people from Muggle families shouldn’t even be allowed in.”
“Yer not from a Muggle family. If he’d known who yeh were — he’s grown up knowin’ yer name if his parents are wizardin’ folk. You saw what everyone in the Leaky Cauldron was like when they saw yeh. Anyway, what does he know about it, some o’ the best I ever saw were the only ones with magic in ’em in a long line 0′ Muggles — look at yer mum! Look what she had fer a sister!”
“So what is Quidditch?”
“It’s our sport. Wizard sport. It’s like — like soccer in the Muggle world — everyone follows Quidditch — played up in the air on broomsticks and there’s four balls — sorta hard ter explain the rules.”
“And what are Slytherin and Hufflepuff?”
“School houses. There’s four. Everyone says Hufflepuff are a lot o’ duffers, but –”
“I bet I’m in Hufflepuff” said Harry gloomily.
“Better Hufflepuff than Slytherin,” said Hagrid darkly. “There’s not a single witch or wizard who went bad who wasn’t in Slytherin.
You-Know-Who was one.”
“Vol-, sorry – You-Know-Who was at Hogwarts?”
“Years an’ years ago,” said Hagrid.
They bought Harry’s school books in a shop called Flourish and Blotts where the shelves were stacked to the ceiling with books as large as paving stones bound in leather; books the size of postage stamps in covers of silk; books full of peculiar symbols and a few books with nothing in them at all. Even Dudley, who never read anything, would have been wild to get his hands on some of these. Hagrid almost had to drag Harry away from Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue- Tying and Much, Much More) by Professor Vindictus Viridian.
“I was trying to find out how to curse Dudley.”
“I’m not sayin’ that’s not a good idea, but yer not ter use magic in the Muggle world except in very special circumstances,” said Hagrid. “An’ anyway, yeh couldn’ work any of them curses yet, yeh’ll need a lot more study before yeh get ter that level.”
Hagrid wouldn’t let Harry buy a solid gold cauldron, either (“It says pewter on yer list”), but they got a nice set of scales for weighing potion ingredients and a collapsible brass telescope. Then they visited the Apothecary, which was fascinating enough to make up for its horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and rotted cabbages. Barrels of slimy stuff stood on the floor; jars of herbs, dried roots, and bright powders lined the walls; bundles of feathers, strings of fangs, and snarled claws hung from the ceiling. While Hagrid asked the man behind the counter for a supply of some basic potion ingredients for Harry, Harry himself examined silver unicorn horns at twenty-one Galleons each and minuscule, glittery-black beetle eyes (five Knuts a scoop).
Outside the Apothecary, Hagrid checked Harry’s list again.
“Just yer wand left – A yeah, an’ I still haven’t got yeh a birthday present.”
Harry felt himself go red.
“You don’t have to –”
“I know I don’t have to. Tell yeh what, I’ll get yer animal. Not a toad, toads went outta fashion years ago, yeh’d be laughed at – an’ I don’ like cats, they make me sneeze. I’ll get yer an owl. All the kids want owls, they’re dead useful, carry yer mail an’ everythin’.”
Twenty minutes later, they left Eeylops Owl Emporium, which had been dark and full of rustling and flickering, jewel-bright eyes. Harry now carried a large cage that held a beautiful snowy owl, fast asleep with her head under her wing. He couldn’t stop stammering his thanks, sounding just like Professor Quirrell.
“Don’ mention it,” said Hagrid gruffly. “Don’ expect you’ve had a lotta presents from them Dursleys. Just Ollivanders left now – only place fer wands, Ollivanders, and yeh gotta have the best wand.”
A magic wand… this was what Harry had been really looking forward to.
The last shop was narrow and shabby. Peeling gold letters over the door read Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window.
A tinkling bell rang somewhere in the depths of the shop as they stepped inside. It was a tiny place, empty except for a single, spindly chair that Hagrid sat on to wait. Harry felt strangely as though he had entered a very strict library; he swallowed a lot of new questions that had just occurred to him and looked instead at the thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly right up to the ceiling. For some reason, the back of his neck prickled. The very dust and silence in here seemed to tingle with some secret magic.
“Good afternoon,” said a soft voice. Harry jumped. Hagrid must have jumped, too, because there was a loud crunching noise and he got quickly off the spindly chair.
An old man was standing before them, his wide, pale eyes shining like moons through the gloom of the shop.
“Hello,” said Harry awkwardly.
“Ah yes,” said the man. “Yes, yes. I thought I’d be seeing you soon.
Harry Potter.” It wasn’t a question. “You have your mother’s eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work.”
Mr. Ollivander moved closer to Harry. Harry wished he would blink. Those silvery eyes were a bit creepy.
“Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches.
Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favored it — it’s really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course.”
Mr. Ollivander had come so close that he and Harry were almost nose to nose. Harry could see himself reflected in those misty eyes.
“And that’s where…”
Mr. Ollivander touched the lightning scar on Harry’s forehead with a long, white finger.
“I’m sorry to say I sold the wand that did it,” he said softly.
“Thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Powerful wand, very powerful, and in the wrong hands… well, if I’d known what that wand was going out into the world to do….”
He shook his head and then, to Harry’s relief, spotted Hagrid.
“Rubeus! Rubeus Hagrid! How nice to see you again…. Oak, sixteen inches, rather bendy, wasn’t it?”
“It was, sir, yes,” said Hagrid.
“Good wand, that one. But I suppose they snapped it in half when you got expelled?” said Mr. Ollivander, suddenly stern.
“Er — yes, they did, yes,” said Hagrid, shuffling his feet. “I’ve still got the pieces, though,” he added brightly.
“But you don’t use them?” said Mr. Ollivander sharply.
“Oh, no, sit,” said Hagrid quickly. Harry noticed he gripped his pink umbrella very tightly as he spoke.
“Hmmm,” said Mr. Ollivander, giving Hagrid a piercing look. “Well, now — Mr. Potter. Let me see.” He pulled a long tape measure with silver markings out of his pocket. “Which is your wand arm?”
“Er — well, I’m right-handed,” said Harry.
“Hold out your arm. That’s it.” He measured Harry from shoulder to finger, then wrist to elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit and round his head. As he measured, he said, “Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance, Mr. Potter. We use unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. No two Ollivander wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the same. And of course, you will never get such good results with another wizard’s wand.”
Harry suddenly realized that the tape measure, which was measuring between his nostrils, was doing this on its own. Mr. Ollivander was flitting around the shelves, taking down boxes.
“That will do,” he said, and the tape measure crumpled into a heap on the floor. “Right then, Mr. Potter. Try this one. Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine inches. Nice and flexible. just take it and give it a wave.”
Harry took the wand and (feeling foolish) waved it around a bit, but Mr. Ollivander snatched it out of his hand almost at once.
“Maple and phoenix feather. Seven inches. Quite whippy. Try –”
Harry tried — but he had hardly raised the wand when it, too, was snatched back by Mr. Ollivander.
“No, no -here, ebony and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches, springy.
Go on, go on, try it out.”
Harry tried. And tried. He had no idea what Mr. Ollivander was waiting for. The pile of tried wands was mounting higher and higher on the spindly chair, but the more wands Mr. Ollivander pulled from the shelves, the happier he seemed to become.
“Tricky customer, eh? Not to worry, we’ll find the perfect match here somewhere — I wonder, now – – yes, why not — unusual combination — holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple.”
Harry took the wand. He felt a sudden warmth in his fingers. He raised the wand above his head, brought it swishing down through the dusty air and a stream of red and gold sparks shot from the end like a firework, throwing dancing spots of light on to the walls. Hagrid whooped and clapped and Mr. Ollivander cried, “Oh, bravo! Yes, indeed, oh, very good. Well, well, well… how curious… how very curious… ì
He put Harry’s wand back into its box and wrapped it in brown paper, still muttering, “Curious… curious..
“Sorry,” said Harry, “but what’s curious?”
Mr. Ollivander fixed Harry with his pale stare.
“I remember every wand I’ve ever sold, Mr. Potter. Every single wand. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather — just one other. It is very curious indeed that you should be destined for this wand when its brother why, its brother gave you that scar.”
Harry swallowed.
“Yes, thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Curious indeed how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard, remember…. I think we must expect great things from you, Mr. Potter…. After all, He- Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things — terrible, yes, but great.”
Harry shivered. He wasn’t sure he liked Mr. Ollivander too much. He paid seven gold Galleons for his wand, and Mr. Ollivander bowed them from his shop.
The late afternoon sun hung low in the sky as Harry and Hagrid made their way back down Diagon Alley, back through the wall, back through the Leaky Cauldron, now empty. Harry didn’t speak at all as they walked down the road; he didn’t even notice how much people were gawking at them on the Underground, laden as they were with all their funny-shaped packages, with the snowy owl asleep in its cage on Harry’s lap. Up another escalator, out into Paddington station; Harry only realized where they were when Hagrid tapped him on the shoulder.
“Got time fer a bite to eat before yer train leaves,” he said.
He bought Harry a hamburger and they sat down on plastic seats to eat them. Harry kept looking around. Everything looked so strange, somehow.
“You all right, Harry? Yer very quiet,” said Hagrid.
Harry wasn’t sure he could explain. He’d just had the best birthday of his life — and yet — he chewed his hamburger, trying to find the words.
“Everyone thinks I’m special,” he said at last. “All those people in the Leaky Cauldron, Professor Quirrell, Mr. Ollivander… but I don’t know anything about magic at all. How can they expect great things? I’m famous and I can’t even remember what I’m famous for. I don’t know what happened when Vol-, sorry — I mean, the night my parents died.”
Hagrid leaned across the table. Behind the wild beard and eyebrows he wore a very kind smile.
“Don’ you worry, Harry. You’ll learn fast enough. Everyone starts at the beginning at Hogwarts, you’ll be just fine. just be yerself. I know it’s hard. Yeh’ve been singled out, an’ that’s always hard. But yeh’ll have a great time at Hogwarts — I did — still do, ‘smatter of fact.”
Hagrid helped Harry on to the train that would take him back to the Dursleys, then handed him an envelope.
“Yer ticket fer Hogwarts, ” he said. “First o’ September — King’s Cross — it’s all on yer ticket. Any problems with the Dursleys, send me a letter with yer owl, she’ll know where to find me…. See yeh soon, Harry.”
The train pulled out of the station. Harry wanted to watch Hagrid until he was out of sight; he rose in his seat and pressed his nose against the window, but he blinked and Hagrid had gone.
CHAPTER SIX
THE JOURNEY FROM PLATFORM NINE AND THREE-QUARTERS
Harry’s last month with the Dursleys wasn’t fun. True, Dudley was now so scared of Harry he wouldn’t stay in the same room, while Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn’t shut Harry in his cupboard, force him to do anything, or shout at him — in fact, they didn’t speak to him at all.
Half terrified, half furious, they acted as though any chair with Harry in it were empty. Although this was an improvement in many ways, it did become a bit depressing after a while.
Harry kept to his room, with his new owl for company. He had decided to call her Hedwig, a name he had found in A History of Magic. His school books were very interesting. He lay on his bed reading late into the night, Hedwig swooping in and out of the open window as she pleased. It was lucky that Aunt Petunia didn’t come in to vacuum anymore, because Hedwig kept bringing back dead mice. Every night before he went to sleep, Harry ticked off another day on the piece of paper he had pinned to the wall, counting down to September the first.
On the last day of August he thought he’d better speak to his aunt and uncle about getting to King’s Cross station the next day, so he went down to the living room where they were watching a quiz show on television. He cleared his throat to let them know he was there, and Dudley screamed and ran from the room.
“Er — Uncle Vernon?”
Uncle Vernon grunted to show he was listening.
“Er — I need to be at King’s Cross tomorrow to — to go to Hogwarts.”
Uncle Vernon grunted again.
“Would it be all right if you gave me a lift?”
Grunt. Harry supposed that meant yes.
“Thank you.”
He was about to go back upstairs when Uncle Vernon actually spoke.
“Funny way to get to a wizards’ school, the train. Magic carpets all got punctures, have they?”
Harry didn’t say anything.
“Where is this school, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” said Harry, realizing this for the first time. He pulled the ticket Hagrid had given him out of his pocket.
“I just take the train from platform nine and three-quarters at eleven o’clock,” he read.
His aunt and uncle stared.
“Platform what?”
“Nine and three-quarters.”
“Don’t talk rubbish,” said Uncle Vernon. “There is no platform nine and three-quarters.”
“It’s on my ticket.”
“Barking,” said Uncle Vernon, “howling mad, the lot of them. You’ll see.
You just wait. All right, we’ll take you to King’s Cross. We’re going up to London tomorrow anyway, or I wouldn’t bother.”
“Why are you going to London?” Harry asked, trying to keep things friendly.
“Taking Dudley to the hospital,” growled Uncle Vernon. “Got to have that ruddy tail removed before he goes to Smeltings.”
Harry woke at five o’clock the next morning and was too excited and nervous to go back to sleep. He got up and pulled on his jeans because he didn’t want to walk into the station in his wizard’s robes — he’d change on the train. He checked his Hogwarts list yet again to make sure he had everything he needed, saw that Hedwig was shut safely in her cage, and then paced the room, waiting for the Dursleys to get up. Two hours later, Harry’s huge, heavy trunk had been loaded into the Dursleys’ car, Aunt Petunia had talked Dudley into sitting next to Harry, and they had set off.
They reached King’s Cross at half past ten. Uncle Vernon dumped Harry’s trunk onto a cart and wheeled it into the station for him. Harry thought this was strangely kind until Uncle Vernon stopped dead, facing the platforms with a nasty grin on his face.
“Well, there you are, boy. Platform nine — platform ten. Your platform should be somewhere in the middle, but they don’t seem to have built it yet, do they?”
He was quite right, of course. There was a big plastic number nine over one platform and a big plastic number ten over the one next to it, and in the middle, nothing at all.
“Have a good term,” said Uncle Vernon with an even nastier smile. He left without another word. Harry turned and saw the Dursleys drive away.
All three of them were laughing. Harry’s mouth went rather dry. What on earth was he going to do? He was starting to attract a lot of funny looks, because of Hedwig. He’d have to ask someone.
He stopped a passing guard, but didn’t dare mention platform nine and three-quarters. The guard had never heard of Hogwarts and when Harry couldn’t even tell him what part of the country it was in, he started to get annoyed, as though Harry was being stupid on purpose. Getting desperate, Harry asked for the train that left at eleven o’clock, but the guard said there wasn’t one. In the end the guard strode away, muttering about time wasters. Harry was now trying hard not to panic.
According to the large clock over the arrivals board, he had ten minutes left to get on the train to Hogwarts and he had no idea how to do it; he was stranded in the middle of a station with a trunk he could hardly lift, a pocket full of wizard money, and a large owl.
Hagrid must have forgotten to tell him something you had to do, like tapping the third brick on the left to get into Diagon Alley. He wondered if he should get out his wand and start tapping the ticket inspector’s stand between platforms nine and ten.
At that moment a group of people passed just behind him and he caught a few words of what they were saying.
“– packed with Muggles, of course –”
Harry swung round. The speaker was a plump woman who was talking to four boys, all with flaming red hair. Each of them was pushing a trunk like Harry’s in front of him — and they had an owl.
Heart hammering, Harry pushed his cart after them. They stopped and so did he, just near enough to hear what they were saying.
“Now, what’s the platform number?” said the boys’ mother.
“Nine and three-quarters!” piped a small girl, also red-headed, who was holding her hand, “Mom, can’t I go… ì
“You’re not old enough, Ginny, now be quiet. All right, Percy, you go first.”
What looked like the oldest boy marched toward platforms nine and ten.
Harry watched, careful not to blink in case he missed it — but just as the boy reached the dividing barrier between the two platforms, a large crowd of tourists came swarming in front of him and by the time the last backpack had cleared away, the boy had vanished.
“Fred, you next,” the plump woman said.
“I’m not Fred, I’m George,” said the boy. “Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother? CarA you tell I’m George?”
“Sorry, George, dear.”
“Only joking, I am Fred,” said the boy, and off he went. His twin called after him to hurry up, and he must have done so, because a second later, he had gone — but how had he done it? Now the third brother was walking briskly toward the barrier he was almost there — and then, quite suddenly, he wasn’t anywhere.
There was nothing else for it.
“Excuse me,” Harry said to the plump woman.
“Hello, dear,” she said. “First time at Hogwarts? Ron’s new, too.”
She pointed at the last and youngest of her sons. He was tall, thin, and gangling, with freckles, big hands and feet, and a long nose.
“Yes,” said Harry. “The thing is — the thing is, I don’t know how to –”
“How to get onto the platform?” she said kindly, and Harry nodded.
“Not to worry,” she said. “All you have to do is walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don’t stop and don’t be scared you’ll crash into it, that’s very important. Best do it at a bit of a run if you’re nervous. Go on, go now before Ron.”
“Er — okay,” said Harry.
He pushed his trolley around and stared at the barrier. It looked very solid.
He started to walk toward it. People jostled him on their way to platforms nine and ten. Harry walked more quickly. He was going to smash right into that barrier and then he’d be in trouble — leaning forward on his cart, he broke into a heavy run — the barrier was coming nearer and nearer — he wouldn’t be able to stop — the cart was out of control — he was a foot away — he closed his eyes ready for the crash — It didn’t come… he kept on running… he opened his eyes. A scarlet steam engine was waiting next to a platform packed with people. A sign overhead said Hogwarts Express, eleven O’clock. Harry looked behind him and saw a wrought-iron archway where the barrier had been, with the words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters on it, He had done it.
Smoke from the engine drifted over the heads of the chattering crowd, while cats of every color wound here and there between their legs. Owls hooted to one another in a disgruntled sort of way over the babble and the scraping of heavy trunks.
The first few carriages were already packed with students, some hanging out of the window to talk to their families, some fighting over seats.
Harry pushed his cart off down the platform in search of an empty seat.
He passed a round-faced boy who was saying, “Gran, I’ve lost my toad again.”
“Oh, Neville,” he heard the old woman sigh.
A boy with dreadlocks was surrounded by a small crowd.
“Give us a look, Lee, go on.”
The boy lifted the lid of a box in his arms, and the people around him shrieked and yelled as something inside poked out a long, hairy leg.
Harry pressed on through the crowd until he found an empty compartment near the end of the train. He put Hedwig inside first and then started to shove and heave his trunk toward the train door. He tried to lift it up the steps but could hardly raise one end and twice he dropped it painfully on his foot.
“Want a hand?” It was one of the red-haired twins he’d followed through the barrier.
“Yes, please,” Harry panted.
“Oy, Fred! C’mere and help!”
With the twins’ help, Harry’s trunk was at last tucked away in a corner of the compartment.
“Thanks,” said Harry, pushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes.
“What’s that?” said one of the twins suddenly, pointing at Harry’s lightning scar.
“Blimey,” said the other twin. “Are you “He is,” said the first twin. “Aren’t you?” he added to Harry.
“What?” said Harry.
“Harry Potter, “chorused the twins.
“Oh, him,” said Harry. “I mean, yes, I am.”
The two boys gawked at him, and Harry felt himself turning red. Then, to his relief, a voice came floating in through the train’s open door.
“Fred? George? Are you there?”
“Coming, Mom.”
With a last look at Harry, the twins hopped off the train.
Harry sat down next to the window where, half hidden, he could watch the red-haired family on the platform and hear what they were saying. Their mother had just taken out her handkerchief.
“Ron, you’ve got something on your nose.”
The youngest boy tried to jerk out of the way, but she grabbed him and began rubbing the end of his nose.
“Mom — geroff” He wriggled free.
“Aaah, has ickle Ronnie got somefink on his nosie?” said one of the twins.
“Shut up,” said Ron.
“Where’s Percy?” said their mother.
“He’s coming now.”
The oldest boy came striding into sight. He had already changed into his billowing black Hogwarts robes, and Harry noticed a shiny silver badge on his chest with the letter P on it.
“Can’t stay long, Mother,” he said. “I’m up front, the prefects have got two compartments to themselves –”
“Oh, are you a prefect, Percy?” said one of the twins, with an air of great surprise. “You should have said something, we had no idea.”
“Hang on, I think I remember him saying something about it,” said the other twin. “Once –”
“Or twice –”
“A minute –”
“All summer –”
“Oh, shut up,” said Percy the Prefect.
“How come Percy gets new robes, anyway?” said one of the twins.
“Because he’s a prefect,” said their mother fondly. “All right, dear, well, have a good term — send me an owl when you get there.”
She kissed Percy on the cheek and he left. Then she turned to the twins.
“Now, you two — this year, you behave yourselves. If I get one more owl telling me you’ve — you’ve blown up a toilet or –”
“Blown up a toilet? We’ve never blown up a toilet.”
“Great idea though, thanks, Mom.”
“It’s not funny. And look after Ron.”
“Don’t worry, ickle Ronniekins is safe with us.”
“Shut up,” said Ron again. He was almost as tall as the twins already and his nose was still pink where his mother had rubbed it.
“Hey, Mom, guess what? Guess who we just met on the train?”
Harry leaned back quickly so they couldn’t see him looking.
“You know that black-haired boy who was near us in the station? Know who he is?”
“Who?”
“Harry Potter!”
Harry heard the little girl’s voice.
“Oh, Mom, can I go on the train and see him, Mom, eh please….”
“You’ve already seen him, Ginny, and the poor boy isn’t something you goggle at in a zoo. Is he really, Fred? How do you know?”
“Asked him. Saw his scar. It’s really there – like lightning.”
“Poor dear – no wonder he was alone, I wondered. He was ever so polite when he asked how to get onto the platform.”
“Never mind that, do you think he remembers what You-Know-Who looks like?”
Their mother suddenly became very stern.
“I forbid you to ask him, Fred. No, don’t you dare. As though he needs reminding of that on his first day at school.”
“All right, keep your hair on.”
A whistle sounded.
“Hurry up!” their mother said, and the three boys clambered onto the train. They leaned out of the window for her to kiss them good-bye, and their younger sister began to cry.
“Don’t, Ginny, we’ll send you loads of owls.”
“We’ll send you a Hogwarts toilet seat.”
“George!”
“Only joking, Mom.”
The train began to move. Harry saw the boys’ mother waving and their sister, half laughing, half crying, running to keep up with the train until it gathered too much speed, then she fell back and waved.
Harry watched the girl and her mother disappear as the train rounded the corner. Houses flashed past the window. Harry felt a great leap of excitement. He didn’t know what he was going to but it had to be better than what he was leaving behind.
The door of the compartment slid open and the youngest redheaded boy came in.
“Anyone sitting there?” he asked, pointing at the seat opposite Harry.
“Everywhere else is full.”
Harry shook his head and the boy sat down. He glanced at Harry and then looked quickly out of the window, pretending he hadn’t looked. Harry saw he still had a black mark on his nose.
“Hey, Ron.”
The twins were back.
“Listen, we’re going down the middle of the train — Lee Jordan’s got a giant tarantula down there.”
“Right,” mumbled Ron.
“Harry,” said the other twin, “did we introduce ourselves? Fred and George Weasley. And this is Ron, our brother. See you later, then.
“Bye,” said Harry and Ron. The twins slid the compartment door shut behind them.
“Are you really Harry Potter?” Ron blurted out.
Harry nodded.
“Oh -well, I thought it might be one of Fred and George’s jokes,” said Ron. “And have you really got — you know…”
He pointed at Harry’s forehead.
Harry pulled back his bangs to show the lightning scar. Ron stared.
“So that’s where You-Know-Who “Yes,” said Harry, “but I can’t remember it.”
“Nothing?” said Ron eagerly.
“Well — I remember a lot of green light, but nothing else.”
“Wow,” said Ron. He sat and stared at Harry for a few moments, then, as though he had suddenly realized what he was doing, he looked quickly out of the window again.
“Are all your family wizards?” asked Harry, who found Ron just as interesting as Ron found him.
“Er — Yes, I think so,” said Ron. “I think Mom’s got a second cousin who’s an accountant, but we never talk about him.”
“So you must know loads of magic already.”
The Weasleys were clearly one of those old wizarding families the pale boy in Diagon Alley had talked about.
“I heard you went to live with Muggles,” said Ron. “What are they like?”
“Horrible -well, not all of them. My aunt and uncle and cousin are, though. Wish I’d had three wizard brothers.”
“Five,” said Ron. For some reason, he was looking gloomy. “I’m the sixth in our family to go to Hogwarts. You could say I’ve got a lot to live up to. Bill and Charlie have already left — Bill was head boy and Charlie was captain of Quidditch. Now Percy’s a prefect. Fred and George mess around a lot, but they still get really good marks and everyone thinks they’re really funny. Everyone expects me to do as well as the others, but if I do, it’s no big deal, because they did it first. You never get anything new, either, with five brothers. I’ve got Bill’s old robes, Charlie’s old wand, and Percy’s old rat.”
Ron reached inside his jacket and pulled out a fat gray rat, which was asleep.
“His name’s Scabbers and he’s useless, he hardly ever wakes up. Percy got an owl from my dad for being made a prefect, but they couldn’t aff — I mean, I got Scabbers instead.”
Ron’s ears went pink. He seemed to think he’d said too much, because he went back to staring out of the window.
Harry didn’t think there was anything wrong with not being able to afford an owl. After all, he’d never had any money in his life until a month ago, and he told Ron so, all about having to wear Dudley’s old clothes and never getting proper birthday presents. This seemed to cheer Ron up.
“… and until Hagrid told me, I didn’t know anything about be ing a wizard or about my parents or Voldemort”
Ron gasped.
“What?” said Harry.
“You said You-Know-Who’s name!” said Ron, sounding both shocked and impressed. “I’d have thought you, of all people –”
“I’m not trying to be brave or anything, saying the name,” said Harry, I just never knew you shouldn’t. See what I mean? I’ve got loads to learn…. I bet,” he added, voicing for the first time something that had been worrying him a lot lately, “I bet I’m the worst in the class.”
“You won’t be. There’s loads of people who come from Muggle families and they learn quick enough.”
While they had been talking, the train had carried them out of London.
Now they were speeding past fields full of cows and sheep. They were quiet for a time, watching the fields and lanes flick past.
Around half past twelve there was a great clattering outside in the corridor and a smiling, dimpled woman slid back their door and said, “Anything off the cart, dears?”
Harry, who hadn’t had any breakfast, leapt to his feet, but Ron’s ears went pink again and he muttered that he’d brought sandwiches. Harry went out into the corridor.
He had never had any money for candy with the Dursleys, and now that he had pockets rattling with gold and silver he was ready to buy as many Mars Bars as he could carry — but the woman didn’t have Mars Bars. What she did have were Bettie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum, Chocolate Frogs. Pumpkin Pasties, Cauldron Cakes, Licorice Wands, and a number of other strange things Harry had never seen in his life. Not wanting to miss anything, he got some of everything and paid the woman eleven silver Sickles and seven bronze Knuts.
Ron stared as Harry brought it all back in to the compartment and tipped it onto an empty seat.
“Hungry, are you?”
“Starving,” said Harry, taking a large bite out of a pumpkin pasty.
Ron had taken out a lumpy package and unwrapped it. There were four sandwiches inside. He pulled one of them apart and said, “She always forgets I don’t like corned beef.”
“Swap you for one of these,” said Harry, holding up a pasty. “Go on –”
“You don’t want this, it’s all dry,” said Ron. “She hasn’t got much time,” he added quickly, “you know, with five of us.”
“Go on, have a pasty,” said Harry, who had never had anything to share before or, indeed, anyone to share it with. It was a nice feeling, sitting there with Ron, eating their way through all Harry’s pasties, cakes, and candies (the sandwiches lay forgotten).
“What are these?” Harry asked Ron, holding up a pack of Chocolate Frogs.
“They’re not really frogs, are they?” He was starting to feel that nothing would surprise him.
“No,” said Ron. “But see what the card is. I’m missing Agrippa.”
“What?”
“Oh, of course, you wouldn’t know — Chocolate Frogs have cards, inside them, you know, to collect — famous witches and wizards. I’ve got about five hundred, but I haven’t got Agrippa or Ptolemy.”
Harry unwrapped his Chocolate Frog and picked up the card. It showed a man’s face. He wore half- moon glasses, had a long, crooked nose, and flowing silver hair, beard, and mustache. Underneath the picture was the name Albus Dumbledore.
“So this is Dumbledore!” said Harry.
“Don’t tell me you’d never heard of Dumbledore!” said Ron. “Can I have a frog? I might get Agrippa — thanks Harry turned over his card and read: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE CURRENTLY HEADMASTER OF HOGWARTS Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore enjoys chamber music and tenpin bowling.
Harry turned the card back over and saw, to his astonishment, that Dumbledore’s face had disappeared.
“He’s gone!”
“Well, you can’t expect him to hang around all day,” said Ron. “He’ll be back. No, I’ve got Morgana again and I’ve got about six of her… do you want it? You can start collecting.”
Ron’s eyes strayed to the pile of Chocolate Frogs waiting to be unwrapped.
“Help yourself,” said Harry. “But in, you know, the Muggle world, people just stay put in photos.”
“Do they? What, they don’t move at all?” Ron sounded amazed. “weird!”
Harry stared as Dumbledore sidled back into the picture on his card and gave him a small smile. Ron was more interested in eating the frogs than looking at the Famous Witches and Wizards cards, but Harry couldn’t keep his eyes off them. Soon he had not only Dumbledore and Morgana, but Hengist of Woodcroft, Alberic Grunnion, Circe, Paracelsus, and Merlin.
He finally tore his eyes away from the druidess Cliodna, who was scratching her nose, to open a bag of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.
“You want to be careful with those,” Ron warned Harry. “When they say every flavor, they mean every flavor — you know, you get all the ordinary ones like chocolate and peppermint and mar- malade, but then you can get spinach and liver and tripe. George reckons he had a boogerflavored one once.”
Ron picked up a green bean, looked at it carefully, and bit into a corner.
“Bleaaargh — see? Sprouts.”
They had a good time eating the Every Flavor Beans. Harry got toast, coconut, baked bean, strawberry, curry, grass, coffee, sardine, and was even brave enough to nibble the end off a funny gray one Ron wouldn’t touch, which turned out to be pepper.
The countryside now flying past the window was becoming wilder. The neat fields had gone. Now there were woods, twisting rivers, and dark green hills.
There was a knock on the door of their compartment and the round-faced boy Harry had passed on platform nine and threequarters came in. He looked tearful.
“Sorry,” he said, “but have you seen a toad at all?”
When they shook their heads, he wailed, “I’ve lost him! He keeps getting away from me!”
“He’ll turn up,” said Harry.
“Yes,” said the boy miserably. “Well, if you see him…”
He left.
“Don’t know why he’s so bothered,” said Ron. “If I’d brought a toad I’d lose it as quick as I could. Mind you, I brought Scabbers, so I can’t talk.”
The rat was still snoozing on Ron’s lap.
“He might have died and you wouldn’t know the difference,” said Ron in disgust. “I tried to turn him yellow yesterday to make him more interesting, but the spell didn’t work. I’ll show you, look…”
He rummaged around in his trunk and pulled out a very battered-looking wand. It was chipped in places and something white was glinting at the end.
“Unicorn hair’s nearly poking out. Anyway He had just raised his ‘wand when the compartment door slid open again.
The toadless boy was back, but this time he had a girl with him. She was already wearing her new Hogwarts robes.
“Has anyone seen a toad? Neville’s lost one,” she said. She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth.
“We’ve already told him we haven’t seen it,” said Ron, but the girl wasn’t listening, she was looking at the wand in his hand.
“Oh, are you doing magic? Let’s see it, then.”
She sat down. Ron looked taken aback.
“Er — all right.”
He cleared his throat.
“Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, Turn this stupid, fat rat yellow.”
He waved his wand, but nothing happened. Scabbers stayed gray and fast asleep.
“Are you sure that’s a real spell?” said the girl. “Well, it’s not very good, is it? I’ve tried a few simple spells just for practice and it’s all worked for me. Nobody in my family’s magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it’s the very best school of witchcraft there is, I’ve heard — I’ve learned all our course books by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough — I’m Hermione Granger, by the way, who are you.
She said all this very fast.
Harry looked at Ron, and was relieved to see by his stunned face that he hadn’t learned all the course books by heart either.
“I’m Ron Weasley,” Ron muttered.
“Harry Potter,” said Harry.
“Are you really?” said Hermione. “I know all about you, of course — I got a few extra books. for background reading, and you’re in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century.
“Am I?” said Harry, feeling dazed.
“Goodness, didn’t you know, I’d have found out everything I could if it was me,” said Hermione. “Do either of you know what house you’ll be in? I’ve been asking around, and I hope I’m in Gryffindor, it sounds by far the best; I hear Dumbledore himself was in it, but I suppose Ravenclaw wouldn’t be too bad…. Anyway, we’d better go and look for Neville’s toad. You two had better change, you know, I expect we’ll be there soon.”
And she left, taking the toadless boy with her.
“Whatever house I’m in, I hope she’s not in it,” said Ron. He threw his wand back into his trunk. “Stupid spell — George gave it to me, bet he knew it was a dud.”
“What house are your brothers in?” asked Harry.
“Gryffindor,” said Ron. Gloom seemed to be settling on him again. “Mom and Dad were in it, too. I don’t know what they’ll say if I’m not. I don’t suppose Ravenclaw would be too bad, but imagine if they put me in Slytherin.”
“That’s the house Vol-, I mean, You-Know-Who was in?”
“Yeah,” said Ron. He flopped back into his seat, looking depressed.
“You know, I think the ends of Scabbers’ whiskers are a bit lighter,”
said Harry, trying to take Ron’s mind off houses. “So what do your oldest brothers do now that they’ve left, anyway?”
Harry was wondering what a wizard did once he’d finished school.
“Charlie’s in Romania studying dragons, and Bill’s in Africa doing something for Gringotts,” said Ron. “Did you hear about Gringotts? It’s been all over the Daily Prophet, but I don’t suppose you get that with the Muggles — someone tried to rob a high security vault.”
Harry stared.
“Really? What happened to them?”
“Nothing, that’s why it’s such big news. They haven’t been caught. My dad says it must’ve been a powerful Dark wizard to get round Gringotts, but they don’t think they took anything, that’s what’s odd. ‘Course, everyone gets scared when something like this happens in case You-Know-Who’s behind it.”
Harry turned this news over in his mind. He was starting to get a prickle of fear every time You- Know-Who was mentioned. He supposed this was all part of entering the magical world, but it had been a lot more comfortable saying “Voldemort” without worrying.
“What’s your Quidditch team?” Ron asked.
“Er — I don’t know any,” Harry confessed.
“What!” Ron looked dumbfounded. “Oh, you wait, it’s the best game in the world –” And he was off, explaining all about the four balls and the positions of the seven players, describing famous games he’d been to with his brothers and the broomstick he’d like to get if he had the money. He was just taking Harry through the finer points of the game when the compartment door slid open yet again, but it wasn’t Neville the toadless boy, or Hermione Granger this time.
Three boys entered, and Harry recognized the middle one at once: it was the pale boy from Madam Malkin’s robe shop. He was looking at Harry with a lot more interest than he’d shown back in Diagon Alley.
“Is it true?” he said. “They’re saying all down the train that Harry Potter’s in this compartment. So it’s you, is it?”
“Yes,” said Harry. He was looking at the other boys. Both of them were thickset and looked extremely mean. Standing on either side of the pale boy, they looked like bodyguards.
“Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle,” said the pale boy carelessly, noticing where Harry was looking. “And my name’s Malfoy, Draco Malfoy.”
Ron gave a slight cough, which might have been hiding a snigget. Draco Malfoy looked at him.
“Think my name’s funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford.”
He turned back to Harry. “You’ll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don’t want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there.”
He held out his hand to shake Harry’s, but Harry didn’t take it.
“I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks,” he said coolly.
Draco Malfoy didn’t go red, but a pink tinge appeared in his pale cheeks.
“I’d be careful if I were you, Potter,” he said slowly. “Unless you’re a bit politer you’ll go the same way as your parents. They didn’t know what was good for them, either. You hang around with riffraff like the Weasleys and that Hagrid, and it’ll rub off on you.”
Both Harry and Ron stood up.
“Say that again,” Ron said, his face as red as his hair.
“Oh, you’re going to fight us, are you?” Malfoy sneered.
“Unless you get out now,” said Harry, more bravely than he felt, because Crabbe and Goyle were a lot bigger than him or Ron.
“But we don’t feet like leaving, do we, boys? We’ve eaten all our food and you still seem to have some.”
Goyle reached toward the Chocolate Frogs next to Ron – Ron leapt forward, but before he’d so much as touched Goyle, Goyle let out a horrible yell.
Scabbers the rat was hanging off his finger, sharp little teeth sunk deep into Goyle’s knuckle – Crabbe and Malfoy backed away as Goyle swung Scabbers round and round, howling, and when Scabbets finally flew off and hit the window, all three of them disappeared at once. Perhaps they thought there were more rats lurking among the sweets, or perhaps they’d heard footsteps, because a second later, Hermione Granger had come in.
“What has been going on?” she said, looking at the sweets all over the floor and Ron picking up Scabbers by his tail.
I think he’s been knocked out,” Ron said to Harry. He looked closer at Scabbers. “No — I don’t believe it — he’s gone back to sleep-”
And so he had.
“You’ve met Malfoy before?”
Harry explained about their meeting in Diagon Alley.
“I’ve heard of his family,” said Ron darkly. “They were some of the first to come back to our side after You-Know-Who disappeared. Said they’d been bewitched. My dad doesn’t believe it. He says Malfoy’s father didn’t need an excuse to go over to the Dark Side.” He turned to Hermione. “Can we help you with something?”
“You’d better hurry up and put your robes on, I’ve just been up to the front to ask the conductor, and he says we’re nearly there. You haven’t been fighting, have you? You’ll be in trouble before we even get there!”
“Scabbers has been fighting, not us,” said Ron, scowling at her. “Would you mind leaving while we change?”
“All right — I only came in here because people outside are behaving very childishly, racing up and down the corridors,” said Hermione in a sniffy voice. “And you’ve got dirt on your nose, by the way, did you know?”
Ron glared at her as she left. Harry peered out of the window. It was getting dark. He could see mountains and forests under a deep purple sky. The train did seem to be slowing down.
He and Ron took off their jackets and pulled on their long black robes.
Ron’s were a bit short for him, you could see his sneakers underneath them.
A voice echoed through the train: “We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes’ time. Please leave your luggage on the train, it will be taken to the school separately.”
Harry’s stomach lurched with nerves and Ron, he saw, looked pale under his freckles. They crammed their pockets with the last of the sweets and joined the crowd thronging the corridor.
The train slowed right down and finally stopped. People pushed their way toward the door and out on to a tiny, dark platform. Harry shivered in the cold night air. Then a lamp came bobbing over the heads of the students, and Harry heard a familiar voice: “Firs’ years! Firs’ years over here! All right there, Harry?”
Hagrid’s big hairy face beamed over the sea of heads.
“C’mon, follow me — any more firs’ years? Mind yer step, now! Firs’ years follow me!”
Slipping and stumbling, they followed Hagrid down what seemed to be a steep, narrow path. It was so dark on either side of them that Harry thought there must be thick trees there. Nobody spoke much. Neville, the boy who kept losing his toad, sniffed once or twice.
“Ye’ all get yer firs’ sight o’ Hogwarts in a sec,” Hagrid called over his shoulder, “jus’ round this bend here.”
There was a loud “Oooooh!”
The narrow path had opened suddenly onto the edge of a great black take.
Perched atop a high mountain on the other side, its windows sparkling in the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers.
“No more’n four to a boat!” Hagrid called, pointing to a fleet of little boats sitting in the water by the shore. Harry and Ron were followed into their boat by Neville and Hermione. “Everyone in?” shouted Hagrid, who had a boat to himself. “Right then — FORWARD!”
And the fleet of little boats moved off all at once, gliding across the lake, which was as smooth as glass. Everyone was silent, staring up at the great castle overhead. It towered over them as they sailed nearer and nearer to the cliff on which it stood.
“Heads down!” yelled Hagrid as the first boats reached the cliff; they all bent their heads and the little boats carried them through a curtain of ivy that hid a wide opening in the cliff face. They were carried along a dark tunnel, which seemed to be taking them right underneath the castle, until they reached a kind of underground harbor, where they clambered out onto rocks and pebbles.
“Oy, you there! Is this your toad?” said Hagrid, who was checking the boats as people climbed out of them.
“Trevor!” cried Neville blissfully, holding out his hands. Then they clambered up a passageway in the rock after Hagrid’s lamp, coming out at last onto smooth, damp grass right in the shadow of the castle.
They walked up a flight of stone steps and crowded around the huge, Oak front door.
“Everyone here? You there, still got yer toad?”
Hagrid raised a gigantic fist and knocked three times on the castle door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE SORTING HAT
The door swung open at once. A tall, black-haired witch in emerald-green robes stood there. She had a very stern face and Harry’s first thought was that this was not someone to cross.
“The firs’ years, Professor McGonagall,” said Hagrid.
“Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here.”
She pulled the door wide. The entrance hall was so big you could have fit the whole of the Dursleys’ house in it. The stone walls were lit with flaming torches like the ones at Gringotts, the ceiling was too high to make out, and a magnificent marble staircase facing them led to the upper floors.
They followed Professor McGonagall across the flagged stone floor. Harry could hear the drone of hundreds of voices from a doorway to the right -the rest of the school must already be here — but Professor McGonagall showed the first years into a small, empty chamber off the hall. They crowded in, standing rather closer together than they would usually have done, peering about nervously.
“Welcome to Hogwarts,” said Professor McGonagall. “The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your house will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your house common room.
“The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each house has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your house points, while any rulebreaking will lose house points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the house cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever house becomes yours.
“The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting.”
Her eyes lingered for a moment on Neville’s cloak, which was fastened under his left ear, and on Ron’s smudged nose. Harry nervously tried to flatten his hair.
“I shall return when we are ready for you,” said Professor McGonagall.
“Please wait quietly.”
She left the chamber. Harry swallowed.
“How exactly do they sort us into houses?” he asked Ron.
“Some sort of test, I think. Fred said it hurts a lot, but I think he was joking.”
Harry’s heart gave a horrible jolt. A test? In front of the whole school? But he didn’t know any magic yet — what on earth would he have to do? He hadn’t expected something like this the moment they arrived.
He looked around anxiously and saw that everyone else looked terrified, too. No one was talking much except Hermione Granger, who was whispering very fast about all the spells she’d learned and wondering which one she’d need. Harry tried hard not to listen to her. He’d never been more nervous, never, not even when he’d had to take a school report home to the Dursleys saying that he’d somehow turned his teacher’s wig blue. He kept his eyes fixed on the door. Any second now, Professor McGonagall would come back and lead him to his doom.
Then something happened that made him jump about a foot in the air — several people behind him screamed.
“What the –?”
He gasped. So did the people around him. About twenty ghosts had just streamed through the back wall. Pearly-white and slightly transparent, they glided across the room talking to one another and hardly glancing at the first years. They seemed to be arguing. What looked like a fat little monk was saying: “Forgive and forget, I say, we ought to give him a second chance –”
“My dear Friar, haven’t we given Peeves all the chances he deserves? He gives us all a bad name and you know, he’s not really even a ghost — I say, what are you all doing here?”
A ghost wearing a ruff and tights had suddenly noticed the first years.
Nobody answered.
“New students!” said the Fat Friar, smiling around at them. “About to be Sorted, I suppose?”
A few people nodded mutely.
“Hope to see you in Hufflepuff!” said the Friar. “My old house, you know.”
“Move along now,” said a sharp voice. “The Sorting Ceremony’s about to start.”
Professor McGonagall had returned. One by one, the ghosts floated away through the opposite wall.
“Now, form a line,” Professor McGonagall told the first years, “and follow me.”
Feeling oddly as though his legs had turned to lead, Harry got into line behind a boy with sandy hair, with Ron behind him, and they walked out of the chamber, back across the hall, and through a pair of double doors into the Great Hall.
Harry had never even imagined such a strange and splendid place. It was lit by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating in midair over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting.
These tables were laid with glittering golden plates and goblets. At the top of the hall was another long table where the teachers were sitting.
Professor McGonagall led the first years up here, so that they came to a halt in a line facing the other students, with the teachers behind them.
The hundreds of faces staring at them looked like pale lanterns in the flickering candlelight. Dotted here and there among the students, the ghosts shone misty silver. Mainly to avoid all the staring eyes, Harry looked upward and saw a velvety black ceiling dotted with stars. He heard Hermione whisper, “Its bewitched to look like the sky outside. I read about it in Hogwarts, A History.”
It was hard to believe there was a ceiling there at all, and that the Great Hall didn’t simply open on to the heavens.
Harry quickly looked down again as Professor McGonagall silently placed a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool she put a pointed wizard’s hat. This hat was patched and frayed and extremely dirty. Aunt Petunia wouldn’t have let it in the house.
Maybe they had to try and get a rabbit out of it, Harry thought wildly, that seemed the sort of thing — noticing that everyone in the hall was now staring at the hat, he stared at it, too. For a few seconds, there was complete silence. Then the hat twitched. A rip near the brim opened wide like a mouth — and the hat began to sing: “Oh, you may not think I’m pretty, But don’t judge on what you see, I’ll eat myself if you can find A smarter hat than me.
You can keep your bowlers black, Your top hats sleek and tall, For I’m the Hogwarts Sorting Hat And I can cap them all.
There’s nothing hidden in your head The Sorting Hat can’t see, So try me on and I will tell you Where you ought to be.
You might belong in Gryffindor, Where dwell the brave at heart, Their daring, nerve, and chivalry Set Gryffindors apart; You might belong in Hufflepuff, Where they are just and loyal, Those patient Hufflepuffis are true And unafraid of toil; Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, if you’ve a ready mind, Where those of wit and learning, Will always find their kind; Or perhaps in Slytherin You’ll make your real friends, Those cunning folk use any means To achieve their ends.
So put me on! Don’t be afraid! And don’t get in a flap! You’re in safe hands (though I have none) For I’m a Thinking Cap!”
The whole hall burst into applause as the hat finished its song. It bowed to each of the four tables and then became quite still again.
“So we’ve just got to try on the hat!” Ron whispered to Harry. “I’ll kill Fred, he was going on about wrestling a troll.”
Harry. smiled weakly. Yes, trying on the hat was a lot better than having to do a spell, but he did wish they could have tried it on without everyone watching. The hat seemed to be asking rather alot; Harry didn’t feel brave or quick-witted or any of it at the moment. If only the hat had mentioned a house for people who felt a bit queasy, that would have been the one for him.
Professor McGonagall now stepped forward holding a long roll of parchment.
“When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted,” she said. “Abbott, Hannah!”
A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line, put on the hat, which fell right down over her eyes, and sat down. A moments pause — “HUFFLEPUFF!” shouted the hat.
The table on the right cheered and clapped as Hannah went to sit down at the Hufflepuff table. Harry saw the ghost of the Fat Friar waving merrily at her.
“Bones, Susan!”
“HUFFLEPUFF!” shouted the hat again, and Susan scuttled off to sit next to Hannah.
“Boot, Terry!”
“RAVENCLAW!”
The table second from the left clapped this time; several Ravenclaws stood up to shake hands with Terry as he joined them.
” Brocklehurst, Mandy” went to Ravenclaw too, but “Brown, Lavender”
became the first new Gryffindor, and the table on the far left exploded with cheers; Harry could see Ron’s twin brothers catcalling.
“Bulstrode, Millicent” then became a Slytherin. Perhaps it was Harry’s imagination, after all he’d heard about Slytherin, but he thought they looked like an unpleasant lot. He was starting to feel definitely sick now. He remembered being picked for teams during gym at his old school.
He had always been last to be chosen, not because he was no good, but because no one wanted Dudley to think they liked him.
“Finch-Fletchley, Justin!”
“HUFFLEPUFF!”
Sometimes, Harry noticed, the hat shouted out the house at once, but at others it took a little while to decide. “Finnigan, Seamus,” the sandy-haired boy next to Harry in the line, sat on the stool for almost a whole minute before the hat declared him a Gryffindor.
“Granger, Hermione!”
Hermione almost ran to the stool and jammed the hat eagerly on her head.
“GRYFFINDOR!” shouted the hat. Ron groaned.
A horrible thought struck Harry, as horrible thoughts always do when you’re very nervous. What if he wasn’t chosen at all? What if he just sat there with the hat over his eyes for ages, until Professor McGonagall jerked it off his head and said there had obviously been a mistake and he’d better get back on the train? When Neville Longbottom, the boy who kept losing his toad, was called, he fell over on his way to the stool. The hat took a long time to decide with Neville. When it finally shouted, “GRYFFINDOR,” Neville ran off still wearing it, and had to jog back amid gales of laughter to give it to “MacDougal, Morag.”
Malfoy swaggered forward when his name was called and got his wish at once: the hat had barely touched his head when it screamed, “SLYTHERIN!”
Malfoy went to join his friends Crabbe and Goyle, looking pleased with himself.
There weren’t many people left now. “Moon” “Nott” “Parkinson” then a pair of twin girls, “Patil” and “Patil” then “Perks, Sally-Anne” and then, at last — “Potter, Harry!”
As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like little hissing fires all over the hall.
“Potter, did she say?”
The Harry Potter?”
The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his eyes was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. Next second he was looking at the black inside of the hat. He waited.
Hmm,” said a small voice in his ear. “Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind either. There’s talent, A my goodness, yes — and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that’s interesting….
So where shall I put you?”
Harry gripped the edges of the stool and thought, Not Slytherin, not Slytherin.
“Not Slytherin, eh?” said the small voice. “Are you sure? You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head, and Slytherin will help you on the way to greatness, no doubt about that — no? Well, if you’re sure — better be GRYFFINDOR!”
Harry heard the hat shout the last word to the whole hall. He took off the hat and walked shakily toward the Gryffindor table. He was so relieved to have been chosen and not put in Slytherin, he hardly noticed that he was getting the loudest cheer yet. Percy the Prefect got up and shook his hand vigorously, while the Weasley twins yelled, “We got Potter! We got Potter!” Harry sat down opposite the ghost in the ruff he’d seen earlier. The ghost patted his arm, giving Harry the sudden, horrible feeling he’d just plunged it into a bucket of ice-cold water.
He could see the High Table properly now. At the end nearest him sat Hagrid, who caught his eye and gave him the thumbs up. Harry grinned back. And there, in the center of the High Table, in a large gold chair, sat Albus Dumbledore. Harry recognized him at once from the card he’d gotten out of the Chocolate Frog on the train. Dumbledore’s silver hair was the only thing in the whole hall that shone as brightly as the ghosts. Harry spotted Professor Quirtell, too, the nervous young man from the Leaky Cauldron. He was looking very peculiar in a large purple turban.
And now there were only three people left to be sorted. “Thomas, Dean,”
a Black boy even taller than Ron, joined Harry at the Gryffindor table.
“Turpin, Lisa,” became a Ravenclaw and then it was Ron’s turn. He was pale green by now. Harry crossed his fingers under the table and a second later the hat had shouted, “GRYFFINDOR!”
Harry clapped loudly with the rest as Ron collapsed into the chair next to him.
“Well done, Ron, excellent,” said Percy Weasley Pompously across Harry as “Zabini, Blaise,” was made a Slytherin. Professor McGonagall rolled up her scroll and took the Sorting Hat away.
Harry looked down at his empty gold plate. He had only just realized how hungry he was. The pumpkin pasties seemed ages ago.
Albus Dumbledore had gotten to his feet. He was beaming at the students, his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there.
“Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak! “Thank you!”
He sat back down. Everybody clapped and cheered. Harry didn’t know whether to laugh or not.
“Is he — a bit mad?” he asked Percy uncertainly.
“Mad?” said Percy airily. “He’s a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes. Potatoes, Harry?”
Harry’s mouth fell open. The dishes in front of him were now piled with food. He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs.
The Dursleys had never exactly starved Harry, but he’d never been allowed to eat as much as he liked. Dudley had always taken anything that Harry really wanted, even if It made him sick. Harry piled his plate with a bit of everything except the peppermints and began to eat.
It was all delicious.
“That does look good,” said the ghost in the ruff sadly, watching Harry cut up his steak, “Can’t you –?”
I haven’t eaten for nearly four hundred years,” said the ghost. “I don’t need to, of course, but one does miss it. I don’t think I’ve in troduced myself? Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington at your service. Resident ghost of Gryffindor Tower.”
“I know who you are!” said Ron suddenly. “My brothers told me about you — you’re Nearly Headless Nick!”
“I would prefer you to call me Sir Nicholas de Mimsy –” the ghost began stiffly, but sandy-haired Seamus Finnigan interrupted.
“Nearly Headless? How can you be nearly headless?”
Sir Nicholas looked extremely miffed, as if their little chat wasn’t going at all the way he wanted.
“Like this,” he said irritably. He seized his left ear and pulled. His whole head swung off his neck and fell onto his shoulder as if it was on a hinge. Someone had obviously tried to behead him, but not done it properly. Looking pleased at the stunned looks on their faces, Nearly Headless Nick flipped his head back onto his neck, coughed, and said, “So — new Gryffindors! I hope you’re going to help us win the house championship this year? Gryffindors have never gone so long without winning. Slytherins have got the cup six years in a row! The Bloody Baron’s becoming almost unbearable — he’s the Slytherin ghost.”
Harry looked over at the Slytherin table and saw a horrible ghost sitting there, with blank staring eyes, a gaunt face, and robes stained with silver blood. He was right next to Malfoy who, Harry was pleased to see, didn’t look too pleased with the seating arrangements.
“How did he get covered in blood?” asked Seamus with great interest.
“I’ve never asked,” said Nearly Headless Nick delicately.
When everyone had eaten as much as they could, the remains of the food faded from the plates, leaving them sparkling clean as before. A moment later the desserts appeared. Blocks of ice cream in every flavor you could think of, apple pies, treacle tarts, chocolate eclairs and jam doughnuts, trifle, strawberries, Jell-O, rice pudding — ì
As Harry helped himself to a treacle tart, the talk turned to their families.
“I’m half-and-half,” said Seamus. “Me dad’s a Muggle. Mom didn’t tell him she was a witch ’til after they were married. Bit of a nasty shock for him.”
The others laughed.
“What about you, Neville?” said Ron.
“Well, my gran brought me up and she’s a witch,” said Neville, “but the family thought I was all- Muggle for ages. My Great Uncle Algie kept trying to catch me off my guard and force some magic out of me — he pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, I nearly drowned — but nothing happened until I was eight. Great Uncle Algie came round for dinner, and he was hanging me out of an upstairs window by the ankles when my Great Auntie Enid offered him a meringue and he accidentally let go. But I bounced — all the way down the garden and into the road. They were all really pleased, Gran was crying, she was so happy. And you should have seen their faces when I got in here — they thought I might not be magic enough to come, you see. Great Uncle Algie was so pleased he bought me my toad.”
On Harry’s other side, Percy Weasley and Hermione were talking about lessons (“I do hope they start right away, there’s so much to learn, I’m particularly interested in Transfiguration, you know, turning something into something else, of course, it’s supposed to be very difficult-“; “You’ll be starting small, just matches into needles and that sort of thing — “).
Harry, who was starting to feel warm and sleepy, looked up at the High Table again. Hagrid was drinking deeply from his goblet.
Professor McGonagall was talking to Professor Dumbledore. Professor Quirrell, in his absurd turban, was talking to a teacher with greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin.
It happened very suddenly. The hook-nosed teacher looked past Quirrell’s turban straight into Harry’s eyes — and a sharp, hot pain shot across the scar on Harry’s forehead.
“Ouch!” Harry clapped a hand to his head.
“What is it?” asked Percy.
“N-nothing.”
The pain had gone as quickly as it had come. Harder to shake off was the feeling Harry had gotten from the teacher’s look — a feeling that he didn’t like Harry at all.
“Who’s that teacher talking to Professor Quirrell?” he asked Percy.
“Oh, you know Quirrell already, do you? No wonder he’s looking so nervous, that’s Professor Snape. He teaches Potions, but he doesn’t want to — everyone knows he’s after Quirrell’s job. Knows an awful lot about the Dark Arts, Snape.”
Harry watched Snape for a while, but Snape didn’t look at him again.
At last, the desserts too disappeared, and Professor Dumbledore got to his feet again. The hall fell silent.
“Ahern — just a few more words now that we are all fed and watered. I have a few start-of-term notices to give you.
“First years should note that the forest on the grounds is forbidden to all pupils. And a few of our older students would do well to remember that as well.”
Dumbledore’s twinkling eyes flashed in the direction of the Weasley twins.
“I have also been asked by Mr. Filch, the caretaker, to remind you all that no magic should be used between classes in the corridors.
“Quidditch trials will be held in the second week of the term. Anyone interested in playing for their house teams should contact Madam Hooch.
“And finally, I must tell you that this year, the third-floor corridor on the right-hand side is out of bounds to everyone who does not wish to die a very painful death.”
Harry laughed, but he was one of the few who did.
“He’s not serious?” he muttered to Percy.
“Must be,” said Percy, frowning at Dumbledore. “It’s odd, because he usually gives us a reason why we’re not allowed to go somewhere — the forest’s full of dangerous beasts, everyone knows that. I do think he might have told us prefects, at least.”
“And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!” cried Dumbledore. Harry noticed that the other teachers’ smiles had become rather fixed.
Dumbledore gave his wand a little flick, as if he was trying to get a fly off the end, and a long golden ribbon flew out of it, which rose high above the tables and twisted itself, snakelike, into words.
“Everyone pick their favorite tune,” said Dumbledore, “and off we go!”
And the school bellowed: “Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts, Teach us something please, Whether we be old and bald Or young with scabby knees, Our heads could do with filling With some interesting stuff, For now they’re bare and full of air, Dead flies and bits of fluff, So teach us things worth knowing, Bring back what we’ve forgot, just do your best, we’ll do the rest, And learn until our brains all rot.
Everybody finished the song at different times. At last, only the Weasley twins were left singing along to a very slow funeral march.
Dumbledore conducted their last few lines with his wand and when they had finished, he was one of those who clapped loudest.
“Ah, music,” he said, wiping his eyes. “A magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot!”
The Gryffindor first years followed Percy through the chattering crowds, out of the Great Hall, and up the marble staircase. Harry’s legs were like lead again, but only because he was so tired and full of food. He was too sleepy even to be surprised that the people in the portraits along the corridors whispered and pointed as they passed, or that twice Percy led them through doorways hidden behind sliding panels and hanging tapestries. They climbed more staircases, yawning and dragging their feet, and Harry was just wondering how much farther they had to go when they came to a sudden halt.
A bundle of walking sticks was floating in midair ahead of them, and as Percy took a step toward them they started throwing themselves at him.
“Peeves,” Percy whispered to the first years. “A poltergeist.” He raised his voice, “Peeves — show yourself”
A loud, rude sound, like the air being let out of a balloon, answered.
“Do you want me to go to the Bloody Baron?”
There was a pop, and a little man with wicked, dark eyes and a wide mouth appeared, floating cross- legged in the air, clutching the walking sticks.
“Oooooooh!” he said, with an evil cackle. “Ickle Firsties! What fun!”
He swooped suddenly at them. They all ducked.
“Go away, Peeves, or the Baron’ll hear about this, I mean it!” barked Percy.
Peeves stuck out his tongue and vanished, dropping the walking sticks on Neville’s head. They heard him zooming away, rattling coats of armor as he passed.
“You want to watch out for Peeves,” said Percy, as they set off again.
“The Bloody Baron’s the only one who can control him, he won’t even listen to us prefects. Here we are.”
At the very end of the corridor hung a portrait of a very fat woman in a pink silk dress.
“Password?” she said. “Caput Draconis,” said Percy, and the portrait swung forward to reveal a round hole in the wall. They all scrambled through it — Neville needed a leg up — and found themselves in the Gryffindor common room, a cozy, round room full of squashy armchairs.
Percy directed the girls through one door to their dormitory and the boys through another. At the top of a spiral staircase — they were obviously in one of the towers — they found their beds at last: five four-posters hung with deep red, velvet curtains. Their trunks had already been brought up. Too tired to talk much, they pulled on their pajamas and fell into bed.
” Great food, isn’t it?” Ron muttered to Harry through the hangings.
“Get off, Scabbers! He’s chewing my sheets.”
Harry was going to ask Ron if he’d had any of the treacle tart, but he fell asleep almost at once.
Perhaps Harry had eaten a bit too much, because he had a very strange dream. He was wearing Professor Quirrell’s turban, which kept talking to him, telling him he must transfer to Slytherin at once, because it was his destiny. Harry told the turban he didn’t want to be in Slytherin; it got heavier and heavier; he tried to pull it off but it tightened painfully — and there was Malfoy, laughing at him as he struggled with it -then Malfoy turned into the hook-nosed teacher, Snape, whose laugh became high and cold — there was a burst of green light and Harry woke, sweating and shaking.
He rolled over and fell asleep again, and when he woke next day, he didn’t remember the dream at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE POTIONS MASTER
There, look.”
“Where?”
“Next to the tall kid with the red hair.”
“Wearing the glasses?”
“Did you see his face?”
“Did you see his scar?”
Whispers followed Harry from the moment he left his dormitory the next day. People lining up outside classrooms stood on tiptoe to get a look at him, or doubled back to pass him in the corridors again, staring.
Harry wished they wouldn’t, because he was trying to concentrate on finding his way to classes.
There were a hundred and forty-two staircases at Hogwarts: wide, sweeping ones; narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different on a Friday; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. Then there were doors that wouldn’t open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren’t really doors at all, but solid walls just pretending. It was also very hard to remember where anything was, because it all seemed to move around a lot. The people in the portraits kept going to visit each other, and Harry was sure the coats of armor could walk.
The ghosts didn’t help, either. It was always a nasty shock when one of them glided suddenly through a door you were trying to open. Nearly Headless Nick was always happy to point new Gryffindors in the right direction, but Peeves the Poltergeist was worth two locked doors and a trick staircase if you met him when you were late for class. He would drop wastepaper baskets on your head, pull rugs from under your feet, pelt you with bits of chalk, or sneak up behind you, invisible, grab your nose, and screech, “GOT YOUR CONK!”
Even worse than Peeves, if that was possible, was the caretaker, Argus Filch. Harry and Ron managed to get on the wrong side of him on their very first morning. Filch found them trying to force their way through a door that unluckily turned out to be the entrance to the out-of-bounds corridor on the third floor. He wouldn’t believe they were lost, was sure they were trying to break into it on purpose, and was threatening to lock them in the dungeons when they were rescued by Professor Quirrell, who was passing.
Filch owned a cat called Mrs. Norris, a scrawny, dust-colored creature with bulging, lamp like eyes just like Filch’s. She patrolled the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out of line, and she’d whisk off for Filch, who’d appear, wheezing, two seconds later. Filch knew the secret passageways of the school better than anyone (except perhaps the Weasley twins) and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts. The students all hated him, and it was the dearest ambition of many to give Mrs. Norris a good kick.
And then, once you had managed to find them, there were the classes themselves. There was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.
They had to study the night skies through their telescopes every Wednesday at midnight and learn the names of different stars and the movements of the planets. Three times a week they went out to the greenhouses behind the castle to study Herbology, with a dumpy little witch called Professor Sprout, where they learned how to take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for.
Easily the most boring class was History of Magic, which was the only one taught by a ghost. Professor Binns had been very old indeed when he had fallen asleep in front of the staff room fire and got up next morning to teach, leaving his body behind him. Binns droned on and on while they scribbled down names and dates, and got Emetic the Evil and Uric the Oddball mixed up.
Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was a tiny little wizard who had to stand on a pile of books to see over his desk. At the start of their first class he took the roll call, and when he reached Harry’s name he gave an excited squeak and toppled out of sight.
Professor McGonagall was again different. Harry had been quite right to think she wasn’t a teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave them a talking-to the moment they sat down in her first class.
“Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts,” she said. “Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned.”
Then she changed her desk into a pig and back again. They were all very impressed and couldn’t wait to get started, but soon realized they weren’t going to be changing the furniture into animals for a long time.
After taking a lot of complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. By the end of the lesson, only Hermione Granger had made any difference to her match; Professor McGonagall showed the class how it had gone all silver and pointy and gave Hermione a rare smile.
The class everyone had really been looking forward to was Defense Against the Dark Arts, but Quirrell’s lessons turned out to be a bit of a joke. His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone said was to ward off a vampire he’d met in Romania and was afraid would be coming back to get him one of these days. His turban, he told them, had been given to him by an African prince as a thank-you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie, but they weren’t sure they believed this story.
For one thing, when Seamus Finnigan asked eagerly to hear how Quirrell had fought off the zombie, Quirrell went pink and started talking about the weather; for another, they had noticed that a funny smell hung around the turban, and the Weasley twins insisted that it was stuffed full of garlic as well, so that Quirrell was protected wherever he went.
Harry was very relieved to find out that he wasn’t miles behind everyone else. Lots of people had come from Muggle families and, like him, hadn’t had any idea that they were witches and wizards. There was so much to learn that even people like Ron didn’t have much of a head start.
Friday was an important day for Harry and Ron. They finally managed to find their way down to the Great Hall for breakfast without getting lost once.
“What have we got today?” Harry asked Ron as he poured sugar on his porridge.
“Double Potions with the Slytherins,” said Ron. “Snape’s Head of Slytherin House. They say he always favors them — we’ll be able to see if it’s true.”
“Wish McGonagall favored us, ” said Harry. Professor McGonagall was head of Gryffindor House, but it hadn’t stopped her from giving them a huge pile of homework the day before.
Just then, the mail arrived. Harry had gotten used to this by now, but it had given him a bit of a shock on the first morning, when about a hundred owls had suddenly streamed into the Great Hall during breakfast, circling the tables until they saw their owners, and dropping letters and packages onto their laps.
Hedwig hadn’t brought Harry anything so far. She sometimes flew in to nibble his ear and have a bit of toast before going off to sleep in the owlery with the other school owls. This morning, however, she fluttered down between the marmalade and the sugar bowl and dropped a note onto Harry’s plate. Harry tore it open at once. It said, in a very untidy scrawl: Dear Harry, I know you get Friday afternoons off, so would you like to come and have a cup of tea with me around three? I want to hear all about your first week. Send us an answer back with Hedwig.
Hagrid Harry borrowed Ron’s quill, scribbled Yes, please, see you later on the back of the note, and sent Hedwig off again.
It was lucky that Harry had tea with Hagrid to look forward to, because the Potions lesson turned out to be the worst thing that had happened to him so far.
At the start-of-term banquet, Harry had gotten the idea that Professor Snape disliked him. By the end of the first Potions lesson, he knew he’d been wrong. Snape didn’t dislike Harry — he hated him.
Potions lessons took place down in one of the dungeons. It was colder here than up in the main castle, and would have been quite creepy enough without the pickled animals floating in glass jars all around the walls.
Snape, like Flitwick, started the class by taking the roll call, and like Flitwick, he paused at Harry’s name.
“Ah, Yes,” he said softly, “Harry Potter. Our new — celebrity.”
Draco Malfoy and his friends Crabbe and Goyle sniggered behind their hands. Snape finished calling the names and looked up at the class. His eyes were black like Hagrid’s, but they had none of Hagrid’s warmth.
They were cold and empty and made you think of dark tunnels.
“You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potionmaking,” he began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word — like Professor McGonagall, Snape had y caught every word — like Professor McGonagall, Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort. “As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don’t expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…. I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death — if you aren’t as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach.”
More silence followed this little speech. Harry and Ron exchanged looks with raised eyebrows. Hermione Granger was on the edge of her seat and looked desperate to start proving that she wasn’t a dunderhead.
“Potter!” said Snape suddenly. “What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”
Powdered root of what to an infusion of what? Harry glanced at Ron, who looked as stumped as he was; Hermione’s hand had shot into the air.
“I don’t know, sit,” said Harry.
Snape’s lips curled into a sneer.
“Tut, tut — fame clearly isn’t everything.”
He ignored Hermione’s hand.
“Let’s try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”
Hermione stretched her hand as high into the air as it would go without her leaving her seat, but Harry didn’t have the faintest idea what a bezoar was. He tried not to look at Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, who were shaking with laughter.
“I don’t know, sit.” “Thought you wouldn’t open a book before coming, eh, Potter?” Harry forced himself to keep looking straight into those cold eyes. He had looked through his books at the Dursleys’, but did Snape expect him to remember everything in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi? Snape was still ignoring Hermione’s quivering hand.
“What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?”
At this, Hermione stood up, her hand stretching toward the dungeon ceiling.
“I don’t know,” said Harry quietly. “I think Hermione does, though, why don’t you try her?”
A few people laughed; Harry caught Seamus’s eye, and Seamus winked.
Snape, however, was not pleased.
“Sit down,” he snapped at Hermione. “For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite. Well? Why aren’t you all copying that down?”
There was a sudden rummaging for quills and parchment. Over the noise, Snape said, “And a point will be taken from Gryffindor House for your cheek, Potter.”
Things didn’t improve for the Gryffindors as the Potions lesson continued. Snape put them all into pairs and set them to mixing up a simple potion to cure boils. He swept around in his long black cloak, watching them weigh dried nettles and crush snake fangs, criticizing almost everyone except Malfoy, whom he seemed to like. He was just telling everyone to look at the perfect way Malfoy had stewed his horned slugs when clouds of acid green smoke and a loud hissing filled the dungeon. Neville had somehow managed to melt Seamus’s cauldron into a twisted blob, and their potion was seeping across the stone floor, burning holes in people’s shoes. Within seconds, the whole class was standing on their stools while Neville, who had been drenched in the potion when the cauldron collapsed, moaned in pain as angry red boils sprang up all over his arms and legs.
“Idiot boy!” snarled Snape, clearing the spilled potion away with one wave of his wand. “I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?”
Neville whimpered as boils started to pop up all over his nose.
“Take him up to the hospital wing,” Snape spat at Seamus. Then he rounded on Harry and Ron, who had been working next to Neville.
“You — Potter — why didn’t you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he’d make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That’s another point you’ve lost for Gryffindor.”
This was so unfair that Harry opened his mouth to argue, but Ron kicked him behind their cauldron.
“Doi* push it,” he muttered, “I’ve heard Snape can turn very nasty.”
As they climbed the steps out of the dungeon an hour later, Harry’s mind was racing and his spirits were low. He’d lost two points for Gryffindor in his very first week — why did Snape hate him so much? “Cheer up,”
said Ron, “Snape’s always taking points off Fred and George. Can I come and meet Hagrid with you?”
At five to three they left the castle and made their way across the grounds. Hagrid lived in a small wooden house on the edge of the forbidden forest. A crossbow and a pair of galoshes were outside the front door.
When Harry knocked they heard a frantic scrabbling from inside and several booming barks. Then Hagrid’s voice rang out, saying, “Back, Fang — back.”
Hagrid’s big, hairy face appeared in the crack as he pulled the door open.
“Hang on,” he said. “Back, Fang.”
He let them in, struggling to keep a hold on the collar of an enormous black boarhound.
There was only one room inside. Hams and pheasants were hanging from the ceiling, a copper kettle was boiling on the open fire, and in the corner stood a massive bed with a patchwork quilt over it.
“Make yerselves at home,” said Hagrid, letting go of Fang, who bounded straight at Ron and started licking his ears. Like Hagrid, Fang was clearly not as fierce as he looked.
“This is Ron,” Harry told Hagrid, who was pouring boiling water into a large teapot and putting rock cakes onto a plate.
“Another Weasley, eh?” said Hagrid, glancing at Ron’s freckles. I spent half me life chasin’ yer twin brothers away from the forest.”
The rock cakes were shapeless lumps with raisins that almost broke their teeth, but Harry and Ron pretended to be enjoying them as they told Hagrid all about their first -lessons. Fang rested his head on Harry’s knee and drooled all over his robes.
Harry and Ron were delighted to hear Hagrid call Fitch “that old git.”
“An’ as fer that cat, Mrs. Norris, I’d like ter introduce her to Fang sometime. D’yeh know, every time I go up ter the school, she follows me everywhere? Can’t get rid of her — Fitch puts her up to it.”
Harry told Hagrid about Snape’s lesson. Hagrid, like Ron, told Harry not to worry about it, that Snape liked hardly any of the students.
“But he seemed to really hate me.”
“Rubbish!” said Hagrid. “Why should he?”
Yet Harry couldn’t help thinking that Hagrid didn’t quite meet his eyes when he said that.
“How’s yer brother Charlie?” Hagrid asked Ron. “I liked him a lot — great with animals.”
Harry wondered if Hagrid had changed the subject on purpose. While Ron told Hagrid all about Charlie’s work with dragons, Harry picked up a piece of paper that was lying on the table under the tea cozy. It was a cutting from the Daily Prophet: GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN LATEST Investigations continue into the break-in at Gringotts on 31 July, widely believed to be the work of Dark wizards or witches unknown.
Gringotts goblins today insisted that nothing had been taken. The vault that was searched had in fact been emptied the same day.
“But we’re not telling you what was in there, so keep your noses out if you know what’s good for you,” said a Gringotts spokesgoblin this afternoon.
Harry remembered Ron telling him on the train that someone had tried to rob Gringotts, but Ron hadn’t mentioned the date.
“Hagrid!” said Harry, “that Gringotts break-in happened on my birthday! It might’ve been happening while we were there!”
There was no doubt about it, Hagrid definitely didn’t meet Harry’s eyes this time. He grunted and offered him another rock cake. Harry read the story again. The vault that was searched had in fact been emptied earlier that same day. Hagrid had emptied vault seven hundred and thirteen, if you could call it emptying, taking out that grubby little package. Had that been what the thieves were looking for? As Harry and Ron walked back to the castle for dinner, their pockets weighed down with rock cakes they’d been too polite to refuse, Harry thought that none of the lessons he’d had so far had given him as much to think about as tea with Hagrid. Had Hagrid collected that package just in time? Where was it now? And did Hagrid know something about Snape that he didn’t want to tell Harry? CHAPTER NINE
THE MIDNIGHT DUEL
Harry had never believed he would meet a boy he hated more than Dudley, but that was before he met Draco Malfoy. Still, first-year Gryffindors only had Potions with the Slytherins, so they didn’t have to put up with Malfoy much. Or at least, they didn’t until they spotted a notice pinned up in the Gryffindor common room that made them all groan.
Flying lessons would be starting on Thursday — and Gryffindor and Slytherin would be learning together.
“Typical,” said Harry darkly. “Just what I always wanted. To make a fool of myself on a broomstick in front of Malfoy.”
He had been looking forward to learning to fly more than anything else.
“You don’t know that you’ll make a fool of yourself,” said Ron reasonably. “Anyway, I know Malfoy’s always going on about how good he is at Quidditch, but I bet that’s all talk.”
Malfay certainly did talk about flying a lot. He complained loudly about first years never getting on the house Quidditch teams and told long, boastful stories that always seemed to end with him narrowly escaping Muggles in helicopters. He wasn’t the only one, though: the way Seamus Finnigan told it, he’d spent most of his childhood zooming around the countryside on his broomstick. Even Ron would tell anyone who’d listen about the time he’d almost hit a hang glider on Charlie’s old broom.
Everyone from wizarding families talked about Quidditch constantly. Ron had already had a big argument with Dean Thomas, who shared their dormitory, about soccer. Ron couldn’t see what was exciting about a game with only one ball where no one was allowed to fly. Harry had caught Ron prodding Dean’s poster of West Ham soccer team, trying to make the players move.
Neville had never been on a broomstick in his life, because his grandmother had never let him near one. Privately, Harry felt she’d had good reason, because Neville managed to have an extraordinary number of accidents even with both feet on the ground.
Hermione Granger was almost as nervous about flying as Neville was. This was something you couldn’t learn by heart out of a book — not that she hadn’t tried. At breakfast on Thursday she bored them all stupid with flying tips she’d gotten out of a library book called Quidditch Through the Ages. Neville was hanging on to her every word, desperate for anything that might help him hang on to his broomstick later, but everybody else was very pleased when Hermione’s lecture was interrupted by the arrival of the mail.
Harry hadn’t had a single letter since Hagrid’s note, something that Malfoy had been quick to notice, of course. Malfoy’s eagle owl was always bringing him packages of sweets from home, which he opened gloatingly at the Slytherin table.
A barn owl brought Neville a small package from his grandmother. He opened it excitedly and showed them a glass ball the size of a large marble, which seemed to be full of white smoke.
“It’s a Remembrall!” he explained. “Gran knows I forget things — this tells you if there’s something you’ve forgotten to do. Look, you hold it tight like this and if it turns red — oh…” His face fell, because the Remembrall had suddenly glowed scarlet, “You’ve forgotten something…”
Neville was trying to remember what he’d forgotten when Draco Malfoy, who was passing the Gryffindor table, snatched the Remembrall out of his hand.
Harry and Ron jumped to their feet. They were half hoping for a reason to fight Malfay, but Professor McGonagall, who could spot trouble quicker than any teacher in the school, was there in a flash.
“What’s going on?”
“Malfoy’s got my Remembrall, Professor.”
Scowling, Malfoy quickly dropped the Remembrall back on the table.
“Just looking,” he said, and he sloped away with Crabbe and Goyle behind him.
At three-thirty that afternoon, Harry, Ron, and the other Gryffindors hurried down the front steps onto the grounds for their first flying lesson. It was a clear, breezy day, and the grass rippled under their feet as they marched down the sloping lawns toward a smooth, flat lawn on the opposite side of the grounds to the forbidden forest, whose trees were swaying darkly in the distance.
The Slytherins were already there, and so were twenty broomsticks lying in neat lines on the ground. Harry had heard Fred and George Weasley complain about the school brooms, saying that some of them started to vibrate if you flew too high, or always flew slightly to the left.
Their teacher, Madam Hooch, arrived. She had short, gray hair, and yellow eyes like a hawk.
“Well, what are you all waiting for?” she barked. “Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up.”
Harry glanced down at his broom. It was old and some of the twigs stuck out at odd angles.
“Stick out your right hand over your broom,” called Madam Hooch at the front, “and say ‘Up!”‘ “UPF everyone shouted.
Harry’s broom jumped into his hand at once, but it was one of the few that did. Hermione Granger’s had simply rolled over on the ground, and Neville’s hadn’t moved at all. Perhaps brooms, like horses, could tell when you were afraid, thought Harry; there was a quaver in Neville’s voice that said only too clearly that he wanted to keep his feet on the ground.
Madam Hooch then showed them how to mount their brooms without sliding off the end, and walked up and down the rows correcting their grips.
Harry and Ron were delighted when she told Malfoy he’d been doing it wrong for years.
“Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard,” said Madam Hooch. “Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and then come straight back down by leaning forward slightly. On my whistle — three — two –”
But Neville, nervous and jumpy and frightened of being left on the ground, pushed off hard before the whistle had touched Madam Hooch’s lips.
“Come back, boy!” she shouted, but Neville was rising straight up like a cork shot out of a bottle — twelve feet — twenty feet. Harry saw his scared white face look down at the ground falling away, saw him gasp, slip sideways off the broom and — WHAM — a thud and a nasty crack and Neville lay facedown on the grass in a heap. His broomstick was still rising higher and higher, and started to drift lazily toward the forbidden forest and out of sight.
Madam Hooch was bending over Neville, her face as white as his.
“Broken wrist,” Harry heard her mutter. “Come on, boy — it’s all right, up you get.”.
She turned to the rest of the class.
“None of you is to move while I take this boy to the hospital wing! You leave those brooms where they are or you’ll be out of Hogwarts before you can say ‘Quidditch.’ Come on, dear.”
Neville, his face tear-streaked, clutching his wrist, hobbled off with Madam Hooch, who had her arm around him.
No sooner were they out of earshot than Malfoy burst into laughter.
“Did you see his face, the great lump?”
The other Slytherins joined in.
“Shut up, Malfoy,” snapped Parvati Patil.
“Ooh, sticking up for Longbottom?” said Pansy Parkinson, a hard-faced Slytherin girl. “Never thought you’d like fat little crybabies, Parvati.”
“Look!” said Malfoy, darting forward and snatching something out of the grass. “It’s that stupid thing Longbottom’s gran sent him.”
The Remembrall glittered in the sun as he held it up.
“Give that here, Malfoy,” said Harry quietly. Everyone stopped talking to watch.
Malfoy smiled nastily.
“I think I’ll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to find — how about — up a tree?”
“Give it here!” Harry yelled, but Malfoy had leapt onto his broomstick and taken off. He hadn’t been lying, he could fly well. Hovering level with the topmost branches of an oak he called, “Come and get it, Potter!”
Harry grabbed his broom.
“No!” shouted Hermione Granger. “Madam Hooch told us not to move — you’ll get us all into trouble.”
Harry ignored her. Blood was pounding in his ears. He mounted the broom and kicked hard against the ground and up, up he soared; air rushed through his hair, and his robes whipped out behind him -and in a rush of fierce joy he realized he’d found something he could do without being taught — this was easy, this was wonderful. He pulled his broomstick up a little to take it even higher, and heard screams and gasps of girls back on the ground and an admiring whoop from Ron.
He turned his broomstick sharply to face Malfoy in midair. Malfoy looked stunned.
“Give it here,” Harry called, “or I’ll knock you off that broom!” “Oh, yeah?” said Malfoy, trying to sneer, but looking worried.
Harry knew, somehow, what to do. He leaned forward and grasped the broom tightly in both hands, and it shot toward Malfay like a javelin. Malfoy only just got out of the way in time; Harry made a sharp about-face and held the broom steady. A few people below were clapping.
“No Crabbe and Goyle up here to save your neck, Malfoy,” Harry called.
The same thought seemed to have struck Malfoy.
“Catch it if you can, then!” he shouted, and he threw the glass ball high into the air and streaked back toward the ground.
Harry saw, as though in slow motion, the ball rise up in the air and then start to fall. He leaned forward and pointed his broom handle down — next second he was gathering speed in a steep dive, racing the ball — wind whistled in his ears, mingled with the screams of people watching — he stretched out his hand — a foot from the ground he caught it, just in time to pull his broom straight, and he toppled gently onto the grass with the Remembrall clutched safely in his fist.
“HARRY POTTER!”
His heart sank faster than he’d just dived. Professor McGonagall was running toward them. He got to his feet, trembling.
“Never — in all my time at Hogwarts –”
Professor McGonagall was almost speechless with shock, and her glasses flashed furiously, “– how dare you — might have broken your neck –”
“It wasn’t his fault, Professor –”
“Be quiet, Miss Patil “But Malfoy –”
“That’s enough, Mr. Weasley. Potter, follow me, now.”
Harry caught sight of Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle’s triumphant faces as he left, walking numbly in Professor McGonagall’s wake as she strode toward the castle. He was going to be expelled, he just knew it. He wanted to say something to defend himself, but there seemed to be something wrong with his voice. Professor McGonagall was sweeping along without even looking at him; he had to jog to keep up. Now he’d done it. He hadn’t even lasted two weeks. He’d be packing his bags in ten minutes. What would the Dursleys say when he turned up on the doorstep? Up the front steps, up the marble staircase inside, and still Professor McGonagall didn’t say a word to him. She wrenched open doors and marched along corridors with Harry trotting miserably behind her. Maybe she was taking him to Dumbledore. He thought of Hagrid, expelled but allowed to stay on as gamekeeper. Perhaps he could be Hagrid’s assistant. His stomach twisted as he imagined it, watching Ron and the others becoming wizards, while he stumped around the grounds carrying Hagrid’s bag.
Professor McGonagall stopped outside a classroom. She opened the door and poked her head inside.
“Excuse me, Professor Flitwick, could I borrow Wood for a moment?”
Wood? thought Harry, bewildered; was Wood a cane she was going to use on him? But Wood turned out to be a person, a burly fifth-year boy who came out of Flitwicles class looking confused.
“Follow me, you two,” said Professor McGonagall, and they marched on up the corridor, Wood looking curiously at Harry.
“In here.”
Professor McGonagall pointed them into a classroom that was empty except for Peeves, who was busy writing rude words on the blackboard.
“Out, Peeves!” she barked. Peeves threw the chalk into a bin, which clanged loudly, and he swooped out cursing. Professor McGonagall slammed the door behind him and turned to face the two boys.
“Potter, this is Oliver Wood. Wood — I’ve found you a Seeker.”
Wood’s expression changed from puzzlement to delight.
“Are you serious, Professor?”
“Absolutely,” said Professor McGonagall crisply. “The boy’s a natural.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Was that your first time on a broomstick, Potter?”
Harry nodded silently. He didn’t have a clue what was going on, but he didn’t seem to be being expelled, and some of the feeling started coming back to his legs.
“He caught that thing in his hand after a fifty-foot dive,” Professor McGonagall told Wood. “Didn’t even scratch himself. Charlie Weasley couldn’t have done it.”
Wood was now looking as though all his dreams had come true at once.
“Ever seen a game of Quidditch, Potter?” he asked excitedly.
“Wood’s captain of the Gryffindor team,” Professor McGonagall explained.
“He’s just the build for a Seeker, too,” said Wood, now walking around Harry and staring at him. “Light — speedy — we’ll have to get him a decent broom, Professor — a Nimbus Two Thousand or a Cleansweep Seven, I’d say.”
I shall speak to Professor Dumbledore and see if we can’t bend the first-year rule. Heaven knows, we need a better team than last year.
Flattened in that last match by Slytherin, I couldn’t look Severus Snape in the face for weeks….”
Professor McGonagall peered sternly over her glasses at Harry.
“I want to hear you’re training hard, Potter, or I may change my mind about punishing you.”
Then she suddenly smiled.
“Your father would have been proud,” she said. “He was an excellent Quidditch player himself.”
“You’re joking.”
It was dinnertime. Harry had just finished telling Ron what had happened when he’d left the grounds with Professor McGonagall. Ron had a piece of steak and kidney pie halfway to his mouth, but he’d forgotten all about it.
“Seeker?” he said. “But first years never — you must be the youngest house player in about a century, said Harry, shoveling pie into his mouth. He felt particularly hungry after the excitement of the afternoon. “Wood told me.”
Ron was so amazed, so impressed, he just sat and gaped at Harry.
“I start training next week,” said Harry. “Only don’t tell anyone, Wood wants to keep it a secret.”
Fred and George Weasley now came into the hall, spotted Harry, and hurried over.
“Well done,” said George in a low voice. “Wood told us. We’re on the team too — Beaters.”
“I tell you, we’re going to win that Quidditch cup for sure this year,”
said Fred. “We haven’t won since Charlie left, but this year’s team is going to be brilliant. You must be good, Harry, Wood was almost skipping when he told us.”
“Anyway, we’ve got to go, Lee Jordan reckons he’s found a new secret passageway out of the school.”
“Bet it’s that one behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy that we found in our first week. See you.”
Fred and George had hardly disappeared when someone far less welcome turned up: Malfoy, flanked by Crabbe and Goyle.
“Having a last meal, Potter? When are you getting the train back to the Muggles?”
“You’re a lot braver now that you’re back on the ground and you’ve got your little friends with you,” said Harry coolly. There was of course nothing at all little about Crabbe and Goyle, but as the High Table was full of teachers, neither of them could do more than crack their knuckles and scowl.
“I’d take you on anytime on my own,” said Malfoy. “Tonight, if you want.
Wizard’s duel. Wands only — no contact. What’s the matter? Never heard of a wizard’s duel before, I suppose?”
“Of course he has,” said Ron, wheeling around. “I’m his second, who’s yours?”
Malfoy looked at Crabbe and Goyle, sizing them up.
“Crabbe,” he said. “Midnight all right? We’ll meet you in the trophy room; that’s always unlocked.”
When Malfoy had gone, Ron and Harry looked at each other. “What is a wizard’s duel?” said Harry. “And what do you mean, you’re my second?”
“Well, a second’s there to take over if you die,” said Ron casually, getting started at last on his cold pie. Catching the look on Harry’s face, he added quickly, “But people only die in proper duels, you know, with real wizards. The most you and Malfoy’ll be able to do is send sparks at each other. Neither of you knows enough magic to do any real damage. I bet he expected you to refuse, anyway.”
“And what if I wave my wand and nothing happens?”
“Throw it away and punch him on the nose,” Ron suggested. “Excuse me.”
They both looked up. It was Hermione Granger.
“Can’t a person eat in peace in this place?” said Ron.
Hermione ignored him and spoke to Harry.
“I couldn’t help overhearing what you and Malfoy were saying –”
“Bet you could,” Ron muttered.
“–and you mustn’t go wandering around the school at night, think of the points you’ll lose Gryffindor if you’re caught, and you’re bound to be.
It’s really very selfish of you.”
“And it’s really none of your business,” said Harry.
“Good-bye,” said Ron.
All the same, it wasn’t what you’d call the perfect end to the day, Harry thought, as he lay awake much later listening to Dean and Seamus falling asleep (Neville wasn’t back from the hospital wing). Ron had spent all evening giving him advice such as “If he tries to curse you, you’d better dodge it, because I can’t remember how to block them.”
There was a very good chance they were going to get caught by Filch or Mrs. Norris, and Harry felt he was pushing his luck, breaking another school rule today. On the other hand, Malfoys sneering face kept looming up out of the darkness – this was his big chance to beat Malfoy face-to-face. He couldn’t miss it.
“Half-past eleven,” Ron muttered at last, “we’d better go.”
They pulled on their bathrobes, picked up their wands, and crept across the tower room, down the spiral staircase, and into the Gryffindor common room. A few embers were still glowing in the fireplace, turning all the armchairs into hunched black shadows. They had almost reached the portrait hole when a voice spoke from the chair nearest them, “I can’t believe you’re going to do this, Harry.”
A lamp flickered on. It was Hermione Granger, wearing a pink bathrobe and a frown.
“You!” said Ron furiously. “Go back to bed!”
“I almost told your brother,” Hermione snapped, “Percy — he’s a prefect, he’d put a stop to this.”
Harry couldn’t believe anyone could be so interfering.
“Come on,” he said to Ron. He pushed open the portrait of the Fat Lady and climbed through the hole.
Hermione wasn’t going to give up that easily. She followed Ron through the portrait hole, hissing at them like an angry goose.
“Don’t you care about Gryffindor, do you only care about yourselves, I don’t want Slytherin to win the house cup, and you’ll lose all the points I got from Professor McGonagall for knowing about Switching Spells.”
“Go away.” “All right, but I warned you, you just remember what I said when you’re on the train home tomorrow, you’re so –”
But what they were, they didn’t find out. Hermione had turned to the portrait of the Fat Lady to get back inside and found herself facing an empty painting. The Fat Lady had gone on a nighttime visit and Hermione was locked out of Gryffindor tower.
“Now what am I going to do?” she asked shrilly.
“That’s your problem,” said Ron. “We’ve got to go, we 3 re going to be late.”
They hadn’t even reached the end of the corridor when Hermione caught up with them.
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
“You are not.”
“D’you think I’m going to stand out here and wait for Filch to catch me? If he finds all three of us I’ll tell him the truth, that I was trying to stop you, and you can back me up.”
“You’ve got some nerve –” said Ron loudly.
“Shut up, both of you!” said Harry sharply. I heard something.”
It was a sort of snuffling.
“Mrs. Norris?” breathed Ron, squinting through the dark.
It wasn’t Mrs. Norris. It was Neville. He was curled up on the floor, fast asleep, but jerked suddenly awake as they crept nearer.
“Thank goodness you found me! I’ve been out here for hours, I couldn’t remember the new password to get in to bed.”
“Keep your voice down, Neville. The password’s ‘Pig snout’ but it won’t help you now, the Fat Lady’s gone off somewhere.”
“How’s your arm?” said Harry.
“Fine,” said Neville, showing them. “Madam Pomfrey mended it in about a minute.”
“Good – well, look, Neville, we’ve got to be somewhere, we’ll see you later –”
“Don’t leave me!” said Neville, scrambling to his feet, “I don’t want to stay here alone, the Bloody Baron’s been past twice already.”
Ron looked at his watch and then glared furiously at Hermione and Neville.
“If either of you get us caught, I’ll never rest until I’ve learned that Curse of the Bogies Quirrell told us about, and used it on you.
Hermione opened her mouth, perhaps to tell Ron exactly how to use the Curse of the Bogies, but Harry hissed at her to be quiet and beckoned them all forward.
They flitted along corridors striped with bars of moonlight from the high windows. At every turn Harry expected to run into Filch or Mrs. Norris, but they were lucky. They sped up a staircase to the third floor and tiptoed toward the trophy room.
Malfoy and Crabbe weren’t there yet. The crystal trophy cases glimmered where the moonlight caught them. Cups, shields, plates, and statues winked silver and gold in the darkness. They edged along the walls, keeping their eyes on the doors at either end of the room. Harry took out his wand in case Malfoy leapt in and started at once. The minutes crept by.
“He’s late, maybe he’s chickened out,” Ron whispered.
Then a noise in the next room made them jump. Harry had only just raised his wand when they heard someone speak -and it wasn’t Malfoy.
“Sniff around, my sweet, they might be lurking in a corner.”
It was Filch speaking to Mrs. Norris. Horror-struck, Harry waved madly at the other three to follow him as quickly as possible; they scurried silently toward the door, away from Filch’s voice. Neville’s robes had barely whipped round the corner when they heard Filch enter the trophy room.
“They’re in here somewhere,” they heard him mutter, “probably hiding.”
“This way!” Harry mouthed to the others and, petrified, they began to creep down a long gallery full of suits of armor. They could hear Filch getting nearer. Neville suddenly let out a frightened squeak and broke into a run -he tripped, grabbed Ron around the waist, and the pair of them toppled right into a suit of armor.
The clanging and crashing were enough to wake the whole castle.
“RUN!” Harry yelled, and the four of them sprinted down the gallery, not looking back to see whether Filch was following — they swung around the doorpost and galloped down one corridor then another, Harry in the lead, without any idea where they were or where they were going — they ripped through a tapestry and found themselves in a hidden passageway, hurtled along it and came out near their Charms classroom, which they knew was miles from the trophy room.
“I think we’ve lost him,” Harry panted, leaning against the cold wall and wiping his forehead. Neville was bent double, wheezing and spluttering.
I — told -you,” Hermione gasped, clutching at the stitch in her chest, “I — told — you.”
“We’ve got to get back to Gryffindor tower,” said Ron, “quickly as possible.”
“Malfoy tricked you,” Hermione said to Harry. “You realize that, don’t you? He was never going to meet you — Filch knew someone was going to be in the trophy room, Malfoy must have tipped him off.”
Harry thought she was probably right, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Let’s go.”
It wasn’t going to be that simple. They hadn’t gone more than a dozen paces when a doorknob rattled and something came shooting out of a classroom in front of them.
It was Peeves. He caught sight of them and gave a squeal of delight.
“Shut up, Peeves — please — you’ll get us thrown out.”
Peeves cackled.
“Wandering around at midnight, Ickle Firsties? Tut, tut, tut. Naughty, naughty, you’ll get caughty.”
“Not if you don’t give us away, Peeves, please.”
“Should tell Filch, I should,” said Peeves in a saintly voice, but his eyes glittered wickedly. “It’s for your own good, you know.”
“Get out of the way,” snapped Ron, taking a swipe at Peeves this was a big mistake.
“STUDENTS OUT OF BED!” Peeves bellowed, “STUDENTS OUT OF BED DOWN THE CHARMS CORRIDOR”
Ducking under Peeves, they ran for their lives, right to the end of the corridor where they slammed into a door — and it was locked.
“This is it!” Ron moaned, as they pushed helplessly at the door, “We’re done for! This is the end!” They could hear footsteps, Filch running as fast as he could toward Peeves’s shouts.
“Oh, move over,” Hermione snarled. She grabbed Harry’s wand, tapped the lock, and whispered, ‘Alohomora!”
The lock clicked and the door swung open — they piled through it, shut it quickly, and pressed their ears against it, listening.
“Which way did they go, Peeves?” Filch was saying. “Quick, tell me.”
“Say ‘please.”‘ “Don’t mess with me, Peeves, now where did they go?”
“Shan’t say nothing if you don’t say please,” said Peeves in his annoying singsong voice.
“All right -please.”
“NOTHING! Ha haaa! Told you I wouldn’t say nothing if you didn’t say please! Ha ha! Haaaaaa!” And they heard the sound of Peeves whooshing away and Filch cursing in rage.
“He thinks this door is locked,” Harry whispered. “I think we’ll be okay — get off, Neville!” For Neville had been tugging on the sleeve of Harry’s bathrobe for the last minute. “What?”
Harry turned around — and saw, quite clearly, what. For a moment, he was sure he’d walked into a nightmare — this was too much, on top of everything that had happened so far.
They weren’t in a room, as he had supposed. They were in a corridor. The forbidden corridor on the third floor. And now they knew why it was forbidden.
They were looking straight into the eyes of a monstrous dog, a dog that filled the whole space between ceiling and floor. It had three heads.
Three pairs of rolling, mad eyes; three noses, twitching and quivering in their direction; three drooling mouths, saliva hanging in slippery ropes from yellowish fangs.
It was standing quite still, all six eyes staring at them, and Harry knew that the only reason they weren’t already dead was that their sudden appearance had taken it by surprise, but it was quickly getting over that, there was no mistaking what those thunderous growls meant.
Harry groped for the doorknob — between Filch and death, he’d take Filch.
They fell backward — Harry slammed the door shut, and they ran, they almost flew, back down the corridor. Filch must have hurried off to look for them somewhere else, because they didn’t see him anywhere, but they hardly cared — all they wanted to do was put as much space as possible between them and that monster. They didn’t stop running until they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady on the seventh floor.
“Where on earth have you all been?” she asked, looking at their bathrobes hanging off their shoulders and their flushed, sweaty faces.
“Never mind that — pig snout, pig snout,” panted Harry, and the portrait swung forward. They scrambled into the common room and collapsed, trembling, into armchairs.
It was a while before any of them said anything. Neville, indeed, looked as if he’d never speak again.
“What do they think they’re doing, keeping a thing like that locked up in a school?” said Ron finally. “If any dog needs exercise, that one does.”
Hermione had got both her breath and her bad temper back again. “You don’t use your eyes, any of you, do you?” she snapped. “Didn’t you see what it was standing on.
“The floor?” Harry suggested. “I wasn’t looking at its feet, I was too busy with its heads.”
“No, not the floor. It was standing on a trapdoor. It’s obviously guarding something.”
She stood up, glaring at them.
I hope you’re pleased with yourselves. We could all have been killed — or worse, expelled. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to bed.”
Ron stared after her, his mouth open.
“No, we don’t mind,” he said. “You’d think we dragged her along, wouldn’t you.
But Hermione had given Harry something else to think about as he climbed back into bed. The dog was guarding something…. What had Hagrid said? Gringotts was the safest place in the world for something you wanted to hide — except perhaps Hogwarts.
It looked as though Harry had found out where the grubby littie package from vault seven hundred and thirteen was.
CHAPTER TEN
HALLOWEEN
Malfoy couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw that Harry and Ron were still at Hogwarts the next day, looking tired but perfectly cheerful.
Indeed, by the next morning Harry and Ron thought that meeting the three-headed dog had been an excellent adventure, and they were quite keen to have another one. In the meantime, Harry filled Ron in about the package that seemed to have been moved from Gringotts to Hogwarts, and they spent a lot of time wondering what could possibly need such heavy protection. “It’s either really valuable or really dangerous,” said Ron.
“Or both,” said Harry.
But as all they knew for sure about the mysterious object was that it was about two inches long, they didn’t have much chance of guessing what it was without further clues.
Neither Neville nor Hermione showed the slightest interest in what lay underneath the dog and the trapdoor. All Neville cared about was never going near the dog again.
Hermione was now refusing to speak to Harry and Ron, but she was such a bossy know-it-all that they saw this as an added bonus. All they really wanted now was a way of getting back at Malfoy, and to their great delight, just such a thing arrived in the mail about a week later.
As the owls flooded into the Great Hall as usual, everyone’s attention was caught at once by a long, thin package carried by six large screech owls. Harry was just as interested as everyone else to see what was in this large parcel, and was amazed when the owls soared down and dropped it right in front of him, knocking his bacon to the floor. They had hardly fluttered out of the way when another owl dropped a letter on top of the parcel.
Harry ripped open the letter first, which was lucky, because it said: DO NOT OPEN THE PARCEL AT THE TABLE.
It contains your new Nimbus Two Thousand, but I don’t want everybody knowing you’ve got a broomstick or they’ll all want one. Oliver Wood will meet you tonight on the Quidditch field at seven o’clock for your first training session.
Professor McGonagall Harry had difficulty hiding his glee as he handed the note to Ron to read.
“A Nimbus Two Thousand!” Ron moaned enviously. “I’ve never even touched one.”
They left the hall quickly, wanting to unwrap the broomstick in private before their first class, but halfway across the entrance hall they found the way upstairs barred by Crabbe and Goyle. Malfoy seized the package from Harry and felt it.
“That’s a broomstick,” he said, throwing it back to Harry with a mixture of jealousy and spite on his face. “You’ll be in for it this time, Potter, first years aren’t allowed them.”
Ron couldn’t resist it.
“It’s not any old broomstick,” he said, “it’s a Nimbus Two Thousand.
What did you say you’ve got at home, Malfoy, a Comet Two Sixty?” Ron grinned at Harry. “Comets look flashy, but they’re not in the same league as the Nimbus.”
“What would you know about it, Weasley, you couldn’t afford half the handle,” Malfoy snapped back. “I suppose you and your brothers have to save up twig by twig.”
Before Ron could answer, Professor Flitwick appeared at Malfoy’s elbow.
“Not arguing, I hope, boys?” he squeaked.
“Potter’s been sent a broomstick, Professor,” said Malfoy quickly.
“Yes, yes, that’s right,” said Professor Flitwick, beaming at Harry.
“Professor McGonagall told me all about the special circumstances, Potter. And what model is it?”
“A Nimbus Two Thousand, sit,” said Harry, fighting not to laugh at the look of horror on Malfoy’s face. “And it’s really thanks to Malfoy here that I’ve got it,” he added.
Harry and Ron headed upstairs, smothering their laughter at Malfoy’s obvious rage and confusion. “Well, it’s true,” Harry chortled as they reached the top of the marble staircase, “If he hadn’t stolen Neville’s Remembrall I wouln’t be on the team….”
“So I suppose you think that’s a reward for breaking rules?” came an angry voice from just behind them. Hermione was stomping up the stairs, looking disapprovingly at the package in Harry’s hand.
“I thought you weren’t speaking to us?” said Harry.
“Yes, don’t stop now,” said Ron, “it’s doing us so much good.”
Hermione marched away with her nose in the air.
Harry had a lot of trouble keeping his mind on his lessons that day. It kept wandering up to the dormitory where his new broomstick was lying under his bed, or straying off to the Quidditch field where he’d be learning to play that night. He bolted his dinner that evening without noticing what he was eating, and then rushed upstairs with Ron to unwrap the Nimbus Two Thousand at last.
“Wow,” Ron sighed, as the broomstick rolled onto Harry’s bedspread.
Even Harry, who knew nothing about the different brooms, thought it looked wonderful. Sleek and shiny, with a mahogany handle, it had a long tail of neat, straight twigs and Nimbus Two Thousand written in gold near the top.
As seven o’clock drew nearer, Harry left the castle and set off in the dusk toward the Quidditch field. Held never been inside the stadium before. Hundreds of seats were raised in stands around the field so that the spectators were high enough to see what was going on. At either end of the field were three golden poles with hoops on the end. They reminded Harry of the little plastic sticks Muggle children blew bubbles through, except that they were fifty feet high.
Too eager to fly again to wait for Wood, Harry mounted his broomstick and kicked off from the ground. What a feeling — he swooped in and out of the goal posts and then sped up and down the field. The Nimbus Two Thousand turned wherever he wanted at his lightest touch.
“Hey, Potter, come down!’ Oliver Wood had arrived. fie was carrying a large wooden crate under his arm. Harry landed next to him.
“Very nice,” said Wood, his eyes glinting. “I see what McGonagall meant… you really are a natural. I’m just going to teach you the rules this evening, then you’ll be joining team practice three times a week.”
He opened the crate. Inside were four different-sized balls.
“Right,” said Wood. “Now, Quidditch is easy enough to understand, even if it’s not too easy to play. There are seven players on each side.
Three of them are called Chasers.”
“Three Chasers,” Harry repeated, as Wood took out a bright red ball about the size of a soccer ball.
“This ball’s called the Quaffle,” said Wood. “The Chasers throw the Quaffle to each other and try and get it through one of the hoops to score a goal. Ten points every time the Quaffle goes through one of the hoops. Follow me?”
“The Chasers throw the Quaffle and put it through the hoops to score,”
Harry recited. “So — that’s sort of like basketball on broomsticks with six hoops, isn’t it?”
“What’s basketball?” said Wood curiously. “Never mind,” said Harry quickly.
“Now, there’s another player on each side who’s called the Keeper -I’m Keeper for Gryffindor. I have to fly around our hoops and stop the other team from scoring.”
“Three Chasers, one Keeper,” said Harry, who was determined to remember it all. “And they play with the Quaffle. Okay, got that. So what are they for?” He pointed at the three balls left inside the box.
“I’ll show you now,” said Wood. “Take this.”
He handed Harry a small club, a bit like a short baseball bat.
“I’m going to show you what the Bludgers do,” Wood said. “These two are the Bludgers.”
He showed Harry two identical balls, jet black and slightly smaller than the red Quaffle. Harry noticed that they seemed to be straining to escape the straps holding them inside the box.
“Stand back,” Wood warned Harry. He bent down and freed one of the Bludgers.
At once, the black ball rose high in the air and then pelted straight at Harry’s face. Harry swung at it with the bat to stop it from breaking his nose, and sent it zigzagging away into the air — it zoomed around their heads and then shot at Wood, who dived on top of it and managed to pin it to the ground.
“See?” Wood panted, forcing the struggling Bludger back into the crate and strapping it down safely. “The Bludgers rocket around, trying to knock players off their brooms. That’s why you have two Beaters on each team — the Weasley twins are ours — it’s their job to protect their side from the Bludgers and try and knock them toward the other team. So — think you’ve got all that?”
“Three Chasers try and score with the Quaffle; the Keeper guards the goal posts; the Beaters keep the Bludgers away from their team,” Harry reeled off.
“Very good,” said Wood.
“Er — have the Bludgers ever killed anyone?” Harry asked, hoping he sounded offhand.
“Never at Hogwarts. We’ve had a couple of broken jaws but nothing worse than that. Now, the last member of the team is the Seeker. That’s you. And you don’t have to worry about the Quaffle or the Bludgers unless they crack my head open.”
“Don’t worry, the Weasleys are more than a match for the Bludgers — I mean, they’re like a pair of human Bludgers themselves.”
Wood reached into the crate and took out the fourth and last ball.
Compared with the Quaffle and the Bludgers, it was tiny, about the size of a large walnut. It was bright gold and had little fluttering silver wings.
“This,” said Wood, “is the Golden Snitch, and it’s the most important ball of the lot. It’s very hard to catch because it’s so fast and difficult to see. It’s the Seeker’s job to catch it. You’ve got to weave in and out of the Chasers, Beaters, Bludgers, and Quaffle to get it before the other team’s Seeker, because whichever Seeker catches the Snitch wins his team an extra hundred and fifty points, so they nearly always win. That’s why Seekers get fouled so much. A game of Quidditch only ends when the Snitch is caught, so it can go on for ages — I think the record is three months, they had to keep bringing on substitutes so the players could get some sleep. “Well, that’s it — any questions?”
Harry shook his head. He understood what he had to do all right, it was doing it that was going to be the problem.
“We won’t practice with the Snitch yet,” said Wood, carefully shutting it back inside the crate, “it’s too dark, we might lose it. Let’s try you out with a few of these.”
He pulled a bag of ordinary golf balls out of his pocket and a few minutes later, he and Harry were up in the air, Wood throwing the golf balls as hard as he could in every direction for Harry to catch.
Harry didn’t miss a single one, and Wood was delighted. After half an hour, night had really fallen and they couldn’t carry on.
“That Quidditch cup’ll have our name on it this year,” said Wood happily as they trudged back up to the castle. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you turn out better than Charlie Weasley, and he could have played for England if he hadn’t gone off chasing dragons.”
Perhaps it was because he was now so busy, what with Quidditch practice three evenings a week on top of all his homework, but Harry could hardly believe it when he realized that he’d already been at Hogwarts two months. The castle felt more like home than Privet Drive ever had. His lessons, too, were becoming more and more interesting now that they had mastered the basics.
On Halloween morning they woke to the delicious smell of baking pumpkin wafting through the corridors. Even better, Professor Flitwick announced in Charms that he thought they were ready to start making objects fly, something they had all been dying to try since they’d seen him make Neville’s toad zoom around the classroom. Professor Flitwick put the class into pairs to practice. Harry’s partner was Seamus Finnigan (which was a relief, because Neville had been trying to catch his eye). Ron, however, was to be working with Hermione Granger. It was hard to tell whether Ron or Hermione was angrier about this. She hadn’t spoken to either of them since the day Harry’s broomstick had arrived.
“Now, don’t forget that nice wrist movement we’ve been practicing!”
squeaked Professor Flitwick, perched on top of his pile of books as usual. “Swish and flick, remember, swish and flick. And saying the magic words properly is very important, too — never forget Wizard Baruffio, who said ‘s’ instead of ‘f’ and found himself on the floor with a buffalo on his chest.”
It was very difficult. Harry and Seamus swished and flicked, but the feather they were supposed to be sending skyward just lay on the desktop. Seamus got so impatient that he prodded it with his wand and set fire to it — Harry had to put it out with his hat.
Ron, at the next table, wasn’t having much more luck.
“Wingardium Leviosa!” he shouted, waving his long arms like a windmill.
“You’re saying it wrong,” Harry heard Hermione snap. “It’s Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa, make the ‘gar’ nice and long.”
“You do it, then, if you’re so clever,” Ron snarled.
Hermione rolled up the sleeves of her gown, flicked her wand, and said, “Wingardium Leviosa!”
Their feather rose off the desk and hovered about four feet above their heads.
“Oh, well done!” cried Professor Flitwick, clapping. “Everyone see here, Miss Granger’s done it!”
Ron was in a very bad mood by the end of the class. “It’s no wonder no one can stand her,” he said to Harry as they pushed their way into the crowded corridor, “she’s a nightmare, honestly. ì
Someone knocked into Harry as they hurried past him. It was Hermione.
Harry caught a glimpse of her face — and was startled to see that she was in tears.
“I think she heard you.”
“So?” said Ron, but he looked a bit uncomfortable. “She must’ve noticed she’s got no friends.”
Hermione didn’t turn up for the next class and wasn’t seen all afternoon. On their way down to the Great Hall for the Halloween feast, Harry and Ron overheard Parvati Patil telling her friend Lavender that Hermione was crying in the girls’ bathroom and wanted to be left alone.
Ron looked still more awkward at this, but a moment later they had entered the Great Hall, where the Halloween decorations put Hermione out of their minds.
A thousand live bats fluttered from the walls and ceiling while a thousand more swooped over the tables in low black clouds, making the candles in the pumpkins stutter. The feast appeared suddenly on the golden plates, as it had at the start-of-term banquet.
Harry was just helping himself to a baked potato when Professor Quirrell came sprinting into the hall, his turban askew and terror on his face.
Everyone stared as he reached Professor Dumbledore’s chair, slumped against the table, and gasped, “Troll — in the dungeons — thought you ought to know.”
He then sank to the floor in a dead faint.
There was an uproar. It took several purple firecrackers exploding from the end of Professor Dumbledore’s wand to bring silence.
“Prefects,” he rumbled, “lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately!”
Percy was in his element.
“Follow me! Stick together, first years! No need to fear the troll if you follow my orders! Stay close behind me, now. Make way, first years coming through! Excuse me, I’m a prefect!”
“How could a troll get in?” Harry asked as they climbed the stairs.
“Don’t ask me, they’re supposed to be really stupid,” said Ron. “Maybe Peeves let it in for a Halloween joke.”
They passed different groups of people hurrying in different directions.
As they jostled their way through a crowd of confused Hufflepuffs, Harry suddenly grabbed Ron’s arm.
“I’ve just thought — Hermione.”
“What about her?”
“She doesn’t know about the troll.”
Ron bit his lip.
“Oh, all right,” he snapped. “But Percy’d better not see us.”
Ducking down, they joined the Hufflepuffs going the other way, slipped down a deserted side corridor, and hurried off toward the girls’ bathroom. They had just turned the corner when they heard quick footsteps behind them.
“Percy!” hissed Ron, pulling Harry behind a large stone griffin.
Peering around it, however, they saw not Percy but Snape. He crossed the corridor and disappeared from view.
“What’s he doing?” Harry whispered. “Why isn’t he down in the dungeons with the rest of the teachers?”
“Search me.”
Quietly as possible, they crept along the next corridor after Snape’s fading footsteps.
“He’s heading for the third floor,” Harry said, but Ron held up his hand.
“Can you smell something?”
Harry sniffed and a foul stench reached his nostrils, a mixture of old socks and the kind of public toilet no one seems to clean.
And then they heard it — a low grunting, and the shuffling footfalls of gigantic feet. Ron pointed — at the end of a passage to the left, something huge was moving toward them. They shrank into the shadows and watched as it emerged into a patch of moonlight.
It was a horrible sight. Twelve feet tall, its skin was a dull, granite gray, its great lumpy body like a boulder with its small bald head perched on top like a coconut. It had short legs thick as tree trunks with flat, horny feet. The smell coming from it was incredible. It was holding a huge wooden club, which dragged along the floor because its arms were so long.
The troll stopped next to a doorway and peered inside. It waggled its long ears, making up its tiny mind, then slouched slowly into the room.
“The keys in the lock,” Harry muttered. “We could lock it in.”
“Good idea,” said Ron nervously.
They edged toward the open door, mouths dry, praying the troll wasn’t about to come out of it. With one great leap, Harry managed to grab the key, slam the door, and lock it.
‘Yes!”
Flushed with their victory, they started to run back up the passage, but as they reached the corner they heard something that made their hearts stop — a high, petrified scream — and it was coming from the chamber they’d just chained up.
“Oh, no,” said Ron, pale as the Bloody Baron.
“It’s the girls’ bathroom!” Harry gasped.
“Hermione!” they said together.
It was the last thing they wanted to do, but what choice did they have? Wheeling around, they sprinted back to the door and turned the key, fumbling in their panic. Harry pulled the door open and they ran inside.
Hermione Granger was shrinking against the wall opposite, looking as if she was about to faint. The troll was advancing on her, knocking the sinks off the walls as it went.
“Confuse it!” Harry said desperately to Ron, and, seizing a tap, he threw it as hard as he could against the wall.
The troll stopped a few feet from Hermione. It lumbered around, blinking stupidly, to see what had made the noise. Its mean little eyes saw Harry. It hesitated, then made for him instead, lifting its club as it went.
“Oy, pea-brain!” yelled Ron from the other side of the chamber, and he threw a metal pipe at it. The troll didn’t even seem to notice the pipe hitting its shoulder, but it heard the yell and paused again, turning its ugly snout toward Ron instead, giving Harry time to run around it.
“Come on, run, run!” Harry yelled at Hermione, trying to pull her toward the door, but she couldn’t move, she was still flat against the wall, her mouth open with terror.
The shouting and the echoes seemed to be driving the troll berserk. It roared again and started toward Ron, who was nearest and had no way to escape.
Harry then did something that was both very brave and very stupid: He took a great running jump and managed to fasten his arms around the troll’s neck from behind. The troll couldn’t feel Harry hanging there, but even a troll will notice if you stick a long bit of wood up its nose, and Harry’s wand had still been in his hand when he’d jumped — it had gone straight up one of the troll’s nostrils.
Howling with pain, the troll twisted and flailed its club, with Harry clinging on for dear life; any second, the troll was going to rip him off or catch him a terrible blow with the club.
Hermione had sunk to the floor in fright; Ron pulled out his own wand — not knowing what he was going to do he heard himself cry the first spell that came into his head: “Wingardium Leviosa!”
The club flew suddenly out of the troll’s hand, rose high, high up into the air, turned slowly over — and dropped, with a sickening crack, onto its owner’s head. The troll swayed on the spot and then fell flat on its face, with a thud that made the whole room tremble.
Harry got to his feet. He was shaking and out of breath. Ron was standing there with his wand still raised, staring at what he had done.
It was Hermione who spoke first.
“Is it — dead?”
I don’t think so,” said Harry, I think it’s just been knocked out.”
He bent down and pulled his wand out of the troll’s nose. It was covered in what looked like lumpy gray glue.
“Urgh — troll boogers.”
He wiped it on the troll’s trousers.
A sudden slamming and loud footsteps made the three of them look up.
They hadn’t realized what a racket they had been making, but of course, someone downstairs must have heard the crashes and the troll’s roars. A moment later, Professor McGonagall had come bursting into the room, closely followed by Snape, with Quirrell bringing up the rear. Quirrell took one look at the troll, let out a faint whimper, and sat quickly down on a toilet, clutching his heart.
Snape bent over the troll. Professor McGonagall was looking at Ron and Harry. Harry had never seen her look so angry. Her lips were white.
Hopes of winning fifty points for Gryffindor faded quickly from Harry’s mind.
“What on earth were you thinking of?” said Professor McGonagall, with cold fury in her voice. Harry looked at Ron, who was still standing with his wand in the air. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed. Why aren’t you in your dormitory?”
Snape gave Harry a swift, piercing look. Harry looked at the floor. He wished Ron would put his wand down.
Then a small voice came out of the shadows.
“Please, Professor McGonagall — they were looking for me.”
“Miss Granger!”
Hermione had managed to get to her feet at last.
I went looking for the troll because I — I thought I could deal with it on my own — you know, because I’ve read all about them.”
Ron dropped his wand. Hermione Granger, telling a downright lie to a teacher? “If they hadn’t found me, I’d be dead now. Harry stuck his wand up its nose and Ron knocked it out with its own club. They didn’t have time to come and fetch anyone. It was about to finish me off when they arrived.”
Harry and Ron tried to look as though this story wasn’t new to them.
“Well — in that case…” said Professor McGonagall, staring at the three of them, “Miss Granger, you foolish girl, how could you think of tackling a mountain troll on your own?”
Hermione hung her head. Harry was speechless. Hermione was the last person to do anything against the rules, and here she was, pretending she had, to get them out of trouble. It was as if Snape had started handing out sweets.
“Miss Granger, five points will be taken from Gryffindor for this,” said Professor McGonagall. “I’m very disappointed in you. If you’re not hurt at all, you’d better get off to Gryffindor tower. Students are finishing the feast in their houses.”
Hermione left.
Professor McGonagall turned to Harry and Ron.
“Well, I still say you were lucky, but not many first years could have taken on a full-grown mountain troll. You each win Gryffindor five points. Professor Dumbledore will be informed of this. You may go.”
They hurried out of the chamber and didn’t speak at all until they had climbed two floors up. It was a relief to be away from the smell of the troll, quite apart from anything else.
“We should have gotten more than ten points,” Ron grumbled.
“Five, you mean, once she’s taken off Hermione’s.”
“Good of her to get us out of trouble like that,” Ron admitted. “Mind you, we did save her.”
“She might not have needed saving if we hadn’t locked the thing in with her,” Harry reminded him.
They had reached the portrait of the Fat Lady.
“Pig snout,” they said and entered.
The common room was packed and noisy. Everyone was eating the food that had been sent up. Hermione, however, stood alone by the door, waiting for them. There was a very embarrassed pause. Then, none of them looking at each other, they all said “Thanks,” and hurried off to get plates.
But from that moment on, Hermione Granger became their friend. There are some things you can’t share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a twelve-foot mountain troll is one of them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
QUIDDITCH
As they entered November, the weather turned very cold. The mountains around the school became icy gray and the lake like chilled steel. Every morning the ground was covered in frost. Hagrid could be seen from the upstairs windows defrosting broomsticks on the Quidditch field, bundled up in a long moleskin overcoat, rabbit fur gloves, and enormous beaverskin boots.
The Quidditch season had begun. On Saturday, Harry would be playing in his first match after weeks of training: Gryffindor versus Slytherin. If Gryffindor won, they would move up into second place in the house championship.
Hardly anyone had seen Harry play because Wood had decided that, as their secret weapon, Harry should be kept, well, secret. But the news that he was playing Seeker had leaked out somehow, and Harry didn’t know which was worse — people telling him he’d be brilliant or people telling him they’d be running around underneath him holding a mattress.
It was really lucky that Harry now had Hermlone as a friend. He didn’t know how he’d have gotten through all his homework without her, what with all the last-minute Quidditch practice Wood was making them do. She had also tent him Quidditch Through the Ages, which turned out to be a very interesting read.
Harry learned that there were seven hundred ways of committing a Quidditch foul and that all of them had happened during a World Cup match in 1473; that Seekers were usually the smallest and fastest players, and that most serious Quidditch accidents seemed to happen to them; that although people rarely died playing Quidditch, referees had been known to vanish and turn up months later in the Sahara Desert.
Hermione had become a bit more relaxed about breaking rules since Harry and Ron had saved her from the mountain troll, and she was much nicer for it. The day before Harry’s first Quidditch match the three of them were out in the freezing courtyard during break, and she had conjured them up a bright blue fire that could be carried around in a jam jar.
They were standing with their backs to it, getting warm, when Snape crossed the yard. Harry noticed at once that Snape was limping. Harry, Ron, and Hermione moved closer together to block the fire from view; they were sure it wouldn’t be allowed. Unfortunately, something about their guilty faces caught Snape’s eye. He limped over. He hadn’t seen the fire, but he seemed to be looking for a reason to tell them off anyway.
“What’s that you’ve got there, Potter?”
It was Quidditch Through the Ages. Harry showed him.
“Library books are not to be taken outside the school,” said Snape.
“Give it to me. Five points from Gryffindor.”
“He’s just made that rule up,” Harry muttered angrily as Snape limped away. “Wonder what’s wrong with his leg?”
“Dunno, but I hope it’s really hurting him,” said Ron bitterly.
The Gryffindor common room was very noisy that evening. Harry, Ron, and Hermione sat together next to a window. Hermione was checking Harry and Ron’s Charms homework for them. She would never let them copy (“How will you learn?”), but by asking her to read it through, they got the right answers anyway.
Harry felt restless. He wanted Quidditch Through the Ages back, to take his mind off his nerves about tomorrow. Why should he be afraid of Snape? Getting up, he told Ron and Hermione he was going to ask Snape if he could have it.
“Better you than me,” they said together, but Harry had an idea that Snape wouldn’t refuse if there were other teachers listening.
He made his way down to the staffroom and knocked. There was no answer.
He knocked again. Nothing.
Perhaps Snape had left the book in there? It was worth a try. He pushed the door ajar and peered inside — and a horrible scene met his eyes.
Snape and Filch were inside, alone. Snape was holding his robes above his knees. One of his legs was bloody and mangled. Filch was handing Snape bandages.
“Blasted thing*,” Snape was saying. “How are you supposed to keep your eyes on all three heads at once?”
Harry tried to shut the door quietly, but — “POTTER!”
Snape’s face was twisted with fury as he dropped his robes quickly to hide his leg. Harry gulped.
“I just wondered if I could have my book back.”
“GET OUT! OUT!”
Harry left, before Snape could take any more points from Gryffindor. He sprinted back upstairs.
“Did you get it?” Ron asked as Harry joined them. “What’s the matter?”
In a low whisper, Harry told them what he’d seen.
“You know what this means?” he finished breathlessly. “He tried to get past that three-headed dog at Halloween! That’s where he was going when we saw him — he’s after whatever it’s guarding! And Id bet my broomstick he let that troll in, to make a diversion!”
Hermione’s eyes were wide.
“No — he wouldn’t, she said. “I know he’s not very nice, but he wouldn’t try and steal something Dumbledore was keeping safe.”
“Honestly, Hermione, you think all teachers are saints or something,”
snapped Ron. “I’m with Harry. I wouldn’t put anything past Snape. But what’s he after? What’s that dog guarding?”
Harry went to bed with his head buzzing with the same question. Neville was snoring loudly, but Harry couldn’t sleep. He tried to empty his mind — he needed to sleep, he had to, he had his first Quidditch match in a few hours — but the expression on Snape’s face when Harry had seen his leg wasn’t easy to forget.
The next morning dawned very bright and cold. The Great Hall was full of the delicious smell of fried sausages and the cheer ful chatter of everyone looking forward to a good Quidditch match.
“You’ve got to eat some breakfast.”
“I don’t want anything.”
“Just a bit of toast,” wheedled Hermione.
“I’m not hungry.”
Harry felt terrible. In an hour’s time he’d be walking onto the field.
“Harry, you need your strength,” said Seamus Finnigan. “Seekers are always the ones who get clobbered by the other team.”
“Thanks, Seamus,” said Harry, watching Seamus pile ketchup on his sausages.
By eleven o’clock the whole school seemed to be out in the stands around the Quidditch pitch. Many students had binoculars. The seats might be raised high in the air, but it was still difficult to see what was going on sometimes.
Ron and Hermione joined Neville, Seamus, and Dean the West Ham fan up in the top row. As a surprise for Harry, they had painted a large banner on one of the sheets Scabbers had ruined. It said Potter for President, and Dean, who was good at drawing, had done a large Gryffindor lion underneath. Then Hermione had performed a tricky little charm so that the paint flashed different colors.
Meanwhile, in the locker room, Harry and the rest of the team were changing into their scarlet Quidditch robes (Slytherin would be playing in green).
Wood cleared his throat for silence.
“Okay, men,” he said.
“And women,” said Chaser Angelina Johnson.
“And women,” Wood agreed. “This is it.”
“The big one,” said Fred Weasley.
“The one we’ve all been waiting for,” said George.
“We know Oliver’s speech by heart,” Fred told Harry, “we were on the team last year.”
“Shut up, you two,” said Wood. “This is the best team Gryffindor’s had in years. We’re going to win. I know it.”
He glared at them all as if to say, “Or else.”
“Right. It’s time. Good luck, all of you.”
Harry followed Fred and George out of the locker room and, hoping his knees weren’t going to give way, walked onto the field to loud cheers.
Madam Hooch was refereeing. She stood in the middle of the field waiting for the two teams, her broom in her hand.
“Now, I want a nice fair game, all of you,” she said, once they were all gathered around her. Harry noticed that she seemed to be speaking particularly to the Slytherin Captain, Marcus Flint, a sixth year. Harry thought Flint looked as if he had some troll blood in him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fluttering banner high above, flashing Potter for President over the crowd. His heart skipped. He felt braver.
“Mount your brooms, please.”
Harry clambered onto his Nimbus Two Thousand.
Madam Hooch gave a loud blast on her silver whistle.
Fifteen brooms rose up, high, high into the air. They were off. “And the Quaffle is taken immediately by Angelina Johnson of Gryffindor — what an excellent Chaser that girl is, and rather attractive, too –”
“JORDAN!”
“Sorry, Professor.”
The Weasley twins’ friend, Lee Jordan, was doing the commentary for the match, closely watched by Professor McGonagall.
“And she’s really belting along up there, a neat pass to Alicia Spinnet, a good find of Oliver Wood’s, last year only a reserve — back to Johnson and — no, the Slytherins have taken the Quaffle, Slytherin Captain Marcus Flint gains the Quaffle and off he goes — Flint flying like an eagle up there — he’s going to sc- no, stopped by an excellent move by Gryffindor Keeper Wood and the Gryffindors take the Quaffle — that’s Chaser Katie Bell of Gryffindor there, nice dive around Flint, off up the field and — OUCH — that must have hurt, hit in the back of the head by a Bludger — Quaffle taken by the Slytherins — that’s Adrian Pucey speeding off toward the goal posts, but he’s blocked by a second Bludger — sent his way by Fred or George Weasley, can’t tell which — nice play by the Gryffindor Beater, anyway, and Johnson back in possession of the Quaffle, a clear field ahead and off she goes — she’s really flying — dodges a speeding Bludger — the goal posts are ahead — come on, now, Angelina — Keeper Bletchley dives — misses — GRYFFINDORS SCORE!”
Gryffindor cheers filled the cold air, with howls and moans from the Slytherins.
“Budge up there, move along.”
“Hagrid!”
Ron and Hermione squeezed together to give Hagrid enough space to join them.
“Bin watchin’ from me hut,” said Hagrid, patting a large pair of binoculars around his neck, “But it isn’t the same as bein’ in the crowd. No sign of the Snitch yet, eh?”
“Nope,” said Ron. “Harry hasn’t had much to do yet.”
“Kept outta trouble, though, that’s somethin’,” said Hagrid, raising his binoculars and peering skyward at the speck that was Harry.
Way up above them, Harry was gliding over the game, squinting about for some sign of the Snitch. This was part of his and Wood’s game plan.
“Keep out of the way until you catch sight of the Snitch,” Wood had said. “We don’t want you attacked before you have to be.”
When Angelina had scored, Harry had done a couple of loop-the-loops to let off his feelings. Now he was back to staring around for the Snitch.
Once he caught sight of a flash of gold, but it was just a reflection from one of the Weasleys’ wristwatches, and once a Bludger decided to come pelting his way, more like a cannonball than anything, but Harry dodged it and Fred Weasley came chasing after it.
“All right there, Harry?” he had time to yell, as he beat the Bludger furiously toward Marcus Flint.
“Slytherin in possession,” Lee Jordan was saying, “Chaser Pucey ducks two Bludgers, two Weasleys, and Chaser Bell, and speeds toward the — wait a moment — was that the Snitch?”
A murmur ran through the crowd as Adrian Pucey dropped the Quaffle, too busy looking over his shoulder at the flash of gold that had passed his left ear.
Harry saw it. In a great rush of excitement he dived downward after the streak of gold. Slytherin Seeker Terence Higgs had seen it, too. Neck and neck they hurtled toward the Snitch -all the Chasers seemed to have forgotten what they were supposed to be doing as they hung in midair to watch.
Harry was faster than Higgs — he could see the little round ball, wings fluttering, darting up ahead – – he put on an extra spurt of speed — WHAM! A roar of rage echoed from the Gryffindors below — Marcus Flint had blocked Harry on purpose, and Harry’s broom spun off course, Harry holding on for dear life.
“Foul!” screamed the Gryffindors.
Madam Hooch spoke angrily to Flint and then ordered a free shot at the goal posts for Gryffindor. But in all the confusion, of course, the Golden Snitch had disappeared from sight again.
Down in the stands, Dean Thomas was yelling, “Send him off, ref! Red card!”
“What are you talking about, Dean?” said Ron.
“Red card!” said Dean furiously. “In soccer you get shown the red card and you’re out of the game!”
“But this isn’t soccer, Dean,” Ron reminded him.
Hagrid, however, was on Dean’s side.
“They oughta change the rules. Flint coulda knocked Harry outta the air.”
Lee Jordan was finding it difficult not to take sides.
“So — after that obvious and disgusting bit of cheating “Jordan!” growled Professor McGonagall.
“I mean, after that open and revolting foul ‘Jordan, I’m warning you –”
“All right, all right. Flint nearly kills the Gryffindor Seeker, which could happen to anyone, I’m sure, so a penalty to Gryffindor, taken by Spinner, who puts it away, no trouble, and we continue play, Gryffindor still in possession.”
It was as Harry dodged another Bludger, which went spinning dangerously past his head, that it happened. His broom gave a sudden, frightening lurch. For a split second, he thought he was going to fall. He gripped the broom tightly with both his hands and knees. He’d never felt anything like that.
It happened again. It was as though the broom was trying to buck him off. But Nimbus Two Thousands did not suddenly decide to buck their riders off. Harry tried to turn back toward the Gryffindor goal- posts — he had half a mind to ask Wood to call time-out — and then he realized that his broom was completely out of his control. He couldn’t turn it. He couldn’t direct it at all. It was zigzagging through the air, and every now and then making violent swishing movements that almost unseated him.
Lee was still commentating.
“Slytherin in possession — Flint with the Quaffle — passes Spinnet — passes Bell — hit hard in the face by a Bludger, hope it broke his nose — only joking, Professor — Slytherins score — A no…
The Slytherins were cheering. No one seemed to have noticed that Harry’s broom was behaving strangely. It was carrying- him slowly higher, away from the game, jerking and twitching as it went.
“Dunno what Harry thinks he’s doing,” Hagrid mumbled. He stared through his binoculars. “If I didn’ know better, I’d say he’d lost control of his broom… but he can’t have….”
Suddenly, people were pointing up at Harry all over the stands. His broom had started to roll over and over, with him only just managing to hold on. Then the whole crowd gasped. Harry’s broom had given a wild jerk and Harry swung off it. He was now dangling from it, holding on with only one hand.
“Did something happen to it when Flint blocked him?” Seamus whispered.
“Can’t have,” Hagrid said, his voice shaking. “Can’t nothing interfere with a broomstick except powerful Dark magic — no kid could do that to a Nimbus Two Thousand.”
At these words, Hermione seized Hagrid’s binoculars, but instead of looking up at Harry, she started looking frantically at the crowd.
“What are you doing?” moaned Ron, gray-faced.
“I knew it,” Hermione gasped, “Snape — look.”
Ron grabbed the binoculars. Snape was in the middle of the stands opposite them. He had his eyes fixed on Harry and was muttering nonstop under his breath.
“He’s doing something — jinxing the broom,” said Hermione.
“What should we do?”
“Leave it to me.”
Before Ron could say another word, Hermione had disappeared. Ron turned the binoculars back on Harry. His broom was vibrating so hard, it was almost impossible for him to hang on much longer. The whole crowd was on its feet, watching, terrified, as the Weasleys flew up to try and pull Harry safely onto one of their brooms, but it was no good — every time they got near him, the broom would jump higher still. They dropped lower and circled beneath him, obviously hoping to catch him if he fell.
Marcus Flint seized the Quaffle and scored five times without anyone noticing.
“Come on, Hermione,” Ron muttered desperately.
Hermione had fought her way across to the stand where Snape stood, and was now racing along the row behind him; she didn’t even stop to say sorry as she knocked Professor Quirrell headfirst into the row in front.
Reaching Snape, she crouched down, pulled out her wand, and whispered a few, well- chosen words. Bright blue flames shot from her wand onto the hem of Snape’s robes.
It took perhaps thirty seconds for Snape to realize that he was on fire.
A sudden yelp told her she had done her job. Scooping the fire off him into a little jar in her pocket, she scrambled back along the row — Snape would never know what had happened.
It was enough. Up in the air, Harry was suddenly able to clamber back on to his broom.
“Neville, you can look!” Ron said. Neville had been sobbing into Hagrid’s jacket for the last five minutes.
Harry was speeding toward the ground when the crowd saw him clap his hand to his mouth as though he was about to be sick — he hit the field on all fours — coughed — and something gold fell into his hand.
“I’ve got the Snitch!” he shouted, waving it above his head, and the game ended in complete confusion.
“He didn’t catch it, he nearly swallowed it,” Flint was still howling twenty minutes later, but it made no difference — Harry hadn’t broken any rules and Lee Jordan was still happily shouting the results — Gryffindor had won by one hundred and seventy points to sixty. Harry heard none of this, though. He was being made a cup of strong tea back in Hagrid’s hut, with Ron and Hermione.
“It was Snape,” Ron was explaining, “Hermione and I saw him. He was cursing your broomstick, muttering, he wouldn’t take his eyes off you.”
“Rubbish,” said Hagrid, who hadn’t heard a word of what had gone on next to him in the stands. “Why would Snape do somethin’ like that?”
Harry, Ron, and Hermione looked at one another, wondering what to tell him. Harry decided on the truth.
“I found out something about him,” he told Hagrid. “He tried to get past that three-headed dog on Halloween. It bit him. We think he was trying to steal whatever it’s guarding.”
Hagrid dropped the teapot.
“How do you know about Fluffy?” he said.
“Fluffy?”
“Yeah — he’s mine — bought him off a Greek chappie I met in the pub las’ year — I lent him to Dumbledore to guard the “Yes?” said Harry eagerly.
“Now, don’t ask me anymore,” said Hagrid gruffly. “That’s top secret, that is.”
“But Snape’s trying to steal it.”
“Rubbish,” said Hagrid again. “Snape’s a Hogwarts teacher, he’d do nothin’ of the sort.”
“So why did he just try and kill Harry?” cried Hermione.
The afternoon’s events certainly seemed to have changed her mind about Snape.
I know a jinx when I see one, Hagrid, I’ve read all about them! You’ve got to keep eye contact, and Snape wasn’t blinking at all, I saw him!”
“I’m tellin’ yeh, yer wrong!” said Hagrid hotly. “I don’ know why Harry’s broom acted like that, but Snape wouldn’ try an’ kill a student! Now, listen to me, all three of yeh — yer meddlin’ in things that don’ concern yeh. It’s dangerous. You forget that dog, an’ you forget what it’s guardin’, that’s between Professor Dumbledore an’ Nicolas Flamel –”
“Aha!” said Harry, “so there’s someone called Nicolas Flamel involved, is there?”
Hagrid looked furious with himself.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE MIRROR OF ERISED
Christmas was coming. One morning in mid-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow. The lake froze solid and the Weasley twins were punished for bewitching several snowballs so that they followed Quirrell around, bouncing off the back of his turban. The few owls that managed to battle their way through the stormy sky to deliver mail had to be nursed back to health by Hagrid before they could fly off again.
No one could wait for the holidays to start. While the Gryffindor common room and the Great Hall had roaring fires, the drafty corridors had become icy and a bitter wind rattled the windows in the classrooms.
Worst of all were Professor Snape’s classes down in the dungeons, where their breath rose in a mist before them and they kept as close as possible to their hot cauldrons.
“I do feel so sorry,” said Draco Malfoy, one Potions class, “for all those people who have to stay at Hogwarts for Christmas because they’re not wanted at home.”
He was looking over at Harry as he spoke. Crabbe and Goyle chuckled.
Harry, who was measuring out powdered spine of lionfish, ignored them.
Malfoy had been even more unpleasant than usual since the Quidditch match. Disgusted that the Slytherins had lost, he had tried to get everyone laughing at how a wide-mouthed tree frog would be replacing Harry as Seeker next. Then he’d realized that nobody found this funny, because they were all so impressed at the way Harry had managed to stay on his bucking broomstick. So Malfoy, jealous and angry, had gone back to taunting Harry about having no proper family.
It was true that Harry wasn’t going back to Privet Drive for Christmas.
Professor McGonagall had come around the week before, making a list of students who would be staying for the holidays, and Harry had signed up at once. He didn’t feel sorry for himself at all; this would probably be the best Christmas he’d ever had. Ron and his brothers were staying, too, because Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were going to Romania to visit Charlie.
When they left the dungeons at the end of Potions, they found a large fir tree blocking the corridor ahead. Two enormous feet sticking out at the bottom and a loud puffing sound told them that Hagrid was behind it.
“Hi, Hagrid, want any help?” Ron asked, sticking his head through the branches.
“Nah, I’m all right, thanks, Ron.”
“Would you mind moving out of the way?” came Malfoys cold drawl from behind them. “Are you trying to earn some extra money, Weasley? Hoping to be gamekeeper yourself when you leave Hogwarts, I suppose — that hut of Hagrid’s must seem like a palace compared to what your family’s used to.”
Ron dived at Malfoy just as Snape came up the stairs.
“WEASLEY!”
Ron let go of the front of Malfoy’s robes.
“He was provoked, Professor Snape,” said Hagrid, sticking his huge hairy face out from behind the tree. “Malfoy was insultin’ his family.”
“Be that as it may, fighting is against Hogwarts rules, Hagrid,” said Snape silkily. “Five points from Gryffindor, Weasley, and be grateful it isn’t more. Move along, all of you.”
Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle pushed roughly past the tree, scattering needles everywhere and smirking.
“I’ll get him,” said Ron, grinding his teeth at Malfoy’s back, “one of these days, I’ll get him –”
“I hate them both,” said Harry, “Malfoy and Snape.”
“Come on, cheer up, it’s nearly Christmas,” said Hagrid. “Tell yeh what, come with me an’ see the Great Hall, looks a treat.”
So the three of them followed Hagrid and his tree off to -the Great Hall, where Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick were busy with the Christmas decorations.
“Ah, Hagrid, the last tree — put it in the far corner, would you?”
The hall looked spectacular. Festoons of holly and mistletoe hung all around the walls, and no less than twelve towering Christmas trees stood around the room, some sparkling with tiny icicles, some glittering with hundreds of candles.
“How many days you got left until yer holidays?” Hagrid asked.
“Just one,” said Hermione. “And that reminds me -Harry, Ron, we’ve got half an hour before lunch, we should be in the library.”
“Oh yeah, you’re right,” said Ron, tearing his eyes away from Professor Flitwick, who had golden bubbles blossoming out of his wand and was trailing them over the branches of the new tree.
“The library?” said Hagrid, following them out of the hall. “Just before the holidays? Bit keen, aren’t yeh?”
“Oh, we’re not working,” Harry told him brightly. “Ever since you mentioned Nicolas Flamel we’ve been trying to find out who he is.”
“You what?” Hagrid looked shocked. “Listen here — I’ve told yeh — drop it. It’s nothin’ to you what that dog’s guardin’.”
“We just want to know who Nicolas Flamel is, that’s all,” said Hermione.
“Unless you’d like to tell us and save us the trouble?” Harry added. “We must’ve been through hundreds of books already and we can’t find him anywhere — just give us a hint — I know I’ve read his name somewhere.”
“I’m sayin’ nothin, said Hagrid flatly.
“Just have to find out for ourselves, then,” said Ron, and they left Hagrid looking disgruntled and hurried off to the library.
They had indeed been searching books for Flamel’s name ever since Hagrid had let it slip, because how else were they going to find out what Snape was trying to steal? The trouble was, it was very hard to know where to begin, not knowing what Flamel might have done to get himself into a book. He wasn’t in Great Wizards of the Twentieth Century, or Notable Magical Names of Our Time; he was missing, too, from Important Modern Magical Discoveries, and A Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry. And then, of course, there was the sheer size of the library; tens of thousands of books; thousands of shelves; hundreds of narrow rows.
Hermione took out a list of subjects and titles she had decided to search while Ron strode off down a row of books and started pulling them off the shelves at random. Harry wandered over to the Restricted Section. He had been wondering for a while if Flamel wasn’t somewhere in there. Unfortunately, you needed a specially signed note from one of the teachers to look in any of the restricted books, and he knew he’d never get one. These were the books containing powerful Dark Magic never taught at Hogwarts, and only read by older students studying advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts.
“What are you looking for, boy?”
“Nothing,” said Harry.
Madam Pince the librarian brandished a feather duster at him.
“You’d better get out, then. Go on — out!”
Wishing he’d been a bit quicker at thinking up some story, Harry left the library. He, Ron, and Hermione had already agreed they’d better not ask Madam Pince where they could find Flamel. They were sure she’d be able to tell them, but they couldn’t risk Snape hearing what they were up to.
Harry waited outside in the corridor to see if the other two had found anything, but he wasn’t very hopeful. They had been looking for two weeks, after A, but as they only had odd moments between lessons it wasn’t surprising they’d found nothing. What they really needed was a nice long search without Madam Pince breathing down their necks.
Five minutes later, Ron and Hermione joined him, shaking their heads.
They went off to lunch.
“You will keep looking while I’m away, won’t you?” said Hermione. “And send me an owl if you find anything.”
“And you could ask your parents if they know who Flamel is,” said Ron.
“It’d be safe to ask them.”
“Very safe, as they’re both dentists,” said Hermione.
Once the holidays had started, Ron and Harry were having too good a time to think much about Flamel. They had the dormitory to themselves and the common room was far emptier than usual, so they were able to get the good armchairs by the fire. They sat by the hour eating anything they could spear on a toasting fork — bread, English muffins, marshmallows — and plotting ways of getting Malfoy expelled, which were fun to talk about even if they wouldn’t work.
Ron also started teaching Harry wizard chess. This was exactly like Muggle chess except that the figures were alive, which made it a lot like directing troops in battle. Ron’s set was very old and battered.
Like everything else he owned, it had once belonged to someone else in his family — in this case, his grandfather. However, old chessmen weren’t a drawback at all. Ron knew them so well he never had trouble getting them to do what he wanted.
Harry played with chessmen Seamus Finnigan had lent him, and they didn’t trust him at all. He wasn’t a very good player yet and they kept shouting different bits of advice at him, which was confusing. “Don’t send me there, can’t you see his knight? Send him, we can afford to lose him.” On Christmas Eve, Harry went to bed looking forward to the next day for the food and the fun, but not expecting any presents at all.
When he woke early in the morning, however, the first thing he saw was a small pile of packages at the foot of his bed.
“Merry Christmas,” said Ron sleepily as Harry scrambled out of bed and pulled on his bathrobe.
“You, too,” said Harry. “Will you look at this? I’ve got some presents!”
“What did you expect, turnips?” said Ron, turning to his own pile, which was a lot bigger than Harry’s.
Harry picked up the top parcel. It was wrapped in thick brown paper and scrawled across it was To Harry, from Hagrid. Inside was a roughly cut wooden flute. Hagrid had obviously whittled it himself. Harry blew it — it sounded a bit like an owl.
A second, very small parcel contained a note.
We received your message and enclose your Christmas present. From Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. Taped to the note was a fifty-pence piece.
“That’s friendly,” said Harry.
Ron was fascinated by the fifty pence.
“Weird!” he said, ‘NMat a shape! This is money?”
“You can keep it,” said Harry, laughing at how pleased Ron was. “Hagrid and my aunt and uncle — so who sent these?”
“I think I know who that one’s from,” said Ron, turning a bit pink and pointing to a very lumpy parcel. “My mom. I told her you didn’t expect any presents and — oh, no,” he groaned, “she’s made you a Weasley sweater.”
Harry had torn open the parcel to find a thick, hand-knitted sweater in emerald green and a large box of homemade fudge.
“Every year she makes us a sweater,” said Ron, unwrapping his own, “and mine’s always maroon.”
“That’s really nice of her,” said Harry, trying the fudge, which was very tasty.
His next present also contained candy — a large box of Chocolate Frogs from Hermione.
This only left one parcel. Harry picked it up and felt it. It was very light. He unwrapped it.
Something fluid and silvery gray went slithering to the floor where it lay in gleaming folds. Ron gasped.
“I’ve heard of those,” he said in a hushed voice, dropping the box of Every Flavor Beans he’d gotten from Hermione. “If that’s what I think it is — they’re really rare, and really valuable.”
“What is it?”
Harry picked the shining, silvery cloth off the floor. It was strange to the touch, like water woven into material.
“It’s an invisibility cloak,” said Ron, a look of awe on his face. “I’m sure it is — try it on.”
Harry threw the cloak around his shoulders and Ron gave a yell.
“It is! Look down!”
Harry looked down at his feet, but they were gone. He dashed to the mirror. Sure enough, his reflection looked back at him, just his head suspended in midair, his body completely invisible. He pulled the cloak over his head and his reflection vanished completely.
“There’s a note!” said Ron suddenly. “A note fell out of it!”
Harry pulled off the cloak and seized the letter. Written in narrow, loopy writing he had never seen before were the following words: Your father left this in my possession before he died. It is time it was returned to you. Use it well.
A Very Merry Christmas to you.
There was no signature. Harry stared at the note. Ron was admiring the cloak.
“I’d give anything for one of these,” he said. “Anything. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” said Harry. He felt very strange. Who had sent the cloak? Had it really once belonged to his father? Before he could say or think anything else, the dormitory door was flung open and Fred and George Weasley bounded in. Harry stuffed the cloak quickly out of sight. He didn’t feel like sharing it with anyone else yet.
“Merry Christmas!”
“Hey, look — Harry’s got a Weasley sweater, too!”
Fred and George were wearing blue sweaters, one with a large yellow F on it, the other a G.
“Harry’s is better than ours, though,” said Fred, holding up Harry’s sweater. “She obviously makes more of an effort if you’re not family.”
“Why aren’t you wearing yours, Ron?” George demanded. “Come on, get it on, they’re lovely and warm.”
“I hate maroon,” Ron moaned halfheartedly as he pulled it over his head.
“You haven’t got a letter on yours,” George observed. “I suppose she thinks you don’t forget your name. But we’re not stupid — we know we’re called Gred and Forge.”
“What’s all th is noise.
Percy Weasley stuck his head through the door, looking disapproving. He had clearly gotten halfway through unwrapping his presents as he, too, carried a lumpy sweater over his arm, which Fred seized.
“P for prefect! Get it on, Percy, come on, we’re all wearing ours, even Harry got one.”
“I — don’t — want said Percy thickly, as the twins forced the sweater over his head, knocking his glasses askew.
“And you’re not sitting with the prefects today, either,” said George. “Christmas is a time for family.”
They frog-marched Percy from the room, his arms pinned to his side by his sweater.
Harry had never in all his life had such a Christmas dinner. A hundred fat, roast turkeys; mountains of roast and boiled potatoes; platters of chipolatas; tureens of buttered peas, silver boats of thick, rich gravy and cranberry sauce — and stacks of wizard crackers every few feet along the table. These fantastic party favors were nothing like the feeble Muggle ones the Dursleys usually bought, with their little plastic toys and their flimsy paper hats inside. Harry pulled a wizard cracker with Fred and it didn’t just bang, it went off with a blast like a cannon and engulfed them all in a cloud of blue smoke, while from the inside exploded a rear admiral’s hat and several live, white mice. Up at the High Table, Dumbledore had swapped his pointed wizard’s hat for a flowered bonnet, and was chuckling merrily at a joke Professor Flitwick had just read him.
Flaming Christmas puddings followed the turkey. Percy nearly broke his teeth on a silver sickle embedded in his slice. Harry watched Hagrid getting redder and redder in the face as he called for more wine, finally kissing Professor McGonagall on the cheek, who, to Harry’s amazement, giggled and blushed, her top hat lopsided.
When Harry finally left the table, he was laden down with a stack of things out of the crackers, including a pack of nonexplodable, luminous balloons, a Grow-Your-Own-Warts kit, and his own new wizard chess set.
The white mice had disappeared and Harry had a nasty feeling they were going to end up as Mrs. Norris’s Christmas dinner.
Harry and the Weasleys spent a happy afternoon having a furious snowball fight on the grounds. Then, cold, wet, and gasping for breath, they returned to the fire in the Gryffindor common room, where Harry broke in his new chess set by losing spectacularly to Ron. He suspected he wouldn’t have lost so badly if Percy hadn’t tried to help him so much.
After a meal of turkey sandwiches, crumpets, trifle, and Christmas cake, everyone felt too full and sleepy to do much before bed except sit and watch Percy chase Fred and George all over Gryffindor tower because they’d stolen his prefect badge.
It had been Harry’s best Christmas day ever. Yet something had been nagging at the back of his mind all day. Not until he climbed into bed was he free to think about it: the invisibility cloak and whoever had sent it.
Ron, full of turkey and cake and with nothing mysterious to bother him, fell asleep almost as soon as he’d drawn the curtains of his four-poster. Harry leaned over the side of his own bed and pulled the cloak out from under it.
His father’s… this had been his father’s. He let the material flow over his hands, smoother than silk, light as air. Use it well, the note had said.
He had to try it, now. He slipped out of bed and wrapped the cloak around himself. Looking down at his legs, he saw only moonlight and shadows. It was a very funny feeling.
Use it well.
Suddenly, Harry felt wide-awake. The whole of Hogwarts was open to him in this cloak. Excitement flooded through him as he stood there in the dark and silence. He could go anywhere in this, anywhere, and Filch would never know.
Ron grunted in his sleep. Should Harry wake him? Something held him back — his father’s cloak — he felt that this time — the first time — he wanted to use it alone.
He crept out of the dormitory, down the stairs, across the common room, and climbed through the portrait hole.
“Who’s there?” squawked the Fat Lady. Harry said nothing. He walked quickly down the corridor.
Where should he go? He stopped, his heart racing, and thought. And then it came to him. The Restricted Section in the library. He’d be able to read as long as he liked, as long as it took to find out who Flamel was.
He set off, drawing the invisibility cloak tight around him as he walked.
The library was pitch-black and very eerie. Harry lit a lamp to see his way along the rows of books. The lamp looked as if it was floating along in midair, and even though Harry could feel his arm supporting it, the sight gave him the creeps.
The Restricted Section was right at the back of the library. Step ping carefully over the rope that separated these books from the rest of the library, he held up his lamp to read the titles.
They didn’t tell him much. Their peeling, faded gold letters spelled words in languages Harry couldn’t understand. Some had no title at all.
One book had a dark stain on it that looked horribly like blood. The hairs on the back of Harry’s neck prickled. Maybe he was imagining it, maybe not, but he thought a faint whispering was coming from the books, as though they knew someone was there who shouldn’t be.
He had to start somewhere. Setting the lamp down carefully on the floor, he looked along the bottom shelf for an interestinglooking book. A large black and silver volume caught his eye. He pulled it out with difficulty, because it was very heavy, and, balancing it on his knee, let it fall open.
A piercing, bloodcurdling shriek split the silence — the book was screaming! Harry snapped it shut, but the shriek went on and on, one high, unbroken, earsplitting note. He stumbled backward and knocked over his lamp, which went out at once. Panicking, he heard footsteps coming down the corridor outside — stuffing the shrieking book back on the shelf, he ran for it. He passed Filch in the doorway; Filch’s pale, wild eyes looked straight through him, and Harry slipped under Filch’s outstretched arm and streaked off up the corridor, the book’s shrieks still ringing in his ears.
He came to a sudden halt in front of a tall suit of armor. He had been so busy getting away from the library, he hadn’t paid attention to where he was going. Perhaps because it was dark, he didn’t recognize where he was at all. There was a suit of armor near the kitchens, he knew, but he must be five floors above there.
“You asked me to come directly to you, Professor, if anyone was wandering around at night, and somebody’s been in the library Restricted Section.”
Harry felt the blood drain out of his face. Wherever he was, Filch must know a shortcut, because his soft, greasy voice was getting nearer, and to his horror, it was Snape who replied, “The Restricted Section? Well, they can’t be far, we’ll catch them.”
Harry stood rooted to the spot as Filch and Snape came around the corner ahead. They couldn’t see him, of course, but it was a narrow corridor and if they came much nearer they’d knock right into him — the cloak didn’t stop him from being solid.
He backed away as quietly as he could. A door stood ajar to his left. It was his only hope. He squeezed through it, holding his breath, trying not to move it, and to his relief he managed to get inside the room without their noticing anything. They walked straight past, and Harry leaned against the wall, breathing deeply, listening to their footsteps dying away. That had been close, very close. It was a few seconds before he noticed anything about the room he had hidden in.
It looked like an unused classroom. The dark shapes of desks and chairs were piled against the walls, and there was an upturned wastepaper basket — but propped against the wall facing him was something that didn’t look as if it belonged there, something that looked as if someone had just put it there to keep it out of the way.
It was a magnificent mirror, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet. There was an inscription carved around the top: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi. His panic fading now that there was no sound of Filch and Snape, Harry moved nearer to the mirror, wanting to look at himself but see no reflection again. He stepped in front of it.
He had to clap his hands to his mouth to stop himself from screaming. He whirled around. His heart was pounding far more furiously than when the book had screamed — for he had seen not only himself in the mirror, but a whole crowd of people standing right behind him.
But the room was empty. Breathing very fast, he turned slowly back to the mirror.
There he was, reflected in it, white and scared-looking, and there, reflected behind him, were at least ten others. Harry looked over his shoulder — but still, no one was there. Or were they all invisible, too? Was he in fact in a room full of invisible people and this mirror’s trick was that it reflected them, invisible or not? He looked in the mirror again. A woman standing right behind his reflection was smiling at him and waving. He reached out a hand and felt the air behind him. If she was really there, he’d touch her, their reflections were so close together, but he felt only air — she and the others existed only in the mirror.
She was a very pretty woman. She had dark red hair and her eyes — her eyes are just like mine, Harry thought, edging a little closer to the glass. Bright green — exactly the same shape, but then he noticed that she was crying; smiling, but crying at the same time. The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was very untidy. It stuck up at the back, just as Harry’s did.
Harry was so close to the mirror now that his nose was nearly touching that of his reflection.
“Mom?” he whispered. “Dad?”
They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry’s knobbly knees — Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life.
The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness.
How long he stood there, he didn’t know. The reflections did not fade and he looked and looked until a distant noise brought him back to his senses. He couldn’t stay here, he had to find his way back to bed. He tore his eyes away from his mother’s face, whispered, “I’ll come back,”
and hurried from the room.
“You could have woken me up,” said Ron, crossly.
“You can come tonight, I’m going back, I want to show you the mirror.
“I’d like to see your mom and dad,” Ron said eagerly.
“And I want to see all your family, all the Weasleys, you’ll be able to show me your other brothers and everyone.”
“You can see them any old time,” said Ron. “Just come round my house this summer. Anyway, maybe it only shows dead people. Shame about not finding Flamel, though. Have some bacon or something, why aren’t you eating anything?”
Harry couldn’t eat. He had seen his parents and would be seeing them again tonight. He had almost forgotten about Flamel. It didn’t seem very important anymore. Who cared what the three headed dog was guarding? What did it matter if Snape stole it, really? “Are you all right?” said Ron. “You look odd.”
What Harry feared most was that he might not be able to find the mirror room again. With Ron covered in the cloak, too, they had to walk much more slowly the next night. They tried retracing Harry’s route from the library, wandering around the dark passageways for nearly an hour.
“I’m freezing,” said Ron. “Let’s forget it and go back.”
“No!” Harry hissed. I know it’s here somewhere.”
They passed the ghost of a tall witch gliding in the opposite direction, but saw no one else. just as Ron started moaning that his feet were dead with cold, Harry spotted the suit of armor.
“It’s here — just here — yes!”
They pushed the door open. Harry dropped the cloak from around his shoulders and ran to the mirror.
There they were. His mother and father beamed at the sight of him.
“See?” Harry whispered.
“I can’t see anything.”
“Look! Look at them all… there are loads of them….”
“I can only see you.”
“Look in it properly, go on, stand where I am.”
Harry stepped aside, but with Ron in front of the mirror, he couldn’t see his family anymore, just Ron in his paisley pajamas.
Ron, though, was staring transfixed at his image.
“Look at me!” he said.
“Can you see all your family standing around you?”
“No — I’m alone — but I’m different — I look older — and I’m head boy!”
“What?”
“I am — I’m wearing the badge like Bill used to — and I’m holding the house cup and the Quidditch cup — I’m Quidditch captain, too.
Ron tore his eyes away from this splendid sight to look excitedly at Harry.
“Do you think this mirror shows the future?”
“How can it? All my family are dead — let me have another look –”
“You had it to yourself all last night, give me a bit more time.”
“You’re only holding the Quidditch cup, what’s interesting about that? I want to see my parents.”
“Don’t push me –”
A sudden noise outside in the corridor put an end to their discussion.
They hadn’t realized how loudly they had been talking.
“Quick!”
Ron threw the cloak back over them as the luminous eyes of Mrs. Norris came round the door. Ron and Harry stood quite still, both thinking the same thing — did the cloak work on cats? After what seemed an age, she turned and left.
“This isn’t safe — she might have gone for Filch, I bet she heard us.
Come on.”
And Ron pulled Harry out of the room.
The snow still hadn’t melted the next morning.
“Want to play chess, Harry?” said Ron.
“No.”
“Why don’t we go down and visit Hagrid?”
“No… you go…”
“I know what you’re thinking about, Harry, that mirror. Don’t go back tonight.”
“Why not?”
“I dunno, I’ve just got a bad feeling about it — and anyway, you’ve had too many close shaves already. Filch, Snape, and Mrs. Norris are wandering around. So what if they can’t see you? What if they walk into you? What if you knock something over?”
“You sound like Hermione.”
“I’m serious, Harry, don’t go.”
But Harry only had one thought in his head, which was to get back in front of the mirror, and Ron wasn’t going to stop him.
That third night he found his way more quickly than before. He was walking so fast he knew he was making more noise than was wise, but he didn’t meet anyone.
And there were his mother and father smiling at him again, and one of his grandfathers nodding happily. Harry sank down to sit on the floor in front of the mirror. There was nothing to stop him from staying here all night with his family. Nothing at all.
Except — “So — back again, Harry?”
Harry felt as though his insides had turned to ice. He looked behind him. Sitting on one of the desks by the wall was none other than Albus Dumbledore. Harry must have walked straight past him, so desperate to get to the mirror he hadn’t noticed him.
” — I didn’t see you, sir.”
“Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you,” said Dumbledore, and Harry was relieved to see that he was smiling.
“So,” said Dumbledore, slipping off the desk to sit on the floor with Harry, “you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised.”
“I didn’t know it was called that, Sir.”
“But I expect you’ve realized by now what it does?”
“It — well — it shows me my family –”
“And it showed your friend Ron himself as head boy.”
“How did you know –?”
“I don’t need a cloak to become invisible,” said Dumbledore gently.
“Now, can you think what the Mirror of Erised shows us all?”
Harry shook his head.
“Let me explain. The happiest man on earth would be able to use the Mirror of Erised like a normal mirror, that is, he would look into it and see himself exactly as he is. Does that help?”
Harry thought. Then he said slowly, “It shows us what we want…
whatever we want…”
“Yes and no,” said Dumbledore quietly. “It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you. Ronald Weasley, who has always been overshadowed by his brothers, sees himself standing alone, the best of all of them. However, this mirror will give us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.
“The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again. If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now, why don’t you put that admirable cloak back on and get off to bed?”
Harry stood up.
“Sir — Professor Dumbledore? Can I ask you something?”
“Obviously, you’ve just done so,” Dumbledore smiled. “You may ask me one more thing, however.”
“What do you see when you look in the mirror?”
“I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks.”
Harry stared.
“One can never have enough socks,” said Dumbledore. “Another Christmas has come and gone and I didn’t get a single pair. People will insist on giving me books.”
It was only when he was back in bed that it struck Harry that Dumbledore might not have been quite truthful. But then, he thought, as he shoved Scabbers off his pillow, it had been quite a personal question.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NICOLAS FLAMEL
Dumbledore had convinced Harry not to go looking for the Mirror of Erised again, and for the rest of the Christmas holidays the invisibility cloak stayed folded at the bottom of his trunk. Harry wished he could forget what he’d seen in the mirror as easily, but he couldn’t. He started having nightmares. Over and over again he dreamed about his parents disappearing in a flash of green light, while a high voice cackled with laughter.
“You see, Dumbledore was right, that mirror could drive you mad,” said Ron, when Harry told him about these drearns.
Hermione, who came back the day before term started, took a different view of things. She was torn between horror at the idea of Harry being out of bed, roaming the school three nights in a row (“If Filch had caught you!”), and disappointment that he hadn’t at least found out who Nicolas Flamel was.
They had almost given up hope of ever finding Flamel in a li- brary book, even though Harry was still sure he’d read the name somewhere.
Once term had started, they were back to skimming through books for ten minutes during their breaks. Harry had even less time than the other two, because Quidditch practice had started again.
Wood was working the team harder than ever. Even the endless rain that had replaced the snow couldn’t dampen his spirits. The Weasleys complained that Wood was becoming a fanatic, but Harry was on Wood’s side. If they won their next match, against Hufflepuff, they would overtake Slytherin in the house championship for the first time in seven years. Quite apart from wanting to win, Harry found that he had fewer nightmares when he was tired out after training.
Then, during one particularly wet and muddy practice session, Wood gave the team a bit of bad news. He’d just gotten very angry with the Weasleys, who kept dive-bombing each other and pretending to fall off their brooms.
“Will you stop messing around!” he yelled. “That’s exactly the sort of thing that’ll lose us the match! Snape’s refereeing this time, and he’ll be looking for any excuse to knock points off Gryffindor!”
George Weasley really did fall off his broom at these words.
“Snape’s refereeing?” he spluttered through a mouthful of mud. “When’s he ever refereed a Quidditch match? He’s not going to be fair if we might overtake Slytherin.”
The rest of the team landed next to George to complain, too.
“It’s not my fault,” said Wood. “We’ve just got to make sure we play a clean game, so Snape hasn’t got an excuse to pick on us.”
Which was all very well, thought Harry, but he had another reason for not wanting Snape near him while he was playing Quidditch….
The rest of the team hung back to talk to one another as usual at the end of practice, but Harry headed straight back to the Gryffindor common room, where he found Ron and Hermione playing chess. Chess was the only thing Hermione ever lost at, something Harry and Ron thought was very good for her.
“Don’t talk to me for a moment,” said Ron when Harry sat down next to him, “I need to concen –” He caught sight of Harry’s face. “What’s the matter with you? You look terrible.”
Speaking quietly so that no one else would hear, Harry told the other two about Snape’s sudden, sinister desire to be a Quidditch referee.
“Don’t play,” said Hermione at once.
“Say you’re ill,” said Ron.
“Pretend to break your leg,” Hermione suggested.
“Really break your leg,” said Ron.
“I can’t,” said Harry. “There isn’t a reserve Seeker. If I back out, Gryffindor can’t play at all.”
At that moment Neville toppled into the common room. How he had managed to climb through the portrait hole was anyone’s guess, because his legs had been stuck together with what they recognized at once as the Leg-Locker Curse. He must have had to bunny hop all the way up to Gryffindor tower.
Everyone fell over laughing except Hermione, who leapt up and performed the countercurse. Neville’s legs sprang apart and he got to his feet, trembling. “What happened?” Hermione asked him, leading him over to sit with Harry and Ron.
“Malfoy,” said Neville shakily. “I met him outside the library. He said he’d been looking for someone to practice that on.”
“Go to Professor McGonagall!” Hermione urged Neville. “Report him!”
Neville shook his head.
“I don’t want more trouble,” he mumbled.
“You’ve got to stand up to him, Neville!” said Ron. “He’s used to walking all over people, but that’s no reason to lie down in front of him and make it easier.”
“There’s no need to tell me I’m not brave enough to be in Gryffindor, Malfoy’s already done that,” Neville choked out.
Harry felt in the pocket of his robes and pulled out a Chocolate Frog, the very last one from the box Hermione had given him for Christmas. He gave it to Neville, who looked as though he might cry.
“You’re worth twelve of Malfoy,” Harry said. “The Sorting Hat chose you for Gryffindor, didn’t it? And where’s Malfoy? In stinking Slytherin.”
Neville’s lips twitched in a weak smile as he unwrapped the frog.
“Thanks, Harry… I think I’ll go to bed…. D’you want the card, you collect them, don’t you?”
As Neville walked away, Harry looked at the Famous Wizard card.
“Dumbledore again,” he said, “He was the first one I ever-”
He gasped. He stared at the back of the card. Then he looked up at Ron and Hermione.
“I’ve found him!” he whispered. “I’ve found Flamel! I told you I’d read the name somewhere before, I read it on the train coming here — listen to this: ‘Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel’!”
Hermione jumped to her feet. She hadn’t looked so excited since they’d gotten back the marks for their very first piece of homework.
“Stay there!” she said, and she sprinted up the stairs to the girls’ dormitories. Harry and Ron barely had time to exchange mystified looks before she was dashing back, an enormous old book in her arms.
“I never thought to look in here!” she whispered excitedly. “I got this out of the library weeks ago for a bit of light reading.”
“Light?” said Ron, but Hermione told him to be quiet until she’d looked something up, and started flicking frantically through the pages, muttering to herself.
At last she found what she was looking for.
“I knew it! I knew it!”
“Are we allowed to speak yet?” said Ron grumpily. Hermione ignored him.
“Nicolas Flamel,” she whispered dramatically, “is the only known maker of the Sorcerer’s Stone!”
This didn’t have quite the effect she’d expected.
“The what?” said Harry and Ron.
“Oh, honestly, don’t you two read? Look — read that, there.”
She pushed the book toward them, and Harry and Ron read: The ancient study of alchemy is concerned with making the Sorcerer’s Stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal.
There have been many reports of the Sorcerer’s Stone over the centuries, but the only Stone currently in existence belongs to Mr. Nicolas Flamel, the noted alchemist and opera lover. Mr. Flamel, who celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday last year, enjoys a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle (six hundred and fifty-eight).
“See?” said Hermione, when Harry and Ron had finished. “The dog must be guarding Flamel’s Sorcerer’s Stone! I bet he asked Dumbledore to keep it safe for him, because they’re friends and he knew someone was after it, that’s why he wanted the Stone moved out of Gringotts!”
“A stone that makes gold and stops you from ever dying!” said Harry. “No wonder Snape’s after it! Anyone would want it.”
“And no wonder we couldn’t find Flamel in that Study of Recent Developments in Wizardry,” said Ron. “He’s not exactly recent if he’s six hundred and sixty-five, is he?”
The next morning in Defense Against the Dark Arts, while copying down different ways of treating werewolf bites, Harry and Ron were still discussing what they’d do with a Sorcerer’s Stone if they had one. It wasn’t until Ron said he’d buy his own Quidditch team that Harry remembered about Snape and the coming match.
“I’m going to play,” he told Ron and Hermione. “If I don’t, all the Slytherins will think I’m just too scared to face Snape. I’ll show them… it’ll really wipe the smiles off their faces if we win.”
“Just as long as we’re not wiping you off the field,” said Hermione.
As the match drew nearer, however, Harry became more and more nervous, whatever he told Ron and Hermione. The rest of the team wasn’t too calm, either. The idea of overtaking Slytherin in the house championship was wonderful, no one had done it for seven years, but would they be allowed to, with such a biased referee? Harry didn’t know whether he was imagining it or not, but he seemed to keep running into Snape wherever he went. At times, he even wondered whether Snape was following him, trying to catch him on his own. Potions lessons were turning into a sort of weekly torture, Snape was so horrible to Harry. Could Snape possibly know they’d found out about the Sorcerer’s Stone? Harry didn’t see how he could — yet he sometimes had the horrible feeling that Snape could read minds.
Harry knew, when they wished him good luck outside the locker rooms the next afternoon, that Ron and Hermione were wondering whether they’d ever see him alive again. This wasn’t what you’d call comforting. Harry hardly heard a word of Wood’s pep talk as he pulled on his Quidditch robes and picked up his Nimbus Two Thousand.
Ron and Hermione, meanwhile, had found a place in the stands next to Neville, who couldn’t understand why they looked so grim and worried, or why they had both brought their wands to the match. Little did Harry know that Ron and Hermione had been secretly practicing the Leg-Locker Curse. They’d gotten the idea from Malfoy using it on Neville, and were ready to use it on Snape if he showed any sign of wanting to hurt Harry.
“Now, don’t forget, it’s Locomotor Mortis,” Hermione muttered as Ron slipped his wand up his sleeve.
“I know,” Ron snapped. “Don’t nag.”
Back in the locker room, Wood had taken Harry aside.
“Don’t want to pressure you, Potter, but if we ever need an early capture of the Snitch it’s now. Finish the game before Snape can favor Hufflepuff too much.”
“The whole school’s out there!” said Fred Weasley, peering out of the door. “Even — blimey — Dumbledore’s come to watch!”
Harry’s heart did a somersault.
“Dumbledore?” he said, dashing to the door to make sure. Fred was right.
There was no mistaking that silver beard.
Harry could have laughed out loud with relief He was safe. There was simply no way that Snape would dare to try to hurt him if Dumbledore was watching.
Perhaps that was why Snape was looking so angry as the teams marched onto the field, something that Ron noticed, too.
“I’ve never seen Snape look so mean,” he told Hermione. “Look -they’re off Ouch!”
Someone had poked Ron in the back of the head. It was Malfoy.
“Oh, sorry, Weasley, didn’t see you there.”
Malfoy grinned broadly at Crabbe and Goyle.
“Wonder how long Potter’s going to stay on his broom this time? Anyone want a bet? What about you, Weasley?”
Ron didn’t answer; Snape had just awarded Hufflepuff a penalty because George Weasley had hit a Bludger at him. Hermione, who had all her fingers crossed in her lap, was squinting fixedly at Harry, who was circling the game like a hawk, looking for the Snitch.
“You know how I think they choose people for the Gryffindor team?” said Malfoy loudly a few minutes later, as Snape awarded Hufflepuff another penalty for no reason at all. “It’s people they feel sorry for. See, there’s Potter, who’s got no parents, then there’s the Weasleys, who’ve got no money — you should be on the team, Longbottom, you’ve got no brains.”
Neville went bright red but turned in his seat to face Malfoy.
“I’m worth twelve of you, Malfoy,” he stammered.
Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle howled with laughter, but Ron, still not daring to take his eyes from the game, said, “You tell him, Neville.”
“Longbottom, if brains were gold you’d be poorer than Weasley, and that’s saying something.”
Ron’s nerves were already stretched to the breaking point with anxiety about Harry.
“I’m warning you, Malfoy — one more word “Ron!” said Hermione suddenly, “Harry –”
“What? Where?”
Harry had suddenly gone into a spectacular dive, which drew gasps and cheers from the crowd. Hermione stood up, her crossed fingers in her mouth, as Harry streaked toward the ground like a bullet.
“You’re in luck, Weasley, Potter’s obviously spotted some money on the ground!” said Malfoy.
Ron snapped. Before Malfoy knew what was happening, Ron was on top of him, wrestling him to the ground. Neville hesitated, then clambered over the back of his seat to help.
“Come on, Harry!” Hermione screamed, leaping onto her seat to watch as Harry sped straight at Snape — she didn’t even notice Malfoy and Ron rolling around under her seat, or the scuffles and yelps coming from the whirl of fists that was Neville, Crabbe, and Goyle.
Up in the air, Snape turned on his broomstick just in time to see something scarlet shoot past him, missing him by inches — the next second, Harry had pulled out of the dive, his arm raised in triumph, the Snitch clasped in his hand.
The stands erupted; it had to be a record, no one could ever remember the Snitch being caught so quickly.
“Ron! Ron! Where are you? The game’s over! Harry’s won! We’ve won! Gryffindor is in the lead!” shrieked Hermione, dancing up and down on her seat and hugging Parvati Patil in the row in front.
Harry jumped off his broom, a foot from the ground. He couldn’t believe it. He’d done it — the game was over; it had barely lasted five minutes. As Gryffindors came spilling onto the field, he saw Snape land nearby, white-faced and tight-lipped — then Harry felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into Dumbledore’s smiling face.
“Well done,” said Dumbledore quietly, so that only Harry could hear.
“Nice to see you haven’t been brooding about that mirror… been keeping busy… excellent…”
Snape spat bitterly on the ground.
Harry left the locker room alone some time later, to take his Nimbus Two Thousand back to the broomshed. He couldn’t ever remember feeling happier. He’d really done something to be proud of now — no one could say he was just a famous name any more. The evening air had never smelled so sweet. He walked over the damp grass, reliving the last hour in his head, which was a happy blur: Gryffindors running to lift him onto their shoulders; Ron and Hermione in the distance, jumping up and down, Ron cheering through a heavy nosebleed.
Harry had reached the shed. He leaned against the wooden door and looked up at Hogwarts, with its windows glowing red in the setting sun.
Gryffindor in the lead. He’d done it, he’d shown Snape….
And speaking of Snape…
A hooded figure came swiftly down the front steps of the castle. Clearly not wanting to be seen, it walked as fast as possible toward the forbidden forest. Harry’s victory faded from his mind as he watched. He recognized the figure’s prowling walk. Snape, sneaking into the forest while everyone else was at dinner — what was going on? Harry jumped back on his Nimbus Two Thousand and took off. Gliding silently over the castle he saw Snape enter the forest at a run. He followed.
The trees were so thick he couldn’t see where Snape had gone. He flew in circles, lower and lower, brushing the top branches of trees until he heard voices. He glided toward them and landed noiselessly in a towering beech tree.
He climbed carefully along one of the branches, holding tight to his broomstick, trying to see through the leaves. Below, in a shadowy clearing, stood Snape, but he wasn’t alone. Quirrell was there, too.
Harry couldn’t make out the look on his face, but he was stuttering worse than ever. Harry strained to catch what they were saying.
“… d-don’t know why you wanted t-t-to meet here of all p-places, Severus…”
“Oh, I thought we’d keep this private,” said Snape, his voice icy.
“Students aren’t supposed to know about the Sorcerer’s Stone, after all.”
Harry leaned forward. Quirrell was mumbling something. Snape interrupted him.
“Have you found out how to get past that beast of Hagrid’s yet?”
“B-b-but Severus, I –”
“You don’t want me as your enemy, Quirrell,” said Snape, taking a step toward him.
“I-I don’t know what you “You know perfectly well what I mean.”
An owl hooted loudly, and Harry nearly fell out of the tree. He steadied himself in time to hear Snape say, “– your little bit of hocus-pocus.
I’m waiting.”
“B-but I d-d-don’t –”
“Very well,” Snape cut in. “We’ll have another little chat soon, when you’ve had time to think things over and decided where your loyalties lie.”
He threw his cloak over his head and strode out of the clearing. It was almost dark now, but Harry could see Quirrell, standing quite still as though he was petrified.
“Harry, where have you been?” Hermione squeaked.
“We won! You won! We won!” shouted Ron, thumping Harry on the back. “And I gave Malfoy a black eye, and Neville tried to take on Crabbe and Goyle single-handed! He’s still out cold but Madam Pomftey says he’ll be all right – talk about showing Slytherin! Everyone’s waiting for you in the common room, we’re having a party, Fred and George stole some cakes and stuff from the kitchens.”
“Never mind that now,” said Harry breathlessly. “Let’s find an empty room, you wait ’til you hear this….”
He made sure Peeves wasn’t inside before shutting the door behind them, then he told them what he’d seen and heard.
“So we were right, it is the Sorcerer’s Stone, and Snape’s trying to force Quirrell to help him get it. He asked if he knew how to get past Fluffy – and he said something about Quirrell’s ‘hocus pocuss– I reckon there are other things guarding the stone apart from Fluffy, loads of enchantments, probably, and Quirrell would have done some anti-Dark Arts spell that Snape needs to break through –”
“So you mean the Stone’s only safe as long as Quirrell stands up to Snape?” said Hermione in alarm.
“It’ll be gone by next Tuesday,” said Ron.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NORBERT THE NORWEGIAN RIDGEBACK
Quirrell, however, must have been braver than they’d thought. In the weeks that followed he did seem to be getting paler and thinner, but it didn’t look as though he’d cracked yet.
Every time they passed the third-floor corridor, Harry, Ron, and Hermione would press their ears to the door to check that Fluffy was still growling inside. Snape was sweeping about in his usual bad temper, which surely meant that the Stone was still safe. Whenever Harry passed Quirrell these days he gave him an encouraging sort of smile, and Ron had started telling people off for laughing at Quirrell’s stutter.
Hermione, however, had more on her mind than the Sorcerer’s Stone. She had started drawing up study schedules and colorcoding all her notes.
Harry and Ron wouldn’t have minded, but she kept nagging them to do the same.
“Hermione, the exams are ages away.”
“Ten weeks,” Hermione snapped. “That’s not ages, that’s like a second to Nicolas Flamel.”
“But we’re not six hundred years old,” Ron reminded her. “Anyway, what are you studying for, you already know it A.”
“What am I studying for? Are you crazy? You realize we need to pass these exams to get into the second year? They’re very important, I should have started studying a month ago, I don’t know what’s gotten into me….”
Unfortunately, the teachers seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Hermione. They piled so much homework on them that the Easter holidays weren’t nearly as much fun as the Christmas ones. It was hard to relax with Hermione next to you reciting the twelve uses of dragon’s blood or practicing wand movements. Moaning and yawning, Harry and Ron spent most of their free time in the library with her, trying to get through all their extra work.
“I’ll never remember this,” Ron burst out one afternoon, throwing down his quill and looking longingly out of the library window. It was the first really fine day they’d had in months. The sky was a clear, forget-me-not blue, and there was a feeling in the air of summer coming.
Harry, who was looking up “Dittany” in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi, didn’t look up until he heard Ron say, “Hagrid! What are you doing in the library?”
Hagrid shuffled into view, hiding something behind his back. He looked very out of place in his moleskin overcoat.
“Jus’ lookin’,” he said, in a shifty voice that got their interest at once. “An’ what’re you lot up ter?” He looked suddenly suspicious. “Yer not still lookin’ fer Nicolas Flamel, are yeh?” “Oh, we found out who he is ages ago,” said Ron impressively. “And we know what that dog’s guarding, it’s a Sorcerer’s St –”
“Shhhh!” Hagrid looked around quickly to see if anyone was listening.
“Don’ go shoutin’ about it, what’s the matter with yeh?”
“There are a few things we wanted to ask you, as a matter of fact,” said Harry, “about what’s guarding the Stone apart from Fluffy –”
“SHHHH!” said Hagrid again. “Listen – come an’ see me later, I’m not promisin’ I’ll tell yeh anythin’, mind, but don’ go rabbitin’ about it in here, students aren’ s’pposed ter know. They’ll think I’ve told yeh –”
“See you later, then,” said Harry.
Hagrid shuffled off.
“What was he hiding behind his back?” said Hermione thoughtfully.
“Do you think it had anything to do with the Stone?”
“I’m going to see what section he was in,” said Ron, who’d had enough of working. He came back a minute later with a pile of books in his arms and slammed them down on the table.
“Dragons!” he whispered. “Hagrid was looking up stuff about dragons! Look at these: Dragon Species of Great Britain and Ireland; From Egg to Inferno, A Dragon Keeper’s Guide.”
“Hagrid’s always wanted a dragon, he told me so the first time I ever met him, ” said Harry.
“But it’s against our laws,” said Ron. “Dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlocks’ Convention of 1709, everyone knows that. It’s hard to stop Muggles from noticing us if we’re keeping dragons in the back garden – anyway, you can’t tame dragons, it’s dangerous. You should see the burns Charlie’s got off wild ones in Romania.”
“But there aren’t wild dragons in Britain?” said Harry.
“Of course there are,” said Ron. “Common Welsh Green and Hebridean Blacks. The Ministry of Magic has a job hushing them up, I can tell you.
Our kind have to keep putting spells on Muggles who’ve spotted them, to make them forget.”
“So what on earths Hagrid up to?” said Hermione.
When they knocked on the door of the gamekeeper’s hut an hour later, they were surprised to see that all the curtains were closed. Hagrid called “Who is it?” before he let them in, and then shut the door quickly behind them.
It was stifling hot inside. Even though it was such a warm day, there was a blazing fire in the grate. Hagrid made them tea and offered them stoat sandwiches, which they refused.
“So — yeh wanted to ask me somethin’?”
“Yes,” said Harry. There was no point beating around the bush. “We were wondering if you could tell us what’s guarding the Sorcerer’s Stone apart from Fluffy.”
Hagrid frowned at him.
“0′ course I cant, he said. “Number one, I don’ know meself. Number two, yeh know too much already, so I wouldn’ tell yeh if I could. That Stone’s here fer a good reason. It Was almost stolen outta Gringotts – I s’ppose yeh’ve worked that out an’ all? Beats me how yeh even know abou’ Fluffy.”
“Oh, come on, Hagrid, you might not want to tell us, but you do know, you know everything that goes on round here,” said Hermione in a warm, flattering voice. Hagrid’s beard twitched and they could tell he was smiling. “We only wondered who had done the guarding, really.” Hermione went on. “We wondered who Dumbledore had trusted enough to help him, apart from you.”
Hagrid’s chest swelled at these last words. Harry and Ron beamed at Hermione.
“Well, I don’ s’pose it could hurt ter tell yeh that… let’s see… he borrowed Fluffy from me… then some o’ the teachers did enchantments…
Professor Sprout — Professor Flitwick — Professor McGonagall –” he ticked them off on his fingers, “Professor Quirrell — an’ Dumbledore himself did somethin’, o’ course. Hang on, I’ve forgotten someone. Oh yeah, Professor Snape.”
“Snape?”
“Yeah — yer not still on abou’ that, are yeh? Look, Snape helped protect the Stone, he’s not about ter steal it.”
Harry knew Ron and Hermione were thinking the same as he was. If Snape had been in on protecting the Stone, it must have been easy to find out how the other teachers had guarded it. He probably knew everything — except, it seemed, Quirrell’s spell and how to get past Fluffy.
“You’re the only one who knows how to get past Fluffy. aren’t you, Hagrid?” said Harry anxiously. “And you wouldn’t tell anyone, would you? Not even one of the teachers?”
“Not a soul knows except me an’ Dumbledore,” said Hagrid proudly.
“Well, that’s something,” Harry muttered to the others. “Hagrid, can we have a window open? I’m boiling.”
“Can’t, Harry, sorry,” said Hagrid. Harry noticed him glance at the fire. Harry looked at it, too.
“Hagrid — what’s that?”
But he already knew what it was. In the very heart of the fire, underneath the kettle, was a huge, black egg.
“Ah,” said Hagrid, fiddling nervously with his beard, “That’s er…”
“Where did you get it, Hagrid?” said Ron, crouching over the fire to get a closer look at the egg. “It must’ve cost you a fortune.”
“Won it,” said Hagrid. “Las’ night. I was down in the village havin’ a few drinks an’ got into a game o’ cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad ter get rid of it, ter be honest.”
“But what are you going to do with it when it’s hatched?” said Hermione.
“Well, I’ve bin doin’ some readin’ , said Hagrid, pulling a large book from under his pillow. “Got this outta the library — Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit — it’s a bit outta date, o’ course, but it’s all in here. Keep the egg in the fire, ’cause their mothers breathe on I em, see, an’ when it hatches, feed it on a bucket o’ brandy mixed with chicken blood every half hour. An’ see here — how ter recognize diff’rent eggs — what I got there’s a Norwegian Ridgeback. They’re rare, them.”
He looked very pleased with himself, but Hermione didn’t.
“Hagrid, you live in a wooden house,” she said.
But Hagrid wasn’t listening. He was humming merrily as he stoked the fire.
So now they had something else to worry about: what might happen to Hagrid if anyone found out he was hiding an illegal dragon in his hut.
“Wonder what it’s like to have a peaceful life,” Ron sighed, as evening after evening they struggled through all the extra homework they were getting. Hermione had now started making study schedules for Harry and Ron, too. It was driving them nuts.
Then, one breakfast time, Hedwig brought Harry another note from Hagrid.
He had written only two words: It’s hatching.
Ron wanted to skip Herbology and go straight down to the hut. Hermione wouldn’t hear of it.
“Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?”
“We’ve got lessons, we’ll get into trouble, and that’s nothing to what Hagrid’s going to be in when someone finds out what he’s doing –”
“Shut up!” Harry whispered.
Malfoy was only a few feet away and he had stopped dead to listen. How much had he heard? Harry didn’t like the look on Malfoy’s face at all.
Ron and Hermione argued all the way to Herbology and in the end, Hermione agreed to run down to Hagrid’s with the other two during morning break. When the bell sounded from the castle at the end of their lesson, the three of them dropped their trowels at once and hurried through the grounds to the edge of the forest. Hagrid greeted them, looking flushed and excited.
“It’s nearly out.” He ushered them inside.
The egg was lying on the table. There were deep cracks in it. Something was moving inside; a funny clicking noise was coming from it.
They all drew their chairs up to the table and watched with bated breath.
All at once there was a scraping noise and the egg split open. The baby dragon flopped onto the table. It wasn’t exactly pretty; Harry thought it looked like a crumpled, black umbrella. Its spiny wings were huge compared to its skinny jet body, it had a long snout with wide nostrils, the stubs of horns and bulging, orange eyes.
It sneezed. A couple of sparks flew out of its snout.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” Hagrid murmured. He reached out a hand to stroke the dragon’s head. It snapped at his fingers, showing pointed fangs.
“Bless him, look, he knows his mommy!” said Hagrid.
“Hagrid,” said Hermione, “how fast do Norwegian Ridgebacks grow, exactly?”
Hagrid was about to answer when the color suddenly drained from his face — he leapt to his feet and ran to the window.
“What’s the matter?”
“Someone was lookin’ through the gap in the curtains — it’s a kid — he’s runnin’ back up ter the school.”
Harry bolted to the door and looked out. Even at a distance there was no mistaking him.
Malfoy had seen the dragon.
Something about the smile lurking on Malfoy’s face during the next week made Harry, Ron, and Hermione very nervous. They spent most of their free time in Hagrid’s darkened hut, trying to reason with him.
“Just let him go,” Harry urged. “Set him free.”
“I can’t,” said Hagrid. “He’s too little. He’d die.”
They looked at the dragon. It had grown three times in length in just a week. Smoke kept furling out of its nostrils. Hagrid hadn’t been doing his gamekeeping duties because the dragon was keeping him so busy. There were empty brandy bottles and chicken feathers all over the floor.
“I’ve decided to call him Norbert,” said Hagrid, looking at the dragon with misty eyes. “He really knows me now, watch. Norbert! Norbert! Where’s Mommy?”
“He’s lost his marbles,” Ron muttered in Harry’s ear.
“Hagrid,” said Harry loudly, “give it two weeks and Norbert’s going to be as long as your house. Malfoy could go to Dumbledore at any moment.”
Hagrid bit his lip.
“I — I know I can’t keep him forever, but I can’t jus’ dump him, I can’t.”
Harry suddenly turned to Ron. Charlie, he said.
“You’re losing it, too,” said Ron. “I’m Ron, remember?”
“No — Charlie — your brother, Charlie. In Romania. Studying dragons.
We could send Norbert to him. Charlie can take care of him and then put him back in the wild!”
“Brilliant!” said Ron. “How about it, Hagrid?”
And in the end, Hagrid agreed that they could send -an owl to Charlie to ask him.
The following week dragged by. Wednesday night found Hermione and Harry sitting alone in the common room, long after everyone else had gone to bed. The clock on the wall had just chimed midnight when the portrait hole burst open. Ron appeared out of nowhere as he pulled off Harry’s invisibility cloak. He had been down at Hagrid’s hut, helping him feed Norbert, who was now eating dead rats by the crate.
“It bit me!” he said, showing them his hand, which was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. “I’m not going to be able to hold a quill for a week. I tell you, that dragon’s the most horrible animal I’ve ever met, but the way Hagrid goes on about it, you’d think it was a fluffy little bunny rabbit. When it bit me he told me off for frightening it. And when I left, he was singing it a lullaby.”
There was a tap on the dark window.
“It’s Hedwig!” said Harry, hurrying to let her in. “She’ll have Charlie’s answer!”
The three of them put their heads together to read the note.
Dear Ron,
How are you? Thanks for the letter — I’d be glad to take the Norwegian Ridgeback, but it won’t be easy getting him here. I think the best thing will be to send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit me next week. Trouble is, they mustn’t be seen carrying an illegal dragon.
Could you get the Ridgeback up the tallest tower at midnight on Saturday? They can meet you there and take him away while it’s still dark.
Send me an answer as soon as possible.
Love,
Charlie
They looked at one another.
“We’ve got the invisibility cloak,” said Harry. “It shouldn’t be too difficult — I think the cloaks big enough to cover two of us and Norbert.”
It was a mark of how bad the last week had been that the other two agreed with him. Anything to get rid of Norbert — and Malfoy.
There was a hitch. By the next morning, Ron’s bitten hand had swollen to twice its usual size. He didn’t know whether it was safe to go to Madam Pomfrey — would she recognize a dragon bite? By the afternoon, though, he had no choice. The cut had turned a nasty shade of green. It looked as if Norbert’s fangs were poisonous.
Harry and Hermione rushed up to the hospital wing at the end of the day to find Ron in a terrible state in bed.
“It’s not just my hand,” he whispered, “although that feels like it’s about to fall off. Malfoy told Madam Pomfrey he wanted to borrow one of my books so he could come and have a good laugh at me. He kept threatening to tell her what really bit me — I’ve told her it was a dog, but I don’t think she believes me -I shouldn’t have hit him at the Quidditch match, that’s why he’s doing this.”
Harry and Hermione tried to calm Ron down.
“It’ll all be over at midnight on Saturday,” said Hermione, but this didn’t soothe Ron at all. On the contrary, he sat bolt upright and broke into a sweat.
“Midnight on Saturday!” he said in a hoarse voice. “Oh no oh no — I’ve just remembered — Charlie’s letter was in that book Malfoy took, he’s going to know we’re getting rid of Norbert.”
Harry and Hermione didn’t get a chance to answer. Madam Pomfrey came over at that moment and made them leave, saying Ron needed sleep.
“It’s too late to change the plan now,” Harry told Hermione. “We haven’t got time to send Charlie another owl, and this could be our only chance to get rid of Norbert. We’ll have to risk it. And we have got the invisibility cloak, Malfoy doesn’t know about that.”
They found Fang, the boarhound, sitting outside with a bandaged tail when they went to tell Hagrid, who opened a window to talk to them.
“I won’t let you in,” he puffed. “Norbert’s at a tricky stage — nothin’ I can’t handle.”
When they told him about Charlie’s letter, his eyes filled with tears, although that might have been because Norbert had just bitten him on the leg.
“Aargh! It’s all right, he only got my boot — jus’ playin’ — he’s only a baby, after all.”
The baby banged its tail on the wall, making the windows rattle. Harry and Hermione walked back to the castle feeling Saturday couldn’t come quickly enough.
They would have felt sorry for Hagrid when the time came for him to say good-bye to Norbert if they hadn’t been so worried about what they had to do. It was a very dark, cloudy night, and they were a bit late arriving at Hagrid’s hut because they’d had to wait for Peeves to get out of their way in the entrance hall, where he’d been playing tennis against the wall. Hagrid had Norbert packed and ready in a large crate.
“He’s got lots o’ rats an’ some brandy fer the journey,” said Hagrid in a muffled voice. “An’ I’ve packed his teddy bear in case he gets lonely.”
From inside the crate came ripping noises that sounded to Harry as though the teddy was having his head torn off.
“Bye-bye, Norbert!” Hagrid sobbed, as Harry and Hermione covered the crate with the invisibility cloak and stepped underneath it themselves.
“Mommy will never forget you!”
How they managed to get the crate back up to the castle, they never knew. Midnight ticked nearer as they heaved Norbert up the marble staircase in the entrance hall and along the dark corridors. UP another staircase, then another — even one of Harry’s shortcuts didn’t make the work much easier.
“Nearly there!” Harry panted as they reached the corridor beneath the tallest tower.
Then a sudden movement ahead of them made them almost drop the crate.
Forgetting that they were already invisible, they shrank into the shadows, staring at the dark outlines of two people grappling with each other ten feet away. A lamp flared.
Professor McGonagall, in a tartan bathrobe and a hair net, had Malfoy by the ear.
“Detention!” she shouted. “And twenty points from Slytherin! Wandering around in the middle of the night, how dare you –”
“You don’t understand, Professor. Harry Potter’s coming — he’s got a dragon!”
“What utter rubbish! How dare you tell such lies! Come on — I shall see Professor Snape about you, Malfoy!”
The steep spiral staircase up to the top of the tower seemed the easiest thing in the world after that. Not until they’d stepped out into the cold night air did they throw off the cloak, glad to be able to breathe properly again. Hermione did a sort of jig.
“Malfoy’s got detention! I could sing!”
“Don’t,” Harry advised her.
Chuckling about Malfoy, they waited, Norbert thrashing about in his crate. About ten minutes later, four broomsticks came swooping down out of the darkness.
Charlie’s friends were a cheery lot. They showed Harry and Hermione the harness they’d rigged up, so they could suspend Norbert between them.
They all helped buckle Norbert safely into it and then Harry and Hermione shook hands with the others and thanked them very much.
At last, Norbert was going… going… gone.
They slipped back down the spiral staircase, their hearts as light as their hands, now that Norbert was off them. No more dragon — Malfoy in detention — what could spoil their happiness? The answer to that was waiting at the foot of the stairs. As they stepped into the corridor, Filch’s face loomed suddenly out of the darkness.
“Well, well, well,” he whispered, “we are in trouble.”
They’d left the invisibility cloak on top of the tower.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE FORIBIDDEN FOREST
Things couldn’t have been worse.
Filch took them down to Professor McGonagall’s study on the first floor, where they sat and waited without saying a word to each other. Hermione was trembling. Excuses, alibis, and wild cover- up stories chased each other around Harry’s brain, each more feeble than the last. He couldn’t see how they were going to get out of trouble this time. They were cornered. How could they have been so stupid as to forget the cloak? There was no reason on earth that Professor McGonagall would accept for their being out of bed and creeping around the school in the dead of night, let alone being up the tallest astronomy tower, which was out-of-bounds except for classes. Add Norbert and the invisibility cloak, and they might as well be packing their bags already.
Had Harry thought that things couldn’t have been worse? He was wrong.
When Professor McGonagall appeared, she was leading Neville.
“Harry!” Neville burst Out, the moment he saw the other two. “I was trying to find you to warn you, I heard Malfoy saying he was going to catch you, he said you had a drag –”
Harry shook his head violently to shut Neville up, but Professor McGonagall had seen. She looked more likely to breathe fire than Norbert as she towered over the three of them.
“I would never have believed it of any of you. Mr. Filch says you were up in the astronomy tower. It’s one o’clock in the morning. Explain yourselves.”
It was the first time Hermione had ever failed to answer a teacher’s question. She was staring at her slippers, as still as a statue.
“I think I’ve got a good idea of what’s been going on,” said Professor McGonagall. “It doesn’t take a genius to work it out. You fed Draco Malfoy some cock-and-bull story about a dragon, trying to get him out of bed and into trouble. I’ve already caught him. I suppose you think it’s funny that Longbottom here heard the story and believed it, too?”
Harry caught Neville’s eye and tried to tell him without words that this wasn’t true, because Neville was looking stunned and hurt. Poor, blundering Neville — Harry knew what it must have cost him to try and find them in the dark, to warn them.
“I’m disgusted,” said Professor McGonagall. “Four students out of bed in one night! I’ve never heard of such a thing before! You, Miss Granger, I thought you had more sense. As for you, Mr. Potter, I thought Gryffindor meant more to you than this. All three of you will receive detentions — yes, you too, Mr. Longbottom, nothing gives you the right to walk around school at night, especially these days, it’s very dangerous — and fifty points will be taken from Gryffindor.”
“Fifty?” Harry gasped — they would lose the lead, the lead he’d won in the last Quidditch match.
“Fifty points each,” said Professor McGonagall, breathing heavily through her long, pointed nose.
“Professor — please “You can’t –”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Potter. Now get back to bed, all of you. I’ve never been more ashamed of Gryffindor students.”
A hundred and fifty points lost. That put Gryffindor in last place. In one night, they’d ruined any chance Gryffindor had had for the house cup. Harry felt as though the bottom had dropped out of his stomach. How could they ever make up for this? Harry didn’t sleep all night. He could hear Neville sobbing into his pillow for what seemed like hours. Harry couldn’t think of anything to say to comfort him. He knew Neville, like himself, was dreading the dawn. What would happen when the rest of Gryffindor found out what they’d done? At first, Gryffindors passing the giant hourglasses that recorded the house points the next day thought there’d been a mistake. How could they suddenly have a hundred and fifty points fewer than yesterday? And then the story started to spread: Harry Potter, the famous Harry Potter, their hero of two Quidditch matches, had lo st them all those points, him and a couple of other stupid first years.
From being one of the most popular and admired people at the school, Harry was suddenly the most hated. Even Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs turned on him, because everyone had been longing to see Slytherin lose the house cup. Everywhere Harry went, people pointed and didn’t trouble to lower their voices as they insulted him. Slytherins, on the other hand, clapped as he walked past them, whistling and cheering, “Thanks Potter, we owe you one!”
Only Ron stood by him.
“They’ll all forget this in a few weeks. Fred and George have lost loads of points in all the time they’ve been here, and people still like them.”
“They’ve never lost a hundred and fifty points in one go, though, have they?” said Harry miserably.
“Well — no,” Ron admitted.
It was a bit late to repair the damage, but Harry swore to himself not to meddle in things that weren’t his business from now on. He’d had it with sneaking around and spying. He felt so ashamed of himself that he went to Wood and offered to resign from the Quidditch team.
“Resign?” Wood thundered. “What good’ll that do? How are we going to get any points back if we can’t win at Quidditch?”
But even Quidditch had lost its fun. The rest of the team wouldn’t speak to Harry during practice, and if they had to speak about him, they called him “the Seeker.”
Hermione and Neville were suffering, too. They didn’t have as bad a time as Harry, because they weren’t as well-known, but nobody would speak to them, either. Hermione had stopped drawing attention to herself in class, keeping her head down and working in silence.
Harry was almost glad that the exams weren’t far away. All the studying he had to do kept his mind off his misery. He, Ron, and Hermione kept to themselves, working late into the night, trying to remember the ingredients in complicated potions, learn charms and spells by heart, memorize the dates of magical discoveries and goblin rebellions….
Then, about a week before the exams were due to start, Harry’s new resolution not to interfere in anything that didn’t concern him was put to an unexpected test. Walking back from the library on his own one afternoon, he heard somebody whimpering from a classroom up ahead. As he drew closer, he heard Quirrell’s voice.
“No — no — not again, please –”
It sounded as though someone was threatening him. Harry moved closer.
“All right — all right –” he heard Quirrell sob.
Next second, Quirrell came hurrying out of the classroom straightening his turban. He was pale and looked as though he was about to cry. He strode out of sight; Harry didn’t think Quirrell had even noticed him.
He waited until Quirrell’s footsteps had disappeared, then peered into the classroom. It was empty, but a door stood ajar at the other end.
Harry was halfway toward it before he remembered what he’d promised himself about not meddling.
All the same, he’d have gambled twelve Sorcerer’s Stones that Snape had just left the room, and from what Harry had just heard, Snape would be walking with a new spring in his step — Quirrell seemed to have given in at last.
Harry went back to the library, where Hermione was testing Ron on Astronomy. Harry told them what he’d heard.
“Snape’s done it, then!” said Ron. “If Quirrell’s told him how to break his Anti-Dark Force spell –”
“There’s still Fluffy, though,” said Hermione.
“Maybe Snape’s found out how to get past him without asking Hagrid,”
said Ron, looking up at the thousands of books surrounding them. “I bet there’s a book somewhere in here telling you how to get past a giant three-headed dog. So what do we do, Harry?”
The light of adventure was kindling again in Ron’s eyes, but Hermione answered before Harry could.
“Go to Dumbledore. That’s what we should have done ages ago. If we try anything ourselves we’ll be thrown out for sure.”
“But we’ve got no proof!” said Harry. “Quirrell’s too scared to back us up. Snape’s only got to say he doesn’t know how the troll got in at Halloween and that he was nowhere near the third floor — who do you think they’ll believe, him or us? It’s not exactly a secret we hate him, Dumbledore’ll think we made it up to get him sacked. Filch wouldn’t help us if his life depended on it, he’s too friendly with Snape, and the more students get thrown out, the better, he’ll think. And don’t forget, we’re not supposed to know about the Stone or Fluffy. That’ll take a lot of explaining.”
Hermione looked convinced, but Ron didn’t.
“If we just do a bit of poking around –”
“No,” said Harry flatly, “we’ve done enough poking around.”
He pulled a map of Jupiter toward him and started to learn the names of its moons.
The following morning, notes were delivered to Harry, Hermione, and Neville at the breakfast table. They were all the same: Your detention will take place at eleven o’clock tonight. Meet Mr. Filch in the entrance hall.
Professor McGonagall Harry had forgotten they still had detentions to do in the furor over the points they’d lost. He half expected Hermione to complain that this was a whole night of studying lost, but she didn’t say a word. Like Harry, she felt they deserved what they’d got.
At eleven o’clock that night, they said good-bye to Ron in the common room and went down to the entrance hall with Neville. Filch was already there — and so was Malfoy. Harry had also forgotten that Malfoy had gotten a detention, too.
“Follow me,” said Filch, lighting a lamp and leading them outside.
I bet you’ll think twice about breaking a school rule again, won’t you, eh?” he said, leering at them. “Oh yes… hard work and pain are the best teachers if you ask me…. It’s just a pity they let the old punishments die out… hang you by your wrists from the ceiling for a few days, I’ve got the chains still in my office, keep ’em well oiled in case they’re ever needed…. Right, off we go, and don’t think of running off, now, it’ll be worse for you if you do.”
They marched off across the dark grounds. Neville kept sniffing. Harry wondered what their punishment was going to be. It must be something really horrible, or Filch wouldn’t be sounding so delighted.
The moon was bright, but clouds scudding across it kept throwing them into darkness. Ahead, Harry could see the lighted windows of Hagrid’s hut. Then they heard a distant shout.
“Is that you, Filch? Hurry up, I want ter get started.”
Harry’s heart rose; if they were going to be working with Hagrid it wouldn’t be so bad. His relief must have showed in his -face, because Filch said, “I suppose you think you’ll be enjoying yourself with that oaf? Well, think again, boy — it’s into the forest you’re going and I’m much mistaken if you’ll all come out in one piece.”
At this, Neville let out a little moan, and Malfoy stopped dead in his tracks.
“The forest?” he repeated, and he didn’t sound quite as cool as usual.
“We can’t go in there at night — there’s all sorts of things in there — werewolves, I heard.”
Neville clutched the sleeve of Harry’s robe and made a choking noise.
“That’s your problem, isn’t it?” said Filch, his voice cracking with glee. “Should’ve thought of them werewolves before you got in trouble, shouldn’t you?”
Hagrid came striding toward them out of the dark, Fang at his heel. He was carrying his large crossbow, and a quiver of arrows hung over his shoulder.
“Abou’ time,” he said. “I bin waitin’ fer half an hour already. All right, Harry, Hermione?”
“I shouldn’t be too friendly to them, Hagrid,” said Filch coldly, they’re here to be punished, after all.”
“That’s why yer late, is it?” said Hagrid, frowning at Filch. “Bin lecturin’ them, eh? ‘Snot your place ter do that. Yeh’ve done yer bit, I’ll take over from here.”
“I’ll be back at dawn,” said Filch, “for what’s left of them,” he added nastily, and he turned and started back toward the castle, his lamp bobbing away in the darkness.
Malfoy now turned to Hagrid.
“I’m not going in that forest, he said, and Harry was pleased to hear the note of panic in his voice.
“Yeh are if yeh want ter stay at Hogwarts,” said Hagrid fiercely.
“Yeh’ve done wrong an’ now yehve got ter pay fer it.”
“But this is servant stuff, it’s not for students to do. I thought we’d be copying lines or something, if my father knew I was doing this, he’d tell yer that’s how it is at Hogwarts,” Hagrid growled. “Copyin’ lines! What good’s that ter anyone? Yeh’ll do summat useful or Yeh’ll get out.
If yeh think yer father’d rather you were expelled, then get back off ter the castle an’ pack. Go on”‘ Malfoy didn’t move. He looked at Hagrid furiously, but then dropped his gaze.
“Right then,” said Hagrid, “now, listen carefully, ’cause it’s dangerous what we’re gonna do tonight, an’ I don’ want no one takin’ risks. Follow me over here a moment.”
He led them to the very edge of the forest. Holding his lamp up high, he pointed down a narrow, winding earth track that disappeared into the thick black trees. A light breeze lifted their hair as they looked into the forest.
“Look there,” said Hagrid, “see that stuff shinin’ on the ground? Silvery stuff? That’s unicorn blood. There’s a unicorn in there bin hurt badly by summat. This is the second time in a week. I found one dead last Wednesday. We’re gonna try an’ find the poor thing. We might have ter put it out of its misery.”
“And what if whatever hurt the unicorn finds us first?” said Malfoy, unable to keep the fear out of his voice.
“There’s nothin’ that lives in the forest that’ll hurt yeh if yer with me or Fang,” said Hagrid. “An’ keep ter the path. Right, now, we’re gonna split inter two parties an’ follow the trail in diff’rent directions. There’s blood all over the place, it must’ve bin staggerin’ around since last night at least.”
“I want Fang,” said Malfoy quickly, looking at Fang’s long teeth.
“All right, but I warn yeh, he’s a coward,” said Hagrid. ” So me, Harry, an’ Hermione’ll go one way an’ Draco, Neville, an’ Fang’ll go the other.
Now, if any of us finds the unicorn, we’ll send up green sparks, right? Get yer wands out an’ practice now — that’s it — an’ if anyone gets in trouble, send up red sparks, an’ we’ll all come an’ find yeh — so, be careful — let’s go.”
The forest was black and silent. A little way into it they reached a fork in the earth path, and Harry, Hermione, and Hagrid took the left path while Malfoy, Neville, and Fang took the right.
They walked in silence, their eyes on the ground. Every now and then a ray of moonlight through the branches above lit a spot of silver-blue blood on the fallen leaves.
Harry saw that Hagrid looked very worried.
“Could a werewolf be killing the unicorns?” Harry asked.
“Not fast enough,” said Hagrid. “It’s not easy ter catch a unicorn, they’re powerful magic creatures. I never knew one ter be hurt before.”
They walked past a mossy tree stump. Harry could hear running water; there must be a stream somewhere close by. There were still spots of unicorn blood here and there along the winding path.
“You all right, Hermione?” Hagrid whispered. “Don’ worry, it can’t’ve gone far if it’s this badly hurt, an’ then we’ll be able ter — GET BEHIND THAT TREE!”
Hagrid seized Harry and Hermione and hoisted them off the path behind a towering oak. He pulled out an arrow and fitted it into his crossbow, raising it, ready to fire. The three of them listened. Something was slithering over dead leaves nearby: it sounded like a cloak trailing along the ground. Hagrid was squinting up the dark path, but after a few seconds, the sound faded away.
“I knew it, ” he murmured. “There’s summat in here that shouldn’ be.”
“A werewolf?” Harry suggested.
“That wasn’ no werewolf an’ it wasn’ no unicorn, neither,” said Hagrid grimly. “Right, follow me, but careful, now.”
They walked more slowly, ears straining for the faintest sound.
Suddenly, in a clearing ahead, something definitely moved.
“Who’s there?” Hagrid called. “Show yerself — I’m armed!”
And into the clearing came — was it a man, or a horse? To the waist, a man, with red hair and beard, but below that was a horse’s gleaming chestnut body with a long, reddish tail. Harry and Hermione’s jaws dropped.
“Oh, it’s you, Ronan,” said Hagrid in relief. “How are yeh?”
He walked forward and shook the centaur’s hand.
“Good evening to you, Hagrid,” said Ronan. He had a deep, sorrowful voice. “Were you going to shoot me?”
“Can’t be too careful, Ronan,” said Hagrid, patting his crossbow.
“There’s summat bad loose in this forest. This is Harry Potter an’ Hermione Granger, by the way. Students up at the school. An’ this is Ronan, you two. He’s a centaur.)) “We’d noticed,” said Hermione faintly.
“Good evening,” said Ronan. “Students, are you? And do you learn much, up at the school?”
“Erm –”
“A bit,” said Hermione timidly.
“A bit. Well, that’s something.” Ronan sighed. He flung back his head and stared at the sky. “Mars is bright tonight.”
“Yeah,” said Hagrid, glancing up, too. “Listen, I’m glad we’ve run inter yeh, Ronan, ’cause there’s a unicorn bin hurt — you seen anythin’?”
Ronan didn’t answer immediately. He stared unblinkingly upward, then sighed again.
“Always the innocent are the first victims,” he said. “So it has been for ages past, so it is now.”
“Yeah,” said Hagrid, “but have yeh seen anythin’, Ronan? Anythin’ unusual?”
“Mars is bright tonight,” Ronan repeated, while Hagrid watched him impatiently. “Unusually bright.”
“Yeah, but I was meanin’ anythin’ unusual a bit nearer home, said Hagrid. “So yeh haven’t noticed anythin’ strange?”
Yet again, Ronan took a while to answer. At last, he said, “The forest hides many secrets.”
A movement in the trees behind Ronan made Hagrid raise his bow again, but it was only a second centaur, black-haired and -bodied and wilder-looking than Ronan.
“Hullo, Bane,” said Hagrid. “All right?”
“Good evening, Hagrid, I hope you are well?”
“Well enough. Look, I’ve jus’ bin askin’ Ronan, you seen anythin’ odd in here lately? There’s a unicorn bin injured — would yeh know anythin’ about it?”
Bane walked over to stand next to Ronan. He looked skyward. “Mars is bright tonight,” he said simply.
“We’ve heard,” said Hagrid grumpily. “Well, if either of you do see anythin’, let me know, won’t yeh? We’ll be off, then.”
Harry and Hermione followed him out of the clearing, staring over their shoulders at Ronan and Bane until the trees blocked their view.
“Never,” said Hagrid irritably, “try an’ get a straight answer out of a centaur. Ruddy stargazers. Not interested in anythin’ closer’n the moon.”
“Are there many of them in here?” asked Hermione.
“Oh, a fair few… Keep themselves to themselves mostly, but they’re good enough about turnin’ up if ever I want a word. They’re deep, mind, centaurs… they know things… jus’ don’ let on much.”
“D’you think that was a centaur we heard earlier?” said Harry.
“Did that sound like hooves to you? Nah, if yeh ask me, that was what’s bin killin’ the unicorns — never heard anythin’ like it before.”
They walked on through the dense, dark trees. Harry kept looking nervously over his shoulder. He had the nasty feeling they were being watched. He was very glad they had Hagrid and his crossbow with them.
They had just passed a bend in the path when Hermione grabbed Hagrid’s arm.
“Hagrid! Look! Red sparks, the others are in trouble!”
“You two wait here!” Hagrid shouted. “Stay on the path, I’ll come back for yeh!”
They heard him crashing away through the undergrowth and stood looking at each other, very scared, until they couldn’t hear anything but the rustling of leaves around them.
“You don’t think they’ve been hurt, do you?” whispered Hermione.
“I don’t care if Malfoy has, but if something’s got Neville… it’s our fault he’s here in the first place.”
The minutes dragged by. Their ears seemed sharper than usual. Harry’s seemed to be picking up every sigh of the wind, every cracking twig.
What was going on? Where were the others? At last, a great crunching noise announced Hagrid’s return. Malfoy, Neville, and Fang were with him. Hagrid was fuming. Malfoy, it seemed, had sneaked up behind Neville and grabbed him as a joke. Neville had panicked and sent up the sparks.
“We’ll be lucky ter catch anythin’ now, with the racket you two were makin’. Right, we’re changin’ groups — Neville, you stay with me an’ Hermione, Harry, you go with Fang an’ this idiot. I’m sorry,” Hagrid added in a whisper to Harry, “but he’ll have a harder time frightenin’ you, an’ we’ve gotta get this done.”
So Harry set off into the heart of the forest with Malfoy and Fang. They walked for nearly half an hour, deeper and deeper into the forest, until the path became almost impossible to follow because the trees were so thick. Harry thought the blood seemed to be getting thicker. There were splashes on the roots of a tree, as though the poor creature had been thrashing around in pain close by. Harry could see a clearing ahead, through the tangled branches of an ancient oak.
“Look –” he murmured, holding out his arm to stop Malfoy.
Something bright white was gleaming on the ground. They inched closer.
It was the unicorn all right, and it was dead. Harry had never seen anything so beautiful and sad. Its long, slender legs were stuck out at odd angles where it had fallen and its mane was spread pearly-white on the dark leaves.
Harry had taken one step toward it when a slithering sound made him freeze where he stood. A bush on the edge of the clearing quivered….
Then, out of the shadows, a hooded figure came crawling across the ground like some stalking beast. Harry, Malfoy, and Fang stood transfixed. The cloaked figure reached the unicorn, lowered its head over the wound in the animal’s side, and began to drink its blood.
“AAAAAAAAAARGH!”
Malfoy let out a terrible scream and bolted — so did Fang. The hooded figure raised its head and looked right at Harry — unicorn blood was dribbling down its front. It got to its feet and came swiftly toward Harry — he couldn’t move for fear.
Then a pain like he’d never felt before pierced his head; it was as though his scar were on fire. Half blinded, he staggered backward. He heard hooves behind him, galloping, and something jumped clean over Harry, charging at the figure.
The pain in Harry’s head was so bad he fell to his knees. It took a minute or two to pass. When he looked up, the figure had gone. A centaur was standing over him, not Ronan or Bane; this one looked younger; he had white-blond hair and a palomino body.
“Are you all right?” said the centaur, pulling Harry to his feet.
“Yes — thank you — what was that?”
The centaur didn’t answer. He had astonishingly blue eyes, like pale sapphires. He looked carefully at Harry, his eyes lingering on the scar that stood out, livid, on Harry’s forehead.
“You are the Potter boy,” he said. “You had better get back to Hagrid.
The forest is not safe at this time — especially for you. Can you ride? It will be quicker this way.
“My name is Firenze,” he added, as he lowered himself on to his front legs so that Harry could clamber onto his back.
There was suddenly a sound of more galloping from the other side of the clearing. Ronan and Bane came bursting through the trees, their flanks heaving and sweaty.
“Firenze!” Bane thundered. “What are you doing? You have a human on your back! Have you no shame? Are you a common mule?”
“Do you realize who this is?” said Firenze. “This is the Potter boy. The quicker he leaves this forest, the better.”
“What have you been telling him?” growled Bane. “Remember, Firenze, we are sworn not to set ourselves against the heavens. Have we not read what is to come in the movements of the planets?”
Ronan pawed the ground nervously. “I’m sure Firenze thought he was acting for the best, ” he said in his gloomy voice.
Bane kicked his back legs in anger.
“For the best! What is that to do with us? Centaurs are concerned with what has been foretold! It is not our business to run around like donkeys after stray humans in our forest!”
Firenze suddenly reared on to his hind legs in anger, so that Harry had to grab his shoulders to stay on.
“Do you not see that unicorn?” Firenze bellowed at Bane. “Do you not understand why it was killed? Or have the planets not let you in on that secret? I set myself against what is lurking in this forest, Bane, yes, with humans alongside me if I must.”
And Firenze whisked around; with Harry clutching on as best he could, they plunged off into the trees, leaving Ronan and Bane behind them.
Harry didn’t have a clue what was going on.
“Why’s Bane so angry?” he asked. “What was that thing you saved me from, anyway?”
Firenze slowed to a walk, warned Harry to keep his head bowed in case of low-hanging branches, but did not answer Harry’s question. They made their way through the trees in silence for so long that Harry thought Firenze didn’t want to talk to him anymore. They were passing through a particularly dense patch of trees, however, when Firenze suddenly stopped.
“Harry Potter, do you know what unicorn blood is used -for?”
“No,” said Harry, startled by the odd question. “We’ve only used the horn and tail hair in Potions.”
“That is because it is a monstrous thing, to slay a unicorn,” said Firenze. “Only one who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, would commit such a crime. The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price. You have slain something pure and defenseless to save yourself, and you will have but a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips.”
Harry stared at the back of Firenze’s head, which was dappled silver in the moonlight.
“But who’d be that desperate?” he wondered aloud. “If you’re going to be cursed forever, deaths better, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Firenze agreed, “unless all you need is to stay alive long enough to drink something else — something that will bring you back to full strength and power — something that will mean you can never die.
Mr. Potter, do you know what is hidden in the school at this very moment?”
“The Sorcerer’s Stone! Of course — the Elixir of Life! But I don’t understand who –”
“Can you think of nobody who has waited many years to return to power, who has clung to life, awaiting their chance?”
It was as though an iron fist had clenched suddenly around Harry’s heart. Over the rustling of the trees, he seemed to hear once more what Hagrid had told him on the night they had met: “Some say he died.
Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die.”
“Do you mean,” Harry croaked, “that was Vol-”
“Harry! Harry, are you all right?”
Hermione was running toward them down the path, Hagrid puffing along behind her.
“I’m fine,” said Harry, hardly knowing what he was saying. “The unicorn’s dead, Hagrid, it’s in that clearing back there.”
“This is where I leave you,” Firenze murmured as Hagrid hurried off to examine the unicorn. “You are safe now.”
Harry slid off his back.
“Good luck, Harry Potter,” said Firenze. “The planets have been read wrongly before now, even by centaurs. I hope this is one of those times.”
He turned and cantered back into the depths of the forest, leaving Harry shivering behind him.
Ron had fallen asleep in the dark common room, waiting for them to return. He shouted something about Quidditch fouls when Harry roughly shook him awake. In a matter of seconds, though, he was wide-eyed as Harry began to tell him and Hermione what had happened in the forest.
Harry couldn’t sit down. He paced up and down in front of the fire. He was still shaking.
“Snape wants the stone for Voldemort… and Voldemort’s waiting in the forest… and all this time we thought Snape just wanted to get rich….”
“Stop saying the name!” said Ron in a terrified whisper, as if he thought Voldemort could hear them.
Harry wasn’t listening.
“Firenze saved me, but he shouldn’t have done so…. Bane was furious…
he was talking about interfering with what the planets say is going to happen…. They must show that Voldemort’s coming back…. Bane thinks Firenze should have let Voldemort kill me…. I suppose that’s written in the stars as well.”
“Will you stop saying the name!” Ron hissed.
“So all I’ve got to wait for now is Snape to steal the Stone,” Harry went on feverishly, “then Voldemort will be able to come and finish me off… Well, I suppose Bane’ll be happy.”
Hermione looked very frightened, but she had a word of comfort.
“Harry, everyone says Dumbledore’s the only one You-Know-Who was ever afraid of With Dumbledore around, You-Know-Who won’t touch you. Anyway, who says the centaurs are right? It sounds like fortune-telling to me, and Professor McGonagall says that’s a very imprecise branch of magic.”
The sky had turned light before they stopped talking. They went to bed exhausted, their throats sore. But the night’s surprises weren’t over.
When Harry pulled back his sheets, he found his invisibility cloak folded neatly underneath them. There was a note pinned to it: Just in case.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THROUGH THE TRAPDOOR
In years to come, Harry would never quite remember how he had managed to get through his exams when he half expected Voldemort to come bursting through the door at any moment. Yet the days crept by, and there could be no doubt that Fluffy was still alive and well behind the locked door.
It was sweltering hot, especially in the large classroom where they did their written papers. They had been given special, new quills for the exams, which had been bewitched with an AntiCheating spell.
They had practical exams as well. Professor Flitwick called them one by one into his class to see if they could make a pineapple tapdance across a desk. Professor McGonagall watched them turn a mouse into a snuffbox — points were given for how pretty the snuffbox was, but taken away if it had whiskers. Snape made them all nervous, breathing down their necks while they tried to remember how to make a Forgetfulness potion.
Harry did the best he could, trying to ignore the stabbing pains in his forehead, which had been bothering him ever since his trip into the forest. Neville thought Harry had a bad case of exam nerves because Harry couldn’t sleep, but the truth was that Harry kept being woken by his old nightmare, except that it was now worse than ever because there was a hooded figure dripping blood in it.
Maybe it was because they hadn’t seen what Harry had seen in the forest, or because they didn’t have scars burning on their foreheads, but Ron and Hermione didn’t seem as worried about the Stone as Harry. The idea of Voldemort certainly scared them, but he didn’t keep visiting them in dreams, and they were so busy with their studying they didn’t have much time to fret about what Snape or anyone else might be up to.
Their very last exam was History of Magic. One hour of answering questions about batty old wizards who’d invented selfstirring cauldrons and they’d be free, free for a whole wonderful week until their exam results came out. When the ghost of Professor Binns told them to put down their quills and roll up their parchment, Harry couldn’t help cheering with the rest.
“That was far easier than I thought it would be,” said Hermione as they joined the crowds flocking out onto the sunny grounds. “I needn’t have learned about the 1637 Werewolf Code of Conduct or the uprising of Elfric the Eager.”
Hermione always liked to go through their exam papers afterward, but Ron said this made him feel ill, so they wandered down to the lake and flopped under a tree. The Weasley twins and Lee Jordan were tickling the tentacles of a giant squid, which was basking in the warm shallows. “No more studying,” Ron sighed happily, stretching out on the grass. “You could look more cheerful, Harry, we’ve got a week before we find out how badly we’ve done, there’s no need to worry yet.”
Harry was rubbing his forehead.
“I wish I knew what this means!” he burst out angrily. “My scar keeps hurting — it’s happened before, but never as often as this.”
“Go to Madam Pomfrey,” Hermione suggested.
“I’m not ill,” said Harry. “I think it’s a warning… it means danger’s coming….”
Ron couldn’t get worked up, it was too hot.
“Harry, relax, Hermione’s right, the Stone’s safe as long as Dumbledore’s around. Anyway, we’ve never had any proof Snape found out how to get past Fluffy. He nearly had his leg ripped off once, he’s not going to try it again in a hurry. And Neville will play Quidditch for England before Hagrid lets Dumbledore down.”
Harry nodded, but he couldn’t shake off a lurking feeling that there was something he’d forgotten to do, something important. When he tried to explain this, Hermione said, “That’s just the exams. I woke up last night and was halfway through my Transfiguration notes before I remembered we’d done that one.”
Harry was quite sure the unsettled feeling didn’t have anything to do with work, though. He watched an owl flutter toward the school across the bright blue sky, a note clamped in its mouth. Hagrid was the only one who ever sent him letters. Hagrid would never betray Dumbledore.
Hagrid would never tell anyone how to get past Fluffy… never… but — Harry suddenly jumped to his feet.
“Where’re you going?” said Ron sleepily.
“I’ve just thought of something,” said Harry. He had turned white.
“We’ve got to go and see Hagrid, now.”
“Why?” panted Hermione, hurrying to keep up.
“Don’t you think it’s a bit odd,” said Harry, scrambling up the grassy slope, “that what Hagrid wants more than anything else is a dragon, and a stranger turns up who just happens to have an egg in his pocket? How many people wander around with dragon eggs if it’s against wizard law? Lucky they found Hagrid, don’t you think? Why didn’t I see it before?”
“What are you talking about?” said Ron, but Harry, sprinting across the grounds toward the forest, didn’t answer.
Hagrid was sitting in an armchair outside his house; his trousers and sleeves were rolled up, and he was shelling peas into a large bowl.
“Hullo,” he said, smiling. “Finished yer exams? Got time fer a drink?”
“Yes, please,” said Ron, but Harry cut him off.
“No, we’re in a hurry. Hagrid, I’ve got to ask you something. You know that night you won Norbert? What did the stranger you were playing cards with look like?”
“Dunno,” said Hagrid casually, “he wouldn’ take his cloak off.”
He saw the three of them look stunned and raised his eyebrows.
“It’s not that unusual, yeh get a lot o’ funny folk in the Hog’s Head — that’s the pub down in the village. Mighta bin a dragon dealer, mightn’ he? I never saw his face, he kept his hood up.”
Harry sank down next to the bowl of peas. “What did you talk to him about, Hagrid? Did you mention Hogwarts at all?”
“Mighta come up,” said Hagrid, frowning as he tried to remember.
“Yeah… he asked what I did, an’ I told him I was gamekeeper here….
He asked a bit about the sorta creatures I took after… so I told him… an’ I said what I’d always really wanted was a dragon… an’ then… I can’ remember too well, ’cause he kept buyin’ me drinks….
Let’s see… yeah, then he said he had the dragon egg an’ we could play cards fer it if I wanted… but he had ter be sure I could handle it, he didn’ want it ter go ter any old home…. So I told him, after Fluffy, a dragon would be easy…”
“And did he — did he seem interested in Fluffy?” Harry asked, try ing to keep his voice calm.
“Well — yeah — how many three-headed dogs d’yeh meet, even around Hogwarts? So I told him, Fluffy’s a piece o’ cake if yeh know how to calm him down, jus’ play him a bit o’ music an’ he’ll go straight off ter sleep –”
Hagrid suddenly looked horrified.
“I shouldn’ta told yeh that!” he blurted out. “Forget I said it! Hey — where’re yeh goin’?”
Harry, Ron, and Hermione didn’t speak to each other at all until they came to a halt in the entrance hall, which seemed very cold and gloomy after the grounds.
“We’ve got to go to Dumbledore,” said Harry. “Hagrid told that stranger how to get past Fluffy, and it was either Snape or Voldemort under that cloak — it must’ve been easy, once he’d got Hagrid drunk. I just hope Dumbledore believes us. Firenze might back us up if Bane doesn’t stop him. Where’s Dumbledore’s office?”
They looked around, as if hoping to see a sign pointing them in the right direction. They had never been told where Dumbledore lived, nor did they know anyone who had been sent to see him.
“We’ll just have to –” Harry began, but a voice suddenly rang across the hall.
“What are you three doing inside?”
It was Professor McGonagall, carrying a large pile of books.
“We want to see Professor Dumbledore,” said Hermione, rather bravely, Harry and Ron thought.
“See Professor Dumbledore?” Professor McGonagall repeated, as though this was a very fishy thing to want to do. “Why?”
Harry swallowed — now what? “It’s sort of secret,” he said, but he wished at once he hadn’t, because Professor McGonagall’s nostrils flared.
“Professor Dumbledore left ten minutes ago,” she said coldly. “He received an urgent owl from the Ministry of Magic and flew off for London at once.”
“He’s gone?” said Harry frantically. “Now?”
“Professor Dumbledore is a very great wizard, Potter, he has many demands on his time — “But this is important.”
“Something you have to say is more important than the Ministry of Magic, Potter.
“Look,” said Harry, throwing caution to the winds, “Professor — it’s about the Sorcerer’s tone –”
Whatever Professor McGonagall had expected, it wasn’t that. The books she was carrying tumbled out of her arms, but she didn’t pick them up.
“How do you know –?” she spluttered.
“Professor, I think — I know — that Sn- that someone’s going to try and steal the Stone. I’ve got to talk to Professor Dumbledore.”
She eyed him with a mixture of shock and suspicion.
“Professor Dumbledore will be back tomorrow,” she said finally. I don’t know how you found out about the Stone, but rest assured, no one can possibly steal it, it’s too well protected.”
“But Professor –”
“Potter, I know what I’m talking about,” she said shortly. She bent down and gathered up the fallen books. I suggest you all go back outside and enjoy the sunshine.”
But they didn’t.
“It’s tonight,” said Harry, once he was sure Professor McGonagall was out of earshot. “Snape’s going through the trapdoor tonight. He’s found out everything he needs, and now he’s got Dumbledore out of the way. He sent that note, I bet the Ministry of Magic will get a real shock when Dumbledore turns up.”
“But what can we –”
Hermione gasped. Harry and Ron wheeled round.
Snape was standing there.
“Good afternoon,” he said smoothly.
They stared at him.
“You shouldn’t be inside on a day like this,” he said, with an odd, twisted smile.
“We were –” Harry began, without any idea what he was going to say.
“You want to be more careful,” said Snape. “Hanging around like this, people will think you’re up to something. And Gryffindor really can’t afford to lose any more points, can it?”
Harry flushed. They turned to go outside, but Snape called them back.
“Be warned, Potter — any more nighttime wanderings and I will personally make sure you are expelled. Good day to you.”
He strode off in the direction of the staffroom.
Out on the stone steps, Harry turned to the others.
“Right, here’s what we’ve got to do,” he whispered urgently. “One of us has got to keep an eye on Snape — wait outside the staff room and follow him if he leaves it. Hermione, you’d better do that.”
“Why me?”
“It’s obvious,” said Ron. “You can pretend to be waiting for Professor Flitwick, you know.” He put on a high voice, “‘Oh Professor Flitwick, I’m so worried, I think I got question fourteen b wrong….’ì
“Oh, shut up,” said Hermione, but she agreed to go and watch out for Snape.
“And we’d better stay outside the third-floor corridor,” Harry told Ron.
“Come on.”
But that part of the plan didn’t work. No sooner had they reached the door separating Fluffy from the rest of the school than Professor McGonagall turned up again and this time, she lost her temper.
“I suppose you think you’re harder to get past than a pack of enchantments!” she stormed. “Enough of this nonsense! If I hear you ‘ve come anywhere near here again, I’ll take another fifty points from Gryffindor! Yes, Weasley, from my own house!” Harry and Ron went back to the common room, Harry had just said, “At least Hermione’s on Snape’s tail,” when the portrait of the Fat Lady swung open and Hermione came in.
“I’m sorry, Harry!” she wailed. “Snape came out and asked me what I was doing, so I said I was waiting for Flitwick, and Snape went to get him, and I’ve only just got away, I don’t know where Snape went.”
“Well, that’s it then, isn’t it?” Harry said.
The other two stared at him. He was pale and his eyes were glittering.
“I’m going out of here tonight and I’m going to try and get to the Stone first.”
“You’re mad!” said Ron.
“You can’t!” said Hermione. “After what McGonagall and Snape have said? You’ll be expelled!”
“SO WHAP” Harry shouted. “Don’t you understand? If Snape gets hold of the Stone, Voldemort’s coming back! Haven’t you heard what it was like when he was trying to take over? There won’t be any Hogwarts to get expelled from! He’ll flatten it, or turn it into a school for the Dark Arts! Losing points doesn’t matter anymore, can’t you see? D’you think he’ll leave you and your families alone if Gryffindor wins the house cup? If I get caught before I can get to the Stone, well, I’ll have to go back to the Dursleys and wait for Voldemort to find me there, it’s only dying a bit later than I would have, because I’m never going over to the Dark Side! I’m going through that trapdoor tonight and nothing you two say is going to stop me! Voldemort killed my parents, remember?”
He glared at them.
“You’re right Harry,” said Hermione in a small voice.
“I’ll use the invisibility cloak,” said Harry. “It’s just lucky I got it back.”
“But will it cover all three of us?” said Ron.
“All — all three of us?”
“Oh, come off it, you don’t think we’d let you go alone?”
“Of course not,” said Hermione briskly. “How do you think you’d get to the Stone without us? I’d better go and took through my books, there might be something useful…”
“But if we get caught, you two will be expelled, too.”
“Not if I can help it,” said Hermione grimly. “Flitwick told me in secret that I got a hundred and twelve percent on his exam. They’re not throwing me out after that.”
After dinner the three of them sat nervously apart in the common room.
Nobody bothered them; none of the Gryffindors had anything to say to Harry any more, after all. This was the first night he hadn’t been upset by it. Hermione was skimming through all her notes, hoping to come across one of the enchantments they were about to try to break. Harry and Ron didn’t talk much. Both of them were thinking about what they were about to do.
Slowly, the room emptied as people drifted off to bed.
“Better get the cloak,” Ron muttered, as Lee Jordan finally left, stretching and yawning. Harry ran upstairs to their dark dormitory. He putted out the cloak and then his eyes fell on the flute Hagrid had given him for Christmas. He pocketed it to use on Fluffy — he didn’t feel much like singing.
He ran back down to the common room.
“We’d better put the cloak on here, and make sure it covers all three of us — if Filch spots one of our feet wandering along on its own –”
“What are you doing?” said a voice from the corner of the room. Neville appeared from behind an armchair, clutching Trevor the toad, who looked as though he’d been making another bid for freedom.
“Nothing, Neville, nothing,” said Harry, hurriedly putting the cloak behind his back.
Neville stared at their guilty faces.
“You’re going out again,” he said.
“No, no, no,” said Hermione. “No, we’re not. Why don’t you go to bed, Neville?”
Harry looked at the grandfather clock by the door. They couldn’t afford to waste any more time, Snape might even now be playing Fluffy to sleep.
“You can’t go out,” said Neville, “you’ll be caught again. Gryffindor will be in even more trouble.”
“You don’t understand,” said Harry, “this is important.”
But Neville was clearly steeling himself to do something desperate.
I won’t let you do it,” he said, hurrying to stand in front of the portrait hole. “I’ll — I’ll fight you!”
“Neville, “Ron exploded, “get away from that hole and don’t be an idiot –”
“Don’t you call me an idiot!” said Neville. I don’t think you should be breaking any more rules! And you were the one who told me to stand up to people!”
“Yes, but not to us,” said Ron in exasperation. “Neville, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
He took a step forward and Neville dropped Trevor the toad, who leapt out of sight.
“Go on then, try and hit me!” said Neville, raising his fists. “I’m ready!”
Harry turned to Hermione.
“Do something,” he said desperately.
Hermione stepped forward.
“Neville,” she said, “I’m really, really sorry about this.”
She raised her wand.
“Petrificus Totalus!” she cried, pointing it at Neville.
Neville’s arms snapped to his sides. His legs sprang together. His whole body rigid, he swayed where he stood and then fell flat on his face, stiff as a board.
Hermione ran to turn him over. Neville’s jaws were jammed together so he couldn’t speak. Only his eyes were moving, looking at them in horror.
“What’ve you done to him?” Harry whispered.
“It’s the full Body-Bind,” said Hermione miserably. “Oh, Neville, I’m so sorry.”
“We had to, Neville, no time to explain,” said Harry.
“You’ll understand later, Neville,” said Ron as they stepped over him and pulled on the invisibility cloak.
But leaving Neville lying motionless on the floor didn’t feel like a very good omen. In their nervous state, every statue’s shadow looked like Filch, every distant breath of wind sounded like Peeves swooping down on them. At the foot of the first set of stairs, they spotted Mrs. Norris skulking near the top.
“Oh, let’s kick her, just this once,” Ron whispered in Harry’s ear, but Harry shook his head. As they climbed carefully around her, Mrs. Norris turned her lamplike eyes on them, but didn’t do anything.
They didn’t meet anyone else until they reached the staircase up to the third floor. Peeves was bobbing halfway up, loosening the carpet so that people would trip.
“Who’s there?” he said suddenly as they climbed toward him. He narrowed his wicked black eyes. “Know you’re there, even if I can’t see you. Are you ghoulie or ghostie or wee student beastie?”
He rose up in the air and floated there, squinting at them.
“Should call Filch, I should, if something’s a-creeping around unseen.”
Harry had a sudden idea.
“Peeves,” he said, in a hoarse whisper, “the Bloody Baron has his own reasons for being invisible.”
Peeves almost fell out of the air in shock. He caught himself in time and hovered about a foot off the stairs.
“So sorry, your bloodiness, Mr. Baron, Sir,” he said greasily. “My mistake, my mistake — I didn’t see you — of course I didn’t, you’re invisible — forgive old Peevsie his little joke, sir.”
“I have business here, Peeves,” croaked Harry. “Stay away from this place tonight.”
“I will, sir, I most certainly will,” said Peeves, rising up in the air again. “Hope your business goes well, Baron, I’ll not bother you.”
And he scooted off “Brilliant, Harry!” whispered Ron.
A few seconds later, they were there, outside the third-floor corridor — and the door was already ajar.
“Well, there you are,” Harry said quietly, “Snape’s already got past Fluffy.”
Seeing the open door somehow seemed to impress upon all three of them what was facing them. Underneath the cloak, Harry turned to the other two.
“If you want to go back, I won’t blame you,” he said. “You can take the cloak, I won’t need it now.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Ron.
“We’re coming,” said Hermione.
Harry pushed the door open.
As the door creaked, low, rumbling growls met their ears. All three of the dog’s noses sniffed madly in their direction, even though it couldn’t see them.
“What’s that at its feet?” Hermione whispered.
“Looks like a harp,” said Ron. “Snape must have left it there.”
“It must wake up the moment you stop playing,” said Harry. “Well, here goes…”
He put Hagrid’s flute to his lips and blew. It wasn’t really a tune, but from the first note the beast’s eyes began to droop. Harry hardly drew breath. Slowly, the dog’s growls ceased — it tottered on its paws and fell to its knees, then it slumped to the ground, fast asleep.
“Keep playing,” Ron warned Harry as they slipped out of the cloak and crept toward the trapdoor. They could feel the dog’s hot, smelly breath as they approached the giant heads. “I think we’ll be able to pull the door open,” said Ron, peering over the dog’s back. “Want to go first, Hermione?”
“No, I don’t!”
“All right.” Ron gritted his teeth and stepped carefully over the dog’s legs. He bent and pulled the ring of the trapdoor, which swung up and open.
“What can you see?” Hermione said anxiously.
“Nothing — just black — there’s no way of climbing down, we’ll just have to drop.”
Harry, who was still playing the flute, waved at Ron to get his attention and pointed at himself.
“You want to go first? Are you sure?” said Ron. “I don’t know how deep this thing goes. Give the flute to Hermione so she can keep him asleep.”
Harry handed the flute over. In the few seconds’ silence, the dog growled and twitched, but the moment Hermione began to play, it fell back into its deep sleep.
Harry climbed over it and looked down through the trapdoor. There was no sign of the bottom.
He lowered himself through the hole until he was hanging on by his fingertips. Then he looked up at Ron and said, “If anything happens to me, don’t follow. Go straight to the owlery and send Hedwig to Dumbledore, right?”
“Right,” said Ron.
“See you in a minute, I hope…
And Harry let go. Cold, damp air rushed past him as he fell down, down, down and — FLUMP. With a funny, muffled sort of thump he landed on something soft. He sat up and felt around, his eyes not used to the gloom. It felt as though he was sitting on some sort of plant.
“It’s okay!” he called up to the light the size of a postage stamp, which was the open trapdoor, “it’s a soft landing, you can jump!”
Ron followed right away. He landed, sprawled next to Harry.
“What’s this stuff?” were his first words.
“Dunno, some sort of plant thing. I suppose it’s here to break the fall.
Come on, Hermione!”
The distant music stopped. There was a loud bark from the dog, but Hermione had already jumped. She landed on Harry’s other side.
“We must be miles under the school , she said.
“Lucky this plant thing’s here, really,” said Ron.
“Lucky!” shrieked Hermione. “Look at you both!”
She leapt up and struggled toward a damp wall. She had to struggle because the moment she had landed, the plant had started to twist snakelike tendrils around her ankles. As for Harry and Ron, their legs had already been bound tightly in long creepers without their noticing.
Hermione had managed to free herself before the plant got a firm grip on her. Now she watched in horror as the two boys fought to pull the plant off them, but the more they strained against it, the tighter and faster the plant wound around them.
“Stop moving!” Hermione ordered them. “I know what this is — it’s Devil’s Snare!”
“Oh, I’m so glad we know what it’s called, that’s a great help,” snarled Ron, leaning back, trying to stop the plant from curling around his neck. “Shut up, I’m trying to remember how to kill it!” said Hermione.
“Well, hurry up, I can’t breathe!” Harry gasped, wrestling with it as it curled around his chest.
“Devil’s Snare, Devil’s Snare… what did Professor Sprout say? — it likes the dark and the damp “So light a fire!” Harry choked.
“Yes — of course — but there’s no wood!” Hermione cried, wringing her hands.
“HAVE YOU GONE MAD?” Ron bellowed. “ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?”
“Oh, right!” said Hermione, and she whipped out her wand, waved it, muttered something, and sent a jet of the same bluebell flames she had used on Snape at the plant. In a matter of seconds, the two boys felt it loosening its grip as it cringed away from the light and warmth.
Wriggling and flailing, it unraveled itself from their bodies, and they were able to pull free.
“Lucky you pay attention in Herbology, Hermione,” said Harry as he joined her by the wall, wiping sweat off his face.
“Yeah,” said Ron, “and lucky Harry doesn’t lose his head in a crisis — ‘there’s no wood,’ honestly.”
“This way,” said Harry, pointing down a stone passageway, which was the only way forward.
All they could hear apart from their footsteps was the gentle drip of water trickling down the walls. The passageway sloped downward, and Harry was reminded of Gringotts. With an unpleasant jolt of the heart, he remembered the dragons said to be guarding vaults in the wizards’ bank. If they met a dragon, a fully-grown dragon — Norbert had been bad enough…
“Can you hear something?” Ron whispered.
Harry listened. A soft rustling and clinking seemed to be coming from up ahead.
“Do you think it’s a ghost?”
“I don’t know… sounds like wings to me.”
“There’s light ahead — I can see something moving.”
They reached the end of the passageway and saw before them a brilliantly lit chamber, its ceiling arching high above them. It was full of small, jewel-bright birds, fluttering and tumbling all around the room. On the opposite side of the chamber was a heavy wooden door.
“Do you think they’ll attack us if we cross the room?” said Ron.
“Probably,” said Harry. “They don’t look very vicious, but I suppose if they all swooped down at once… well, there’s no other choice… I’ll run.”
He took a deep breath, covered his face with his arms, and sprinted across the room. He expected to feel sharp beaks and claws tearing at him any second, but nothing happened. He reached the door untouched. He pulled the handle, but it was locked.
The other two followed him. They tugged and heaved at the door, but it wouldn’t budge, not even when Hermione tried her Alohomora charm.
“Now what?” said Ron.
“These birds… they can’t be here just for decoration,” said Hermione.
They watched the birds soaring overhead, glittering — glittering? “They’re not birds!” Harry said suddenly. “They’re keys! Winged keys — look carefully. So that must mean…” he looked around the chamber while the other two squinted up at the flock of keys. “… yes — look! Broomsticks! We’ve got to catch the key to the door!”
“But there are hundreds of them!”
Ron examined the lock on the door.
“We’re looking for a big, old-fashioned one — probably silver, like the handle.”
They each seized a broomstick and kicked off into the air, soaring into the midst of the cloud of keys. They grabbed and snatched, but the bewitched keys darted and dived so quickly it was almost impossible to catch one.
Not for nothing, though, was Harry the youngest Seeker in a century. He had a knack for spotting things other people didn’t. After a minute’s weaving about through the whirl of rainbow feathers, he noticed a large silver key that had a bent wing, as if it had already been caught and stuffed roughly into the keyhole.
“That one!” he called to the others. “That big one — there — no, there — with bright blue wings — the feathers are all crumpled on one side.”
Ron went speeding in the direction that Harry was pointing, crashed into the ceiling, and nearly fell off his broom.
“We’ve got to close in on it!” Harry called, not taking his eyes off the key with the damaged wing. “Ron, you come at it from above — Hermione, stay below and stop it from going down and I’ll try and catch it. Right, NOW!”
Ron dived, Hermione rocketed upward, the key dodged them both, and Harry streaked after it; it sped toward the wall, Harry leaned forward and with a nasty, crunching noise, pinned it against the stone with one hand. Ron and Hermione’s cheers echoed around the high chamber.
They landed quickly, and Harry ran to the door, the key struggling in his hand. He rammed it into the lock and turned — it worked. The moment the lock had clicked open, the key took flight again, looking very battered now that it had been caught twice.
“Ready?” Harry asked the other two, his hand on the door handle. They nodded. He pulled the door open.
The next chamber was so dark they couldn’t see anything at all. But as they stepped into it, light suddenly flooded the room to reveal an astonishing sight.
They were standing on the edge of a huge chessboard, behind the black chessmen, which were all taller than they were and carved from what looked like black stone. Facing them, way across the chamber, were the white pieces. Harry, Ron and Hermione shivered slightly — the towering white chessmen had no faces.
“Now what do we do?” Harry whispered.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” said Ron. “We’ve got to play our way across the room.”
Behind the white pieces they could see another door.
“How?” said Hermione nervously.
“I think,” said Ron, “we’re going to have to be chessmen.”
He walked up to a black knight and put his hand out to touch the knight’s horse. At once, the stone sprang to life. The horse pawed the ground and the knight turned his helmeted head to look down at Ron.
“Do we — er — have to join you to get across?” The black knight nodded. Ron turned to the other two.
“This needs thinking about he said. I suppose we’ve got to take the place of three of the black pieces….”
Harry and Hermione stayed quiet, watching Ron think. Finally he said, “Now, don’t be offended or anything, but neither of you are that good at chess –”
“We’re not offended,” said Harry quickly. “Just tell us what to do.”
“Well, Harry, you take the place of that bishop, and Hermione, YOU 90 next to him instead of that castle.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to be a knight,” said Ron.
The chessmen seemed to have been listening, because at these words a knight, a bishop, and a castle turned their backs on the white pieces and walked off the board, leaving three empty squares that Harry, Ron, and Hermione took.
“White always plays first in chess,” said Ron, peering across the board.
“Yes… look…”
A white pawn had moved forward two squares.
Ron started to direct the black pieces. They moved silently wherever he sent them. Harry’s knees were trembling. What if they lost? “Harry — move diagonally four squares to the right.”
Their first real shock came when their other knight was taken. The white queen smashed him to the floor and dragged him off the board, where he lay quite still, facedown.
“Had to let that happen,” said Ron, looking shaken. “Leaves you free to take that bishop, Hermione, go on.”
Every time one of their men was lost, the white pieces showed no mercy.
Soon there was a huddle of limp black players slumped along the wall.
Twice, Ron only just noticed in time that Harry and Hermione were in danger. He himself darted around the board, taking almost as many white pieces as they had lost black ones.
“We’re nearly there,” he muttered suddenly. “Let me think let me think…”
The white queen turned her blank face toward him.
“Yes…” said Ron softly, “It’s the only way… I’ve got to be taken.”
“NOF Harry and Hermione shouted.
“That’s chess!” snapped Ron. “You’ve got to make some sacrifices! I take one step forward and she’ll take me — that leaves you free to checkmate the king, Harry!”
“But –”
“Do you want to stop Snape or not?”
“Ron –”
“Look, if you don’t hurry up, he’ll already have the Stone!”
There was no alternative.
“Ready?” Ron called, his face pale but determined. “Here I go – now, don’t hang around once you’ve won.”
He stepped forward, and the white queen pounced. She struck Ron hard across the head with her stone arm, and he crashed to the floor – Hermione screamed but stayed on her square – the white queen dragged Ron to one side. He looked as if he’d been knocked out.
Shaking, Harry moved three spaces to the left.
The white king took off his crown and threw it at Harry’s feet. They had won. The chessmen parted and bowed, leaving the door ahead clear. With one last desperate look back at Ron, Harry and Hermione charged through the door and up the next passageway.
“What if he’s –?”
“He’ll be all right,” said Harry, trying to convince himself. “What do you reckon’s next?”
“We’ve had Sprout’s, that was the Devil’s Snare; Flitwick must’ve put charms on the keys; McGonagall transfigured the chessmen to make them alive; that leaves Quirrell’s spell, and Snape’s.”
They had reached another door.
“All right?” Harry whispered.
“Go on.”
Harry pushed it open.
A disgusting smell filled their nostrils, making both of them pull their robes up over their noses. Eyes watering, they saw, flat on the floor in front of them, a troll even larger than the one they had tackled, out cold with a bloody lump on its head.
“I’m glad we didn’t have to fight that one,” Harry whispered as they stepped carefully over one of its massive legs. “Come on, I can’t breathe.”
He pulled open the next door, both of them hardly daring to look at what came next – but there was nothing very frightening in here, just a table with seven differently shaped bottles standing on it in a line.
“Snape’s,” said Harry. “What do we have to do?”
They stepped over the threshold, and immediately a fire sprang up behind them in the doorway. It wasn’t ordinary fire either; it was purple. At the same instant, black flames shot up in the doorway leading onward.
They were trapped.
“Look!” Hermione seized a roll of paper lying next to the bottles. Harry looked over her shoulder to read it: Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind, Two of us will help you, which ever you would find, One among us seven will let you move ahead, Another will transport the drinker back instead, Two among our number hold only nettle wine, Three of us are killers, waiting bidden in line.
Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore, To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four: First, however slyly the poison tries to hide You will always find some on nettle wine’s left side; Second, different are those who stand at either end, But if you would move onward, neither is your friend; Third, as you see clearly, all are different size, Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides; Fourth, the second left and the second on the right Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight.
Hermione let out a great sigh and Harry, amazed, saw that she was smiling, the very last thing he felt like doing.
“Brilliant,” said Hermione. “This isn’t magic — it’s logic — a puzzle.
A lot of the greatest wizards haven’t got an ounce of logic, they’d be stuck in here forever.”
“But so will we, won’t we?” “Of course not,” said Hermione. “Everything we need is here on this paper. Seven bottles: three are poison; two are wine; one will get us safely through the black fire, and one will get us back through the purple.”
“But how do we know which to drink?”
“Give me a minute.”
Hermione read the paper several times. Then she walked up and down the line of bottles, muttering to herself and pointing at them. At last, she clapped her hands.
“Got it,” she said. “The smallest bottle will get us through the black fire — toward the Stone.”
Harry looked at the tiny bottle.
“There’s only enough there for one of us,” he said. “That’s hardly one swallow.”
They looked at each other.
“Which one will get you back through the purple flames?”
Hermione pointed at a rounded bottle at the right end of the line.
“You drink that,” said Harry. “No, listen, get back and get Ron. Grab brooms from the flying- key room, they’ll get you out of the trapdoor and past Fluffy — go straight to the owlery and send Hedwig to Dumbledore, we need him. I might be able to hold Snape off for a while, but I’m no match for him, really.”
“But Harry — what if You-Know-Who’s with him?”
“Well — I was lucky once, wasn’t I?” said Harry, pointing at his scar.
“I might get lucky again.”
Hermione’s lip trembled, and she suddenly dashed at Harry and threw her arms around him.
“Hermione!”
“Harry — you’re a great wizard, you know.”
“I’m not as good as you,” said Harry, very embarrassed, as she let go of him.
“Me!” said Hermione. “Books! And cleverness! There are more important things — friendship and bravery and — oh Harry — be careful!”
“You drink first,” said Harry. “You are sure which is which, aren’t you?”
“Positive,” said Hermione. She took a long drink from the round bottle at the end, and shuddered.
“It’s not poison?” said Harry anxiously.
“No — but it’s like ice.”
“Quick, go, before it wears off.”
“Good luck — take care.”
“GO!”
Hermione turned and walked straight through the purple fire.
Harry took a deep breath and picked up the smallest bottle. He turned to face the black flames.
“Here I come,” he said, and he drained the little bottle in one gulp.
It was indeed as though ice was flooding his body. He put the bottle down and walked forward; he braced himself, saw the black flames licking his body, but couldn’t feel them — for a moment he could see nothing but dark fire — then he was on the other side, in the last chamber.
There was already someone there — but it wasn’t Snape. It wasn’t even Voldemort.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE MAN WITH TWO FACES It was Quirrell.
“You!” gasped Harry.
Quirrell smiled. His face wasn’t twitching at all.
“Me,” he said calmly. “I wondered whether I’d be meeting you here, Potter.”
“But I thought — Snape –”
“Severus?” Quirrell laughed, and it wasn’t his usual quivering treble, either, but cold and sharp. “Yes, Severus does seem the type, doesn’t he? So useful to have him swooping around like an overgrown bat. Next to him, who would suspect p-p-poor, st-stuttering P-Professor Quirrell?”
Harry couldn’t take it in. This couldn’t be true, it couldn’t.
“But Snape tried to kill me!”
“No, no, no. I tried to kill you. Your friend Miss Granger accidentally knocked me over as she rushed to set fire to Snape at that Quidditch match. She broke my eye contact with you. Another few seconds and I’d have got you off that broom. I’d have managed it before then if Snape hadn’t been muttering a countercurse, trying to save you.”
“Snape was trying to save me?”
“Of course,” said Quirrell coolly. “\Why do you think he wanted to referee your next match? He was trying to make sure I didn’t do it again. Funny, really… he needn’t have bothered. I couldn’t do anything with Dumbledore watching. All the other teachers thought Snape was trying to stop Gryffindor from winning, he did make himself unpopular…
and what a waste of time, when after all that, I’m going to kill you tonight.”
Quirrell snapped his fingers. Ropes sprang out of thin air and wrapped themselves tightly around Harry.
“You’re too nosy to live, Potter. Scurrying around the school on Halloween like that, for all I knew you’d seen me coming to look at what was guarding the Stone.”
“You let the troll in?”
“Certainly. I have a special gift with trolls — you must have seen what I did to the one in the chamber back there? Unfortunately, while everyone else was running around looking for it, Snape, who already suspected me, went straight to the third floor to head me off — and not only did my troll fail to beat you to death, that three-headed dog didn’t even manage to bite Snape’s leg off properly.
“Now, wait quietly, Potter. I need to examine this interesting mirror.
It was only then that Harry realized what was standing behind Quirrell.
It was the Mirror of Erised.
“This mirror is the key to finding the Stone,” Quirrell murmured, tapping his way around the frame. “Trust Dumbledore to come up with something like this… but he’s in London… I’ll be far away by the time he gets back….”
All Harry could think of doing was to keep Quirrell talking and stop him from concentrating on the mirror.
“I saw you and Snape in the forest –” he blurted out.
“Yes,” said Quirrell idly, walking around the mirror to look at the back. “He was on to me by that time, trying to find out how far I’d got.
He suspected me all along. Tried to frighten me – as though he could, when I had Lord Voldemort on my side….”
Quirrell came back out from behind the mirror and stared hungrily into it.
“I see the Stone… I’m presenting it to my master… but where is it?”
Harry struggled against the ropes binding him, but they didn’t give. He had to keep Quirrell from giving his whole attention to the mirror.
“But Snape always seemed to hate me so much.”
“Oh, he does,” said Quirrell casually, “heavens, yes. He was at Hogwarts with your father, didn’t you know? They loathed each other. But he never wanted you dead.”
“But I heard you a few days ago, sobbing — I thought Snape was threatening you….”
For the first time, a spasm of fear flitted across Quirrell’s face.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I find it hard to follow my master’s instructions — he is a great wizard and I am weak –”
“You mean he was there in the classroom with you?” Harry gasped.
“He is with me wherever I go,” said Quirrell quietly. “I met him when I traveled around the world. A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it…. Since then, I have served him faithfully, although I have let him down many times. He has had to be very hard on me.”
Quirrell shivered suddenly. “He does not forgive mistakes easily. When I failed to steal the stone from Gringotts, he was most displeased. He punished me… decided he would have to keep a closer watch on me….”
Quirrell’s voice trailed away. Harry was remembering his trip to Diagon Alley -how could he have been so stupid? He’d seen Quirrell there that very day, shaken hands with him in the Leaky Cauldron.
Quirrell cursed under his breath.
“I don’t understand… is the Stone inside the mirror? Should I break it?”
Harry’s mind was racing.
What I want more than anything else in the world at the moment, he thought, is to find the Stone before Quirrell does. So if I look in the mirror, I should see myseff finding it — which means I’ll see where it’s hidden! But how can I look without Quirrell realizing what I’m up to? He tried to edge to the left, to get in front of the glass without Quirrell noticing, but the ropes around his ankles were too tight: he tripped and fell over. Quirrell ignored him. He was still talking to himself. “What does this mirror do? How does it work? Help me, Master!”
And to Harry’s horror, a voice answered, and the voice seemed to come from Quirrell himself “Use the boy… Use the boy…”
Quirrell rounded on Harry.
“Yes — Potter — come here.”
He clapped his hands once, and the ropes binding Harry fell off. Harry got slowly to his feet.
“Come here,” Quirrell repeated. “Look in the mirror and tell me what you see.”
Harry walked toward him.
I must lie, he thought desperately. I must look and lie about what I see, that’s all.
Quirrell moved close behind him. Harry breathed in the funny smell that seemed to come from Quirrell’s turban. He closed his eyes, stepped in front of the mirror, and opened them again.
He saw his reflection, pale and scared-looking at first. But a moment later, the reflection smiled at him. It put its hand into its pocket and pulled out a blood-red stone. It winked and put the Stone back in its pocket — and as it did so, Harry felt something heavy drop into his real pocket. Somehow — incredibly — he’d gotten the Stone.
“Well?” said Quirrell impatiently. “What do you see?”
Harry screwed up his courage.
“I see myself shaking hands with Dumbledore,” he invented. “I — I’ve won the house cup for Gryffindor.”
Quirrell cursed again.
“Get out of the way,” he said. As Harry moved aside, he felt the Sorcerer’s Stone against his leg. Dare he make a break for it? But he hadn’t walked five paces before a high voice spoke, though Quirrell wasn’t moving his lips.
“He lies… He lies…”
“Potter, come back here!” Quirrell shouted. “Tell me the truth! What did you just see?”
The high voice spoke again.
“Let me speak to him… face-to-face…”
“Master, you are not strong enough!”
“I have strength enough… for this….”
Harry felt as if Devil’s Snare was rooting him to the spot. He couldn’t move a muscle. Petrified, he watched as Quirrell reached up and began to unwrap his turban. What was going on? The turban fell away. Quirrell’s head looked strangely small without it. Then he turned slowly on the spot.
Harry would have screamed, but he couldn’t make a sound. Where there should have been a back to Quirrell’s head, there was a face, the most terrible face Harry had ever seen. It was chalk white with glaring red eyes and slits for nostrils, like a snake.
“Harry Potter…” it whispered.
Harry tried to take a step backward but his legs wouldn’t move.
“See what I have become?” the face said. “Mere shadow and vapor … I have form only when I can share another’s body… but there have always been those willing to let me into their hearts and minds…. Unicorn blood has strengthened me, these past weeks… you saw faithful Quirrell drinking it for me in the forest… and once I have the Elixir of Life, I will be able to create a body of my own…. Now… why don’t you give me that Stone in your pocket?”
So he knew. The feeling suddenly surged back into Harry’s legs. He stumbled backward.
“Don’t be a fool,” snarled the face. “Better save your own life and join me… or you’ll meet the same end as your parents…. They died begging me for mercy…”
“LIAR!” Harry shouted suddenly.
Quirrell was walking backward at him, so that Voldemort could still see him. The evil face was now smiling.
“How touching…” it hissed. “I always value bravery… Yes, boy, your parents were brave…. I killed your father first; and he put up a courageous fight… but your mother needn’t have died… she was trying to protect you…. Now give me the Stone, unless you want her to have died in vain.”
“NEVER!”
Harry sprang toward the flame door, but Voldemort screamed “SEIZE HIM!”
and the next second, Harry felt Quirrell’s hand close on his wrist. At once, a needle-sharp pain seared across Harry’s scar; his head felt as though it was about to split in two; he yelled, struggling with all his might, and to his surprise, Quirrell let go of him. The pain in his head lessened — he looked around wildly to see where Quirrell had gone, and saw him hunched in pain, looking at his fingers — they were blistering before his eyes.
“Seize him! SEIZE HIM!” shrieked Voldemort again, and Quirrell lunged, knocking Harry clean off his feet’ landing on top of him, both hands around Harry’s neck — Harry’s scar was almost blinding him with pain, yet he could see Quirrell howling in agony.
“Master, I cannot hold him — my hands — my hands!”
And Quirrell, though pinning Harry to the ground with his knees, let go of his neck and stared, bewildered, at his own palms — Harry could see they looked burned, raw, red, and shiny.
“Then kill him, fool, and be done!” screeched Voldemort.
Quirrell raised his hand to perform a deadly curse, but Harry, by instinct, reached up and grabbed Quirrell’s face — “AAAARGH!”
Quirrell rolled off him, his face blistering, too, and then Harry knew: Quirrell couldn’t touch his bare skin, not without suffering terrible pain — his only chance was to keep hold of Quirrell, keep him in enough pain to stop him from doing a curse.
Harry jumped to his feet, caught Quirrell by the arm, and hung on as tight as he could. Quirrell screamed and tried to throw Harry off — the pain in Harry’s head was building — he couldn’t see — he could only hear Quirrell’s terrible shrieks and Voldemort’s yells of, “KILL HIM! KILL HIM!” and other voices, maybe in Harry’s own head, crying, “Harry! Harry!”
He felt Quirrell’s arm wrenched from his grasp, knew all was lost, and fell into blackness, down … down… down…
Something gold was glinting just above him. The Snitch! He tried to catch it, but his arms were too heavy.
He blinked. It wasn’t the Snitch at all. It was a pair of glasses. How strange.
He blinked again. The smiling face of Albus Dumbledore swam into view above him.
“Good afternoon, Harry,” said Dumbledore. Harry stared at him. Then he remembered: “Sir! The Stone! It was Quirrell! He’s got the Stone! Sir, quick –”
“Calm yourself, dear boy, you are a little behind the times,” said Dumbledore. “Quirrell does not have the Stone.”
“Then who does? Sir, I –”
“Harry, please relax, or Madam Pomfrey will have me thrown out.
Harry swallowed and looked around him. He realized he must be in the hospital wing. He was lying in a bed with white linen sheets, and next to him was a table piled high with what looked like half the candy shop.
“Tokens from your friends and admirers,” said Dumbledore, beaming. “What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows. I believe your friends Misters Fred and George Weasley were responsible for trying to send you a toilet seat. No doubt they thought it would amuse you. Madam Pomfrey, however, felt it might not be very hygienic, and confiscated it.”
“How long have I been in here?”
“Three days. Mr. Ronald Weasley and Miss Granger will be most relieved you have come round, they have been extremely worried.”
“But sit, the Stone I see you are not to be distracted. Very well, the Stone. Professor Quirrell did not manage to take it from you. I arrived in time to prevent that, although you were doing very well on your own, I must say.
“You got there? You got Hermione’s owl?”
“We must have crossed in midair. No sooner had I reached London than it became clear to me that the place I should be was the one I had just left. I arrived just in time to pull Quirrell off you.”
“It was you.”
“I feared I might be too late.”
“You nearly were, I couldn’t have kept him off the Stone much longer –”
“Not the Stone, boy, you — the effort involved nearly killed you. For one terrible moment there, I was afraid it had. As for the Stone, it has been destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” said Harry blankly. “But your friend — Nicolas Flamel –”
“Oh, you know about Nicolas?” said Dumbledore, sounding quite delighted.
“You did do the thing properly, didn’t you? Well, Nicolas and I have had a little chat, and agreed it’s all for the best.”
“But that means he and his wife will die, won’t they?”
“They have enough Elixir stored to set their affairs in order and then, yes, they will die.”
Dumbledore smiled at the look of amazement on Harry’s face.
“To one as young as you, I’m sure it seems incredible, but to Nicolas and Perenelle, it really is like going to bed after a very, very long day. After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. You know, the Stone was really not such a wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all — the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.” Harry lay there, lost for words. Dumbledore hummed a little and smiled at the ceiling.
“Sir?” said Harry. “I’ve been thinking… sir — even if the Stone’s gone, Vol-, I mean, You-Know- Who –”
“Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.”
“Yes, sir. Well, Voldemort’s going to try other ways of coming back, isn’t he? I mean, he hasn’t gone, has he?”
“No, Harry, he has not. He is still out there somewhere, perhaps looking for another body to share… not being truly alive, he cannot be killed.
He left Quirrell to die; he shows just as little mercy to his followers as his enemies. Nevertheless, Harry, while you may only have delayed his return to power, it will merely take someone else who is prepared to fight what seems a losing battle next time — and if he is delayed again, and again, why, he may never return to power.”
Harry nodded, but stopped quickly, because it made his head hurt. Then he said, “Sir, there are some other things I’d like to know, if you can tell me… things I want to know the truth about….”
“The truth.” Dumbledore sighed. “It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution. However, I shall answer your questions unless I have a very good reason not to, in which case I beg you’ll forgive me. I shall not, of course, lie.”
“Well… Voldemort said that he only killed my mother because she tried to stop him from killing me. But why would he want to kill me in the first place?”
Dumbledore sighed very deeply this time.
“Alas, the first thing you ask me, I cannot tell you. Not today. Not now. You will know, one day… put it from your mind for now, Harry.
When you are older… I know you hate to hear this… when you are ready, you will know.”
And Harry knew it would be no good to argue.
“But why couldn’t Quirrell touch me?”
“Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realize that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign… to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed, and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good.”
Dumbledore now became very interested in a bird out on the windowsill, which gave Harry time to dry his eyes on the sheet. When he had found his voice again, Harry said, “And the invisibility cloak – do you know who sent it to me?”
“Ah – your father happened to leave it in my possession, and I thought you might like it.” Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled. “Useful things… your father used it mainly for sneaking off to the kitchens to steal food when he was here.”
“And there’s something else…”
“Fire away.”
“Quirrell said Snape –”
“Professor Snape, Harry.” “Yes, him — Quirrell said he hates me because he hated my father. Is that true?”
“Well, they did rather detest each other. Not unlike yourself and Mr. Malfoy. And then, your father did something Snape could never forgive.”
“What?”
“He saved his life.”
“What?”
“Yes…” said Dumbledore dreamily. “Funny, the way people’s minds work, isn’t it? Professor Snape couldn’t bear being in your father’s debt….
I do believe he worked so hard to protect you this year because he felt that would make him and your father even. Then he could go back to hating your father’s memory in peace….”
Harry tried to understand this but it made his head pound, so he stopped.
“And sir, there’s one more thing…”
“Just the one?”
“How did I get the Stone out of the mirror?”
“Ah, now, I’m glad you asked me that. It was one of my more brilliant ideas, and between you and me, that’s saying something. You see, only one who wanted to find the Stone — find it, but not use it — would be able to get it, otherwise they’d just see themselves making gold or drinking Elixir of Life. My brain surprises even me sometimes…. Now, enough questions. I suggest you make a start on these sweets. Ah! Bettie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans! I was unfortunate enough in my youth to come across a vomitflavored one, and since then I’m afraid I’ve rather lost my liking for them — but I think I’ll be safe with a nice toffee, don’t you?”
He smiled and popped the golden-brown bean into his mouth. Then he choked and said, “Alas! Ear wax!”
Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, was a nice woman, but very strict.
“Just five minutes,” Harry pleaded.
“Absolutely not.”
“You let Professor Dumbledore in…”
“Well, of course, that was the headmaster, quite different. You need rest.”
“I am resting, look, lying down and everything. Oh, go on, Madam Pomfrey…”
“Oh, very well,” she said. “But five minutes only.”
And she let Ron and Hermione in.
“Harry!”
Hermione looked ready to fling her arms around him again, but Harry was glad she held herself in as his head was still very sore.
“Oh, Harry, we were sure you were going to — Dumbledore was so worried –”
“The whole school’s talking about it,” said Ron. “What really happened?”
It was one of those rare occasions when the true story is even more strange and exciting than the wild rumors. Harry told them everything: Quirrell; the mirror; the Stone; and Voldemort. Ron and Hermione were a very good audience; they gasped in all the right places, and when Harry told them what was under Quirrell’s turban, Hermione screamed out loud.
“So the Stone’s gone?” said Ron finally. “Flamel’s just going to die?”
“That’s what I said, but Dumbledore thinks that — what was it? — ‘to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.
“I always said he was off his rocker,” said Ron, looking quite impressed at how crazy his hero was.
“So what happened to you two?” said Harry.
“Well, I got back all right,” said Hermione. “I brought Ron round — that took a while — and we were dashing up to the owlery to contact Dumbledore when we met him in the entrance hall — he already knew — he just said, ‘Harry’s gone after him, hasn’t he?’ and hurtled off to the third floor.”
“D’you think he meant you to do it?” said Ron. “Sending you your father’s cloak and everything?”
“Well, ” Hermione exploded, “if he did — I mean to say that’s terrible — you could have been killed.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Harry thoughtfully. “He’s a funny man, Dumbledore.
I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don’t think it was an accident he let me find out how the mirror worked. It’s almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could….”
“Yeah, Dumbledore’s off his rocker, all right,” said Ron proudly.
“Listen, you’ve got to be up for the end-of-year feast tomorrow. The points are all in and Slytherin won, of course — you missed the last Quidditch match, we were steamrollered by Ravenclaw without you — but the food’ll be good.”
At that moment, Madam Pomfrey bustled over.
“You’ve had nearly fifteen minutes, now OUT” she said firmly.
After a good night’s sleep, Harry felt nearly back to normal.
I want to go to the feast,” he told Madam Pomfrey as she straightened his many candy boxes. I can, can’t I?”
“Professor Dumbledore says you are to be allowed to go,” she said stiffily, as though in her opinion Professor Dumbledore didn’t realize how risky feasts could be. “And you have another visitor.”
“Oh, good,” said Harry. “Who is it?”
Hagrid sidled through the door as he spoke. As usual when he was indoors, Hagrid looked too big to be allowed. He sat down next to Harry, took one look at him, and burst into tears.
“It’s — all — my — ruddy — fault!” he sobbed, his face in his hands.
I told the evil git how ter get past Fluffy! I told him! It was the only thing he didn’t know, an’ I told him! Yeh could’ve died! All fer a dragon egg! I’ll never drink again! I should be chucked out an’ made ter live as a Muggle!”
“Hagrid!” said Harry, shocked to see Hagrid shaking with grief and remorse, great tears leaking down into his beard. “Hagrid, he’d have found out somehow, this is Voldemort we’re talking about, he’d have found out even if you hadn’t told him.”
“Yeh could’ve died!” sobbed Hagrid. “An’ don’ say the name!”
“VOLDEMORT!” Harry bellowed, and Hagrid was so shocked, he stopped crying. “I’ve met him and I’m calling him by his name. Please cheer up, Hagrid, we saved the Stone, it’s gone, he can’t use it. Have a Chocolate Frog, I’ve got loads….”
Hagrid wiped his nose on the back of his hand and said, “That reminds me. I’ve got yeh a present.”
“It’s not a stoat sandwich, is it?” said Harry anxiously, and at last Hagrid gave a weak chuckle. “Nah. Dumbledore gave me the day off yesterday ter fix it. ‘Course, he shoulda sacked me instead — anyway, got yeh this…”
It seemed to be a handsome, leather-covered book. Harry opened it curiously. It was full of wizard photographs. Smiling and waving at him from every page were his mother and father.
“Sent owls off ter all yer parents’ old school friends, askin’ fer photos… knew yeh didn’ have any… d’yeh like it?”
Harry couldn’t speak, but Hagrid understood.
Harry made his way down to the end-of-year feast alone that night. He had been held up by Madam Pomfrey’s fussing about, insisting on giving him one last checkup, so the Great Hall was already full. It was decked out in the Slytherin colors of green and silver to celebrate Slytherin’s winning the house cup for the seventh year in a row. A huge banner showing the Slytherin serpent covered the wall behind the High Table.
When Harry walked in there was a sudden hush, and then everybody started talking loudly at once. He slipped into a seat between Ron and Hermione at the Gryffindor table and tried to ignore the fact that people were standing up to look at him.
Fortunately, Dumbledore arrived moments later. The babble died away.
“Another year gone!” Dumbledore said cheerfully. “And I must trouble you with an old man’s wheezing waffle before we sink our teeth into our delicious feast. What a year it has been! Hopefully your heads are all a little fuller than they were… you have the whole summer ahead to get them nice and empty before next year starts….
“Now, as I understand it, the house cup here needs awarding, and the points stand thus: In fourth place, Gryffindor, with three hundred and twelve points; in third, Hufflepuff, with three hundred and fifty-two; Ravenclaw has four hundred and twenty-six and Slytherin, four hundred and seventy- two.”
A storm of cheering and stamping broke out from the Slytherin table.
Harry could see Draco Malfoy banging his goblet on the table. It was a sickening sight.
“Yes, Yes, well done, Slytherin,” said Dumbledore. “However, recent events must be taken into account.”
The room went very still. The Slytherins’ smiles faded a little.
“Ahem,” said Dumbledore. “I have a few last-minute points to dish out.
Let me see. Yes…
“First — to Mr. Ronald Weasley…”
Ron went purple in the face; he looked like a radish with a bad sunburn.
“…for the best-played game of chess Hogwarts has seen in many years, I award Gryffindor house fifty points.”
Gryffindor cheers nearly raised the bewitched ceiling; the stars overhead seemed to quiver. Percy could be heard telling the other prefects, “My brother, you know! My youngest brother! Got past McGonagall’s giant chess set!”
At last there was silence again.
“Second — to Miss Hermione Granger… for the use of cool logic in the face of fire, I award Gryffindor house fifty points.”
Hermione buried her face in her arms; Harry strongly suspected she had burst into tears. Gryffindors up and down the table were beside themselves — they were a hundred points up. “Third — to Mr. Harry Potter…” said Dumbledore. The room went deadly quiet for pure nerve and outstanding courage, I award Gryffindor house sixty points.”
The din was deafening. Those who could add up while yelling themselves hoarse knew that Gryffindor now had four hundred and seventy-two points — exactly the same as Slytherin. They had tied for the house cup — if only Dumbledore had given Harry just one more point.
Dumbledore raised his hand. The room gradually fell silent.
“There are all kinds of courage,” said Dumbledore, smiling. “It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. I therefore award ten points to Mr. Neville Longbottom.”
Someone standing outside the Great Hall might well have thought some sort of explosion had taken place, so loud was the noise that erupted from the Gryffindor table. Harry, Ron, and Hermione stood up to yell and cheer as Neville, white with shock, disappeared under a pile of people hugging him. He had never won so much as a point for Gryffindor before.
Harry, still cheering, nudged Ron in the ribs and pointed at Malfoy, who couldn’t have looked more stunned and horrified if he’d just had the Body-Bind Curse put on him.
“Which means, Dumbledore called over the storm of applause, for even Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were celebrating the downfall of Slytherin, “we need a little change of decoration.”
He clapped his hands. In an instant, the green hangings became scarlet and the silver became gold; the huge Slytherin serpent vanished and a towering Gryffindor lion took its place. Snape was shaking Professor McGonagall’s hand, with a horrible, forced smile. He caught Harry’s eye and Harry knew at once that Snape’s feelings toward him hadn’t changed one jot. This didn’t worry Harry. It seemed as though life would be back to normal next year, or as normal as it ever was at Hogwarts.
It was the best evening of Harry’s life, better than winning at Quidditch, or Christmas, or knocking out mountain trolls… he would never, ever forget tonight.
Harry had almost forgotten that the exam results were still to come, but come they did. To their great surprise, both he and Ron passed with good marks; Hermione, of course, had the best grades of the first years. Even Neville scraped through, his good Herbology mark making up for his abysmal Potions one. They had hoped that Goyle, who was almost as stupid as he was mean, might be thrown out, but he had passed, too. It was a shame, but as Ron said, you couldn’t have everything in life.
And suddenly, their wardrobes were empty, their trunks were packed, Neville’s toad was found lurking in a corner of the toilets; notes were handed out to all students, warning them not to use magic over the holidays (“I always hope they’ll forget to give us these,” said Fred Weasley sadly); Hagrid was there to take them down to the fleet of boats that sailed across the lake; they were boarding the Hogwarts Express; talking and laughing as the countryside became greener and tidier; eating Bettie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans as they sped past Muggle towns; pulling off their wizard robes and putting on jackets and coats; pulling into platform nine and three-quarters at King’s Cross Station.
It took quite a while for them all to get off the platform. A wizened old guard was up by the ticket barrier, letting them go through the gate in twos and threes so they didn’t attract attention by all bursting out of a solid wall at once and alarming the Muggles.
“You must come and stay this summer,” said Ron, “both of you — I’ll send you an owl.”
“Thanks,” said Harry, “I’ll need something to look forward to.” People jostled them as they moved forward toward the gateway back to the Muggle world. Some of them called: “Bye, Harry!”
“See you, Potter!”
“Still famous,” said Ron, grinning at him.
“Not where I’m going, I promise you,” said Harry.
He, Ron, and Hermione passed through the gateway together. “There he is, Mom, there he is, look!”
It was Ginny Weasley, Ron’s younger sister, but she wasn’t pointing at Ron.
“Harry Potter!” she squealed. “Look, Mom! I can see “Be quiet, Ginny, and it’s rude to point.”
Mrs. Weasley smiled down at them.
“Busy year?” she said.
“Very,” said Harry. “Thanks for the fudge and the sweater, Mrs. Weasley.”
“Oh, it was nothing, dear.”
“Ready, are you?”
It was Uncle Vernon, still purple-faced, still mustached, still looking furious at the nerve of Harry, carrying an owl in a cage in a station full of ordinary people. Behind him stood Aunt Petunia and Dudley, looking terrified at the very sight of Harry.
“You must be Harry’s family!” said Mrs. Weasley.
“In a manner of speaking,” said Uncle Vernon. “Hurry up, boy, we haven’t got all day.” He walked away.
Harry hung back for a last word with Ron and Hermione.
“See you over the summer, then.”
“Hope you have — er — a good holiday,” said Hermione, looking uncertainly after Uncle Vernon, shocked that anyone could be so unpleasant.
“Oh, I will,” said Harry, and they were surprised at the grin that was spreading over his face. “They don’t know we’re not allowed to use magic at home. I’m going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer….”
THE END
�BARRON’S BOOK NOTES
JANE AUSTEN’S
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
^^^^^^^^^^JANE AUSTEN: THE AUTHOR AND HER TIMES
Jane Austen was a country parson’s daughter who lived most of her life in a tiny English village. She began writing her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, when she was still in her late teens. When she wrote the original version of her second and most famous novel, Pride and Prejudice (originally entitled First Impressions), she was not yet twenty-one. At that time she had never been away from home, except for a few years at a girls’ boarding school before the age of ten. And yet, although she had seen almost nothing of the world beyond Steventon, the town where she grew up, she was able to write a witty, worldly novel of love, money, and marriage.
Jane Austen’s world seems very narrow to us today. The year she was born, 1775, was an important one in English as well as American history, but to the people of the little village of Steventon, the American Revolution was something very far away that hardly touched their lives at all. Years later while Austen was writing her novels, England was involved in the Napoleonic Wars, but you won’t find much mention of them in her work. One reason these wars did not affect the English at home very much was that they were fought entirely on foreign soil or at sea, and they did not involve very large numbers of Englishmen. (Two of Jane Austen’s brothers did see combat as naval officers and both reached the rank of admiral, and a naval officer who did well in the wars is one of her most attractive heroes in her last novel, Persuasion.) Another reason is that–without television, radio, telephones, automobiles, or even railroads–news traveled slowly.
People traveled very little, and when they did it was on foot, by public coach, or–if they could afford it–by private carriage. In the evenings they sat together around the fire, mother and girls mending or embroidering by candlelight and often someone reading aloud. For entertainment, they might visit a neighbor or go to a dance in the village public hall. At these so-called assemblies, young people were chaperoned by mothers and aunts, and only the most correct behavior was tolerated. If there was a large estate in the neighborhood, the squire or lord of the manor would give evening parties and occasionally a ball, to which his lady would invite the leading families of the countryside.
Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice in the family sitting room while her six brothers and a sister, her father’s pupils, and visiting neighbors swirled around her. She would cover her manuscript with a blotter during interruptions and take up her pen again when the room was quiet. All the while, she was watching, listening, and thinking about the world around her. The novel reflects her understanding of and active involvement with “ordinary” people.
The plot of Pride and Prejudice is based on the concerns of people in early nineteenth-century country society. One of these concerns is money. Austen could observe the money problems of a middle-class family right in her own home. As a clergyman of the Church of England, her father was an educated man and a gentleman. But his parish consisted of only about three hundred people, and his income didn’t provide well for his family, so he had to take in students in addition to his church duties. Even so, he could send only one son, the oldest, to Oxford, and he couldn’t give his daughters attractive dowries or an income if they remained unmarried.
Like other young women of their social class, Jane and her sister Cassandra were educated, mostly at home, in the “ladylike” subjects of music, drawing and painting, needlework, and social behavior. Thanks to her father and her own literary tastes, Jane was also very well read. Tall and graceful, with dark hair and beautiful hazel eyes, she enjoyed parties, liked to dance, and had numerous suitors. As it turned out, however, neither Jane nor her sister Cassandra ever married. After their father died in 1805, they and their mother were cared for by a brother who had been adopted by a wealthy childless couple and had inherited a sizable estate. (Such adoptions were a fairly common custom of the time.)
Such realities of middle-class life are central to Pride and Prejudice. Critics of a hundred or so years ago called Jane Austen “vulgar” and “mercenary,” because she writes so frankly about money. One of the first things we learn about her characters, for example, is how much income they have. Her critics considered it bad taste to talk about money, either one’s own or someone else’s.
But in the middle class of Jane Austen’s time, the amount of your income could be a matter of life and death. What is more, it was not money you worked for and earned that mattered, but money you were born to or inherited. People who worked–businessmen, manufacturers, and even some professional people, such as lawyers–were not accepted as members of the “gentry.” They were “in trade,” and the gentry looked down on them.
While Austen was writing, a great change was coming over England. The industrial revolution was reaching its height, and a new middle class of prosperous factory owners was developing. Yet in the midst of this change, one ancient English tradition still survived, and that was that the true gentry were not the newly rich in the cities but those who lived on their inherited estates. The new middle class, who had become rich “in trade,” were therefore buying manor houses and estates in the country, and setting up their heirs as members of the landed aristocracy.
In Pride and Prejudice the two leading male characters represent this social change. Mr. Darcy’s aristocratic family goes back for generations, and he draws his income from his vast estate of tenant farms. His friend Mr. Bingley, however, is heir to a fortune made “in trade” and is looking for a suitable country estate to establish himself in the upper class.
Notice how different characters in the novel react to these social distinctions. Jane Austen herself, through her heroine Elizabeth, expresses her contempt for snobbery. You’ll find that she pokes fun at the snobs and makes them her most comical characters.
Still, there was a very serious side to all this, and that was the situation of young women. In our time, women have many other choices in addition to marriage. In Jane Austen’s time it wasn’t so. A young woman of her class depended for her happiness, her health, in fact the whole shape of her life, on her making a good marriage. If her husband was poor or a gambler or a drunkard, she and her children could suffer genuine privation. A girl with no fortune of her own often could not attract a husband. Then she might have to become a governess, living in other people’s houses, looking after their children and subject to their whims.
The necessity of making a good marriage is one of the major themes of Pride and Prejudice, but that doesn’t mean the novel is old fashioned. In fact, you may find that you can make a good argument for calling Jane Austen a feminist and her novel a feminist novel. It’s a serious novel in many ways, but also a very funny one.
Jane Austen began writing novels simply to entertain herself and her family, with no idea of having her stories published. In her time, novels weren’t considered a respectable form of literature, rather the way murder mysteries and Gothic romances are looked down on in our own time. Ministers preached and social critics thundered against the habit of reading novels. Meanwhile, hundreds of novels were being published–most of them trashy romances or wildly exaggerated adventure yarns–and people went right on reading them.
Most of these novels, including some of the better ones, were written by women. Writing was one of the few possible occupations for an intelligent, educated woman. Women could write at home while fulfilling their traditional role of running a household and bringing up children. They could stay out of the public eye, hiding behind an assumed name. George Eliot’s real name was Mary Ann Travers, the Bronte sisters wrote under the name of Bell, and George Sand in real life was Madame Dudevant. When Jane Austen’s books were finally published, thanks to her brother Henry who acted as her agent, the title page just said “By a Lady.” Her novels were read by a small, exclusive audience during her lifetime. She lived a quiet life and never yearned for celebrity.
Austin was working on her sixth and last novel, Persuasion, when Henry fell ill and she moved to London to nurse him. Soon afterward her own health began to fail. With Cassandra as her nurse and companion, she moved to Winchester to be treated by a famous surgeon there. He apparently could not help her, and on July 18, 1817, she died, just five months short of her forty-second birthday.
Judging from her letters, which radiate good humor and laugh off minor misfortunes, Jane Austen’s life, although short, was a busy and contented one. If the lively, witty Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice was modeled on any living person, the model must have been Jane Austen herself.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: THE PLOT
In the neighborhood of the Bennet family’s estate of Longbourn, Mr. Bingley, an attractive young bachelor with a good income, has moved into the nearby manor. He falls in love with the oldest of the five Bennet daughters, Jane. But his friend, wealthy and aristocratic Mr. Darcy, disapproves of Bingley’s choice. Darcy considers the Bennet family to be socially inferior, and he plots with Bingley’s sisters to separate the lovers. Meanwhile, though, Darcy is finding it hard to resist his own increasing attraction to Jane’s next younger sister, the vivacious Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is prejudiced against Darcy because he seems so proud and conceited. She also suspects that he has interfered between Jane and Bingley. She is even more put off when she hears that Darcy has treated a young man, George Wickham, cruelly and unjustly. Wickham tells her that Darcy has denied him the inheritance that his godfather, Darcy’s father, left him. Wickham courts Elizabeth, and his good looks, charming manners, and story of injustice at Darcy’s hands win her sympathy and deepen her prejudice against Darcy.
Because Mr. Bennet has no son, his estate will be inherited by his nearest male relative, Mr. Collins. This pompous clergyman comes to Longbourn seeking a wife. He proposes to Elizabeth, who rejects him–even though marrying him would be the one way to keep Longbourn in the family. But he wins her best friend, Charlotte Lucas, a plain young woman who marries Collins to escape from spinsterhood into a safe, if loveless, marriage.
The story continues with an interweaving of plot and subplots. Elizabeth visits Charlotte, now Mrs. Collins. Darcy visits his aunt, Lady Catherine, who is Mr. Collins’s patron. Darcy and Elizabeth meet constantly, and at last he proposes to her, saying with more honesty than tact that he does this against his better judgment. She angrily rejects him, accusing him of destroying Jane’s happiness and Wickham’s legitimate prospects. Later, in an earnest letter, he tells her the truth on both counts: he did interfere between Jane and Bingley, but he did not treat Wickham unjustly. In fact, he says, Wickham is a thoroughly bad character. Elizabeth believes Darcy for once, and her prejudice against him begins to weaken.
Elizabeth goes on a trip with her aunt and uncle, the Gardiners. They come to Darcy’s magnificent estate in his absence and are shown through the house. His housekeeper praises him for his goodness and generosity, painting a very different picture of him from the one Elizabeth has had. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Darcy himself arrives. Elizabeth is mortified to be found there, but he is full of courtesy to the Gardiners and very attentive to Elizabeth.
Bad news comes from Longbourn: The youngest Bennet girl, giddy sixteen-year-old Lydia, has run away with Wickham. Such a scandal must disgrace the whole family, and Elizabeth decides that now, just as her feelings toward Darcy have begun to change, any hope of his renewing his proposal is lost forever.
But not so. Darcy feels partially responsible for Lydia’s elopement; he feels he should have warned the Bennets that Wickham once tried the same thing with Darcy’s own sister. Besides, he is very much in love with Elizabeth. For her sake he searches out the fugitive couple, makes sure that they are legally married, pays Wickham’s debts, and buys him a commission in the army. All this he does secretly. But, though sworn to secrecy, Lydia reveals Darcy’s part in her rescue–and Elizabeth realizes at last how wrong she’s been about him all along.
Bingley, with Darcy’s encouragement, proposes to Jane and is accepted. Soon Darcy makes his proposal again to Elizabeth. By now she has abandoned her prejudice and he has subdued his pride, and so they are married and all ends happily.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: ELIZABETH BENNET
The leading female character in the novel is just under twenty-one. She is not as beautiful as her older sister but pretty enough, with fine eyes and a light, graceful figure. Mr. Darcy is attracted by her looks, but he especially likes what he calls her “lively mind”–she herself calls it her “impertinence.” She is quick to make fun of people’s absurdities and hypocrisies, but she’s also deeply serious about some things–particularly about people’s power to make each other happy or unhappy. This seriousness is the main source of her prejudice against Darcy, and also–when she learns more about him–the source of her love for him. Unlike Jane, she is quick to express her feelings; she is fiery in expressing her anger at Darcy for what she believes he has done to make Jane unhappy and to ruin Wickham’s prospects. She also tries to persuade her father that he must be firm with Lydia, but she fails to budge him. She is too loyal to criticize her father openly, but she admits to herself that he is wrong in his treatment both of Lydia and of his wife.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: FITZWILLIAM DARCY
Darcy is the leading male character in the novel, a tall, handsome man of twenty-eight, who first scorns and then falls in love with Elizabeth, much against his will. Unlike his friend Bingley, who is delighted with the friendly country society, Darcy’s first impression is that there is no one attractive enough to dance with or even talk to. Even Elizabeth seems to him merely “tolerable” when he first sees her. His ancient family name, magnificent estate, and sizable fortune all contribute to his pride. But there’s another side to his character, as Elizabeth and we, the readers, learn. He is a generous master to his servants and tenants and a loving brother to his young sister Georgiana. He is so steadfast in his love for Elizabeth–even though she has rejected him,–that he finds and rescues her sister from disgrace. He does this in secret, not expecting even to be thanked for it. He is too honorable to win Elizabeth’s hand by this unselfish action alone. He does not want her gratitude; he wants her love. Darcy’s character gradually unfolds in the course of the story, and we, along with Elizabeth, like him better the more sides of him we see. We also see that he takes Elizabeth’s criticism of him to heart–makes an effort to curb his pride and judge people according to what they really are, not merely by their rank in society. He demonstrates this change by his politeness and then his growing friendship with Elizabeth’s aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, even though Mr. Gardiner is “in trade.” The gradual revelation and development of Darcy’s character–from pride to generosity and gentleness–is one of the strengths of the novel.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: JANE BENNET
Elizabeth’s older sister is in her early twenties. She is the family beauty, and she is also the sweetest-natured of the family. She can’t see anybody’s faults and is never cross or angry. Her calmness and even temper turn out to be a disadvantage to her, however, when she doesn’t seem to return Bingley’s affection and he is easily discouraged from proposing to her. Although Jane hides her feelings from most people, Elizabeth knows that she really loves Bingley and suffers at losing him.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHARLES BINGLEY
Darcy’s friend provides a contrast to Darcy the way Jane provides contrast to Elizabeth. Where Darcy is proud and hard to please, Bingley is easygoing and ready to like everybody. He is also good-looking and a highly eligible bachelor. As the heir to a fortune, he is looking for a country estate, but he is taking his time and enjoying his freedom. Although he is attractive, he is unsure of himself and quick to believe Darcy when Darcy says that Jane Bennet doesn’t love him. When Darcy changes his opinion of the situation, Bingley just as readily renews his attentions to Jane and wins her hand. As Elizabeth says, from Darcy’s point of view Bingley is a most convenient friend, so willing to be led in the way that Darcy wants him to go.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CAROLINE BINGLEY
Charles’s sister is a fashionable young woman and what we today would call a social climber. She would like to forget that her own and her brother’s fortunes were made “in trade” and is ambitious to step up higher in society by way of marriage. When Charles seems interested in Jane Bennet, Caroline pretends to be friendly to her, but she lets Jane know that she hopes her brother will marry Darcy’s sister. She also conspires with Darcy to separate her brother from Jane. As for Elizabeth, Caroline is barely polite to her face and critical, even spiteful, behind her back. She is obviously jealous of Darcy’s growing interest in Elizabeth. She herself had hoped to marry him.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: MR. BENNET
Elizabeth’s father is a witty, scholarly country gentleman whose comments and opinions contribute much to the comedy of the novel. But he is also a disappointed man, who long ago gave up all hope of finding happiness in his marriage–and who treats his foolish wife and younger daughters as objects of amusement. He loves his two older girls, Jane and Elizabeth (Elizabeth is his favorite). But his unwillingness to control his wife’s silly talk and his youngest daughter Lydia’s flirtatious behavior comes close to wrecking both Jane’s and Elizabeth’s hopes of making happy marriages. Another of his disappointments is that his estate is entailed–meaning that it can go only to a male heir–and he has no son. Like most human beings, he would like to avoid unpleasantness, particularly the unpleasantness of having to save money and provide for the future. In his early years, always expecting the birth of a boy, he saw no need to save any of his income in order to provide for his daughters’ future. By the time the fifth Bennet baby turned out to be still another girl, it seemed to him too late to do anything about the situation. Elizabeth loves her father dearly, but even she can’t pretend that he doesn’t have these serious faults as a husband and father.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: MRS. BENNET
Elizabeth’s mother is a figure of fun from the very opening scene of the novel; the fact is that she is really not very bright. Her whole purpose in life is to get her daughters married, but her lack of sense and judgment goes far to damage their prospects. She babbles constantly, complains of her nerves, and takes to her bed when things go wrong. She is even more embarrassing to her two older daughters when she is in good spirits, making silly comments and boasting loudly of their expectations. Her indulgence of Lydia’s wildness carries the family to the brink of disaster.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: LYDIA BENNET
The youngest daughter is a feather-brained sixteen-year-old interested only in bonnets, balls, and flirting with the officers stationed in town. She is not beautiful, but her youth and high spirits make her attractive–she is probably much like what Mrs. Bennet was at that age. Like her mother, she has little common sense, no judgment of right and wrong, and no understanding of the suffering her thoughtless behavior causes her family, particularly her older sisters. Both she and Mrs. Bennet take pride in the fact that Lydia is the first of the girls to be married, with no thought at all of the circumstances of the marriage, the character of her husband, and the poor prospects for their future happiness.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: MARY BENNET
Mary is the middle sister, a plain, bookish girl given to showing off her musical accomplishments, much to Elizabeth’s embarrassment.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CATHERINE BENNET
Kitty, as she is called, is older than Lydia but trails after her and shares in the younger girl’s misadventures.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: GEORGE WICKHAM
Wickham first comes on the scene as the most attractive man Elizabeth has ever met. When he pays attention to her, she is too flattered to be suspicious of how much he is confiding in someone he hardly knows. He tells her about growing up on the Darcy estate, where his father was Darcy’s father’s steward. He claims that after Darcy’s father’s death, Darcy refused to provide for him as the elder Darcy had wished. Considering how Elizabeth already feels about Darcy, she is all too ready to believe and sympathize with Wickham. Like most people, she is eager to like and think the best of someone who shows that he likes her, no matter what her judgment might otherwise tell her. She is so prejudiced–against Darcy and in Wickham’s favor–that she doesn’t doubt Wickham’s story for a moment. In fact, however, Wickham is the only real villain in the novel. He is a gambler and fortune hunter, forever in debt and forever seeking to marry a girl with money. As Elizabeth later learns, he once tried to elope with Darcy’s sister, an heiress. When he runs away with Elizabeth’s sister Lydia, he is in fact running away to escape his debts, and he lets Lydia come along–not because he cares for her, but because she wants to go with him and he doesn’t mind having a female companion.
As you read the novel, ask yourself to what degree Wickham’s character is the result of his position in society. As an estate steward’s son, he was only a little higher in social rank than a farmer, but Darcy’s father was fond of him and gave him the education of a gentleman. This raised his expectations and gave him a taste for high living. He tells Elizabeth that Darcy was jealous of his father’s affection for him. In fact, Wickham has always been–understandably–jealous of Darcy, who was born to wealth and status. Of course Wickham could have made a life for himself as a clergyman, which was the future that Darcy’s father foresaw for him, or in the army, which would have been more to his own taste. But his appetite for pleasure and excitement, so much like Lydia’s, makes it certain that he will never behave in a mature, responsible way.
NOTE: By running off with Lydia, Wickham seems at first to have destroyed all hope of happiness for both Jane and Elizabeth. In the end, though, his behavior actually helps bring both pairs of lovers together–thanks to Jane Austen’s skill with characters and plot.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: REVEREND WILLIAM COLLINS
Mr. Bennet’s cousin and heir to the Longbourn estate is one of Jane Austen’s great comic creations. He is an example of how she expressed her criticisms of society through humor. Mr. Collins is pompous, pretentious, and obviously hypocritical in his moral judgments; and he takes every opportunity to flatter and win the approval of his social superiors. He comes to Longbourn in search of a wife, a well-meaning attempt to compensate the Bennets by keeping the estate in the family. But of course Elizabeth won’t have him, so he sneaks off across the fields to Lucas Lodge to try for Charlotte, who needs no coaxing to accept him. As you will see, Collins’s meddling in the Bennet family’s affairs is not only a source of comedy; it also–ironically–helps to bring Elizabeth and Darcy together.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHARLOTTE LUCAS
Elizabeth’s best friend is intelligent but plain. Like Elizabeth and Jane, she has no fortune of her own; unlike them, she has little chance of attracting a husband of her own choosing. Charlotte shocks Elizabeth by accepting a proposal of marriage from the ridiculous Mr. Collins. Marriage to this foolish, pompous man cannot promise companionship–let alone love–but it does promise security, and that is enough for Charlotte. In her opinion, happiness in marriage is all a matter of chance. In the character of Charlotte, Jane Austen gives us a picture of the reality that the ordinary young woman of her class had to face. While Jane with her beauty and Elizabeth with her wit and charm might win a good man’s love, a plain, sensible girl like Charlotte could only try to achieve security and perhaps some comfort in a home of her own.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: LADY CATHERINE DE BOURGH
Darcy’s aunt and Mr. Collins’s patron, is another of Austen’s comic creations. She is a bossy woman who considers it her duty to look into people’s affairs and tell them how to manage their lives. She visits Elizabeth for the sole purpose of getting her to promise not to marry Mr. Darcy. In the end, though, her interference–and her report to Darcy of Elizabeth’s response to it–give Darcy the courage to propose again.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: MR. AND MRS. GARDINER
Elizabeth’s uncle and aunt, are Jane Austen’s answer to the snobs she makes fun of in the novel. Mr. Gardiner is “in trade” and the Gardiner home is in an unfashionable part of London. But the Gardiner’s are as well bred as the born gentry and have better manners than some titled folk–for example Darcy’s own aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Edward Gardiner is Mrs. Bennet’s brother, but he is nothing like her. He is a sensible, dignified, and responsible gentleman. His wife is fashionable in a quiet way, and a loving adviser to Elizabeth and Jane. The Gardiners bring Elizabeth and Darcy together by chance, and Darcy’s politeness to her uncle and aunt lets Elizabeth know that he still cares for her and that he realizes not all of her family are like her mother and younger sisters. The Gardiners are the ones to whom Darcy turns for help in rescuing Lydia, and it is from Mrs. Gardiner that Elizabeth finally learns of Darcy’s generosity on behalf of her family.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: MISS DE BOURGH
Lady Catherine’s daughter.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: GEORGIANA DARCY
Darcy’s sister.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: SIR WILLIAM AND LADY LUCAS
Charlotte Lucas’s parents.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: MR. AND MRS. PHILIPS
Mrs. Bennet’s sister and brother-in-law.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: MR. AND MRS. HURT
Bingley’s married sister and her husband.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: SETTING
Jane Austen sets her novel in places she was probably familiar with as a girl. Mr. Bennet’s modest gentleman’s estate is the main setting with excursions to (a) Meryton, a provincial town within walking distance where a regiment of militia is the chief attraction for the younger Bennet girls; and (b) the more distant and far grander Pemberley, Mr. Darcy’s inherited manor in Derbyshire. Some action takes place in the more modest manor house of Netherfield. Rented by Mr. Bingley, Netherfield is located in the neighborhood of the Bennet home of Longbourn.
Although never specifically described, the various rooms in which the Bennet family live and entertain their visitors, the surrounding gardens where they walk, and the farm that provides their income, all become familiar to us. So does the main street of Meryton where the Bennet girls encounter the officers on their walks and their Aunt Philips keeps track of comings and goings from her window.
The only setting that is described in detail is Pemberley. There the beauty of every view and the good taste of every rich furnishing become part of the developing love story of Elizabeth and Darcy. You can see the novelist’s skillful hand here, in the economy with which she uses the physical description of this setting both to unfold significant aspects of her hero’s character and to advance her plot.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: THEME
How to get a husband, and preferably a rich one, is the central theme of the novel. Austen’s concern with money has won her the accusation of being vulgar and mercenary. Yet in her hands, under the guise of comedy, the subject is transformed into a serious and sympathetic exposure of the lot of women in her society. For the women of her time marriage on any terms was often the only escape from a depressing spinsterhood in respectable poverty. Around this crucial issue of marriage she weaves her lively subthemes of social criticism, making fun of snobbery, hypocrisy, the spiteful gossip of respectable housewives and the prying impertinence of ladies of title. While the drive of her story is getting the Bennet girls married, Austen incidentally examines marriage itself, and its effect on five different couples. She comments, through her heroine, on the ironic fact that the Bennets must be happy over a marriage (Lydia’s to Wickham) that can bring no happiness to anyone. Here is a brief look at some of the subthemes:
1. GOOD MANNERS
Every society has its rules of social behavior, but manners are much less important today than they were in Jane Austen’s time. Her world was dominated by social rituals that had built-in rules–balls, formal visits, and conversations in which people were supposed to avoid personal or otherwise embarrassing subjects. In Pride and Prejudice Austen demonstrates her view that these rules are necessary: they constitute civil and considerate behavior, the “oil” that allows relationships to run smoothly. She is often critical of characters who break the rules and sometimes uses them for comic effect–as when Lady Catherine de Bourgh pries into the Bennet family’s affairs. Mr. Collins represents the other side of the coin–he is comic because he carries good manners to a ridiculous extreme. Elizabeth represents the middle ground. When Mr. Collins proposes, she rejects him with a proper “thank you.” But when Darcy proposes, she tells him that she cannot express gratitude to him because she does not feel gratitude–and she goes on to tell him exactly how she does feel, in words that bristle with angry criticism of him. It is clear that while Jane Austen approves of the correct forms of social behavior, she makes fun of them when they are carried to excess, and she does not approve of them as cover-ups of strong and justifiable feelings.
2. PRIVILEGE AND RESPONSIBILITY
The English gentry, as Jane Austen shows us, were highly privileged people. When Darcy is criticized for being proud, Charlotte Lucas comes to his defense, saying that a man of his wealth and family background has a right to be proud. As the story unfolds, however, it becomes clear that privilege brings with it responsibilities–ones that Darcy takes seriously. For example, his housekeeper tells of his generous treatment of his servants and tenants. And, shortly after that, Darcy undertakes the rescue of Lydia and the rehabilitation of Wickham, at least as far as he is able. Darcy’s sense of responsibility impresses Elizabeth and finally wipes away her prejudice against him.
3. RELATIONSHIPS
Jane Austen is known for her perceptive depiction of relationships. In Pride and Prejudice, for example, she shows us all kinds of marriages, no two of them alike: Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Charlotte and Mr. Collins, Lydia and Wickham, Jane and Bingley, and, finally, Elizabeth and Darcy. She also shows us other kinds of relationships: the sisterly relationship of Jane and Elizabeth, the aunt and niece relationship of Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner. Finally, there are the friendships: Elizabeth and Charlotte enjoy a friendship of equals, even though they do not always agree. Darcy and Bingley, on the other hand, have an odd relationship in which Bingley confesses himself to be in awe of Darcy, and Darcy, the stronger character, has taken on a responsibility for his friend’s welfare–to the point of manipulating him away from courting Jane.
At the end of the novel, when Darcy and Elizabeth are married, Darcy’s sister Georgiana is amazed that Elizabeth can tease Darcy and make him laugh at himself–a privilege, as Jane Austen points out, that a wife may have but not a younger sister. In this final subtle touch Jane Austen shows her mastery of the art of relationships.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: STYLE
Jane Austen’s graceful, economical narrative style was unique in her time. It was an era in literature given to flowery wordiness and emotional excess. Readers of the day could take their choice among collections of sermons to improve their minds, tales of sin and punishment to improve their morals, and horror stories to stimulate their circulation. Pride and Prejudice is told in a readable prose without a single superfluous word, and it frequently breaks into dialogue so lively and so revealing of characters that entire scenes have been lifted bodily from the novel and reproduced in dramatized versions for stage and screen. In some passages the author enters into the mind of one or another of her characters, most often into her heroine Elizabeth’s, and there she reveals her character’s capacity for humor and self-criticism. Austen’s style is so deceptively lucid that we can hardly believe she submitted her writing to so much polishing and revision.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: POINT OF VIEW
Pride and Prejudice is mostly written from the objective view of an external observer. However, from time to time the novel departs from this objective storytelling approach to explore the thoughts and feelings of a character–either Darcy as he slips little by little into love with Elizabeth, or Elizabeth as she considers her own behavior and the behavior of others. Whatever the approach whether through Elizabeth’s mind or through the voice of a narrator, the point of view is always and unmistakably Jane Austen’s. It is always her sharply critical eye, youthful though it was when she wrote the novel, that observes and subtly comments on her society’s follies and foibles, making us laugh but also making us aware. When we finish her book we know very well the defects she saw in the people of her world, but we also know how much she enjoyed her life among them, faults and all.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: FORM AND STRUCTURE
Like her writing style, the structure of Jane Austen’s novel is deceptively simple. She appears to be telling a straightforward story, character by character and happening by happening, exactly as it occurred in chronological sequence. We can in fact read the novel that way. But on closer look we find that Pride and Prejudice is not merely a record of events. Instead, it is an interweaving of plot and subplots, an intricate pattern with various threads.
The main plot follows the far from smooth course of the romance between Elizabeth and Darcy and the conflict of his pride and her prejudice. Their feelings, born of first impressions, are not the only obstacles between them. Three subplots complicate their relationship.
The first is Bingley’s attraction to Jane Bennet and Darcy’s intervention to save his friend from what he sees as an undesirable marriage. The second is Wickham’s involvement with the Darcy family, and his ability to charm Elizabeth and deepen her prejudice against Darcy. The third is Charlotte Lucas’ marriage to Mr. Collins, which throws Elizabeth and Darcy together and sharpens their differences.
Elizabeth ends up rejecting Darcy in what we come to see as the first dramatic climax of the story. The Wickham subplot brings on the second dramatic climax: his elopement with Lydia and the scandal and probable ruin of the entire Bennet family.
Austen maintains an air of suspense to the very end. She also keeps her three subplots alive with a novelist’s juggling skill. In the end, all three subplots contribute to the resolution of the principal plot, and the hero and heroine come together in happiness at last.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER ONE
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
This opening line of Pride and Prejudice has become one of the most famous sentences in English literature. With this single short statement, Jane Austen does three things:
1. She declares one of her major themes: Money and Marriage.
2. She establishes an ironic, humorous tone by using very intellectual-sounding words to introduce a subject that is not intellectual at all–the search for someone to marry.
3. She sets the stage for a chase–either by the young man in search of a bride, or by young women in pursuit of him as a husband.
As we all know from reading adventure stories or watching slapstick movie comedies, a chase can be one of the most entertaining forms of narrative. Jane Austen seemed to know that too, because from the opening scene that follows her first sentence, the chase is on.
Mrs. Bennet tells her husband that a single young man, Mr. Bingley, has rented the nearby manor house of Netherfield. She is sure that he will fall in love with one of the Bennet daughters, and tells Mr. Bennet that he must begin the acquaintance at once by calling on him. Mr. Bennet teases her by saying she should send her daughters themselves over to Mr. Bingley so that he can get a good look at them. She is offended at the suggestion and complains of her poor nerves. Mrs. Bennet never knows when her husband is making fun of her.
NOTE: The opening scene of the novel is written almost entirely in dialogue. This is the way Jane Austen develops both her characters and her story. She does not tell, she shows. Pride and Prejudice has been successfully adapted for three forms of the drama–stage, motion pictures, and television–and you can see why just from this first scene. If you were to make a note of similar scenes as they occur, you’d see that by assembling them you’d have the whole action of the novel in dramatic form. One of the most entertaining ways to enjoy and understand the novel is to read some of these scenes aloud or even act them out.
The short first chapter makes clear in a few lines of dialogue the relationship of Elizabeth’s parents and the quality of their marriage. Most of the novel is about young women hoping to get married, yet here at the very start of the story we find a couple who are not a good example of happiness in marriage. In the course of the novel, Austen shows how several other marriages work. Some are happy, some not, and no two are alike. In a society in which marriage was so important to women–and to men–the qualities that make a marriage succeed are quite a serious matter. Austen treats the subject with comedy, but underneath the comic surface she is very serious. Notice, as you read, what qualities she shows us as good and bad in a marriage.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWO
In another scene of domestic comedy, Mr. Bennet is teasing his wife again, but by this time he has done his social duty and introduced himself to Bingley. Mrs. Bennet expresses her joy in the same way she expressed her disappointment earlier–excessively. She is already planning when she can invite the newcomer to dinner.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THREE
Mr. Bingley returns Mr. Bennet’s visit, but he does not see the young ladies. They, however, try to watch him from an upstairs window, although all they can see is that he wears a blue coat and rides a black horse.
NOTE: By having the sisters watch Bingley from a window, Austen shows us how restricted they are, compared with the young men such as Bingley, who have much more freedom.
The girls are dying to know what Mr. Bingley is like. Mr. Bennet can’t be bothered with what he considers silly questions. But their neighbor, Lady Lucas, comes calling, and she tells them what her husband has told her about Mr. Bingley. He seems to fulfill all their hopes. He’s young, handsome, and friendly–and he’ll be bringing several gentlemen and ladies to the next village ball.
In a quick transition, we are at the ball. Mr. Bingley arrives with his two sisters, the husband of one of them, and Bingley’s aristocratic friend, Mr. Darcy. Rumor runs swiftly around the assembly room: tall, handsome Mr. Darcy is twice as rich as Mr. Bingley and owns a large estate in Derbyshire.
NOTE: How much money Darcy has is the first fact we learn about him. Is that usually the first thing we want to know about a person? Do you think the people in Jane Austen’s time and social class were more mercenary than we are today? More realistic? Or was a person’s income really the most important thing about him? One thing we can say for sure is that in Austen’s time–even more than in our own–the amount of money a person’s family had determined that person’s rank in society. To know a person’s income therefore gave a very good idea of how that person stood in the world.
All too soon, Darcy offends the company by his proud and disdainful manners. While Bingley dances every dance (and two dances with Jane Bennet, as everybody notices), Darcy dances once with each of the ladies in his own group and refuses to be introduced to any others. He gives the cold shoulder to Elizabeth, telling Bingley, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” Elizabeth overhears this remark and repeats it as a funny story, so that we can’t tell whether her feelings are hurt, or whether she has already written Darcy off as too disagreeable to be bothered with.
NOTE: With a few quick strokes of dialogue and action, this scene sets up several contrasts: Bingley’s attitudes are contrasted to Darcy’s; Jane’s personality is contrasted to Elizabeth’s. What’s more, two beginning love affairs are contrasted: While the romance of Jane and Bingley starts smoothly, Elizabeth and Darcy manage to antagonize each other from the very beginning. We can look forward to seeing them strike sparks from each other whenever they meet.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FOUR
In the privacy of their room, Jane confesses to Elizabeth how much she admires Bingley and likes his sisters. Elizabeth teases her about Bingley but says nothing about his sisters–even though she finds them haughty, conceited, and insincere. This is the first time that we see Elizabeth holding back some knowledge or observation from Jane; it won’t be the last. Elizabeth may laugh at Jane sometimes, or tease her into laughing at herself when she becomes too serious, but she is also careful to protect Jane from anything that will hurt her gentle sister’s feelings.
The scene at Longbourn is mirrored in one at Netherfield, where Bingley and Darcy also rehash the ball and where opinions also differ. To Bingley, everyone at the party was delightful and Miss Jane Bennet in particular is an angel, while to Darcy it was a company that had no fashion and little beauty. He admits that Miss Bennet is pretty, but in his opinion she smiles too much. Bingley’s sisters tell him she is a sweet girl.
NOTE: The original title of Pride and Prejudice was “First Impressions.” As you read the novel, decide how accurate the characters’ first impressions of each other were–and watch how their attitudes change.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIVE
The Lucases come to visit the Bennets, and of course the subject of discussion is the ball. In this small, self-contained society, it is inevitable that such an event become the top subject of conversation. All the local gentry were there, and every word that was spoken, every move that was made, were noted and will be commented on.
Mrs. Bennet energetically voices her dislike of Darcy. Charlotte Lucas suggests that with family, fortune–everything–in his favor, Darcy has a right to be proud. Elizabeth replies laughingly that she could forgive his pride if he had not offended hers.
NOTE: This scene gives us our first indication of how different Charlotte and Elizabeth are. Charlotte is sensible and realistic, willing to accept things and people as they are. Elizabeth, for all her jokes, is very idealistic. She has high expectations about life and strict standards of how people should treat each other.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER SIX
The ladies of Netherfield and Longbourn have now exchanged visits. Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst were cool to Mrs. Bennet and her younger daughters but mentioned that they would like to see more of Jane and Elizabeth. Jane is pleased with their offer of friendship. Elizabeth is not. One thing does please Elizabeth, though: the attention Bingley’s sisters are paying to Jane proves that their brother is interested in her. And Elizabeth can tell that Jane is falling in love with Bingley.
The two friends, Elizabeth and Charlotte, talk privately about the effect the newcomers are having on the neighborhood. Elizabeth, always on the lookout for Jane’s happiness, mentions to her friend that Jane seems to be falling in love with Bingley but is hiding it well. Elizabeth’s view is that a young woman can’t let on that she is interested in a man until he openly expresses his interest in her by proposing marriage. If he doesn’t, the humiliation of having shown her feelings for him would be too much to bear.
Charlotte disagrees. She thinks Jane is hiding her feelings too well. She makes a shrewd comment: a woman would do well to show a man more than she feels for him, rather than less, in order to encourage him. Elizabeth argues against this point of view. Charlotte is right, she says, only if the woman’s main purpose is to attract a husband–whether the man loves her or not.
Charlotte makes a startling reply: she says it does not matter how well two people know each other before they marry. Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of luck, she claims. To her way of thinking, “it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.”
Do you agree with Charlotte? Add her opinion to the growing number of attitudes toward love and marriage–some romantic, some cynical–that Pride and Prejudice asks us to consider and evaluate.
NOTE: Charlotte’s comments are significant in another way. Her warning that Jane should show her feelings for Bingley gives us a foreshadowing of trouble in that romance. Also, Charlotte’s philosophy about marriage gives us a clue to how she will deal with a proposal of marriage that will soon be coming her way.
A major plot development is forecast in this chapter: Darcy is undergoing a change of feeling toward Elizabeth. Having made it clear to his friends that he finds her scarcely pretty, he is now watching her, listening to her conversations with others–he even asks her to dance. She declines, but with such charm that even her rejection pleases him. When Miss Bingley makes a guess that he is thinking of the dullness of the company, he contradicts her. No, he says, he is thinking of “the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.” To Miss Bingley’s astonishment, he even tells her frankly that the woman he means is Elizabeth Bennet. She at once reminds him that Mrs. Bennet would be his mother-in-law if he married Elizabeth. He listens to her mean-spirited comments with indifference. His interest in Elizabeth is established, and so is Miss Bingley’s jealousy.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER SEVEN
This chapter begins with a note on property law and social classes. A brief narrative paragraph establishes the facts of Mr. Bennet’s moderate income and entailed estate (see Glossary), and of Mrs. Bennet’s relatives, who are in trade. Her sister, Mrs. Philips, is the wife of an attorney in Meryton, a mile from Longbourn. The two youngest Bennet girls, Kitty and Lydia, walk to the town almost daily to look in the shops and learn the gossip by visiting their aunt.
On this day they hear something that to them is great news. A regiment of militia has arrived, to be stationed in the town for the winter. From this moment on, the two girls–especially Lydia–can talk of nothing but the officers and their hopes of being noticed by them.
NOTE: Officers in the military were ranked as gentlemen, whatever the families of their origin. It was customary for a family to buy a commission in the army or navy for a younger son who could not inherit a title or estate; or they might help out a promising young man from a lower social class in this way; he could then make a gentlemanly career in the services. It would not be out of order for a girl of the Bennet family to marry an officer, but if neither he nor she had additional income it would not be wise. They could not live comfortably on an officer’s pay.
Now we get a sample of Mrs. Bennet’s plotting. Jane is invited to dine with Bingley’s sisters. The gentlemen are to be away, dining with the officers. Mrs. Bennet decides that Jane cannot have the carriage but must go on horseback, because rain threatens. If the weather turns bad, she will have to stay overnight at Netherfield, and this will give Bingley’s interest in her an opportunity to ripen.
Mrs. Bennet’s scheme works all too well. Jane gets soaked and is kept in bed at Netherfield with a bad cold. Elizabeth hurries to her side. Jane feels so ill that Elizabeth is invited to stay and nurse her.
Here is a new situation, in which the story promises to take a fresh turn. Jane and Elizabeth are both under the same roof with Bingley and Darcy. The pace quickens from here on.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER EIGHT
Day and evening follow at Netherfield. Elizabeth looks after Jane and makes occasional appearances in the drawing room. Caroline Bingley makes sharp conversational jabs at her in her presence and spiteful comments on her appearance and manners when she is gone. Bingley disagrees with his sister, but Darcy keeps quiet. We’re not sure at this point whether Caroline is winning him over or not.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER NINE
Elizabeth is worried about Jane and sends word to her mother to come and judge for herself how sick Jane is. Mrs. Bennet finds Jane in no danger, but sees no reason to end the visit before her plan to hook Bingley has run its course. She declares that Jane is still too ill to risk the journey home. Bingley agrees: Jane must not take chances, she must stay. Mrs. Bennet and her two youngest daughters stay only a short while, but it is long enough for Elizabeth to be embarrassed by her mother’s crude and tactless remarks. Lydia adds to Elizabeth’s embarrassment by boldly demanding a promise from Bingley that he will give a ball at Netherfield as soon as Jane is better.
NOTE: Elizabeth can’t avoid the realization that her mother and Lydia are social handicaps to both herself and Jane. Mrs. Bennet is too dim-witted to understand Darcy’s most casual remark, too self-important to keep from making idiotic answers, and without the social grace to hide her dislike of him. This scene, comic to us as readers, is painful to Elizabeth. She wishes herself a thousand miles away; this is obviously the kind of embarrassment she is doomed to suffer often.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TEN
In the Netherfield drawing room, Elizabeth bends over her needlework, quietly amused by Caroline Bingley’s attentions to Darcy, who is writing a letter to his young sister. Caroline just can’t hold her tongue. She keeps pouring out compliments and messages for him to tell his sister. He simply goes on writing.
Then follows one of the novel’s lively scenes completely constructed in dialogue. The conversation reveals the personalities of Darcy, Bingley, Caroline Bingley, and Elizabeth–and shows Jane Austen at her dramatic best. Wit and repartee flow–and Darcy is so charmed by Elizabeth that he fears falling in love.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER ELEVEN
After dinner, Jane, feeling much better, joins the company. Bingley devotes himself entirely to making her comfortable. Darcy takes up a book, and Miss Bingley takes up another. She declares her delight in reading, but in fact she shows more interest in Darcy’s progress through his book than in her own. Finally, yawning, she puts her book aside and begins to walk about the room.
Darcy reads on. Miss Bingley invites Elizabeth to join her, and Elizabeth does. At this, to Miss Bingley’s annoyance, Darcy at last raises his head to watch.
Conversation resumes. The good-natured teasing between Elizabeth and Darcy becomes so lively that Miss Bingley puts an end to it by going to the piano and beginning to play. Darcy is glad to have his all too obvious interest in Elizabeth interrupted.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWELVE
Jane and Elizabeth decide it is time to leave Netherfield. Mrs. Bennet, still scheming to keep them there, sends word that she cannot send the Longbourn carriage for them. They ask Bingley for his. He agrees, while expressing his regret at their going. Darcy is troubled at the growing warmth of his feelings toward Elizabeth, so he ignores her during her last day at Netherfield. At home, Mrs. Bennet is angry that her daughters have returned sooner than she planned.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Reverend William Collins, Mr. Bennet’s cousin and heir, now enters the story. He writes a letter inviting himself to Longbourn for a two-week stay. Mr. Bennet is amused by the letter, which goes on and on with explanations, apologies, and self-important remarks.
Mr. Collins arrives. He admires his fair cousins and hints at more than admiration. He praises the house, every room, all the furniture and furnishings piece by piece. Mr. Bennet is entertained. Mrs. Bennet is gratified–until she remembers that what he is admiring will one day be his, when Mr. Bennet dies and the detestable Mr. Collins turns her and her daughters out into the cold. No effort at explanation can make her understand the entail.
NOTE: Mr. Collins’s entrance is one of pure comedy. This chapter and the next are two of the funniest in the novel, but notice how Austen also uses these scenes to develop her plot.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mr. Collins regales his cousins with long accounts of his patron and her estate. He boasts of his skill at making compliments that elegant ladies such as Lady Catherine like to hear. Mr. Bennet slyly asks whether he plans these flatteries in advance. Mr. Collins acknowledges that he does, but he takes care not to let them sound artificial. The chapter continues in a comic vein.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Mr. Collins reveals that Lady Catherine has urged him to marry. He asks Mrs. Bennet if Jane, the oldest daughter, is available. She tells him that Jane is likely soon to be engaged, and he quickly turns his attentions to Elizabeth. Unsuspecting, Elizabeth is polite to him as she would be to any guest. He accompanies the young ladies on their walk to town.
Here another new character enters the story. The good-looking, charming Mr. Wickham has joined the regiment and is walking with his officer friends. They meet the young ladies from Longbourn. While this is going on, Bingley and Darcy ride up to greet the Bennet party, and Elizabeth witnesses a strange encounter. Darcy and Wickham see each other, both give a start of recognition, but with cold looks and slight nods they barely acknowledge knowing each other.
NOTE: With the introduction of Wickham, the thread of a new subplot begins. The pace of the narrative quickens and suspense is added.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER SIXTEEN
During an evening with the officers at Elizabeth’s aunt’s house, Wickham at once seats himself beside Elizabeth and, without being asked, proceeds to explain the mysterious encounter with Darcy.
It seems he grew up on the Darcy estate as the son of the Darcy steward and the godson of Darcy’s late father. Elizabeth admits that she finds Mr. Darcy a disagreeable man, proud and haughty. All the same she is shocked at the story Wickham tells her. According to him, Darcy has refused to give him the “living” he is entitled to–that is, the rectory of the parish in which Darcy’s estate is situated. He declares that Darcy has done this even though the position of rector there was bequeathed to him in the elder Darcy’s will. Elizabeth is now confronted with the claim that Darcy is not only an unpleasant man but also a dishonorable one.
Wickham further tells her that Mr. Collins’s patron, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, is Darcy’s aunt and that Darcy is intended to marry her daughter. Thus the plot threads become further intertwined and the narrative gains further suspense.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Elizabeth tells Jane what she has learned from Wickham about Darcy. Jane can’t believe it; she is sure there is some misunderstanding. As for Elizabeth, Wickham has won her sympathy; she has only the deepest dislike for Darcy.
Bingley announces the date of the ball he has promised to give at Netherfield. Elizabeth is excited about it and asks Mr. Collins whether, as a clergyman, he disapproves of dancing. On the contrary, says he, and promptly asks her for the first pair of dances. She is dismayed, but must accept. What she is really looking forward to, however, is dancing with Wickham.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Arrived at the ball, Elizabeth looks in vain among the red coats of the officers for Wickham. Did Bingley not invite him out of consideration for Darcy? A fellow officer, however, tells Lydia that Wickham was called to town on business and stayed away an extra day to avoid a certain gentleman. Wickham had told Elizabeth that he had no intention of avoiding Darcy, yet that is just what he is doing.
Elizabeth gets through her dances with the awkward Collins as best she can. Then Darcy asks her to dance, and, too startled to think of an excuse, she accepts. They dance and talk. He is very agreeable, but turns silent the moment she mentions Wickham.
Sir William Lucas, Charlotte’s father compliments them both on their dancing. He then refers to a coming desirable event and pointedly looks at Bingley and Jane, who stand talking, their heads close together.
Miss Bingley approaches Elizabeth and rather insolently warns her against taking an interest in Wickham, since he is low-born. She also understands that he has behaved badly to Darcy, although she does not know the details. In softer terms, Bingley has told Jane much the same thing, also by hearsay. Elizabeth judges that since the information comes by way of Mr. Darcy, she need not believe it.
For Elizabeth, the ball offers only increasing unpleasantness. Collins learns that Darcy is present and insists on presenting himself to Lady Catherine’s nephew. His pompous speech, punctuated by bow after bow, leaves Darcy somewhat puzzled, but it makes Elizabeth blush with embarrassment. Then at supper Mrs. Bennet talks loudly of her expectation that Jane will soon be engaged to Bingley. Elizabeth sees Darcy across the table, listening. She tries to silence her mother but without success. Darcy looks toward Bingley and Jane, and his face is grave.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER NINETEEN
The next day brings a scene of pure comedy. Mr. Collins proposes marriage to Elizabeth, with all the elaborate explanations and compliments that he considers proper to such an occasion. Elizabeth declines politely. He brushes her rejection aside, observing that elegant young ladies are bound to refuse a first proposal, even a second or third. Elizabeth protests that no sensible woman would so mistreat a respectable man or so risk her happiness if she meant to accept him in the end. He does not listen, but persists in his belief that her refusal is ladylike modesty.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWENTY
Mr. Collins reports in detail to Mrs. Bennet. He repeats that he is not discouraged by Elizabeth’s refusal, but will continue to propose to her. Mrs. Bennet, however, knows Elizabeth and she is alarmed. Elizabeth is a headstrong girl, she says. She will command Elizabeth to accept him. Mr. Collins himself is alarmed at her choice of words. A headstrong girl is not the kind of wife he wants.
Charlotte Lucas comes to call as Mrs. Bennet is pouring out her disappointment to Mr. Collins. Mr. Collins withdraws his offer of marriage to Elizabeth once and for all. Charlotte, standing tactfully to one side, hears it all.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The story begins to move faster. Mr. Collins transfers his attentions to Charlotte, Mr. Wickham renews his attentions to Elizabeth, and Jane receives a goodbye note from Caroline Bingley. Miss Bingley implies that her brother will not return to Netherfield, and she expresses her hope that he will marry Darcy’s sister Georgiana.
NOTE: The mood now becomes one of anxiety. Elizabeth tries to raise Jane’s spirits with the argument that Miss Bingley is only expressing her own wishes, not her brother’s. But privately she fears that Miss Bingley may win out and that Jane’s hope of happiness will be dashed.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Mr. Collins sneaks out to Lucas Lodge and quickly accomplishes his mission. Charlotte is watching for him. As she expects, he makes his proposal of marriage to her. She promptly accepts and instructs him to say nothing to the Bennets of their engagement. He leaves Longbourn, promising to return.
Charlotte confides her news to Elizabeth, who is at first disbelieving, then shocked. She is convinced that her friend can’t possibly be happy with this absurd man whom she can’t respect, much less love. Charlotte, not offended, answers her. She is not romantic, she says. She asks only for a comfortable home, and considers her chances of happiness as fair as most people’s on entering a marriage.
NOTE: Charlotte here expresses an attitude toward marriage that was common among middle-class young women of the time. Security was the main thing, not love. Elizabeth can’t accept this philosophy. For her, marriage must be based on mutual affection and respect.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Sir William Lucas comes to the Bennets’ house to announce his daughter’s engagement. Mrs. Bennet cannot forgive Elizabeth for losing a husband, but Mr. Bennet is delighted. Lady Lucas can hardly hide her joy at having her plain daughter well married before any of the pretty Bennet girls.
Mr. Collins writes a self-congratulatory letter to Mr. Bennet, reinviting himself for another visit so that he can be close to Charlotte. Mrs. Bennet is furious. Elizabeth has deliberately lost a chance to be married, and with Bingley gone, Jane’s prospects do not look as bright as they once seemed. Elizabeth begins to fear that Bingley’s sisters may indeed prevail and that Bingley may be gone from Netherfield for good.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The mood now definitely changes from comedy to gloom. A letter from Miss Bingley puts an end to Jane’s hopes. The Bingleys are settled in London for the winter. Mr. Bingley is an intimate of the Darcy household, where he can pursue his courtship of Georgiana.
Jane is downcast, and Elizabeth is indignant. She is furious at Bingley’s sisters, suspects Darcy of conspiring with them, and is angry with Bingley for allowing himself to be influenced against his genuine love for Jane.
With Darcy and his friends gone, Wickham now freely tells his tale to everyone. Darcy is now generally condemned. Elizabeth somehow does not see how improper it is of Wickham to make his story so public. She is still charmed by Wickham and prejudiced against Darcy.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The mood again changes as new characters, the Gardiners, enter the story. They come with their children to spend Christmas at Longbourn. Edward Gardiner is Mrs. Bennet’s brother, but he is not at all like her or like his other sister, the good-natured but vulgar Mrs. Philips. He is dignified, gentlemanly, and sensible. His wife, somewhat younger, is both intelligent and elegant, and she is very close to her two oldest nieces. She invites Jane to return with them for a stay in London, pointing out, however, that since they live in an unfashionable quarter of the city it is unlikely she will meet Mr. Bingley.
Mrs. Gardiner meets Wickham. She spent some girlhood years in the neighborhood of the Darcy estate of Pemberley, and she enjoys recalling stories of that part of the country with him. Elizabeth tells her of Darcy’s treatment of Wickham, and she tries to remember what she may have heard of Darcy’s character. She believes she may have heard of him as a very proud, ill-natured boy.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In a confidential moment between Elizabeth and her aunt, Mrs. Gardiner cautions Elizabeth against falling in love with Wickham, a man with no fortune. Elizabeth at first laughs off the advice. Then, turning serious, she promises to do her best to be wise.
NOTE: Mrs. Gardiner is the only person Elizabeth has accepted advice from on this subject.
Charlotte comes, after her wedding, to say goodbye. Her father and her younger sister Maria are to visit her in her new home, and she invites Elizabeth to come with them. To the reader this raises interesting possibilities, because Mr. Collins’s parsonage is on the edge of Lady Catherine’s estate, and Lady Catherine is Mr. Darcy’s aunt.
Jane writes from London. She has seen Miss Bingley, and she is at last convinced that Elizabeth is right.
Elizabeth learns that Wickham is interested in a young woman who has just inherited some money, but she excuses this as simple prudence, forgetting that she did not excuse Charlotte’s prudence in marrying Mr. Collins. She is still letting her prejudice against Darcy influence her judgment of Wickham.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The setting changes. Elizabeth begins her journey with Sir William and Maria Lucas. On the way to Charlotte’s, they stop overnight at the Gardiners’ in London, where Elizabeth finds Jane in poor spirits.
Elizabeth talks with her aunt of Jane’s problem. Mrs. Gardiner asks about Wickham’s new courtship. Elizabeth exclaims that she is sick of Wickham, Bingley, and Darcy. She is going the next day to see a man without a single agreeable quality (Collins), and she is glad of it.
Before Elizabeth leaves with the Lucases, her aunt invites her to join her and her husband on a summer tour to the Lake District. With this to look forward to, and curious about Charlotte’s new home and life, Elizabeth continues the journey into Kent more cheerfully.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
At Hunsford parsonage Mr. Collins boasts of his house, his furniture, his gardens, and the splendors of his patron’s estate, giving every particular of the size and cost of every item. Charlotte is serene. She hears only what she wishes to hear of her husband’s babble. Elizabeth recognizes Charlotte’s sensible arrangements of the house and grounds, and she understands how Charlotte has managed to keep her husband busy in the garden or in his study, which faces on the road to Rosings. In this way Charlotte has to endure very little of the company of her husband–who may be entertaining to read about but not to live with.
Miss de Bourgh and her governess drive by, stopping at the parsonage gate. Elizabeth is surprised to see what a pale, thin, sickly-looking girl Mr. Darcy is supposed to be interested in marrying–according to Wickham, that is.
The Collinses and their guests are invited to dine at Rosings the next day.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Comedy is again the mood as the scene unfolds at Rosings. The manor house is grand without being tasteful. Pale, shy little Miss de Bourgh can scarcely utter a word. Lady Catherine talks steadily in a loud, aggressive voice. Her questions about Elizabeth’s family, her sisters, their education or lack of it, are just short of offensive. She criticizes, advises, passes judgment. Elizabeth takes it all in good spirit; she is too amused to be offended. Lady Catherine is as ridiculous in her way as Mr. Collins is in his. We may wonder what Darcy thinks of his aunt.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THIRTY
Sir William leaves, and Elizabeth and Maria remain. Elizabeth enjoys her hours of quiet companionship with Charlotte and her long, solitary walks in Rosings park.
The visit is suddenly enlivened by the arrival of Darcy and his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, who have come to visit their aunt. With no loss of time, the two gentlemen call on Charlotte and Elizabeth at the parsonage. Charlotte shrewdly observes that this promptness is a tribute to Elizabeth. The pace quickens, with a promise of surprises to come.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The scene is an evening at Rosings. Elizabeth and Colonel Fitzwilliam engage in lively conversation. Darcy listens, but Lady Catherine interrupts, wanting to know what they are talking about and insisting on being included. This effectively halts the conversation. Elizabeth is asked to play and sing. She does, and Darcy comes close, charmed by her unaffected performance. Lady Catherine criticizes Elizabeth’s playing and tells her she should practice more. Elizabeth, watching carefully, can see no evidence that Darcy is interested in little Miss de Bourgh.
NOTE: The reader, of course, knows that Darcy is really interested in Elizabeth, and the way he is now behaving toward her suggests that his interest may soon lead to action.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Darcy surprises Elizabeth alone when he makes a morning visit to the parsonage. Their conversation is about Bingley’s returning or not returning to Netherfield, and it is awkward. Charlotte, finding him there, thinks he must really be in love with Elizabeth. But when she looks for signs, she can’t find them. His gaze is often fixed on Elizabeth but it does not seem to be an admiring one. The truth is that Darcy is troubled and doesn’t know what to do about his feelings for Elizabeth.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Darcy persists in his peculiar behavior. He often joins Elizabeth on her walks, but then he seems to have little to say. From Fitzwilliam she learns that Darcy keeps postponing their departure.
Fitzwilliam is clearly attracted to her, but he explains, somewhat in apology, that a younger son cannot marry whom he chooses. (He has to find a wife with more money than Elizabeth has.)
She mentions Darcy’s sister, and Fitzwilliam tells her that he shares the guardianship of Georgiana with Darcy. She asks an idle question about whether the young girl gives her guardians much trouble. To her surprise, this evokes an anxious response from him.
Had Elizabeth heard any rumor of the kind? No, says Elizabeth, but his reaction suggests that her chance reference to trouble may have come close to the truth.
Then Fitzwilliam unwittingly tells Elizabeth something she is not supposed to know. He says that Darcy recently saved a friend from an unwise attachment. There was no criticism of the young lady, he understands, only of her family.
Elizabeth is sure that the friend he refers to is Bingley, the young lady is Jane, and the family is her own. Her suspicion has been confirmed: Darcy deliberately came between Bingley and Jane. Her anger rises. Back in the parsonage, she bursts into tears, and this brings on a headache. The last person she wishes to see is Darcy, and she has been invited to tea at Rosings. She claims to be ill and begs to be excused.
NOTE: At this point all comedy has now been put aside. The story has taken a dramatic turn.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
It is evening, the Collinses have gone to Rosings, and Elizabeth is alone. She is rereading all of Jane’s letters, looking for–and finding–evidence that Jane is unhappy. She is growing more and more angry, when suddenly Darcy, the object of her anger, walks in. He has presumably come to learn if she is feeling better. He asks, she answers, and he begins to walk restlessly around the room. Finally he comes to a halt and bursts out: “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”
Elizabeth is too shocked to speak. Taking this as encouragement, he goes on to tell her all the reasons why he should not have made this proposal. He gives her a most unloverlike description of her family and the inferiority of her social standing as compared with his own. His pride is showing.
Elizabeth is now indignant. What angers her above all is his obvious confidence that she will not refuse him. Now it is his turn to be taken aback: she rejects him. She tells him that even if she did not positively dislike him, she would not marry him, and she gives her reasons. Her first is that he has deliberately ruined the happiness of her beloved sister by separating Bingley from her. Her second is that he cruelly deprived Wickham of the secure future that the elder Mr. Darcy had planned for him.
She ends by telling him that there was no way he could have proposed to her that would have persuaded her to accept him. From the beginning of their acquaintance, his arrogance, conceit, and disregard for the feelings of others have convinced her that he was the last man in the world she could ever marry.
Astonished and mortified, Darcy wishes her health and happiness and leaves the house.
NOTE: In this scene the antagonism of Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth’s prejudice reaches its climax. It is a scene to note, not only for the strong feelings it brings to the surface, but for its dramatic form. It has been transferred to stage and screen with almost no change. The two leading characters stand face to face, hiding nothing, speaking their true feelings about each other.
Darcy has revealed not only his love but all his objections to a marriage to Elizabeth, yet he is certain that she will accept him. Elizabeth is surprised by his offer, although we have been warned of his feelings toward her. She is flattered by a proposal from a man of his position, but at the same time insulted by his references to her family and her inferior social position, and outraged by his obvious confidence that she will not refuse him. And so, instead of expressing gratitude for his love and regret at causing him pain, she rejects him with all the strongest words at her command.
Both characters speak out of powerful feelings here. Some critics complain that Jane Austen never gets to the hearts of her characters. You might use this scene as evidence to the contrary.
Now the reader is truly in suspense. How can the bitter confrontation between these two leading characters be resolved? Will Darcy continue to be in love with Elizabeth when she has made it so clear that she detests him? And if he continues to love her, how can he ever overcome her antagonism toward him? What defense can he offer for the behavior that she has so severely criticized? What can he possibly have to say for himself?
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
We learn the answers to some of these questions in the very next chapter. Darcy waits for Elizabeth on her morning walk, hands her a letter, and asks her to do him the honor of reading it. She begins to read it without believing a word of it. But as she goes back over it again and again, her attitude toward its contents begins to change.
Darcy has answered her two angry accusations of the evening before. To the first, he admits that he persuaded Bingley not to pursue his courtship of Jane. He admits also that he concealed Jane’s presence in London from Bingley, a deception of which he is somewhat ashamed. But he justifies his interference on the grounds that it could not have been a good marriage, considering the behavior of the younger Bennet girls, their mother, and even their father. He declares that, before he intervened, he watched Jane carefully, and from the untroubled serenity of her behavior he became convinced that she did not return Bingley’s love at all. If he was mistaken, and if he has indeed caused pain to her, he apologizes. He acted from the best of his knowledge and observation.
To Elizabeth’s second accusation, about his treatment of Wickham, Darcy turns Wickham’s story completely around. He tells Elizabeth that Wickham gave up all interest in a church career and asked Darcy instead for a sizable sum of money, with the intention of studying law. Darcy gave him what he asked (the sum was L3,000) but instead of beginning studies, Wickham squandered the money on idleness and gambling. In debt again, as a last resort he approached Georgiana. Trading on childhood affection, Wickham persuaded Georgiana to elope with him. Fortunately Georgiana, a loving and dutiful sister, confessed the plan to her brother in time to halt it.
Darcy tells Elizabeth that he trusts her with these painful facts, which could be damaging to his sister’s reputation, knowing that he can rely on her to keep them confidential. He also tells her that she can verify the story with Colonel Fitzwilliam, who as his fellow guardian is acquainted with it all. He ends his letter with a generous “God bless you.”
Here are several points for Elizabeth to ponder. One is the confirmation that Darcy did in fact steer Bingley away from Jane. A second is that he did not do this unfeelingly, but took the possibility of causing pain to Jane into consideration. Elizabeth remembers what Charlotte once said–that Jane might be concealing her love for Bingley all too well.
Next is the revelation of Wickham’s true character. He stands forth in this account as an idler, a gambler, an irresponsible, dissipated man who will go so far as to lead a young girl astray, just to get his hands on her fortune–although in this case, as Darcy suggested, Wickham might also have wanted to take revenge on Darcy by harming his sister.
Darcy, on the other hand, appears totally innocent.
NOTE: Is Darcy’s version the truth? What will Elizabeth believe? How will she feel toward Darcy now? Toward Wickham? In addition to these suspenseful questions, we have also received a warning: Watch out for Wickham as a possible source of trouble.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
We follow Elizabeth’s reactions to Darcy’s letter. At first she is angry and disbelieving. After all, she thinks, Darcy has expressed no regret at destroying Jane’s happiness–he is still proud and insolent. And in his story of Wickham, she is certain he is lying from start to finish. She will pay no attention to the letter. She puts it away, resolving never to look at it again.
In the next moment she is reading it a second time. Now she is struck by certain truths. For instance, all along she has known nothing about Wickham except what he himself told her. She has accepted his charm and good looks as evidence of his good character.
Now, for the first time, she realizes how improper it was for him to confide in her, a perfect stranger, on their first meeting. She recalls that he spread his story through the town the moment the Bingleys and Darcy had left the neighborhood. She begins to feel ashamed of her blind acceptance of Wickham and her unreasoning prejudice against Darcy. She decides that although Darcy has told her to consult Colonel Fitzwilliam for the truth of all this, it would be awkward to ask him and surely it is unnecessary.
She returns once more to his comments about Bingley and Jane. She acknowledges now that Jane did indeed conceal her feelings too well, and Darcy could not be blamed for mistaking them. She remembers how her mother embarrassed her at the Netherfield ball, and she feels the justice of Darcy’s comments about her family. Then she feels, with something like despair, that Jane’s loss of love and happiness can be blamed on her own family.
After hours of walking and thinking, Elizabeth returns to the parsonage and learns that both Darcy and Fitzwilliam have called to say goodbye. She is glad that she missed them, since she is no longer interested in Colonel Fitzwilliam, and her feelings towards Darcy are in complete confusion.
NOTE: This chapter is the beginning of Elizabeth’s exploration of her own mind and emotions. Her earnest self-examination is one of the strengths of the novel.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Now that the two gentlemen have left, Elizabeth speaks of her own and Maria’s imminent departure. The mood shifts back to comedy briefly, as Lady Catherine lays down all the details for the coming journey, including how the trunks should be packed. Maria is so intimidated that on returning to the parsonage she takes all her clothes out again and repacks them according to Lady Catherine’s advice.
But the story soon turns back to Elizabeth’s serious thoughts. She spends her remaining mornings in solitary walks, sorting out her confusing emotions.
She arrives at some certainties. For one thing, she believes now that Bingley’s affection for Jane was not just a passing infatuation but deep and sincere, and she can criticize him only for trusting too completely to another’s judgment.
She admits to herself that her family has some serious defects. She loves and admires her father, but she knows that he is wrong to be merely amused at his wife and younger daughters; he should instead take the trouble to control them.
She is ashamed of her attack on Darcy. But she cannot honestly admit any regret at having refused him, and she feels no desire to see him again. For now, she feels only worry for Jane, disappointment in Wickham, and a lack of hope that anything can change for the better for either Jane or herself.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
It is the day of departure. Mr. Collins makes his farewells in his excessive, exaggerated style. When Elizabeth does not praise his house, his gardens, his marriage, and his patron’s attentions eloquently enough, he does the job himself. He also boasts of the success of his marriage. In his eyes, he and Charlotte are in total agreement about everything.
If Elizabeth were not so concerned with her own troubles, she would find his illusion laughable. She doubts Charlotte’s happiness, but she admits to herself that her friend at least seems contented with her domestic concerns.
At the Gardiners’, she finds Jane feeling better. She keeps all mention of Darcy and the surprising turn of events at Hunsford for when she and Jane are home again at Longbourn.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Lydia and Kitty meet their sisters with the Bennet carriage at an inn on the road home. Lydia, giddy as usual, rattles on about a new bonnet, about the regiment’s plans to leave Meryton, and about the fact that Wickham is no longer pursuing the young heiress–whose family has sent her out of his reach to relations in Liverpool.
At home, Lydia still chatters on about the officers. Mrs. Bennet talks about persuading Mr. Bennet to send them all to Brighton, the seaside resort where the militia will be encamped for the summer. Elizabeth is relieved that her father has no intention of doing so. But because he gives only a vague answer, Mrs. Bennet is not discouraged.
NOTE: The follies of Elizabeth’s family now seem poignant instead of comic–to Elizabeth, and to the reader.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FORTY
Elizabeth at last unburdens herself to Jane, being careful to tell her sister only about Darcy and Wickham. She doesn’t mention anything about Bingley–and Darcy’s influence over him.
Elizabeth makes her story of Darcy’s proposal and his letter of the next day as cheerful and entertaining as she can. Jane is grieved for both Darcy and Wickham. Elizabeth teases her: “There is but such a quantity of merit between them; just enough to make one good sort of man; and of late it has been shifting about pretty much. For my part, I am inclined to believe it all Mr. Darcy’s; but you shall do as you choose.” She says, too, that there was some great mistake in the case of those two young men: “One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.”
Elizabeth is able, too, to laugh at herself: she meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so strong a dislike to Darcy, she says, but her behavior turned out to be “such a spur to one’s genius, such an opening for wit.”
Turning serious, she asks Jane’s opinion on whether they should expose Wickham’s true character to their friends. Jane agrees with her that there is no need, as Wickham will soon be gone with the regiment. As you will see, this turns out to be an unwise decision.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Mrs. Bennet joins Lydia in bemoaning the departure of the militia. She cannot understand why Mr. Bennet will not let the family go to Brighton. Then, unexpectedly, a colonel’s young wife invites Lydia to accompany her. Lydia is delighted, Kitty devastated.
Elizabeth protests to her father against letting Lydia go. She tells him that Lydia’s uncontrolled behavior will eventually lead to her disgrace and that the misfortune will involve the entire family, including herself and Jane.
Mr. Bennet sees that she is serious, and he reassures her that she and Jane will be valued wherever they are known. But he is really considering his own convenience rather than his family’s welfare. He tells Elizabeth that there will be no peace at Longbourn if Lydia is prevented from going, and that at Brighton she will go unnoticed among so many women attractive to the officers.
The officers, including Wickham, are invited to dine at Longbourn before they leave. At this last meeting with him, Elizabeth answers his questions about Hunsford, then tells him of seeing Darcy there–pointedly enough to make him uneasy about what she may have learned. He covers his embarrassment by talking of Darcy’s expectation of marrying Miss de Bourgh. Elizabeth is amused. She knows better.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
NOTE: Darcy’s letter criticized not only Elizabeth’s mother and younger sisters, but her father as well. Although she is her father’s favorite and very close to him, Elizabeth also sees his failures–with his younger daughters and with his wife. In this chapter the mood changes to a serious look at the quality of the Bennets’ marriage and the relationship of husband and wife.
Mr. Bennet does not behave properly toward his wife. As a girl she had all the charms of youth and beauty to win him, but her ignorance and shallowness soon cooled his affection and respect. He has not consoled himself for the failure of his marriage by drinking, gambling, or pursuing other pleasures–as some men might. But he does indulge himself in ridiculing his wife–in front of their daughters. For a husband to behave in this disrespectful way to his wife encourages her children also to lose respect for their mother. To Elizabeth, this is the wrong way for a husband and father to behave. Her parents are not an example of a happy marriage.
Now Elizabeth’s worry about Lydia at Brighton, combined with Mrs. Bennet’s and Kitty’s complaints about not being there too, make for great unpleasantness at home. Elizabeth begins to look forward to her promised summer tour with the Gardiners, which has been postponed and will also be shorter than planned. They will not have time to go to the Lakes but only as far as Derbyshire.
At this point Elizabeth cannot help thinking of Pemberley, Darcy’s estate in Derbyshire–and even of Darcy himself. She laughs at herself for these thoughts. Surely she can set foot in his county without his noticing her! This raises the question of whether she wants him to notice her.
NOTE: Not long ago Elizabeth was sure she never cared to see Darcy again. Now her feelings seem to be changing.
At last the Gardiners arrive, place their four young children in Jane’s care, and set off with Elizabeth in their carriage. Soon they come to Lambton, the town Mrs. Gardiner remembers from her girlhood. Pemberley is only five miles away, and Mrs. Gardiner wants to revisit it. A nervous Elizabeth makes excuses not to go there, until she learns from the chambermaid that the Darcy family is away. With the danger of meeting Darcy removed, she agrees to go.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Driving through the extensive Pemberley grounds to the handsome house, Elizabeth finds everything beautiful. She reflects that she might now have been mistress of all this. But then she remembers that her beloved uncle and aunt could not have been with her here. Darcy would consider them “inferior.”
As was the custom at great houses in England, the travelers are welcomed, and the housekeeper gives them a tour of the house. Elizabeth hears with relief that Darcy is not expected until the following day. Relaxing, she looks at the fine rooms, the views, the furniture, and the pleasing decorations.
On learning that Elizabeth knows Darcy “a little,” the housekeeper begins to praise him–his handsomeness, his good temper, his goodness to his sister, his generosity to his servants and tenants. She has known him, she says, since he was four years old and has never heard a cross word from him.
Elizabeth is shaken by this. She stands before his portrait in the family picture gallery. His face in the painting wears a smile that she has seen only sometimes when he was looking at her. Elizabeth’s feelings toward him are changing. She is forgetting her anger at him and remembering only his love for her. She feels, for the first time, grateful for that love.
The mood of this chapter has been suspenseful, and now suddenly the suspense comes to a head. The visitors have left the house and are about to be shown through the grounds when Darcy suddenly appears around the corner of the house from the stables, where he has evidently just dismounted from his horse.
He and Elizabeth both stop, startled at this unexpected meeting. He astonishes her by coming to greet her. He asks after her family and speaks with a gentleness she has never heard from him before.
He leaves her, and she and the Gardiners begin their walk. But in a few minutes Darcy again appears. He asks to be introduced to the Gardiners, whom Elizabeth had expected him to scorn. He joins her uncle in conversation, invites him to fish in the Pemberley trout stream while he is in the neighborhood, and even offers to supply him with fishing tackle.
To Elizabeth, who is still embarrassed at his finding her there, he explains that he has indeed come home a day before he was expected. He tells her that the Bingleys will be coming the next day and that his sister will be with them. He asks Elizabeth’s permission to introduce his sister to her, an extraordinary compliment. The walk, uneasy for them both, comes to an end. Darcy helps the ladies into their carriage and then departs with utmost politeness.
On the way back to their inn, her uncle and aunt comment on their pleasant impression of Darcy, whom Elizabeth had formerly described as so disagreeable. She answers that she has never seen him so pleasant before. She also hints that she has reliable information about his treatment of Wickham, different from what she had before. Inwardly, Elizabeth is amazed. Darcy clearly holds no grudge from their last meeting. She can think of nothing but his changed behavior to her, and she wonders what it means.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Darcy brings his sister to call the very morning of her arrival at Pemberley. Bingley arrives soon after. The Gardiners are beginning to suspect that Darcy is in love with Elizabeth: that is the only thing that can account for his attentiveness.
Bingley asks after Elizabeth’s family. Elizabeth listens closely for signs that he is still thinking of Jane. She hears such a clue when he remembers the exact date on which he last saw the Bennets.
Elizabeth finds the young Miss Darcy to be shy rather than proud; she is also unsure of her social duties. Darcy has to remind her that she wishes to invite the visitors to dinner at Pemberley the next day.
The visit leaves Elizabeth more confused than ever about her own feelings.
NOTE: In this and succeeding chapters, Elizabeth continues her self-examination. It is a powerful factor in keeping up the suspense of the story at this crucial stage. As Darcy reveals more and more of the softer aspects of his personality, Elizabeth must respond to her changing image of him. Her feelings, along with her understanding, are now continually shifting.
Mrs. Gardiner is full of curiosity about the relationship of Elizabeth and Darcy but too tactful to ask Elizabeth. Instead she casually inquires among her friends in the town about his reputation among them. They have little to say about him except that he is believed to be proud, a predictable opinion from townsfolk about the wealthy, aloof aristocrat in their neighborhood. They know more of Wickham, and their judgment is not favorable. He left the neighborhood owing many debts, which, they tell her, Darcy paid.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Elizabeth and the Gardiners pay their morning call at Pemberley, Mr. Gardiner to fish, the ladies to return the visit of the day before. Bingley’s sisters are barely civil, and Georgiana is too shy to talk.
Darcy comes in from the fishing party to greet the guests, and Caroline Bingley at once makes a nasty reference to the militia leaving the Bennets’ neighborhood. Elizabeth notes Georgiana’s distress at this indirect reference to Wickham. As for Darcy, he is looking earnestly at Elizabeth, wondering how she now feels about Wickham–and about himself.
After Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner leave, Caroline Bingley exclaims that Elizabeth has become “so coarse and brown.” Darcy answers mildly that this is a natural consequence of traveling in the summer. Caroline, driven by jealousy, reminds him that he once thought Elizabeth pretty. His answer can hardly please her. That was only when he first knew Elizabeth, he says, but now he considers her “one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.”
NOTE: We are not kept in any doubt about Darcy’s continuing love for Elizabeth. The crucial question is: will he again attempt to make her an offer of marriage? Elizabeth is beginning to ask herself the same question. She is less and less certain of what her own answer, this time, might be.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Two hastily written letters from Jane at Longbourn upset all hopes and speculations. The news brings disgrace on the entire family: Lydia has run away with Wickham. At first it was thought that they were going to Scotland, where marriage can take place without the delays imposed in England. It now appears that they have gone into hiding in London. Wickham is now known to his fellow officers as a man not to be trusted, and his colonel thinks it unlikely that he means to marry Lydia. A troubled Mr. Bennet has gone to London to try to find the fugitives. In the letter Jane begs her uncle to join her father in London as soon as possible and bring his better judgment to the situation.
Elizabeth is hurrying out to find her uncle in the town when Darcy comes in to pay a morning call. He is shocked at her pale face and anxious manner, believing she is ill. He sends a servant to find her aunt and uncle, and begs her to let him get her a glass of wine. She protests that she is not ill, and in her agitation, moved by his concern, she blurts out all her dreadful news. She blames herself for not preventing the disaster by telling what she knew of Wickham’s true character.
Darcy is at first concerned only for her distress, but then he begins to walk around the room, seemingly inattentive, grave and thoughtful. At last he hastily excuses himself and leaves her. As soon as he is gone, Elizabeth feels the full weight of this horrid turn of events as it affects her. With this scandal, which must stain the entire Bennet family, Darcy’s interest in her must surely melt away.
His preoccupation, during the last few minutes of his visit, seems proof to Elizabeth that this process has already begun: whatever love he still feels for her must be cooling. Now, when all hope of having his love seems lost, Elizabeth realizes how much she wishes that he still loved her.
The Gardiners return, and Elizabeth tells them the news. They pack quickly and leave at once for Longbourn. As they hurry away, Mrs. Gardiner reminds Elizabeth that they have a dinner engagement at Pemberley that must be broken. But Elizabeth has already made their excuses to Darcy, and she tells her aunt, “That is all settled!”
“What is all settled?” wonders Mrs. Gardiner, baffled by Elizabeth’s uncommunicative behavior. But Elizabeth herself would not be able to say at this point what is or is not settled, except that she can now see no hope that Darcy will ever interest himself in her again.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The journey back to Longbourn is occupied with speculation on whether Wickham did or did not intend to marry Lydia and make their elopement respectable. The Gardiners can hardly believe that he is wicked enough to seduce a girl of good family and then abandon her, or foolish enough to expect that he would be allowed to get away with it. Elizabeth now tells them that he is indeed capable of all that. She tells them what she now knows of Wickham, but she does not tell them how and from whom she learned the truth. Hopeless as she now feels about her own prospects, she cannot bring herself to tell them about Darcy’s proposal to her, her refusal, and his extraordinary letter that reversed all her previous beliefs about Wickham and himself.
They arrive at Longbourn. Mr. Bennet has written from London but without news of the fugitives. Mrs. Bennet has taken to her bed in this crisis. She weeps, complains of her nerves, and begs her brother to keep Mr. Bennet from fighting a duel with Wickham and getting himself killed. In the same breath she instructs him to tell Lydia not to order her wedding trousseau without consulting her.
Consulting with Jane, Elizabeth learns that Wickham left debts and bad feeling all over Meryton when the militia went away. She again regrets that she did not tell their friends and neighbors what she knew of him. Jane shows her the letter Lydia left for her hostess at Brighton. It raves about her dear Wickham and says what a joke it will be when she writes to her family and surprises them by signing her letter “Mrs. Wickham.” Thoughtless and careless of consequences as Lydia might be, the letter indicates that she at least expected to be married.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Mr. Gardiner writes from London. The fugitives have still not been traced. Perhaps, he says, Elizabeth can say whether Wickham had family or friends from whom more might be learned. Elizabeth is embarrassed: she remembers her former partiality toward Wickham, which has prompted her uncle’s inquiry.
Aunt Philips from Meryton comes with further news of Wickham’s wicked reputation in the town. Meanwhile, the scandal has, of course, reached to Hunsford, and a letter arrives from Mr. Collins. It is typical of Collins–a confused mixture of condolence, advice, and horrified respectability. He quotes Lady Catherine, who points out the inevitable damage to the older daughters’ prospects. Mr. Collins closes with the conflicting advice that the family forgive Lydia and at the same time throw her out to reap the fruits of her offense.
Mr. Bennet returns home, leaving the search for Lydia and Wickham to Gardiner. Now Mrs. Bennet, reversing herself, complains that her husband will not, after all, fight a duel with Wickham. Thus, in the midst of crisis, we are given comedy. Mr. Collins and Mrs. Bennet are still called upon to make us laugh.
NOTE: The comic touches in this chapter are a clue that the story may still have a happy ending.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
An express (special delivery) letter arrives from Mr. Gardiner. The fugitives have been found and he has seen them. Wickham’s circumstances are not hopeless: his debts will be paid, and there will be some money left over as a marriage settlement for Lydia. They will be married as soon as Mr. Bennet agrees to make a small annual allowance to Lydia out of her mother’s dowry. In the meantime she is to stay with the Gardiners, and she will be married from their house.
Mr. Bennet’s reaction to this good news is in character: he makes a joke about it. As he is walking in the garden, putting off the unpleasant task of answering the letter, he thinks about how little is being asked of him. He is to promise a hundred pounds a year to Lydia during his lifetime and fifty pounds after his death. He says that Wickham is a fool to marry Lydia for so little: “I should be sorry to think so ill of him, in the very beginning of our relationship.”
Elizabeth ponders the fact that they must be happy about this marriage even though it can bring very little happiness to the partners and is necessary only to give the pair some respectability. She and Jane worry that their uncle must have spent a great deal to pay Wickham’s debts and still have something left over for Lydia’s marriage settlement (her dowry).
They hurry to their mother’s room to tell her the news. She is beside herself with joy. She seems to forget the unfortunate circumstances and is simply thrilled that she is to have a daughter married, and at sixteen! She chatters on about Lydia’s trousseau, and wants Jane to ask Mr. Bennet how much he will give for it. Jane reminds her mother that her brother has laid out a considerable sum–they do not know how much–just to bring about this happy event. They are hardly in the financial position to start planning a trousseau. Mrs. Bennet is unfazed by Jane’s realistic assessment of the situation. She calls her housekeeper to help her dress so that she can spread the good news of Lydia’s wedding in town.
NOTE: The comic aspects of this chapter provide entertainment and keep the novel from rushing too swiftly to its resolution. The reactions of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet to the crisis and its resolution also further define their characters.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIFTY
In a thoughtful mood Mr. Bennet thinks about the money his brother-in-law has laid out to bring about this marriage of his daughter to one of the most worthless young men in Great Britain–a great irony. At the same time, he worries about how he can ever repay Edward Gardiner. He has never saved any part of his income, expecting always to have a son who would inherit his estate and keep it in the family.
He ponders on how little trouble Lydia’s rescue has caused him. It has been accomplished with no exertion on his part and little expense. He is obliged only to give her now the share she would eventually have been entitled to anyway out of her mother’s modest fortune: the hundred pounds a year is only slightly more than Lydia’s clothes and pocket money have cost him until now.
Mrs. Bennet runs down the list of all the fine houses she knows in the neighborhood and considers which would be grand enough for her newly married daughter. She is shocked when Mr. Bennet says he will give Lydia no money for wedding clothes and will not receive the newlyweds in his house.
Another letter from Mr. Gardiner tells the family that Wickham is leaving the militia, and that a commission has been bought for him in the regular army. The couple will go from London to his regiment, stationed in Newcastle in the north. Jane and Elizabeth persuade their father to change his mind and receive them before they leave.
Elizabeth thinks how happy Darcy would be to know that his offer of marriage, which she spurned so fiercely, would now be welcome. She has already come to the sad conclusion, however, that with Wickham in the family there is no possibility that Darcy will renew his offer. He could never marry someone who is related to Wickham: no kind of pride, she believes, would accept that.
NOTE: In this chapter we see not only the evolution of Elizabeth’s feelings but also the evolution of the novel’s concept of pride. In the beginning of the novel, pride was synonymous with arrogance, insolence, and conceit. Then it was seen as a recognition of one’s own superior status in terms of family and fortune. Now Elizabeth sees it as a judgment of social behavior: no one with any pride would accept Wickham. Remember, though, that Wickham himself said earlier that Darcy’s pride led him into good behavior on occasion. Soon to be revealed, as Darcy’s latest acts become known, is an interpretation of pride as a taking of responsibility.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
The newly married pair arrive. Lydia is her exuberant, uncontrolled self. She shows off her wedding ring. She boasts that she will get all her sisters husbands when they visit her: an army encampment is the very place for finding husbands, she says. Wickham is also his usual smiling, socially agreeable self. He shows no more embarrassment than Lydia does in front of the family, no shame over their affair before they were married. He sits beside Elizabeth, casually chatting about mutual acquaintances in the neighborhood.
Elizabeth sees that, as she had imagined, Lydia is far more attached to Wickham than he is to her, and that he fled from Brighton to escape his debts, not out of love for Lydia. The elopement can be explained by two circumstances: his financial distress and Lydia’s infatuation.
Lydia boisterously recounts for Jane and Elizabeth the details of her wedding. She was annoyed by aunt Gardiner’s preaching, and by the fact that she wasn’t allowed to leave the house for parties or anything before the wedding. She was worried when uncle Gardiner, who was to give her away, was called away to business just before they were to go to the church. But then she remembered that Darcy would do just as well. “Darcy!” her sisters exclaim. Oh yes, he was to bring Wickham to the church. But it was a secret. No one was supposed to know about Darcy.
In that case, says Jane, Lydia must say nothing more. But Elizabeth has to know the rest. She sits down at once and writes to her aunt, begging to know what Darcy had to do with the event.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Mrs. Gardiner answers promptly and fully: Darcy, knowing something of Wickham’s past associations, was able to trace the couple. After he found them, he sought out Mr. Gardiner and informed him of what he had accomplished: he had paid Wickham’s debts, paid Lydia’s dowry, and bought Wickham his army commission. In return he got Wickham to agree to the marriage. All this, says Mrs. Gardiner, he insisted on doing himself. She surmises that obstinacy may be, after all, the chief defect in his character. The reason he gave for taking all this responsibility upon himself was that he held himself to blame for keeping Wickham’s true character a secret from the world in general.
Elizabeth is sitting in the garden, thinking over all this, her mind in a flutter, when Wickham joins her. He mentions that he passed Darcy several times in London and wondered what he was doing there. To this outright lie Elizabeth does not respond. He asks her about her visit to Pemberley. From her careful answers he finally realizes that his lies are useless: she now knows the truth about him. She tells him that they need not quarrel about the past.
Elizabeth now has a new trouble on her mind: her family owes so much to Darcy, and she is unable to thank him for it. She can hardly even hope she will ever see him again.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
News comes that Bingley is returning to Netherfield. Mrs. Bennet rattles on about it, protesting that of course it is nothing to her and yet insisting on talking about nothing else. Jane is clearly uneasy, but she tells Elizabeth she no longer has any interest in Bingley.
Bingley arrives at Netherfield. Very soon afterwards, he comes to call on the Bennets, and Darcy is with him. Elizabeth struggles to stay calm when she first sees him. He asks about the Gardiners, then is silent.
Mrs. Bennet chatters on about Lydia’s marriage to Wickham, and Elizabeth is overcome with embarrassment, knowing what she does of Darcy’s role in Lydia’s rescue. She wishes at that moment that she never had to see him again, never had to live through another such scene. In the next moment she forgets her own misery, though–seeing how warmly attentive Bingley is to Jane. Mrs. Bennet invites both men to dinner, and they accept.
It is clear to Elizabeth that Darcy has changed his mind about Bingley’s courtship of Jane. But what of Darcy, and his interest in Elizabeth? If he still cares for her, why his silence? Has Darcy come calling merely to make certain of his friend’s happiness? Or has he come on his own account, to see her?
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Elizabeth is annoyed at Darcy’s silence, but amused at Jane’s insistence that she and Bingley are now no more than acquaintances.
The two gentlemen arrive for dinner. They are part of a large party. Bingley “happens” to sit next to Jane, but Darcy is seated beside Mrs. Bennet. Elizabeth trembles at her thoughts of their conversation. It seems to her that everything that went wrong before is going wrong again.
She hopes that after dinner Darcy will come over to her. She is pouring the coffee, and he approaches, but as he does a little girl comes up to Elizabeth and whispers to her; Darcy turns away. In the next moment Mrs. Bennet captures him again, and Elizabeth’s evening comes to nothing. But Jane, still professing friendly calm toward Bingley, is glowing with happiness.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Bingley keeps coming to Longbourn, and now Mrs. Bennet begins scheming to leave him alone with Jane. She calls Kitty, then Elizabeth, out of the room. By one device and another, Bingley at last finds the opportunity to make his proposal to Jane and to ask her father for his consent. Mrs. Bennet is wild with joy: a second daughter about to be married!
Jane is radiant. She confides to Elizabeth that when Bingley left Netherfield last November, he was truly in love with her, but he had been persuaded that she did not return his love. Elizabeth silently commends Bingley for not betraying his friend’s part in the matter.
NOTE: Elizabeth’s state of suspense tells us that the story may still have some surprises for us.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
One of these surprises now occurs: Lady Catherine de Bourgh comes to call. Elizabeth is puzzled. She brings no letter or message from Charlotte Collins. Why has she come all the way from Kent and left her personal maid in the coach waiting for her? Lady Catherine asks Elizabeth to go out in the garden with her and at once comes to the point: Elizabeth must promise not to marry Darcy!
In a scene of high comedy, Lady Catherine marshals all her arguments: that years ago she and Darcy’s late mother agreed that her daughter and Darcy would marry; that Elizabeth would be scorned by all of Darcy’s connections, and especially by Lady Catherine herself; that Elizabeth is an obstinate, headstrong girl who shows no gratitude for Lady Catherine’s attentions to her when she was at Hunsford; and so on.
Elizabeth answers only when an answer is demanded of her. When Lady Catherine demands to know whether her nephew has proposed to Elizabeth, Elizabeth reminds her that her ladyship has already declared that to be impossible. When asked if she is engaged to Darcy, she answers truthfully that she is not. But she will make no promises. Lady Catherine demands that she promise, and says she will not leave until Elizabeth does.
She reminds Elizabeth that the Bennet family has low-class connections. Elizabeth responds that Darcy is a gentleman and she is a gentleman’s daughter, and therefore they are social equals. Lady Catherine acknowledges this, but what of her mother’s relatives that are “in trade”? And what of her sister’s elopement, her patched-up marriage? Is the son of Darcy’s father’s late steward to be Darcy’s brother-in-law? “Are shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”
At this, Elizabeth is angered at last. She tell Lady Catherine that she has now been insulted in every possible way. Then she goes into the house, with Lady Catherine’s parting threat still in her ears: “I shall now know how to act…. Depend upon it, I shall carry my point.”
NOTE: Lady Catherine’s threat can’t be ignored entirely; we don’t yet know what influence she has over Darcy.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Elizabeth is uneasy over Lady Catherine’s visit, ridiculous though it was. She speculates that the news of Jane’s engagement to Bingley, traveling swiftly from Lucas Lodge to Hunsford parsonage to Rosings, must have given rise to the assumption that Elizabeth would become engaged to Bingley’s friend.
Elizabeth has no doubt that Lady Catherine means to persist in her interference. The question is how much influence she has over Darcy. How fond is he of his aunt? How much does he depend on her judgment? He must have a higher opinion of Lady Catherine than Elizabeth has, and the very arguments that to her seemed ridiculous might have far more force with him, she reasons.
Elizabeth knows that Darcy wavered before first proposing to her. With his aunt loudly restating all the reasons why he shouldn’t marry into the Bennet family, won’t he choose to preserve his dignity at the expense of his love? Elizabeth decides that if Darcy sends some excuse instead of returning to Netherfield, she will take that as a sign. She will give up all expectations, and soon she will even stop regretting that she lost him–or so she tells herself.
Her father summons her to his study. He says he has something to show her that will surely amuse her, a letter from Mr. Collins. The letter begins with congratulations on Jane’s engagement, then goes on to warn Mr. Bennet most seriously that he should on no account allow Elizabeth to accept a proposal from Darcy. The idea of Darcy proposing to Elizabeth strikes Mr. Bennet as a towering joke. Mr. Collins goes on to say that Lady Catherine would never consent to such a match.
At last Mr. Bennet notices that Elizabeth does not seem to be enjoying the joke. “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?” he asks. Elizabeth tries to laugh. Her father then asks why Lady Catherine called. Was it to refuse her consent?
Elizabeth brushes this guess aside with another laugh, but it is too close for comfort. She goes away wondering about her own judgment. Her father is so sharp in his observations, and yet he believes it impossible that Darcy could be attracted to her. Does her father see too little? She wonders. Or has she been imagining too much?
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Darcy does not send excuses, as Elizabeth had fearfully expected. Instead he returns, and the very next morning after his arrival at Netherfield, he comes calling with Bingley. They all take a walk, but Jane and Bingley soon drop far behind, and Kitty stops at Lucas Lodge to visit Maria. Elizabeth and Darcy go on alone.
Taking courage, Elizabeth thanks him for his part in rescuing Lydia. He is surprised that Mrs. Gardiner could not be trusted with the secret. She quickly tells him the truth: it was Lydia who in her thoughtless way let it slip. He says, “If you will thank me, let it be for yourself alone… I believe I thought only of you.”
With this excellent beginning, he goes on to tell her that his feelings toward her have not changed. But if she still doesn’t want him, she has only to say so and he will be silent on this subject forever. With no hesitation but much embarrassment, Elizabeth quickly assures him that her feelings toward him have indeed changed, and she now hears his proposal with gratitude and joy.
Happy at last, the lovers walk on, freely sharing their thoughts and emotions over the happenings of the past several weeks. Darcy tells Elizabeth that Lady Catherine did indeed call on him to deliver her arguments against Elizabeth. But the effect was the opposite of what she intended. Her angry account of her visit–of every word she and Elizabeth exchanged–gave him hope that he might yet win Elizabeth’s hand.
Both now admit that they have been heartily ashamed of what they said to each other on the memorable evening in Hunsford parsonage, when he made his offer of marriage and she rejected it. Darcy now tells her of his own self-examination since that night when she astonished him–not only with her refusal but with her strict criticism of his behavior. He grew up a loved and spoiled child, an only child for his first dozen years, he explains. He was brought up with good principles, but became proud and conceited–until his dear Elizabeth taught him otherwise.
When he first encountered her at Pemberley, he says, he had intended only to show her that he had changed his attitudes and manners. But within half an hour he was wishing for her to return his love.
Finally, he acknowledges that he had no trouble persuading Bingley to go back to Jane. He simply apologized for his interference and assured Bingley that Jane was not indifferent to him. Elizabeth is tempted to joke about Bingley’s willingness to be guided by his friend. But she realizes that Darcy is not yet accustomed to being laughed at and wisely restrains her impulse.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Elizabeth’s immediate problem is how to break her extraordinary news to her family. She knows that no one except Jane likes Darcy, and she blames this on herself for having expressed her own dislike of him so freely in the past.
She tells Jane her news that night, but the astonished sister can’t believe it. Elizabeth is shaken. If Jane doesn’t believe her, who will? To cover her dismay, she at first tells Jane that she began to love Darcy when she saw Pemberley. Then, becoming serious, she assures Jane that her change of feelings has come in response to everything that has happened. Very gradually, she explains, her initial prejudice gave way to understanding, appreciation, and finally love. She tells Jane of Darcy’s part in the Lydia-Wickham affair, and the two sisters spend half the night talking.
The next day Bingley arrives, and by the warmth of his greeting Elizabeth can see that Darcy has told him of their engagement. Darcy is with him, and Mrs. Bennet asks Elizabeth to take him out for a walk again. She apologizes for making Elizabeth spend time with “that disagreeable man,” but explains it is for Jane.
That evening Darcy visits Mr. Bennet in his study to ask his consent, and soon Mr. Bennet sends for Elizabeth. He is greatly troubled. He has given his consent, but he warns Elizabeth against marrying a man whom she cannot respect.
Elizabeth reassures him that she not only likes Darcy, she loves him. She explains the gradual change of her feelings and the events that changed them, then tells her father the whole story of how Darcy secretly rescued Lydia, managed her marriage, and paid out large sums to clear Wickham’s past and insure his future. Amazed at all this, Mr. Bennet admits that Darcy deserves Elizabeth. He is happy that the expenditure of money on Lydia’s behalf was Darcy’s and not his brother-in-law’s. “I shall offer to pay him… he will rant and storm about his love for you, and there will be an end of the matter.”
Elizabeth has one more scene to face, her mother’s reaction to her news. This she attends to in private, to spare Darcy. At first, Mrs. Bennet is as still as if she’d been turned to stone, but then she reacts exactly as Elizabeth had expected: she is overjoyed that Elizabeth has found such a rich husband. Elizabeth has some momentary forebodings about her mother’s future behavior to Darcy. Fortunately, though, Mrs. Bennet is in such awe of her prospective son-in-law that she is hardly able to utter a word to him when they meet the next day. Mr. Bennet quips to Elizabeth that Wickham is still his favorite son-in-law, but he expects to like her husband quite as well as Jane’s.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER SIXTY
In a playful mood, Elizabeth asks Darcy to account for falling in love with her. He cannot: he was in love before he realized it, he says. She says he loved her for her “impertinence.” He calls it the “liveliness of her mind.” She surmises that he was disgusted with women who fussed over him and that he noticed her because she was different–she did not give him the flattery he was accustomed to. He might have hated her for that, she says, but because he was really good-hearted he loved her instead.
She is pleased with her explanation, but troubled because their happiness stems from a broken confidence: she thanked him for his kindness to Lydia, about which she should have known nothing. He reassures her that he meant to propose to her again anyway, because his aunt’s interference had given him new hope.
He sits down at once to write Lady Catherine, telling her of his engagement. Another letter goes out that day, from Mr. Bennet to Mr. Collins, announcing Elizabeth’s engagement to Darcy. Mr. Bennet advises Collins to console Lady Catherine as best he can, and counsels him to stand by Darcy, who has more patronage to give.
The Collinses arrive at Lucas Lodge. Charlotte has wisely decided to stay away from Hunsford awhile to escape Lady Catherine’s rage. Despite her husband’s disapproval, she calls to rejoice in Elizabeth’s happiness.
Elizabeth’s life is about to change dramatically, and she is painfully aware of how her family and her neighbors must appear to Darcy: Mr. Collins is so excessive and self-important in his expressions of respect, Sir William Lucas is so long-winded with his compliments, and Aunt Philips is so vulgar. But Darcy bears it all with surprising grace, a good omen for her future happiness with him.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
The novel ends with a glimpse of the characters’ later lives. Regretfully, the happy marriages of Jane and Elizabeth do not make Mrs. Bennet any more sensible. She remains hopelessly silly and subject to her imagined attacks of nerves. Mr. Bennet, missing Elizabeth, is a frequent visitor to Pemberley.
Bingley and Jane soon find Netherfield too near to Longbourn, and Bingley purchases an estate within thirty miles of Pemberley. Kitty spends much time visiting her sisters, and getting away from home proves good for her. Mary remains mostly at home, her mother’s chief companion.
Lydia writes to Elizabeth, wishing her joy and hoping for financial help from Darcy. Elizabeth puts an end to that hope, but she and Jane do send the pair money out of their allowances. Lydia and Wickham move frequently and need help each time to pay accumulated debts from the previous residence. As anticipated, their affection for each other soon wanes, and their characters do not improve. Darcy does not receive Wickham at Pemberley, but he continues to help him privately, for Elizabeth’s sake.
Caroline Bingley puts aside her disappointment at Darcy’s marriage and becomes civil to Elizabeth, for the sake of still being welcome at Pemberley. Lady Catherine was so insulting to Elizabeth that Darcy broke off his relationship with his aunt, but Elizabeth persuades him to attempt a reconciliation. Her ladyship eventually condescends to visit Pemberley, out of curiosity, she says, to see how Elizabeth conducts herself.
Except for Jane and Bingley, the Gardiners remain the favorite relatives of both Darcy and Elizabeth, loved for themselves and also as the ones who made possible their happy ending.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: GLOSSARY
ASSEMBLY A community ball or dance held in a public ballroom, as distinct from a private ball held at someone’s home.
ENTAIL The limitation of the inheritance of a landed estate to a specific line of heirs. Usually this meant a male heir, as in the case of Mr. Bennet’s estate of Longbourn. The entail can be broken by the heir, on coming of age, voluntarily joining with the owner of the estate in a legal proceeding. An entail may have been laid down in some ancestor’s will, generations earlier, as Mrs. Bennet was never able to understand.
IN TRADE A way of earning one’s income that is middle-class but not at as high a level in society as having landed property. “Trade” could mean manufacturing, any form of business or commerce, or the practice of law.
A LIVING Specifically in England, an appointment as rector to a Church of England parish with whatever income was attached to it, including a house called the rectory or parsonage. Jane Austen’s father, the Reverend George Austen, held two neighboring and very small livings; his income from them was so small that he was obliged to take in pupils in order to support his large family. A good living, such as several mentioned in Jane Austen’s novels, and in particular the living that was in the Darcy family’s power to give, might yield a very comfortable income.
MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT The sum settled on a woman, usually by her spouse or father, when she married. Her children were entitled to share this sum on her death.
WEDDING CLOTHES The wardrobe and linens that a bride acquires for her married life and household. We use the French word, trousseau, for this. Lydia’s wedding clothes are Mrs. Bennet’s main concern when she learns that Lydia has eloped.
^^^^^^^^^^PRIDE AND PREJUDICE: A TALENT FOR DESCRIBING ORDINARY LIFE
[I have] read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen’s very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements, and feelings, and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!
Sir Walter Scott, Diary, 1826
“NEAREST TO THE MANNER” OF SHAKESPEARE
Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second. But among the writers who… have approached nearest to the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of characters, all in a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings.
Lord Macaulay, Edinburgh Review, 1843
“WHY DO YOU LIKE MISS AUSTEN SO VERY MUCH?”
Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would have rather written Pride and Prejudice… than any of the Waverley Novels?
I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.
Charlotte Bronte, in a letter to
George Henry Lewes, 1843
“TRUTH IS NEVER SACRIFICED…”
Miss Austen is, of all his successors, the one who most nearly resembles Richardson in the power of impressing reality upon her characters. There is a perfection in the exhibition of Miss Austen’s characters which no one else has approached; and truth is never for an instant sacrificed in that delicate atmosphere of satire which pervades her works…
…She has been accused of writing dull stories about ordinary people. But her supposed ordinary people are really not such very ordinary people. Let any one who is inclined to criticise on this score endeavour to construct from among the ordinary people of his own acquaintance one character that shall be capable of interesting any reader for ten minutes. It will then be found how great has been the discrimination of Miss Austen in the selection of her characters and how skilful is her treatment of them.
W. F. Pollock, Fraser’s Magazine, 1860
“LARGEST CLAIMS… IN OUR OWN TIME…”
It should not be surprising that the largest claims for Jane Austen’s art have been made in our own time. The success of modern criticism in analyzing works of fiction by methods formerly associated with the study of lyric poetry has made the traditional objections to Jane Austen’s limited subject-matter seem almost irrelevant. By emphasizing her control of language and mastery of ironic exposure, recent critics have greatly expanded our appreciation of what Jane Austen accomplished on her “little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory.”
A. Walton Litz, Jane Austen:
A Study of Her Artistic Development, 1965
“A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE…”
In these novels, which do not confine their psychological study to principles and formulae, but present it in their elements of variety, individuality and personality, we are given a philosophy of life. A philosophy which though amiable in appearance is none the less dogmatic, and leaves no place for uneasiness or doubt in the author, who puts it into practice and exhibits it in her novels.
The peace, ease and well-being of outer circumstances corresponds with the inner atmosphere of moral serenity, tranquility, and contentment.
An artist less sure of herself, a less skilful psychologist, would try to create this double atmosphere by affirming that peace and joy are laws of life.
Jane Austen affirms nothing of the kind; she contents herself with proving it…
…Because she herself has experienced the kindness of life which has never imposed unbearable sufferings upon her, because she dares to look the contradictions, absurdities and follies which appear on the surface of things, in the face and always with a smile, she has an unshakable confidence in life, an absolute certainty that the unknown power which governs the world desires order and well-being in all things.
Her confidence in life is not due solely to the absence of any bitter trials, it is also the result of a natural leaning to that equilibrium of the spirit, unstable perhaps, but always regained after temporary loss, which we call optimism.
Here, again, Jane Austen is in advance of her time and beyond the region of romantic disquietude, and realizes in the clear atmosphere of her narrow sphere something of the modern “will to live.”…
Leonie Villard, Jane Austen,
A French Appreciation, 1924
“JANE AUSTEN WOULD HAVE BEEN SURPRISED….”
If I am surprised to find myself lecturing to you, Jane Austen would have been still more surprised to find herself being lectured about. For–it is the most striking fact discovered by her life history–she did not take her work very seriously.
Hers was no career of solemn and solitary self-dedication. Neat, elegant and sociable, she spent most of her day sitting in the drawing-room of the parsonage which was her home, sewing and gossiping. From time to time, it is said, she would begin to laugh, and then, stepping across to the writing-table, she would scribble a few lines on a sheet of paper. But if visitors called she slipt the pages under the blotter, when the pages had accumulated into a story, she let it lie for years in a drawer unread. And when at last it did emerge to the public gaze, she refused in the slightest degree to modify the conventional order of her life to suit with the character of a professional authoress. As for the applause of posterity, she seems never to have given it a moment’s thought: it was no part of her sensible philosophy to worry about admiration that she would not live to enjoy.
Yet one hundred and nineteen years have passed since her death, and yearly the applause of posterity has grown louder…. All discriminating critics admire her books, most educated readers enjoy them; her fame, if not highest among English novelists, is of all the most secure…. Jane Austen was a comedian. Her first literary impulse was humorous; and to the end of her life humour was an integral part of her creative process: as her imagination starts to function a smile begins to spread itself across her features. And the smile is the signature on the finished work. It is the angle of her satiric vision, the light of her wit that gives its peculiar glitter and proportion to her picture of the world.
Lord David Cecil, Jane Austen, 1935
“TO TREAT LIFE AS COMEDY…”
Distance–from her subject and from the reader–was Jane Austen’s first condition for writing…. Her temperament chose irony at once: she maintained her distance by diverting herself and her audience with an unengaged laughter, by setting irony, the instrument–and, as it happened, the genius–of her temperament, to sharpen and expose all the incongruities between form and fact, all the delusions intrinsic to conventional art and conventional society.
If Jane Austen’s irony appears at times almost inhumanly cold and penetrating,… it may be because we are accustomed to the soft or sentimental alloying of most irony. Sympathy is irrelevant to irony. Jane Austen’s compulsion, and genius, is to look only for incongruity; and it delights her wherever she finds it…
It was Jane Austen’s first choice to treat life, even in her letters, as material for comedy: not sentimentally, not morally, indeed not tied to any train of consequences, but with a detached discrimination among its incongruities. She was interested in a person, an object, an event, only as she might observe and recreate them free of consequences, as performance, as tableau: her frame was comedy, her defining artistic impulse was irony. Compulsion was also, or became, art. Everywhere she found incongruities between overt and hidden, between professed and acted upon, failures of wholeness which in life have consequences and must be judged but in comedy–and for Jane Austen–are relieved of guilt and responsibility at the moment of perception, to be explored and progressively illuminated by irony.
Marvin Mudrick, Jane Austen,
Irony as Defense and Discovery, 1952
“AN EMBARRASSING POSITION IN LITERARY HISTORY…”
Jane Austen occupies an embarrassing position in literary history–embarrassing because never for a moment does she accommodate herself to the facile generalizations which are made about her contemporaries. Wordsworth and Coleridge can, though with some inaccuracy, be called Romantic; they were both born within five years of Jane Austen. But she is too little a writer of the nineteenth century to be called Romantic, too much a person of her time to be called Classic, too original and too great to be considered a precursor or an apotheosis: she is, however much indebted to her literary forebears…, unique. Working with materials extremely limited in themselves, she develops themes of the broadest significance; the novels go beyond social record… to moral concern, perplexity, and commitment.
The spinster daughter of a country parson, Jane Austen not only limits herself to the sphere which she understands, she even picks and chooses amongst the raw materials of experience available to her, eschewing what her genius cannot control: ‘3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on.’ she writes to her niece.
Andrew H. Wright, Jane Austen’s Novels:
A Study in Structure, 1953
THE END
CHAPTER I
not beautiful, but men seldom
realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton
twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the
delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of
French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish
father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin,
square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a
touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and
slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black
brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line
in her magnolia-white skin–that skin so prized by
Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.
Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool
shade of the porch of Tara, her father’s plantation,
that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty
picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread
its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops
and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco
slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeeninch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the
tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured
for her sixteen years. But for all the modesty of
S CARLETT O’H ARA
WAS
�PART ONE
her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted
smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small
white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly
concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweet face
were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at
variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her by her mother’s
gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her
mammy; her eyes were her own.
On either side of her, the twins lounged easily in
their chairs, squinting at the sunlight through tall
mint-garnished glasses as they laughed and talked,
their long legs, booted to the knee and thick with saddle muscles, crossed negligently. Nineteen years old,
six feet two inches tall, long of bone and hard of muscle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their
eyes merry and arrogant, their bodies clothed in identical blue coats and mustard-colored breeches, they
were as much alike as two bolls of cotton.
Outside, the late afternoon sun slanted down in
the yard, throwing into gleaming brightness the dogwood trees that were solid masses of white blossoms
against the background of new green. The twins’
horses were hitched in the driveway, big animals, red
as their masters’ hair; and around the horses’ legs
9
�PART ONE
quarreled the pack of lean, nervous possum hounds
that accompanied Stuart and Brent wherever they
went. A little aloof, as became an aristocrat, lay
a black-spotted carriage dog, muzzle on paws, patiently waiting for the boys to go home to supper.
Between the hounds and the horses and the twins
there was a kinship deeper than that of their constant companionship. They were all healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited, the
boys as mettlesome as the horses they rode, mettlesome and dangerous but, withal, sweet-tempered to
those who knew how to handle them.
Although born to the ease of plantation life, waited
on hand and foot since infancy, the faces of the three
on the porch were neither slack nor soft. They had
the vigor and alertness of country people who have
spent all their lives in the open and troubled their
heads very little with dull things in books. Life in
the north Georgia county of Clayton was still new
and, according to the standards of Augusta, Savannah
and Charleston, a little crude. The more sedate and
older sections of the South looked down their noses
at the up-country Georgians, but here in north Georgia, a lack of the niceties of classical education carried
no shame, provided a man was smart in the things
10
�PART ONE
that mattered. And raising good cotton, riding well,
shooting straight, dancing lightly, squiring the ladies
with elegance and carrying one’s liquor like a gentleman were the things that mattered.
In these accomplishments the twins excelled, and
they were equally outstanding in their notorious inability to learn anything contained between the covers of books. Their family had more money, more
horses, more slaves than any one else in the County,
but the boys had less grammar than most of their poor
Cracker neighbors.
It was for this precise reason that Stuart and Brent
were idling on the porch of Tara this April afternoon.
They had just been expelled from the University of
Georgia, the fourth university that had thrown them
out in two years; and their older brothers, Tom and
Boyd, had come home with them, because they refused to remain at an institution where the twins were
not welcome. Stuart and Brent considered their latest expulsion a fine joke, and Scarlett, who had not
willingly opened a book since leaving the Fayetteville
Female Academy the year before, thought it just as
amusing as they did.
“I know you two don’t care about being expelled,
or Tom either,” she said. “But what about Boyd? He’s
11
�PART ONE
kind of set on getting an education, and you two have
pulled him out of the University of Virginia and Alabama and South Carolina and now Georgia. He’ll
never get finished at this rate.”
“Oh, he can read law in Judge Parmalee’s office over
in Fayetteville,” answered Brent carelessly. “Besides,
it don’t matter much. We’d have had to come home
before the term was out anyway.”
“Why?”
“The war, goose! The war’s going to start any day,
and you don’t suppose any of us would stay in college
with a war going on, do you?”
“You know there isn’t going to be any war,” said
Scarlett, bored. “It’s all just talk. Why, Ashley
Wilkes and his father told Pa just last week that our
commissioners in Washington would come to–to–an–
amicable agreement with Mr. Lincoln about the Confederacy. And anyway, the Yankees are too scared of
us to fight. There won’t be any war, and I’m tired of
hearing about it.”
“Not going to be any war!” cried the twins indignantly, as though they had been defrauded.
“Why, honey, of course there’s going to be a war,”
said Stuart. “The Yankees may be scared of us, but
after the way General Beauregard shelled them out of
12
�PART ONE
Fort Sumter day before yesterday, they’ll have to fight
or stand branded as cowards before the whole world.
Why, the Confederacy–”
Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience.
“If you say ‘war’ just once more, I’ll go in the house
and shut the door. I’ve never gotten so tired of any
one word in my life as ‘war,’ unless it’s ‘secession.’ Pa
talks war morning, noon and night, and all the gentlemen who come to see him shout about Fort Sumter
and States’ Rights and Abe Lincoln till I get so bored I
could scream! And that’s all the boys talk about, too,
that and their old Troop. There hasn’t been any fun
at any party this spring because the boys can’t talk
about anything else. I’m mighty glad Georgia waited
till after Christmas before it seceded or it would have
ruined the Christmas parties, too. If you say ‘war’
again, I’ll go in the house.”
She meant what she said, for she could never long
endure any conversation of which she was not the
chief subject. But she smiled when she spoke, consciously deepening her dimple and fluttering her
bristly black lashes as swiftly as butterflies’ wings.
The boys were enchanted, as she had intended them
to be, and they hastened to apologize for boring her.
They thought none the less of her for her lack of in13
�PART ONE
terest. Indeed, they thought more. War was men’s
business, not ladies’, and they took her attitude as evidence of her femininity.
Having maneuvered them away from the boring
subject of war, she went back with interest to their immediate situation.
“What did your mother say about you two being expelled again?”
The boys looked uncomfortable, recalling their
mother’s conduct three months ago when they had
come home, by request, from the University of Virginia.
“Well,” said Stuart, “she hasn’t had a chance to say
anything yet. Tom and us left home early this morning before she got up, and Tom’s laying out over at
the Fontaines’ while we came over here.”
“Didn’t she say anything when you got home last
night?”
“We were in luck last night. Just before we got home
that new stallion Ma got in Kentucky last month was
brought in, and the place was in a stew. The big
brute–he’s a grand horse, Scarlett; you must tell your
pa to come over and see him right away–he’d already
bitten a hunk out of his groom on the way down here
and he’d trampled two of Ma’s darkies who met the
14
�PART ONE
train at Jonesboro. And just before we got home, he’d
about kicked the stable down and half-killed Strawberry, Ma’s old stallion. When we got home, Ma was
out in the stable with a sackful of sugar smoothing
him down and doing it mighty well, too. The darkies
were hanging from the rafters, popeyed, they were so
scared, but Ma was talking to the horse like he was
folks and he was eating out of her hand. There ain’t
nobody like Ma with a horse. And when she saw us
she said: ‘In Heaven’s name, what are you four doing home again? You’re worse than the plagues of
Egypt!’ And then the horse began snorting and rearing and she said: ‘Get out of here! Can’t you see he’s
nervous, the big darling? I’ll tend to you four in the
morning!’ So we went to bed, and this morning we
got away before she could catch us and left Boyd to
handle her.”
“Do you suppose she’ll hit Boyd?” Scarlett, like the
rest of the County, could never get used to the way
small Mrs. Tarleton bullied her grown sons and laid
her riding crop on their backs if the occasion seemed
to warrant it.
Beatrice Tarleton was a busy woman, having on
her hands not only a large cotton plantation, a hundred negroes and eight children, but the largest horse15
�PART ONE
breeding farm in the state as well. She was hottempered and easily plagued by the frequent scrapes
of her four sons, and while no one was permitted to
whip a horse or a slave, she felt that a lick now and
then didn’t do the boys any harm.
“Of course she won’t hit Boyd. She never did beat
Boyd much because he’s the oldest and besides he’s
the runt of the litter,” said Stuart, proud of his six
feet two. “That’s why we left him at home to explain
things to her. God’lmighty, Ma ought to stop licking
us! We’re nineteen and Tom’s twenty-one, and she
acts like we’re six years old.”
“Will your mother ride the new horse to the Wilkes
barbecue tomorrow?”
“She wants to, but Pa says he’s too dangerous. And,
anyway, the girls won’t let her. They said they were
going to have her go to one party at least like a lady,
riding in the carriage.”
“I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” said Scarlett. “It’s
rained nearly every day for a week. There’s nothing
worse than a barbecue turned into an indoor picnic.”
“Oh, it’ll be clear tomorrow and hot as June,” said
Stuart. “Look at that sunset. I never saw one redder.
You can always tell weather by sunsets.”
They looked out across the endless acres of Gerald
16
�PART ONE
O’Hara’s newly plowed cotton fields toward the red
horizon. Now that the sun was setting in a welter
of crimson behind the hills across the Flint River, the
warmth of the April day was ebbing into a faint but
balmy chill.
Spring had come early that year, with warm quick
rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms
and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark
river swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing
was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay
to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish
on the sandy tops of furrows, vermilion and scarlet
and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the
trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation house
seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at
the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf. For here were no long, straight furrows,
such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields of the
flat middle Georgia country or in the lush black earth
of the coastal plantations. The rolling foothill country
of north Georgia was plowed in a million curves to
keep the rich earth from washing down into the river
bottoms.
17
�PART ONE
It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains,
brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the
world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a
land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest
shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton
fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent.
At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool
even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an ageold patience, to threaten with soft sighs: “Be careful!
Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back
again.”
To the ears of the three on the porch came the sounds
of hooves, the jingling of harness chains and the shrill
careless laughter of negro voices, as the field hands
and mules came in from the fields. From within the
house floated the soft voice of Scarlett’s mother, Ellen
O’Hara, as she called to the little black girl who carried her basket of keys. The high-pitched, childish
voice answered “Yas’m,” and there were sounds of
footsteps going out the back way toward the smokehouse where Ellen would ration out the food to the
home-coming hands. There was the click of china and
the rattle of silver as Pork, the valet-butler of Tara, laid
the table for supper.
18
�PART ONE
At these last sounds, the twins realized it was time
they were starting home. But they were loath to face
their mother and they lingered on the porch of Tara,
momentarily expecting Scarlett to give them an invitation to supper.
“Look, Scarlett. About tomorrow,” said Brent. “Just
because we’ve been away and didn’t know about
the barbecue and the ball, that’s no reason why we
shouldn’t get plenty of dances tomorrow night. You
haven’t promised them all, have you?”
“Well, I have! How did I know you all would be
home? I couldn’t risk being a wallflower just waiting
on you two.”
“You a wallflower!” The boys laughed uproariously.
“Look, honey. You’ve got to give me the first waltz
and Stu the last one and you’ve got to eat supper with
us. We’ll sit on the stair landing like we did at the last
ball and get Mammy Jincy to come tell our fortunes
again.”
“I don’t like Mammy Jincy’s fortunes. You know she
said I was going to marry a gentleman with jet-black
hair and a long black mustache, and I don’t like blackhaired gentlemen.”
“You like ‘em red-headed, don’t you, honey?”
grinned Brent. “Now, come on, promise us all the
19
�PART ONE
waltzes and the supper.”
“If you’ll promise, we’ll tell you a secret,” said Stuart.
“What?” cried Scarlett, alert as a child at the word.
“Is it what we heard yesterday in Atlanta, Stu? If it
is, you know we promised not to tell.”
“Well, Miss Pitty told us.”
“Miss Who?”
“You know, Ashley Wilkes’ cousin who lives in Atlanta, Miss Pittypat Hamilton–Charles and Melanie
Hamilton’s aunt.”
“I do, and a sillier old lady I never met in all my
life.”
“Well, when we were in Atlanta yesterday, waiting
for the home train, her carriage went by the depot and
she stopped and talked to us, and she told us there
was going to be an engagement announced tomorrow
night at the Wilkes ball.”
“Oh. I know about that,” said Scarlett in disappointment. “That silly nephew of hers, Charlie Hamilton,
and Honey Wilkes. Everybody’s known for years that
they’d get married some time, even if he did seem
kind of lukewarm about it.”
“Do you think he’s silly?” questioned Brent. “Last
20
�PART ONE
Christmas you sure let him buzz round you plenty.”
“I couldn’t help him buzzing,” Scarlett shrugged
negligently. “I think he’s an awful sissy.”
“Besides, it isn’t his engagement that’s going to be
announced,” said Stuart triumphantly. “It’s Ashley’s
to Charlie’s sister, Miss Melanie!”
Scarlett’s face did not change but her lips went
white–like a person who has received a stunning
blow without warning and who, in the first moments
of shock, does not realize what has happened. So still
was her face as she stared at Stuart that he, never analytic, took it for granted that she was merely surprised
and very interested.
“Miss Pitty told us they hadn’t intended announcing it till next year, because Miss Melly hasn’t been
very well; but with all the war talk going around, everybody in both families thought it would be better
to get married soon. So it’s to be announced tomorrow night at the supper intermission. Now, Scarlett,
we’ve told you the secret, so you’ve got to promise to
eat supper with us.”
“Of course I will,” Scarlett said automatically.
“And all the waltzes?”
“All.”
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�PART ONE
“You’re sweet! I’ll bet the other boys will be hopping
mad.”
“Let ‘em be mad,” said Brent. “We two can handle
‘em. Look, Scarlett. Sit with us at the barbecue in the
morning.”
“What?”
Stuart repeated his request.
“Of course.”
The twins looked at each other jubilantly but with
some surprise. Although they considered themselves Scarlett’s favored suitors, they had never before gained tokens of this favor so easily. Usually
she made them beg and plead, while she put them
off, refusing to give a Yes or No answer, laughing if
they sulked, growing cool if they became angry. And
here she had practically promised them the whole of
tomorrow–seats by her at the barbecue, all the waltzes
(and they’d see to it that the dances were all waltzes!)
and the supper intermission. This was worth getting
expelled from the university.
Filled with new enthusiasm by their success, they
lingered on, talking about the barbecue and the ball
and Ashley Wilkes and Melanie Hamilton, interrupting each other, making jokes and laughing at them,
hinting broadly for invitations to supper. Some time
22
�PART ONE
had passed before they realized that Scarlett was having very little to say. The atmosphere had somehow changed. Just how, the twins did not know, but
the fine glow had gone out of the afternoon. Scarlett seemed to be paying little attention to what they
said, although she made the correct answers. Sensing
something they could not understand, baffled and annoyed by it, the twins struggled along for a while, and
then rose reluctantly, looking at their watches.
The sun was low across the new-plowed fields and
the tall woods across the river were looming blackly
in silhouette. Chimney swallows were darting swiftly
across the yard, and chickens, ducks and turkeys
were waddling and strutting and straggling in from
the fields.
Stuart bellowed: “Jeems!” And after an interval
a tall black boy of their own age ran breathlessly
around the house and out toward the tethered horses.
Jeems was their body servant and, like the dogs, accompanied them everywhere. He had been their
childhood playmate and had been given to the twins
for their own on their tenth birthday. At the sight of
him, the Tarleton hounds rose up out of the red dust
and stood waiting expectantly for their masters. The
boys bowed, shook hands and told Scarlett they’d be
23
�PART ONE
over at the Wilkeses’ early in the morning, waiting
for her. Then they were off down the walk at a rush,
mounted their horses and, followed by Jeems, went
down the avenue of cedars at a gallop, waving their
hats and yelling back to her.
When they had rounded the curve of the dusty road
that hid them from Tara, Brent drew his horse to a
stop under a clump of dogwood. Stuart halted, too,
and the darky boy pulled up a few paces behind
them. The horses, feeling slack reins, stretched down
their necks to crop the tender spring grass, and the patient hounds lay down again in the soft red dust and
looked up longingly at the chimney swallows circling
in the gathering dusk. Brent’s wide ingenuous face
was puzzled and mildly indignant.
“Look,” he said. “Don’t it look to you like she would
of asked us to stay for supper?”
“I thought she would,” said Stuart. “I kept waiting
for her to do it, but she didn’t. What do you make of
it?”
“I don’t make anything of it. But it just looks to me
like she might of. After all, it’s our first day home and
she hasn’t seen us in quite a spell. And we had lots
more things to tell her.”
“It looked to me like she was mighty glad to see us
24
�PART ONE
when we came.”
“I thought so, too.”
“And then, about a half-hour ago, she got kind of
quiet, like she had a headache.”
“I noticed that but I didn’t pay it any mind then.
What do you suppose ailed her?”
“I dunno. Do you suppose we said something that
made her mad?”
They both thought for a minute.
“I can’t think of anything. Besides, when Scarlett
gets mad, everybody knows it. She don’t hold herself
in like some girls do.”
“Yes, that’s what I like about her. She don’t go
around being cold and hateful when she’s mad–she
tells you about it. But it was something we did or
said that made her shut up talking and look sort of
sick. I could swear she was glad to see us when we
came and was aiming to ask us to supper.”
“You don’t suppose it’s because we got expelled?”
“Hell, no! Don’t be a fool. She laughed like everything when we told her about it. And besides Scarlett
don’t set any more store by book learning than we
do.”
Brent turned in the saddle and called to the negro
25
�PART ONE
groom.
“Jeems!”
“Suh?”
“You heard what we were talking to Miss Scarlett
about?”
“Nawsuh, Mist’ Brent! Huccome you think Ah be
spyin’ on w’ite folks?”
“Spying, my God! You darkies know everything
that goes on. Why, you liar, I saw you with my own
eyes sidle round the corner of the porch and squat in
the cape jessamine bush by the wall. Now, did you
hear us say anything that might have made Miss Scarlett mad– or hurt her feelings?”
Thus appealed to, Jeems gave up further pretense of
not having overheard the conversation and furrowed
his black brow.
“Nawsuh, Ah din’ notice y’all say anything ter mek
her mad. Look ter me lak she sho glad ter see you an’
sho had missed you, an’ she cheep along happy as a
bird, tell ‘bout de time y’all got ter talkin’ ‘bout Mist’
Ashley an’ Miss Melly Hamilton gittin’ mah’ied. Den
she quiet down lak a bird w’en de hawk fly ober.”
The twins looked at each other and nodded, but
without comprehension.
26
�PART ONE
“Jeems is right. But I don’t see why,” said Stuart.
“My Lord! Ashley don’t mean anything to her, ‘cept
a friend. She’s not crazy about him. It’s us she’s crazy
about.”
Brent nodded an agreement.
“But do you suppose,” he said, “that maybe Ashley
hadn’t told her he was going to announce it tomorrow
night and she was mad at him for not telling her, an
old friend, before he told everybody else? Girls set a
big store on knowing such things first.”
“Well, maybe. But what if he hadn’t told her it was
tomorrow? It was supposed to be a secret and a surprise, and a man’s got a right to keep his own engagement quiet, hasn’t he? We wouldn’t have known it if
Miss Melly’s aunt hadn’t let it out. But Scarlett must
have known he was going to marry Miss Melly sometime. Why, we’ve known it for years. The Wilkes and
Hamiltons always marry their own cousins. Everybody knew he’d probably marry her some day, just
like Honey Wilkes is going to marry Miss Melly’s
brother, Charles.”
“Well, I give it up. But I’m sorry she didn’t ask us to
supper. I swear I don’t want to go home and listen to
Ma take on about us being expelled. It isn’t as if this
was the first time.”
27
�PART ONE
“Maybe Boyd will have smoothed her down by
now. You know what a slick talker that little varmint
is. You know he always can smooth her down.”
“Yes, he can do it, but it takes Boyd time. He has
to talk around in circles till Ma gets so confused that
she gives up and tells him to save his voice for his law
practice. But he ain’t had time to get good started yet.
Why, I’ll bet you Ma is still so excited about the new
horse that she’ll never even realize we’re home again
till she sits down to supper tonight and sees Boyd.
And before supper is over she’ll be going strong and
breathing fire. And it’ll be ten o’clock before Boyd
gets a chance to tell her that it wouldn’t have been
honorable for any of us to stay in college after the way
the Chancellor talked to you and me. And it’ll be midnight before he gets her turned around to where she’s
so mad at the Chancellor she’ll be asking Boyd why
he didn’t shoot him. No, we can’t go home till after
midnight.”
The twins looked at each other glumly. They were
completely fearless of wild horses, shooting affrays
and the indignation of their neighbors, but they had a
wholesome fear of their red-haired mother’s outspoken remarks and the riding crop that she did not scruple to lay across their breeches.
28
�PART ONE
“Well, look,” said Brent. “Let’s go over to the
Wilkes. Ashley and the girls’ll be glad to have us for
supper.”
Stuart looked a little discomforted.
“No, don’t let’s go there. They’ll be in a stew getting
ready for the barbecue tomorrow and besides–”
“Oh, I forgot about that,” said Brent hastily. “No,
don’t let’s go there.”
They clucked to their horses and rode along in silence for a while, a flush of embarrassment on Stuart’s brown cheeks. Until the previous summer, Stuart had courted India Wilkes with the approbation
of both families and the entire County. The County
felt that perhaps the cool and contained India Wilkes
would have a quieting effect on him. They fervently
hoped so, at any rate. And Stuart might have made
the match, but Brent had not been satisfied. Brent
liked India but he thought her mighty plain and tame,
and he simply could not fall in love with her himself to keep Stuart company. That was the first time
the twins’ interest had ever diverged, and Brent was
resentful of his brother’s attentions to a girl who
seemed to him not at all remarkable.
Then, last summer at a political speaking in a grove
of oak trees at Jonesboro, they both suddenly became
29
�PART ONE
aware of Scarlett O’Hara. They had known her for
years, and, since their childhood, she had been a favorite playmate, for she could ride horses and climb
trees almost as well as they. But now to their amazement she had become a grown-up young lady and
quite the most charming one in all the world.
They noticed for the first time how her green
eyes danced, how deep her dimples were when she
laughed, how tiny her hands and feet and what a
small waist she had. Their clever remarks sent her
into merry peals of laughter and, inspired by the
thought that she considered them a remarkable pair,
they fairly outdid themselves.
It was a memorable day in the life of the twins.
Thereafter, when they talked it over, they always
wondered just why they had failed to notice Scarlett’s
charms before. They never arrived at the correct answer, which was that Scarlett on that day had decided
to make them notice. She was constitutionally unable
to endure any man being in love with any woman
not herself, and the sight of India Wilkes and Stuart
at the speaking had been too much for her predatory
nature. Not content with Stuart alone, she had set her
cap for Brent as well, and with a thoroughness that
overwhelmed the two of them.
30
�PART ONE
Now they were both in love with her, and India
Wilkes and Letty Munroe, from Lovejoy, whom Brent
had been half-heartedly courting, were far in the back
of their minds. Just what the loser would do, should
Scarlett accept either one of them, the twins did not
ask. They would cross that bridge when they came
to it. For the present they were quite satisfied to be in
accord again about one girl, for they had no jealousies
between them. It was a situation which interested the
neighbors and annoyed their mother, who had no liking for Scarlett.
“It will serve you right if that sly piece does accept
one of you,” she said. “Or maybe she’ll accept both of
you, and then you’ll have to move to Utah, if the Mormons’ll have you–which I doubt. . . . All that bothers me is that some one of these days you’re both going to get lickered up and jealous of each other about
that two-faced, little, green-eyed baggage, and you’ll
shoot each other. But that might not be a bad idea
either.”
Since the day of the speaking, Stuart had been uncomfortable in India’s presence. Not that India ever
reproached him or even indicated by look or gesture that she was aware of his abruptly changed allegiance. She was too much of a lady. But Stuart felt
31
�PART ONE
guilty and ill at ease with her. He knew he had made
India love him and he knew that she still loved him
and, deep in his heart, he had the feeling that he had
not played the gentleman. He still liked her tremendously and respected her for her cool good breeding, her book learning and all the sterling qualities
she possessed. But, damn it, she was just so pallid
and uninteresting and always the same, beside Scarlett’s bright and changeable charm. You always knew
where you stood with India and you never had the
slightest notion with Scarlett. That was enough to
drive a man to distraction, but it had its charm.
“Well, let’s go over to Cade Calvert’s and have
supper.
Scarlett said Cathleen was home from
Charleston. Maybe she’ll have some news about Fort
Sumter that we haven’t heard.”
“Not Cathleen. I’ll lay you two to one she didn’t
even know the fort was out there in the harbor, much
less that it was full of Yankees until we shelled them
out. All she’ll know about is the balls she went to and
the beaux she collected.”
“Well, it’s fun to hear her gabble. And it’ll be somewhere to hide out till Ma has gone to bed.”
“Well, hell! I like Cathleen and she is fun and I’d
like to hear about Caro Rhett and the rest of the
32
�PART ONE
Charleston folks; but I’m damned if I can stand sitting
through another meal with that Yankee stepmother of
hers.”
“Don’t be too hard on her, Stuart. She means well.”
“I’m not being hard on her. I feel sorry for her, but
I don’t like people I’ve got to feel sorry for. And she
fusses around so much, trying to do the right thing
and make you feel at home, that she always manages to say and do just exactly the wrong thing. She
gives me the fidgets! And she thinks Southerners are
wild barbarians. She even told Ma so. She’s afraid of
Southerners. Whenever we’re there she always looks
scared to death. She reminds me of a skinny hen
perched on a chair, her eyes kind of bright and blank
and scared, all ready to flap and squawk at the slightest move anybody makes.”
“Well, you can’t blame her. You did shoot Cade in
the leg.”
“Well, I was lickered up or I wouldn’t have done it,”
said Stuart. “And Cade never had any hard feelings.
Neither did Cathleen or Raiford or Mr. Calvert. It was
just that Yankee stepmother who squalled and said I
was a wild barbarian and decent people weren’t safe
around uncivilized Southerners.”
“Well, you can’t blame her. She’s a Yankee and ain’t
33
�PART ONE
got very good manners; and, after all, you did shoot
him and he is her stepson.”
“Well, hell! That’s no excuse for insulting me! You
are Ma’s own blood son, but did she take on that time
Tony Fontaine shot you in the leg? No, she just sent
for old Doc Fontaine to dress it and asked the doctor
what ailed Tony’s aim. Said she guessed licker was
spoiling his marksmanship. Remember how mad that
made Tony?”
Both boys yelled with laughter.
“Ma’s a card!” said Brent with loving approval.
“You can always count on her to do the right thing
and not embarrass you in front of folks.”
“Yes, but she’s mighty liable to talk embarrassing in front of Father and the girls when we get
home tonight,” said Stuart gloomily. “Look, Brent. I
guess this means we don’t go to Europe. You know
Mother said if we got expelled from another college
we couldn’t have our Grand Tour.”
“Well, hell! We don’t care, do we? What is there to
see in Europe? I’ll bet those foreigners can’t show us
a thing we haven’t got right here in Georgia. I’ll bet
their horses aren’t as fast or their girls as pretty, and
I know damn well they haven’t got any rye whisky
that can touch Father’s.”
34
�PART ONE
“Ashley Wilkes said they had an awful lot of scenery
and music. Ashley liked Europe. He’s always talking
about it.”
“Well–you know how the Wilkes are. They are kind
of queer about music and books and scenery. Mother
says it’s because their grandfather came from Virginia. She says Virginians set quite a store by such
things.”
“They can have ‘em. Give me a good horse to ride
and some good licker to drink and a good girl to court
and a bad girl to have fun with and anybody can have
their Europe. . . . What do we care about missing the
Tour? Suppose we were in Europe now, with the war
coming on? We couldn’t get home soon enough. I’d
heap rather go to a war than go to Europe.”
“So would I, any day. . . . Look, Brent! I know where
we can go for supper. Let’s ride across the swamp to
Abel Wynder’s place and tell him we’re all four home
again and ready for drill.”
“That’s an idea!” cried Brent with enthusiasm.
“And we can hear all the news of the Troop and find
out what color they finally decided on for the uniforms.”
“If it’s Zouave, I’m damned if I’ll go in the troop. I’d
feel like a sissy in those baggy red pants. They look
35
�PART ONE
like ladies’ red flannel drawers to me.”
“Is y’all aimin’ ter go ter Mist’ Wynder’s? ‘Cause ef
you is, you ain’ gwine git much supper,” said Jeems.
“Dey cook done died, an’ dey ain’ bought a new one.
Dey got a fe’el han’ cookin’, an’ de niggers tells me
she is de wustest cook in de state.”
“Good God! Why don’t they buy another cook?”
“Huccome po’ w’ite trash buy any niggers? Dey ain’
never owned mo’n fo’ at de mostes’.”
There was frank contempt in Jeems’ voice. His
own social status was assured because the Tarletons
owned a hundred negroes and, like all slaves of large
planters, he looked down on small farmers whose
slaves were few.
“I’m going to beat your hide off for that,” cried Stuart fiercely. Don’t you call Abel Wynder ‘po’ white.’
Sure he’s poor, but he ain’t trash; and I’m damned if
I’ll have any man, darky or white, throwing off on
him. There ain’t a better man in this County, or why
else did the Troop elect him lieutenant?”
“Ah ain’ never figgered dat out, mahseff,” replied
Jeems, undisturbed by his master’s scowl. “Look ter
me lak dey’d ‘lect all de awficers frum rich gempmum, ‘stead of swamp trash.”
“He ain’t trash! Do you mean to compare him with
36
�PART ONE
real white trash like the Slatterys? Able just ain’t rich.
He’s a small farmer, not a big planter, and if the boys
thought enough of him to elect him lieutenant, then
it’s not for any darky to talk impudent about him. The
Troop knows what it’s doing.”
The troop of cavalry had been organized three
months before, the very day that Georgia seceded
from the Union, and since then the recruits had been
whistling for war. The outfit was as yet unnamed,
though not for want of suggestions. Everyone had
his own idea on that subject and was loath to relinquish it, just as everyone had ideas about the color
and cut of the uniforms. “Clayton Wild Cats,” “Fire
Eaters,” “North Georgia Hussars,” “Zouaves,” “The
Inland Rifles” (although the Troop was to be armed
with pistols, sabers and bowie knives, and not with
rifles), “The Clayton Grays,” “The Blood and Thunderers,” “The Rough and Readys,” all had their adherents. Until matters were settled, everyone referred
to the organization as the Troop and, despite the highsounding name finally adopted, they were known to
the end of their usefulness simply as “The Troop.”
The officers were elected by the members, for no
one in the County had had any military experience
except a few veterans of the Mexican and Seminole
37
�PART ONE
wars and, besides, the Troop would have scorned a
veteran as a leader if they had not personally liked
him and trusted him. Everyone liked the four Tarleton boys and the three Fontaines, but regretfully refused to elect them, because the Tarletons got lickered
up too quickly and liked to skylark, and the Fontaines
had such quick, murderous tempers. Ashley Wilkes
was elected captain, because he was the best rider in
the County and because his cool head was counted on
to keep some semblance of order. Raiford Calvert was
made first lieutenant, because everybody liked Raif,
and Able Wynder, son of a swamp trapper, himself a
small farmer, was elected second lieutenant.
Abel was a shrewd, grave giant, illiterate, kind of
heart, older than the other boys and with as good or
better manners in the presence of ladies. There was
little snobbery in the Troop. Too many of their fathers and grandfathers had come up to wealth from
the small farmer class for that. Moreover, Able was
the best shot in the Troop, a real sharpshooter who
could pick out the eye of a squirrel at seventy-five
yards, and, too, he knew all about living outdoors,
building fires in the rain, tracking animals and finding
water. The Troop bowed to real worth and moreover,
because they liked him, they made him an officer. He
bore the honor gravely and with no untoward con38
�PART ONE
ceit, as though it were only his due. But the planters’
ladies and the planters’ slaves could not overlook the
fact that he was not born a gentleman, even if their
men folks could.
In the beginning, the Troop had been recruited exclusively from the sons of planters, a gentleman’s outfit, each man supplying his own horse, arms, equipment, uniform and body servant. But rich planters
were few in the young county of Clayton, and, in order to muster a full-strength troop, it had been necessary to raise more recruits among the sons of small
farmers, hunters in the backwoods, swamp trappers,
Crackers and, in a very few cases, even poor whites,
if they were above the average of their class.
These latter young men were as anxious to fight the
Yankees, should war come, as were their richer neighbors; but the delicate question of money arose. Few
small farmers owned horses. They carried on their
farm operations with mules and they had no surplus
of these, seldom more than four. The mules could not
be spared to go off to war, even if they had been acceptable for the Troop, which they emphatically were
not. As for the poor whites, they considered themselves well off if they owned one mule. The backwoods folks and the swamp dwellers owned neither
39
�PART ONE
horses nor mules. They lived entirely off the produce
of their lands and the game in the swamp, conducting their business generally by the barter system and
seldom seeing five dollars in cash a year, and horses
and uniforms were out of their reach. But they were
as fiercely proud in their poverty as the planters were
in their wealth, and they would accept nothing that
smacked of charity from their rich neighbors. So, to
save the feelings of all and to bring the Troop up
to full strength, Scarlett’s father, John Wilkes, Buck
Munroe, Jim Tarleton, Hugh Calvert, in fact every
large planter in the County with the one exception
of Angus MacIntosh, had contributed money to completely outfit the Troop, horse and man. The upshot
of the matter was that every planter agreed to pay for
equipping his own sons and a certain number of the
others, but the manner of handling the arrangements
was such that the less wealthy members of the outfit
could accept horses and uniforms without offense to
their honor.
The Troop met twice a week in Jonesboro to drill
and to pray for the war to begin. Arrangements
had not yet been completed for obtaining the full
quota of horses, but those who had horses performed
what they imagined to be cavalry maneuvers in the
field behind the courthouse, kicked up a great deal
40
�PART ONE
of dust, yelled themselves hoarse and waved the
Revolutionary-war swords that had been taken down
from parlor walls. Those who, as yet, had no horses
sat on the curb in front of Bullard’s store and watched
their mounted comrades, chewed tobacco and told
yarns. Or else engaged in shooting matches. There
was no need to teach any of the men to shoot. Most
Southerners were born with guns in their hands, and
lives spent in hunting had made marksmen of them
all.
From planters’ homes and swamp cabins, a varied
array of firearms came to each muster. There were
long squirrel guns that had been new when first the
Alleghenies were crossed, old muzzle-loaders that
had claimed many an Indian when Georgia was new,
horse pistols that had seen service in 1812, in the
Seminole wars and in Mexico, silver-mounted dueling pistols, pocket derringers, double- barreled hunting pieces and handsome new rifles of English make
with shining stocks of fine wood.
Drill always ended in the saloons of Jonesboro, and
by nightfall so many fights had broken out that the
officers were hard put to ward off casualties until the
Yankees could inflict them. It was during one of these
brawls that Stuart Tarleton had shot Cade Calvert and
41
�PART ONE
Tony Fontaine had shot Brent. The twins had been
at home, freshly expelled from the University of Virginia, at the time the Troop was organized and they
had joined enthusiastically; but after the shooting
episode, two months ago, their mother had packed
them off to the state university, with orders to stay
there. They had sorely missed the excitement of the
drills while away, and they counted education well
lost if only they could ride and yell and shoot off rifles in the company of their friends.
“Well, let’s cut across country to Abel’s,” suggested
Brent. “We can go through Mr. O’Hara’s river bottom
and the Fontaine’s pasture and get there in no time.”
“We ain’ gwine git nothin’ ter eat ‘cept possum an’
greens,” argued Jeems.
“You ain’t going to get anything,” grinned Stuart.
“Because you are going home and tell Ma that we
won’t be home for supper.”
“No, Ah ain’!” cried Jeems in alarm. “No, Ah ain’!
Ah doan git no mo’ fun outer havin’ Miss Beetriss lay
me out dan y’all does. Fust place she’ll ast me huccome Ah let y’all git expelled agin. An’ nex’ thing,
huccome Ah din’ bring y’all home ternight so she
could lay you out. An’ den she’ll light on me lak a
duck on a June bug, an’ fust thing Ah know Ah’ll be
42
�PART ONE
ter blame fer it all. Ef y’all doan tek me ter Mist’ Wynder’s, Ah’ll lay out in de woods all night an’ maybe
de patterollers git me, ‘cause Ah heap ruther de patterollers git me dan Miss Beetriss when she in a state.”
The twins looked at the determined black boy in
perplexity and indignation.
“He’d be just fool enough to let the patterollers get
him and that would give Ma something else to talk
about for weeks. I swear, darkies are more trouble.
Sometimes I think the Abolitionists have got the right
idea.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be right to make Jeems face what
we don’t want to face. We’ll have to take him. But,
look, you impudent black fool, if you put on any airs
in front of the Wynder darkies and hint that we all
the time have fried chicken and ham, while they don’t
have nothing but rabbit and possum, I’ll–I’ll tell Ma.
And we won’t let you go to the war with us, either.”
“Airs? Me put on airs fo’ dem cheap niggers? Nawsuh, Ah got better manners. Ain’ Miss Beetriss taught
me manners same as she taught y’all?”
“She didn’t do a very good job on any of the three of
us,” said Stuart. “Come on, let’s get going.”
He backed his big red horse and then, putting
spurs to his side, lifted him easily over the split rail
43
�PART ONE
fence into the soft field of Gerald O’Hara’s plantation.
Brent’s horse followed and then Jeems’, with Jeems
clinging to pommel and mane. Jeems did not like to
jump fences, but he had jumped higher ones than this
in order to keep up with his masters.
As they picked their way across the red furrows and
down the hill to the river bottom in the deepening
dusk, Brent yelled to his brother:
“Look, Stu! Don’t it seem like to you that Scarlett
WOULD have asked us to supper?”
“I kept thinking she would,” yelled Stuart. “Why do
you suppose…”
44
�CHAPTER II
left Scarlett standing on the porch of
Tara and the last sound of flying hooves had died
away, she went back to her chair like a sleepwalker.
Her face felt stiff as from pain and her mouth actually
hurt from having stretched it, unwillingly, in smiles
to prevent the twins from learning her secret. She sat
down wearily, tucking one foot under her, and her
heart swelled up with misery, until it felt too large for
her bosom. It beat with odd little jerks; her hands
were cold, and a feeling of disaster oppressed her.
There were pain and bewilderment in her face, the bewilderment of a pampered child who has always had
her own way for the asking and who now, for the first
time, was in contact with the unpleasantness of life.
Ashley to marry Melanie Hamilton!
Oh, it couldn’t be true! The twins were mistaken.
They were playing one of their jokes on her. Ashley
couldn’t, couldn’t be in love with her. Nobody could,
not with a mousy little person like Melanie. Scarlett
recalled with contempt Melanie’s thin childish figure,
her serious heart-shaped face that was plain almost
to homeliness. And Ashley couldn’t have seen her in
months. He hadn’t been in Atlanta more than twice
since the house party he gave last year at Twelve
W HEN
THE TWINS
�PART ONE
Oaks. No, Ashley couldn’t be in love with Melanie,
because–oh, she couldn’t be mistaken!–because he
was in love with her! She, Scarlett, was the one he
loved–she knew it!
Scarlett heard Mammy’s lumbering tread shaking
the floor of the hall and she hastily untucked her foot
and tried to rearrange her face in more placid lines. It
would never do for Mammy to suspect that anything
was wrong. Mammy felt that she owned the O’Haras,
body and soul, that their secrets were her secrets;
and even a hint of a mystery was enough to set her
upon the trail as relentlessly as a bloodhound. Scarlett knew from experience that, if Mammy’s curiosity
were not immediately satisfied, she would take up the
matter with Ellen, and then Scarlett would be forced
to reveal everything to her mother, or think up some
plausible lie.
Mammy emerged from the hall, a huge old woman
with the small, shrewd eyes of an elephant. She was
shining black, pure African, devoted to her last drop
of blood to the O’Haras, Ellen’s mainstay, the despair
of her three daughters, the terror of the other house
servants. Mammy was black, but her code of conduct
and her sense of pride were as high as or higher than
those of her owners. She had been raised in the bed46
�PART ONE
room of Solange Robillard, Ellen O’Hara’s mother, a
dainty, cold, high-nosed French-woman, who spared
neither her children nor her servants their just punishment for any infringement of decorum. She had
been Ellen’s mammy and had come with her from Savannah to the up-country when she married. Whom
Mammy loved, she chastened. And, as her love for
Scarlett and her pride in her were enormous, the chastening process was practically continuous.
“Is de gempmum gone? Huccome you din’ ast dem
ter stay fer supper, Miss Scarlett? Ah done tole Poke
ter lay two extry plates fer dem. Whar’s yo’ manners?”
“Oh, I was so tired of hearing them talk about the
war that I couldn’t have endured it through supper,
especially with Pa joining in and shouting about Mr.
Lincoln.”
“You ain’ got no mo’ manners dan a fe’el han’, an’
after Miss Ellen an’ me done labored wid you. An’
hyah you is widout yo’ shawl! An’ de night air fixin’
ter set in! Ah done tole you an’ tole you ‘bout gittin’
fever frum settin’ in de night air wid nuthin’ on yo’
shoulders. Come on in de house, Miss Scarlett.”
Scarlett turned away from Mammy with studied
nonchalance, thankful that her face had been unno47
�PART ONE
ticed in Mammy’s preoccupation with the matter of
the shawl.
“No, I want to sit here and watch the sunset. It’s so
pretty. You run get my shawl. Please, Mammy, and
I’ll sit here till Pa comes home.”
“Yo’ voice soun’ lak you catchin’ a cole,” said
Mammy suspiciously.
“Well, I’m not,” said Scarlett impatiently. “You fetch
me my shawl.”
Mammy waddled back into the hall and Scarlett
heard her call softly up the stairwell to the upstairs
maid.
“You, Rosa! Drap me Miss Scarlett’s shawl.” Then,
more loudly: “Wuthless nigger! She ain’ never whar
she does nobody no good. Now, Ah got ter climb up
an’ git it mahseff.”
Scarlett heard the stairs groan and she got softly
to her feet. When Mammy returned she would resume her lecture on Scarlett’s breach of hospitality,
and Scarlett felt that she could not endure prating
about such a trivial matter when her heart was breaking. As she stood, hesitant, wondering where she
could hide until the ache in her breast subsided a little, a thought came to her, bringing a small ray of
hope. Her father had ridden over to Twelve Oaks, the
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Wilkes plantation, that afternoon to offer to buy Dilcey, the broad wife of his valet, Pork. Dilcey was head
woman and midwife at Twelve Oaks, and, since the
marriage six months ago, Pork had deviled his master night and day to buy Dilcey, so the two could live
on the same plantation. That afternoon, Gerald, his
resistance worn thin, had set out to make an offer for
Dilcey.
Surely, thought Scarlett, Pa will know whether this
awful story is true. Even if he hasn’t actually heard
anything this afternoon, perhaps he’s noticed something, sensed some excitement in the Wilkes family. If
I can just see him privately before supper, perhaps I’ll
find out the truth–that it’s just one of the twins’ nasty
practical jokes.
It was time for Gerald’s return and, if she expected
to see him alone, there was nothing for her to do except meet him where the driveway entered the road.
She went quietly down the front steps, looking carefully over her shoulder to make sure Mammy was
not observing her from the upstairs windows. Seeing
no broad black face, turbaned in snowy white, peering disapprovingly from between fluttering curtains,
she boldly snatched up her green flowered skirts and
sped down the path toward the driveway as fast as
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her small ribbon-laced slippers would carry her.
The dark cedars on either side of the graveled drive
met in an arch overhead, turning the long avenue into
a dim tunnel. As soon as she was beneath the gnarled
arms of the cedars, she knew she was safe from observation from the house and she slowed her swift pace.
She was panting, for her stays were laced too tightly
to permit much running, but she walked on as rapidly
as she could. Soon she was at the end of the driveway
and out on the main road, but she did not stop until she had rounded a curve that put a large clump of
trees between her and the house.
Flushed and breathing hard, she sat down on a
stump to wait for her father. It was past time for
him to come home, but she was glad that he was late.
The delay would give her time to quiet her breathing and calm her face so that his suspicions would
not be aroused. Every moment she expected to hear
the pounding of his horse’s hooves and see him come
charging up the hill at his usual breakneck speed. But
the minutes slipped by and Gerald did not come. She
looked down the road for him, the pain in her heart
swelling up again.
“Oh, it can’t be true!” she thought. “Why doesn’t he
come?”
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Her eyes followed the winding road, blood-red now
after the morning rain. In her thought she traced its
course as it ran down the hill to the sluggish Flint
River, through the tangled swampy bottoms and up
the next hill to Twelve Oaks where Ashley lived. That
was all the road meant now–a road to Ashley and the
beautiful white-columned house that crowned the hill
like a Greek Temple.
“Oh, Ashley! Ashley!” she thought, and her heart
beat faster.
Some of the cold sense of bewilderment and disaster
that had weighted her down since the Tarleton boys
told her their gossip was pushed into the background
of her mind, and in its place crept the fever that had
possessed her for two years.
It seemed strange now that when she was growing
up Ashley had never seemed so very attractive to her.
In childhood days, she had seen him come and go and
never given him a thought. But since that day two
years ago when Ashley, newly home from his three
years’ Grand Tour in Europe, had called to pay his
respects, she had loved him. It was as simple as that.
She had been on the front porch and he had ridden up the long avenue, dressed in gray broadcloth
with a wide black cravat setting off his frilled shirt to
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perfection. Even now, she could recall each detail of
his dress, how brightly his boots shone, the head of a
Medusa in cameo on his cravat pin, the wide Panama
hat that was instantly in his hand when he saw her.
He had alighted and tossed his bridle reins to a pickaninny and stood looking up at her, his drowsy gray
eyes wide with a smile and the sun so bright on his
blond hair that it seemed like a cap of shining silver.
And he said, “So you’ve grown up, Scarlett.” And,
coming lightly up the steps, he had kissed her hand.
And his voice! She would never forget the leap of her
heart as she heard it, as if for the first time, drawling,
resonant, musical.
She had wanted him, in that first instant, wanted
him as simply and unreasoningly as she wanted food
to eat, horses to ride and a soft bed on which to lay
herself.
For two years he had squired her about the County,
to balls, fish fries, picnics and court days, never so often as the Tarleton twins or Cade Calvert, never so
importunate as the younger Fontaine boys, but, still,
never the week went by that Ashley did not come calling at Tara.
True, he never made love to her, nor did the clear
gray eyes ever glow with that hot light Scarlett knew
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so well in other men. And yet–and yet–she knew he
loved her. She could not be mistaken about it. Instinct
stronger than reason and knowledge born of experience told her that he loved her. Too often she had surprised him when his eyes were neither drowsy nor
remote, when he looked at her with a yearning and a
sadness which puzzled her. She KNEW he loved her.
Why did he not tell her so? That she could not understand. But there were so many things about him that
she did not understand.
He was courteous always, but aloof, remote. No one
could ever tell what he was thinking about, Scarlett
least of all. In a neighborhood where everyone said
exactly what he thought as soon as he thought it, Ashley’s quality of reserve was exasperating. He was as
proficient as any of the other young men in the usual
County diversions, hunting, gambling, dancing and
politics, and was the best rider of them all; but he differed from all the rest in that these pleasant activities
were not the end and aim of life to him. And he stood
alone in his interest in books and music and his fondness for writing poetry.
Oh, why was he so handsomely blond, so courteously aloof, so maddeningly boring with his talk
about Europe and books and music and poetry and
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things that interested her not at all–and yet so desirable? Night after night, when Scarlett went to bed
after sitting on the front porch in the semi-darkness
with him, she tossed restlessly for hours and comforted herself only with the thought that the very
next time he saw her he certainly would propose.
But the next time came and went, and the result was
nothing–nothing except that the fever possessing her
rose higher and hotter.
She loved him and she wanted him and she did not
understand him. She was as forthright and simple as
the winds that blew over Tara and the yellow river
that wound about it, and to the end of her days she
would never be able to understand a complexity. And
now, for the first time in her life, she was facing a complex nature.
For Ashley was born of a line of men who used their
leisure for thinking, not doing, for spinning brightly
colored dreams that had in them no touch of reality.
He moved in an inner world that was more beautiful than Georgia and came back to reality with reluctance. He looked on people, and he neither liked
nor disliked them. He looked on life and was neither
heartened nor saddened. He accepted the universe
and his place in it for what they were and, shrugging,
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turned to his music and books and his better world.
Why he should have captivated Scarlett when his
mind was a stranger to hers she did not know. The
very mystery of him excited her curiosity like a door
that had neither lock nor key. The things about him
which she could not understand only made her love
him more, and his odd, restrained courtship only
served to increase her determination to have him for
her own. That he would propose some day she had
never doubted, for she was too young and too spoiled
ever to have known defeat. And now, like a thunderclap, had come this horrible news. Ashley to marry
Melanie! It couldn’t be true!
Why, only last week, when they were riding home
at twilight from Fairhill, he had said: “Scarlett, I have
something so important to tell you that I hardly know
how to say it.”
She had cast down her eyes demurely, her heart
beating with wild pleasure, thinking the happy moment had come. Then he had said: “Not now! We’re
nearly home and there isn’t time. Oh, Scarlett, what a
coward I am!” And putting spurs to his horse, he had
raced her up the hill to Tara.
Scarlett, sitting on the stump, thought of those
words which had made her so happy, and suddenly
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they took on another meaning, a hideous meaning.
Suppose it was the news of his engagement he had
intended to tell her!
Oh, if Pa would only come home! She could not endure the suspense another moment. She looked impatiently down the road again, and again she was disappointed.
The sun was now below the horizon and the red
glow at the rim of the world faded into pink. The sky
above turned slowly from azure to the delicate bluegreen of a robin’s egg, and the unearthly stillness of
rural twilight came stealthily down about her. Shadowy dimness crept over the countryside. The red furrows and the gashed red road lost their magical blood
color and became plain brown earth. Across the road,
in the pasture, the horses, mules and cows stood quietly with heads over the split-rail fence, waiting to be
driven to the stables and supper. They did not like the
dark shade of the thickets hedging the pasture creek,
and they twitched their ears at Scarlett as if appreciative of human companionship.
In the strange half-light, the tall pines of the river
swamp, so warmly green in the sunshine, were black
against the pastel sky, an impenetrable row of black
giants hiding the slow yellow water at their feet. On
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the hill across the river, the tall white chimneys of
the Wilkes’ home faded gradually into the darkness
of the thick oaks surrounding them, and only faroff pin points of supper lamps showed that a house
was here. The warm damp balminess of spring encompassed her sweetly with the moist smells of newplowed earth and all the fresh green things pushing
up to the air.
Sunset and spring and new-fledged greenery were
no miracle to Scarlett. Their beauty she accepted as
casually as the air she breathed and the water she
drank, for she had never consciously seen beauty in
anything but women’s faces, horses, silk dresses and
like tangible things. Yet the serene half-light over
Tara’s well-kept acres brought a measure of quiet to
her disturbed mind. She loved this land so much,
without even knowing she loved it, loved it as she
loved her mother’s face under the lamp at prayer
time.
Still there was no sign of Gerald on the quiet winding road. If she had to wait much longer, Mammy
would certainly come in search of her and bully her
into the house. But even as she strained her eyes
down the darkening road, she heard a pounding of
hooves at the bottom of the pasture hill and saw the
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horses and cows scatter in fright. Gerald O’Hara was
coming home across country and at top speed.
He came up the hill at a gallop on his thick-barreled,
long-legged hunter, appearing in the distance like a
boy on a too large horse. His long white hair standing
out behind him, he urged the horse forward with crop
and loud cries.
Filled with her own anxieties, she nevertheless
watched him with affectionate pride, for Gerald was
an excellent horseman.
“I wonder why he always wants to jump fences
when he’s had a few drinks,” she thought. “And after that fall he had right here last year when he broke
his knee. You’d think he’d learn. Especially when he
promised Mother on oath he’d never jump again.”
Scarlett had no awe of her father and felt him more
her contemporary than her sisters, for jumping fences
and keeping it a secret from his wife gave him a boyish pride and guilty glee that matched her own pleasure in outwitting Mammy. She rose from her seat to
watch him.
The big horse reached the fence, gathered himself
and soared over as effortlessly as a bird, his rider
yelling enthusiastically, his crop beating the air, his
white curls jerking out behind him. Gerald did not
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see his daughter in the shadow of the trees, and he
drew rein in the road, patting his horse’s neck with
approbation.
“There’s none in the County can touch you, nor in
the state,” he informed his mount, with pride, the
brogue of County Meath still heavy on his tongue in
spite of thirty-nine years in America. Then he hastily
set about smoothing his hair and settling his ruffled
shirt and his cravat which had slipped awry behind
one ear. Scarlett knew these hurried preenings were
being made with an eye toward meeting his wife with
the appearance of a gentleman who had ridden sedately home from a call on a neighbor. She knew also
that he was presenting her with just the opportunity
she wanted for opening the conversation without revealing her true purpose.
She laughed aloud. As she had intended, Gerald
was startled by the sound; then he recognized her,
and a look both sheepish and defiant came over his
florid face. He dismounted with difficulty, because
his knee was stiff, and, slipping the reins over his arm,
stumped toward her.
“Well, Missy,” he said, pinching her cheek, “so,
you’ve been spying on me and, like your sister
Suellen last week, you’ll be telling your mother on
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me?”
There was indignation in his hoarse bass voice but
also a wheedling note, and Scarlett teasingly clicked
her tongue against her teeth as she reached out to pull
his cravat into place. His breath in her face was strong
with Bourbon whisky mingled with a faint fragrance
of mint. Accompanying him also were the smells
of chewing tobacco, well-oiled leather and horses–a
combination of odors that she always associated with
her father and instinctively liked in other men.
“No, Pa, I’m no tattletale like Suellen,” she assured
him, standing off to view his rearranged attire with a
judicious air.
Gerald was a small man, little more than five feet
tall, but so heavy of barrel and thick of neck that his
appearance, when seated, led strangers to think him
a larger man. His thickset torso was supported by
short sturdy legs, always incased in the finest leather
boots procurable and always planted wide apart like
a swaggering small boy’s. Most small people who
take themselves seriously are a little ridiculous; but
the bantam cock is respected in the barnyard, and so it
was with Gerald. No one would ever have the temerity to think of Gerald O’Hara as a ridiculous little figure.
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He was sixty years old and his crisp curly hair was
silver-white, but his shrewd face was unlined and his
hard little blue eyes were young with the unworried
youthfulness of one who has never taxed his brain
with problems more abstract than how many cards to
draw in a poker game. His was as Irish a face as could
be found in the length and breadth of the homeland
he had left so long ago–round, high colored, short
nosed, wide mouthed and belligerent.
Beneath his choleric exterior Gerald O’Hara had the
tenderest of hearts. He could not bear to see a slave
pouting under a reprimand, no matter how well deserved, or hear a kitten mewing or a child crying; but
he had a horror of having this weakness discovered.
That everyone who met him did discover his kindly
heart within five minutes was unknown to him; and
his vanity would have suffered tremendously if he
had found it out, for he liked to think that when he
bawled orders at the top of his voice everyone trembled and obeyed. It had never occurred to him that
only one voice was obeyed on the plantation–the soft
voice of his wife Ellen. It was a secret he would never
learn, for everyone from Ellen down to the stupidest
field hand was in a tacit and kindly conspiracy to
keep him believing that his word was law.
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Scarlett was impressed less than anyone else by his
tempers and his roarings. She was his oldest child
and, now that Gerald knew there would be no more
sons to follow the three who lay in the family burying
ground, he had drifted into a habit of treating her in a
man-to-man manner which she found most pleasant.
She was more like her father than her younger sisters,
for Carreen, who had been born Caroline Irene, was
delicate and dreamy, and Suellen, christened Susan
Elinor, prided herself on her elegance and ladylike deportment.
Moreover, Scarlett and her father were bound together by a mutual suppression agreement. If Gerald
caught her climbing a fence instead of walking half
a mile to a gate, or sitting too late on the front steps
with a beau, he castigated her personally and with vehemence, but he did not mention the fact to Ellen or to
Mammy. And when Scarlett discovered him jumping
fences after his solemn promise to his wife, or learned
the exact amount of his losses at poker, as she always
did from County gossip, she refrained from mentioning the fact at the supper table in the artfully artless
manner Suellen had. Scarlett and her father each assured the other solemnly that to bring such matters
to the ears of Ellen would only hurt her, and nothing
would induce them to wound her gentleness.
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Scarlett looked at her father in the fading light, and,
without knowing why, she found it comforting to be
in his presence. There was something vital and earthy
and coarse about him that appealed to her. Being the
least analytic of people, she did not realize that this
was because she possessed in some degree these same
qualities, despite sixteen years of effort on the part of
Ellen and Mammy to obliterate them.
“You look very presentable now,” she said, “and I
don’t think anyone will suspect you’ve been up to
your tricks unless you brag about them. But it does
seem to me that after you broke your knee last year,
jumping that same fence–”
“Well, may I be damned if I’ll have me own daughter telling me what I shall jump and not jump,” he
shouted, giving her cheek another pinch. “It’s me
own neck, so it is. And besides, Missy, what are you
doing out here without your shawl?”
Seeing that he was employing familiar maneuvers
to extricate himself from unpleasant conversation, she
slipped her arm through his and said: “I was waiting
for you. I didn’t know you would be so late. I just
wondered if you had bought Dilcey.”
“Bought her I did, and the price has ruined me.
Bought her and her little wench, Prissy. John Wilkes
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was for almost giving them away, but never will I
have it said that Gerald O’Hara used friendship in a
trade. I made him take three thousand for the two of
them.”
“In the name of Heaven, Pa, three thousand! And
you didn’t need to buy Prissy!”
“Has the time come when me own daughters sit
in judgment on me?” shouted Gerald rhetorically.
“Prissy is a likely little wench and so–”
“I know her. She’s a sly, stupid creature,” Scarlett
rejoined calmly, unimpressed by his uproar. “And the
only reason you bought her was because Dilcey asked
you to buy her.”
Gerald looked crestfallen and embarrassed, as always when caught in a kind deed, and Scarlett
laughed outright at his transparency.
“Well, what if I did? Was there any use buying Dilcey if she was going to mope about the child? Well,
never again will I let a darky on this place marry off
it. It’s too expensive. Well, come on, Puss, let’s go in
to supper.”
The shadows were falling thicker now, the last
greenish tinge had left the sky and a slight chill was
displacing the balminess of spring. But Scarlett loitered, wondering how to bring up the subject of Ash64
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ley without permitting Gerald to suspect her motive.
This was difficult, for Scarlett had not a subtle bone in
her body; and Gerald was so much like her he never
failed to penetrate her weak subterfuges, even as she
penetrated his. And he was seldom tactful in doing
it.
“How are they all over at Twelve Oaks?”
“About as usual. Cade Calvert was there and, after I
settled about Dilcey, we all set on the gallery and had
several toddies. Cade has just come from Atlanta, and
it’s all upset they are there and talking war and–”
Scarlett sighed. If Gerald once got on the subject of
war and secession, it would be hours before he relinquished it. She broke in with another line.
“Did they say anything about the barbecue tomorrow?”
“Now that I think of it they did. Miss–what’s-hername–the sweet little thing who was here last year,
you know, Ashley’s cousin–oh, yes, Miss Melanie
Hamilton, that’s the name–she and her brother
Charles have already come from Atlanta and–”
“Oh, so she did come?”
“She did, and a sweet quiet thing she is, with never
a word to say for herself, like a woman should be.
Come now, daughter, don’t lag. Your mother will be
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hunting for us.”
Scarlett’s heart sank at the news. She had hoped
against hope that something would keep Melanie
Hamilton in Atlanta where she belonged, and the
knowledge that even her father approved of her sweet
quiet nature, so different from her own, forced her
into the open.
“Was Ashley there, too?”
“He was.” Gerald let go of his daughter’s arm and
turned, peering sharply into her face. “And if that’s
why you came out here to wait for me, why didn’t
you say so without beating around the bush?”
Scarlett could think of nothing to say, and she felt
her face growing red with annoyance.
“Well, speak up.”
Still she said nothing, wishing that it was permissible to shake one’s father and tell him to hush his
mouth.
“He was there and he asked most kindly after you,
as did his sisters, and said they hoped nothing would
keep you from the barbecue tomorrow. I’ll warrant
nothing will,” he said shrewdly. “And now, daughter,
what’s all this about you and Ashley?”
“There is nothing,” she said shortly, tugging at his
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arm. “Let’s go in, Pa.”
“So now ‘tis you wanting to go in,” he observed.
“But here I’m going to stand till I’m understanding
you. Now that I think of it, ‘tis strange you’ve been
recently. Has he been trifling with you? Has he asked
to marry you?”
“No,” she said shortly.
“Nor will he,” said Gerald.
Fury flamed in her, but Gerald waved her quiet with
a hand.
“Hold your tongue, Miss! I had it from John Wilkes
this afternoon in the strictest confidence that Ashley’s
to marry Miss Melanie. It’s to be announced tomorrow.”
Scarlett’s hand fell from his arm. So it was true!
A pain slashed at her heart as savagely as a wild
animal’s fangs. Through it all, she felt her father’s
eyes on her, a little pitying, a little annoyed at being
faced with a problem for which he knew no answer.
He loved Scarlett, but it made him uncomfortable to
have her forcing her childish problems on him for a
solution. Ellen knew all the answers. Scarlett should
have taken her troubles to her.
“Is it a spectacle you’ve been making of yourself–
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of all of us?” he bawled, his voice rising as always
in moments of excitement. “Have you been running
after a man who’s not in love with you, when you
could have any of the bucks in the County?”
Anger and hurt pride drove out some of the pain.
“I haven’t been running after him. It–it just surprised me.”
“It’s lying you are!” said Gerald, and then, peering
at her stricken face, he added in a burst of kindliness:
“I’m sorry, daughter. But after all, you are nothing but
a child and there’s lots of other beaux.”
“Mother was only fifteen when she married you,
and I’m sixteen,” said Scarlett, her voice muffled.
“Your mother was different,” said Gerald. “She was
never flighty like you. Now come, daughter, cheer
up, and I’ll take you to Charleston next week to visit
your Aunt Eulalie and, what with all the hullabaloo
they are having over there about Fort Sumter, you’ll
be forgetting about Ashley in a week.”
“He thinks I’m a child,” thought Scarlett, grief and
anger choking utterance, “and he’s only got to dangle
a new toy and I’ll forget my bumps.”
“Now, don’t be jerking your chin at me,” warned
Gerald. “If you had any sense you’d have married
Stuart or Brent Tarleton long ago. Think it over,
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daughter. Marry one of the twins and then the plantations will run together and Jim Tarleton and I will
build you a fine house, right where they join, in that
big pine grove and–”
“Will you stop treating me like a child!” cried Scarlett. “I don’t want to go to Charleston or have a house
or marry the twins. I only want–” She caught herself
but not in time.
Gerald’s voice was strangely quiet and he spoke
slowly as if drawing his words from a store of thought
seldom used.
“It’s only Ashley you’re wanting, and you’ll not be
having him. And if he wanted to marry you, ‘twould
be with misgivings that I’d say Yes, for all the fine
friendship that’s between me and John Wilkes.” And,
seeing her startled look, he continued: “I want my girl
to be happy and you wouldn’t be happy with him.”
“Oh, I would! I would!”
“That you would not, daughter. Only when like
marries like can there be any happiness.”
Scarlett had a sudden treacherous desire to cry out,
“But you’ve been happy, and you and Mother aren’t
alike,” but she repressed it, fearing that he would box
her ears for her impertinence.
“Our people and the Wilkes are different,” he went
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on slowly, fumbling for words. “The Wilkes are different from any of our neighbors–different from any
family I ever knew. They are queer folk, and it’s best
that they marry their cousins and keep their queerness to themselves.”
“Why, Pa, Ashley is not–”
“Hold your whist, Puss! I said nothing against the
lad, for I like him. And when I say queer, it’s not crazy
I’m meaning. He’s not queer like the Calverts who’d
gamble everything they have on a horse, or the Tarletons who turn out a drunkard or two in every litter,
or the Fontaines who are hot-headed little brutes and
after murdering a man for a fancied slight. That kind
of queerness is easy to understand, for sure, and but
for the grace of God Gerald O’Hara would be having
all those faults! And I don’t mean that Ashley would
run off with another woman, if you were his wife, or
beat you. You’d be happier if he did, for at least you’d
be understanding that. But he’s queer in other ways,
and there’s no understanding him at all. I like him,
but it’s neither heads nor tails I can make of most he
says. Now, Puss, tell me true, do you understand his
folderol about books and poetry and music and oil
paintings and such foolishness?”
“Oh, Pa,” cried Scarlett impatiently, “if I married
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him, I’d change all that!”
“Oh, you would, would you now?” said Gerald
testily, shooting a sharp look at her. “Then it’s little enough you are knowing of any man living, let
alone Ashley. No wife has ever changed a husband
one whit, and don’t you be forgetting that. And as
for changing a Wilkes–God’s nightgown, daughter!
The whole family is that way, and they’ve always
been that way. And probably always will. I tell you
they’re born queer. Look at the way they go tearing up to New York and Boston to hear operas and
see oil paintings. And ordering French and German
books by the crate from the Yankees! And there they
sit reading and dreaming the dear God knows what,
when they’d be better spending their time hunting
and playing poker as proper men should.”
“There’s nobody in the County sits a horse better
than Ashley,” said Scarlett, furious at the slur of effeminacy flung on Ashley, “nobody except maybe his
father. And as for poker, didn’t Ashley take two hundred dollars away from you just last week in Jonesboro?”
“The Calvert boys have been blabbing again,” Gerald said resignedly, “else you’d not be knowing the
amount. Ashley can ride with the best and play poker
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with the best–that’s me, Puss! And I’m not denying
that when he sets out to drink he can put even the
Tarletons under the table. He can do all those things,
but his heart’s not in it. That’s why I say he’s queer.”
Scarlett was silent and her heart sank. She could
think of no defense for this last, for she knew Gerald
was right. Ashley’s heart was in none of the pleasant things he did so well. He was never more than
politely interested in any of the things that vitally interested every one else.
Rightly interpreting her silence, Gerald patted her
arm and said triumphantly: “There now, Scarlett! You
admit ‘tis true. What would you be doing with a husband like Ashley? ‘Tis moonstruck they all are, all
the Wilkes.” And then, in a wheedling tone: “When I
was mentioning the Tarletons the while ago, I wasn’t
pushing them. They’re fine lads, but if it’s Cade
Calvert you’re setting your cap after, why, ‘tis the
same with me. The Calverts are good folk, all of them,
for all the old man marrying a Yankee. And when I’m
gone–Whist, darlin’, listen to me! I’ll leave Tara to you
and Cade–”
“I wouldn’t have Cade on a silver tray,” cried Scarlett in fury. “And I wish you’d quit pushing him at
me! I don’t want Tara or any old plantation. Planta72
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tions don’t amount to anything when–”
She was going to say “when you haven’t the man
you want,” but Gerald, incensed by the cavalier way
in which she treated his proffered gift, the thing
which, next to Ellen, he loved best in the whole world
uttered a roar.
“Do you stand there, Scarlett O’Hara, and tell me
that Tara–that land–doesn’t amount to anything?”
Scarlett nodded obstinately. Her heart was too sore
to care whether or not she put her father in a temper.
“Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to
anything,” he shouted, his thick, short arms making
wide gestures of indignation, “for ‘tis the only thing
in this world that lasts, and don’t you be forgetting it!
‘Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting
for–worth dying for.”
“Oh, Pa,” she said disgustedly, “you talk like an
Irishman!”
“Have I ever been ashamed of it? No, ‘tis proud I
am. And don’t be forgetting that you are half Irish,
Miss! And to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in
them the land they live on is like their mother. ‘Tis
ashamed of you I am this minute. I offer you the most
beautiful land in the world–saving County Meath in
the Old Country–and what do you do? You sniff!”
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Gerald had begun to work himself up into a pleasurable shouting rage when something in Scarlett’s woebegone face stopped him.
“But there, you’re young. ‘Twill come to you, this
love of land. There’s no getting away from it, if you’re
Irish. You’re just a child and bothered about your
beaux. When you’re older, you’ll be seeing how ‘tis. .
. . Now, do you be making up your mind about Cade
or the twins or one of Evan Munroe’s young bucks,
and see how fine I turn you out!”
“Oh, Pa!”
By this time, Gerald was thoroughly tired of the
conversation and thoroughly annoyed that the problem should be upon his shoulders. He felt aggrieved,
moreover, that Scarlett should still look desolate after
being offered the best of the County boys and Tara,
too. Gerald liked his gifts to be received with clapping of hands and kisses.
“Now, none of your pouts, Miss. It doesn’t matter
who you marry, as long as he thinks like you and is
a gentleman and a Southerner and prideful. For a
woman, love comes after marriage.”
“Oh, Pa, that’s such an Old Country notion!”
“And a good notion it is! All this American business of running around marrying for love, like ser74
�PART ONE
vants, like Yankees! The best marriages are when the
parents choose for the girl. For how can a silly piece
like yourself tell a good man from a scoundrel? Now,
look at the Wilkes. What’s kept them prideful and
strong all these generations? Why, marrying the likes
of themselves, marrying the cousins their family always expects them to marry.”
“Oh,” cried Scarlett, fresh pain striking her as Gerald’s words brought home the terrible inevitability of
the truth.
Gerald looked at her bowed head and shuffled his
feet uneasily.
“It’s not crying you are?” he questioned, fumbling
clumsily at her chin, trying to turn her face upward,
his own face furrowed with pity.
“No,” she cried vehemently, jerking away.
“It’s lying you are, and I’m proud of it. I’m glad
there’s pride in you, Puss. And I want to see pride in
you tomorrow at the barbecue. I’ll not be having the
County gossiping and laughing at you for mooning
your heart out about a man who never gave you a
thought beyond friendship.”
“He did give me a thought,” thought Scarlett, sorrowfully in her heart. “Oh, a lot of thoughts! I know
he did. I could tell. If I’d just had a little longer,
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I know I could have made him say– Oh, if it only
wasn’t that the Wilkes always feel that they have to
marry their cousins!”
Gerald took her arm and passed it through his.
“We’ll be going in to supper now, and all this is between us. I’ll not be worrying your mother with this–
nor do you do it either. Blow your nose, daughter.”
Scarlett blew her nose on her torn handkerchief,
and they started up the dark drive arm in arm, the
horse following slowly. Near the house, Scarlett was
at the point of speaking again when she saw her
mother in the dim shadows of the porch. She had on
her bonnet, shawl and mittens, and behind her was
Mammy, her face like a thundercloud, holding in her
hand the black leather bag in which Ellen O’Hara always carried the bandages and medicines she used
in doctoring the slaves. Mammy’s lips were large
and pendulous and, when indignant, she could push
out her lower one to twice its normal length. It was
pushed out now, and Scarlett knew that Mammy was
seething over something of which she did not approve.
“Mr. O’Hara,” called Ellen as she saw the two coming up the driveway–Ellen belonged to a generation
that was formal even after seventeen years of wedlock
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and the bearing of six children– “Mr. O’Hara, there is
illness at the Slattery house. Emmie’s baby has been
born and is dying and must be baptized. I am going
there with Mammy to see what I can do.”
Her voice was raised questioningly, as though she
hung on Gerald’s assent to her plan, a mere formality
but one dear to the heart of Gerald.
“In the name of God!” blustered Gerald. “Why
should those white trash take you away just at your
supper hour and just when I’m wanting to tell you
about the war talk that’s going on in Atlanta! Go, Mrs.
O’Hara. You’d not rest easy on your pillow the night
if there was trouble abroad and you not there to help.”
“She doan never git no res’ on her piller fer hoppin’
up at night time nursin’ niggers an po’ w’ite trash dat
could ten’ to deyseff,” grumbled Mammy in a monotone as she went down the stairs toward the carriage
which was waiting in the side drive.
“Take my place at the table, dear,” said Ellen, patting
Scarlett’s cheek softly with a mittened hand.
In spite of her choked-back tears, Scarlett thrilled
to the never- failing magic of her mother’s touch, to
the faint fragrance of lemon verbena sachet that came
from her rustling silk dress. To Scarlett, there was
something breath-taking about Ellen O’Hara, a mir77
�PART ONE
acle that lived in the house with her and awed her
and charmed and soothed her.
Gerald helped his wife into the carriage and gave
orders to the coachman to drive carefully. Toby,
who had handled Gerald’s horses for twenty years,
pushed out his lips in mute indignation at being told
how to conduct his own business. Driving off, with
Mammy beside him, each was a perfect picture of
pouting African disapproval.
“If I didn’t do so much for those trashy Slatterys that
they’d have to pay money for elsewhere,” fumed Gerald, “they’d be willing to sell me their miserable few
acres of swamp bottom, and the County would be
well rid of them.” Then, brightening, in anticipation
of one of his practical jokes: “Come daughter, let’s go
tell Pork that instead of buying Dilcey, I’ve sold him
to John Wilkes.”
He tossed the reins of his horse to a small pickaninny standing near and started up the steps. He
had already forgotten Scarlett’s heartbreak and his
mind was only on plaguing his valet. Scarlett slowly
climbed the steps after him, her feet leaden. She
thought that, after all, a mating between herself and
Ashley could be no queerer than that of her father
and Ellen Robillard O’Hara. As always, she won78
�PART ONE
dered how her loud, insensitive father had managed
to marry a woman like her mother, for never were two
people further apart in birth, breeding and habits of
mind.
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thirty-two years old, and, according to the standards of her day, she was a middleaged woman, one who had borne six children and
buried three. She was a tall woman, standing a head
higher than her fiery little husband, but she moved
with such quiet grace in her swaying hoops that the
height attracted no attention to itself. Her neck, rising from the black taffeta sheath of her basque, was
creamy-skinned, rounded and slender, and it seemed
always tilted slightly backward by the weight of her
luxuriant hair in its net at the back of her head. From
her French mother, whose parents had fled Haiti in
the Revolution of 1791, had come her slanting dark
eyes, shadowed by inky lashes, and her black hair;
and from her father, a soldier of Napoleon, she had
her long straight nose and her square-cut jaw that was
softened by the gentle curving of her cheeks. But only
from life could Ellen’s face have acquired its look of
pride that had no haughtiness, its graciousness, its
melancholy and its utter lack of humor.
She would have been a strikingly beautiful woman
had there been any glow in her eyes, any responsive
warmth in her smile or any spontaneity in her voice
that fell with gentle melody on the ears of her famE LLEN O’H ARA
WAS
�PART ONE
ily and her servants. She spoke in the soft slurring
voice of the coastal Georgian, liquid of vowels, kind
to consonants and with the barest trace of French accent. It was a voice never raised in command to a servant or reproof to a child but a voice that was obeyed
instantly at Tara, where her husband’s blustering and
roaring were quietly disregarded.
As far back as Scarlett could remember, her mother
had always been the same, her voice soft and sweet
whether in praising or in reproving, her manner efficient and unruffled despite the daily emergencies of
Gerald’s turbulent household, her spirit always calm
and her back unbowed, even in the deaths of her three
baby sons. Scarlett had never seen her mother’s back
touch the back of any chair on which she sat. Nor had
she ever seen her sit down without a bit of needlework in her hands, except at mealtime, while attending the sick or while working at the bookkeeping of
the plantation. It was delicate embroidery if company
were present, but at other times her hands were occupied with Gerald’s ruffled shirts, the girls’ dresses
or garments for the slaves. Scarlett could not imagine her mother’s hands without her gold thimble or
her rustling figure unaccompanied by the small negro
girl whose sole function in life was to remove basting threads and carry the rosewood sewing box from
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room to room, as Ellen moved about the house superintending the cooking, the cleaning and the wholesale
clothes-making for the plantation.
She had never seen her mother stirred from her austere placidity, nor her personal appointments anything but perfect, no matter what the hour of day or
night. When Ellen was dressing for a ball or for guests
or even to go to Jonesboro for Court Day, it frequently
required two hours, two maids and Mammy to turn
her out to her own satisfaction; but her swift toilets in
times of emergency were amazing.
Scarlett, whose room lay across the hall from her
mother’s, knew from babyhood the soft sound of
scurrying bare black feet on the hardwood floor in the
hours of dawn, the urgent tappings on her mother’s
door, and the muffled, frightened negro voices that
whispered of sickness and birth and death in the long
row of whitewashed cabins in the quarters. As a
child, she often had crept to the door and, peeping
through the tiniest crack, had seen Ellen emerge from
the dark room, where Gerald’s snores were rhythmic
and untroubled, into the flickering light of an upheld
candle, her medicine case under her arm, her hair
smoothed neatly place, and no button on her basque
unlooped.
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It had always been so soothing to Scarlett to hear
her mother whisper, firmly but compassionately, as
she tiptoed down the hall: “Hush, not so loudly. You
will wake Mr. O’Hara. They are not sick enough to
die.”
Yes, it was good to creep back into bed and know
that Ellen was abroad in the night and everything was
right.
In the mornings, after all-night sessions at births
and deaths, when old Dr. Fontaine and young Dr.
Fontaine were both out on calls and could not be
found to help her, Ellen presided at the breakfast table as usual, her dark eyes circled with weariness but
her voice and manner revealing none of the strain.
There was a steely quality under her stately gentleness that awed the whole household, Gerald as well
as the girls, though he would have died rather than
admit it.
Sometimes when Scarlett tiptoed at night to kiss her
tall mother’s cheek, she looked up at the mouth with
its too short, too tender upper lip, a mouth too easily hurt by the world, and wondered if it had ever
curved in silly girlish giggling or whispered secrets
through long nights to intimate girl friends. But no,
that wasn’t possible. Mother had always been just as
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she was, a pillar of strength, a fount of wisdom, the
one person who knew the answers to everything.
But Scarlett was wrong, for, years before, Ellen Robillard of Savannah had giggled as inexplicably as
any fifteen-year-old in that charming coastal city and
whispered the long nights through with friends, exchanging confidences, telling all secrets but one. That
was the year when Gerald O’Hara, twenty-eight years
older than she, came into her life–the year, too, when
youth and her black-eyed cousin, Philippe Robillard,
went out of it. For when Philippe, with his snapping
eyes and his wild ways, left Savannah forever, he took
with him the glow that was in Ellen’s heart and left
for the bandy-legged little Irishman who married her
only a gentle shell.
But that was enough for Gerald, overwhelmed at
his unbelievable luck in actually marrying her. And
if anything was gone from her, he never missed it.
Shrewd man that he was, he knew that it was no less
than a miracle that he, an Irishman with nothing of
family and wealth to recommend him, should win the
daughter of one of the wealthiest and proudest families on the Coast. For Gerald was a self-made man.
Gerald had come to America from Ireland when he
was twenty-one. He had come hastily, as many a bet84
�PART ONE
ter and worse Irishman before and since, with the
clothes he had on his back, two shillings above his
passage money and a price on his head that he felt
was larger than his misdeed warranted. There was no
Orangeman this side of hell worth a hundred pounds
to the British government or to the devil himself; but
if the government felt so strongly about the death
of an English absentee landlord’s rent agent, it was
time for Gerald O’Hara to be leaving and leaving suddenly. True, he had called the rent agent “a bastard of
an Orangeman,” but that, according to Gerald’s way
of looking at it, did not give the man any right to insult him by whistling the opening bars of “The Boyne
Water.”
The Battle of the Boyne had been fought more than
a hundred years before, but, to the O’Haras and their
neighbors, it might have been yesterday when their
hopes and their dreams, as well as their lands and
wealth, went off in the same cloud of dust that enveloped a frightened and fleeing Stuart prince, leaving William of Orange and his hated troops with their
orange cockades to cut down the Irish adherents of
the Stuarts.
For this and other reasons, Gerald’s family was not
inclined to view the fatal outcome of this quarrel as
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anything very serious, except for the fact that it was
charged with serious consequences. For years, the
O’Haras had been in bad odor with the English constabulary on account of suspected activities against
the government, and Gerald was not the first O’Hara
to take his foot in his hand and quit Ireland between
dawn and morning. His two oldest brothers, James
and Andrew, he hardly remembered, save as closelipped youths who came and went at odd hours of
the night on mysterious errands or disappeared for
weeks at a time, to their mother’s gnawing anxiety. They had come to America years before, after
the discovery of a small arsenal of rifles buried under the O’Hara pigsty. Now they were successful
merchants in Savannah, “though the dear God alone
knows where that may be,” as their mother always
interpolated when mentioning the two oldest of her
male brood, and it was to them that young Gerald
was sent.
He left home with his mother’s hasty kiss on his
cheek and her fervent Catholic blessing in his ears,
and his father’s parting admonition, “Remember who
ye are and don’t be taking nothing off no man.” His
five tall brothers gave him good-by with admiring but
slightly patronizing smiles, for Gerald was the baby
and the little one of a brawny family.
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His five brothers and their father stood six feet and
over and broad in proportion, but little Gerald, at
twenty-one, knew that five feet four and a half inches
was as much as the Lord in His wisdom was going to
allow him. It was like Gerald that he never wasted regrets on his lack of height and never found it an obstacle to his acquisition of anything he wanted. Rather, it
was Gerald’s compact smallness that made him what
he was, for he had learned early that little people
must be hardy to survive among large ones. And Gerald was hardy.
His tall brothers were a grim, quiet lot, in whom the
family tradition of past glories, lost forever, rankled in
unspoken hate and crackled out in bitter humor. Had
Gerald been brawny, he would have gone the way
of the other O’Haras and moved quietly and darkly
among the rebels against the government. But Gerald
was “loud-mouthed and bullheaded,” as his mother
fondly phrased it, hair trigger of temper, quick with
his fists and possessed of a chip on his shoulder so
large as to be almost visible to the naked eye. He
swaggered among the tall O’Haras like a strutting
bantam in a barnyard of giant Cochin roosters, and
they loved him, baited him affectionately to hear him
roar and hammered on him with their large fists no
more than was necessary to keep a baby brother in
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his proper place.
If the educational equipment which Gerald brought
to America was scant, he did not even know it. Nor
would he have cared if he had been told. His mother
had taught him to read and to write a clear hand. He
was adept at ciphering. And there his book knowledge stopped. The only Latin he knew was the responses of the Mass and the only history the manifold wrongs of Ireland. He knew no poetry save that
of Moore and no music except the songs of Ireland
that had come down through the years. While he entertained the liveliest respect for those who had more
book learning than he, he never felt his own lack.
And what need had he of these things in a new country where the most ignorant of bogtrotters had made
great fortunes? in this country which asked only that
a man be strong and unafraid of work?
Nor did James and Andrew, who took him into their
store in Savannah, regret his lack of education. His
clear hand, his accurate figures and his shrewd ability
in bargaining won their respect, where a knowledge
of literature and a fine appreciation of music, had
young Gerald possessed them, would have moved
them to snorts of contempt. America, in the early
years of the century, had been kind to the Irish. James
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and Andrew, who had begun by hauling goods in
covered wagons from Savannah to Georgia’s inland
towns, had prospered into a store of their own, and
Gerald prospered with them.
He liked the South, and he soon became, in his own
opinion, a Southerner. There was much about the
South–and Southerners–that he would never comprehend: but, with the wholeheartedness that was his nature, he adopted its ideas and customs, as he understood them, for his own–poker and horse racing, redhot politics and the code duello, States’ Rights and
damnation to all Yankees, slavery and King Cotton,
contempt for white trash and exaggerated courtesy to
women. He even learned to chew tobacco. There was
no need for him to acquire a good head for whisky, he
had been born with one.
But Gerald remained Gerald. His habits of living
and his ideas changed, but his manners he would not
change, even had he been able to change them. He
admired the drawling elegance of the wealthy rice
and cotton planters, who rode into Savannah from
their moss-hung kingdoms, mounted on thoroughbred horses and followed by the carriages of their
equally elegant ladies and the wagons of their slaves.
But Gerald could never attain elegance. Their lazy,
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blurred voices fell pleasantly on his ears, but his own
brisk brogue clung to his tongue. He liked the casual grace with which they conducted affairs of importance, risking a fortune, a plantation or a slave on
the turn of a card and writing off their losses with
careless good humor and no more ado than when
they scattered pennies to pickaninnies. But Gerald
had known poverty, and he could never learn to lose
money with good humor or good grace. They were
a pleasant race, these coastal Georgians, with their
soft-voiced, quick rages and their charming inconsistencies, and Gerald liked them. But there was a
brisk and restless vitality about the young Irishman,
fresh from a country where winds blew wet and chill,
where misty swamps held no fevers, that set him
apart from these indolent gentlefolk of semi-tropical
weather and malarial marshes.
From them he learned what he found useful, and the
rest he dismissed. He found poker the most useful
of all Southern customs, poker and a steady head for
whisky; and it was his natural aptitude for cards and
amber liquor that brought to Gerald two of his three
most prized possessions, his valet and his plantation.
The other was his wife, and he could only attribute
her to the mysterious kindness of God.
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The valet, Pork by name, shining black, dignified
and trained in all the arts of sartorial elegance, was
the result of an all-night poker game with a planter
from St. Simons Island, whose courage in a bluff
equaled Gerald’s but whose head for New Orleans
rum did not. Though Pork’s former owner later offered to buy him back at twice his value, Gerald obstinately refused, for the possession of his first slave,
and that slave the “best damn valet on the Coast,”
was the first step upward toward his heart’s desire,
Gerald wanted to be a slave owner and a landed gentleman.
His mind was made up that he was not going to
spend all of his days, like James and Andrew, in bargaining, or all his nights, by candlelight, over long
columns of figures. He felt keenly, as his brothers
did not, the social stigma attached to those “in trade.”
Gerald wanted to be a planter. With the deep hunger
of an Irishman who has been a tenant on the lands his
people once had owned and hunted, he wanted to see
his own acres stretching green before his eyes. With
a ruthless singleness of purpose, he desired his own
house, his own plantation, his own horse, his own
slaves. And here in this new country, safe from the
twin perils of the land he had left–taxation that ate up
crops and barns and the ever-present threat of sud91
�PART ONE
den confiscation–he intended to have them. But having that ambition and bringing it to realization were
two different matters, he discovered as time went by.
Coastal Georgia was too firmly held by an entrenched
aristocracy for him ever to hope to win the place he
intended to have.
Then the hand of Fate and a hand of poker combined to give him the plantation which he afterwards
called Tara, and at the same time moved him out of
the Coast into the upland country of north Georgia.
It was in a saloon in Savannah, on a hot night in
spring, when the chance conversation of a stranger
sitting near by made Gerald prick up his ears. The
stranger, a native of Savannah, had just returned after twelve years in the inland country. He had been
one of the winners in the land lottery conducted by
the State to divide up the vast area in middle Georgia, ceded by the Indians the year before Gerald came
to America. He had gone up there and established a
plantation; but, now the house had burned down, he
was tired of the “accursed place” and would be most
happy to get it off his hands.
Gerald, his mind never free of the thought of owning a plantation of his own, arranged an introduction, and his interest grew as the stranger told how
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the northern section of the state was filling up with
newcomers from the Carolinas and Virginia. Gerald
had lived in Savannah long enough to acquire a viewpoint of the Coast–that all of the rest of the state was
backwoods, with an Indian lurking in every thicket.
In transacting business for O’Hara Brothers, he had
visited Augusta, a hundred miles up the Savannah
River, and he had traveled inland far enough to visit
the old towns westward from that city. He knew that
section to be as well settled as the Coast, but from the
stranger’s description, his plantation was more than
two hundred and fifty miles inland from Savannah
to the north and west, and not many miles south of
the Chattahoochee River. Gerald knew that northward beyond that stream the land was still held by the
Cherokees, so it was with amazement that he heard
the stranger jeer at suggestions of trouble with the Indians and narrate how thriving towns were growing
up and plantations prospering in the new country.
An hour later when the conversation began to lag,
Gerald, with a guile that belied the wide innocence of
his bright blue eyes, proposed a game. As the night
wore on and the drinks went round, there came a time
when all the others in the game laid down their hands
and Gerald and the stranger were battling alone. The
stranger shoved in all his chips and followed with
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the deed to his plantation. Gerald shoved in all his
chips and laid on top of them his wallet. If the
money it contained happened to belong to the firm
of O’Hara Brothers, Gerald’s conscience was not sufficiently troubled to confess it before Mass the following morning. He knew what he wanted, and when
Gerald wanted something he gained it by taking the
most direct route. Moreover, such was his faith in his
destiny and four dueces that he never for a moment
wondered just how the money would be paid back
should a higher hand be laid down across the table.
“It’s no bargain you’re getting and I am glad not
to have to pay more taxes on the place,” sighed the
possessor of an “ace full,” as he called for pen and
ink. “The big house burned a year ago and the fields
are growing up in brush and seedling pine. But it’s
yours.”
“Never mix cards and whisky unless you were
weaned on Irish poteen,” Gerald told Pork gravely
the same evening, as Pork assisted him to bed. And
the valet, who had begun to attempt a brogue out of
admiration for his new master, made requisite answer
in a combination of Geechee and County Meath that
would have puzzled anyone except those two alone.
The muddy Flint River, running silently between
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walls of pine and water oak covered with tangled
vines, wrapped about Gerald’s new land like a curving arm and embraced it on two sides. To Gerald,
standing on the small knoll where the house had
been, this tall barrier of green was as visible and
pleasing an evidence of ownership as though it were
a fence that he himself had built to mark his own.
He stood on the blackened foundation stones of the
burned building, looked down the long avenue of
trees leading toward the road and swore lustily, with
a joy too deep for thankful prayer. These twin lines
of somber trees were his, his the abandoned lawn,
waist high in weeds under white-starred young magnolia trees. The uncultivated fields, studded with tiny
pines and underbrush, that stretched their rolling redclay surface away into the distance on four sides belonged to Gerald O’Hara–were all his because he had
an unbefuddled Irish head and the courage to stake
everything on a hand of cards.
Gerald closed his eyes and, in the stillness of the unworked acres, he felt that he had come home. Here
under his feet would rise a house of whitewashed
brick. Across the road would be new rail fences,
inclosing fat cattle and blooded horses, and the red
earth that rolled down the hillside to the rich river
bottom land would gleam white as eiderdown in the
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sun–cotton, acres and acres of cotton! The fortunes of
the O’Haras would rise again.
With his own small stake, what he could borrow
from his unenthusiastic brothers and a neat sum from
mortgaging the land, Gerald bought his first field
hands and came to Tara to live in bachelor solitude
in the four-room overseer’s house, till such a time as
the white walls of Tara should rise.
He cleared the fields and planted cotton and borrowed more money from James and Andrew to buy
more slaves. The O’Haras were a clannish tribe, clinging to one another in prosperity as well as in adversity, not for any overweening family affection but because they had learned through grim years that to
survive a family must present an unbroken front to
the world. They lent Gerald the money and, in the
years that followed, the money came back to them
with interest. Gradually the plantation widened out,
as Gerald bought more acres lying near him, and in
time the white house became a reality instead of a
dream.
It was built by slave labor, a clumsy sprawling
building that crowned the rise of ground overlooking the green incline of pasture land running down
to the river; and it pleased Gerald greatly, for, even
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when new, it wore a look of mellowed years. The old
oaks, which had seen Indians pass under their limbs,
hugged the house closely with their great trunks and
towered their branches over the roof in dense shade.
The lawn, reclaimed from weeds, grew thick with
clover and Bermuda grass, and Gerald saw to it that
it was well kept. From the avenue of cedars to the
row of white cabins in the slave quarters, there was
an air of solidness, of stability and permanence about
Tara, and whenever Gerald galloped around the bend
in the road and saw his own roof rising through green
branches, his heart swelled with pride as though each
sight of it were the first sight.
He had done it all, little, hard-headed, blustering
Gerald.
Gerald was on excellent terms with all his neighbors
in the County, except the MacIntoshes whose land adjoined his on the left and the Slatterys whose meager
three acres stretched on his right along the swamp
bottoms between the river and John Wilkes’ plantation.
The MacIntoshes were Scotch-Irish and Orangemen
and, had they possessed all the saintly qualities of the
Catholic calendar, this ancestry would have damned
them forever in Gerald’s eyes. True, they had lived in
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Georgia for seventy years and, before that, had spent
a generation in the Carolinas; but the first of the family who set foot on American shores had come from
Ulster, and that was enough for Gerald.
They were a close-mouthed and stiff-necked family,
who kept strictly to themselves and intermarried with
their Carolina relatives, and Gerald was not alone in
disliking them, for the County people were neighborly and sociable and none too tolerant of anyone
lacking in those same qualities. Rumors of Abolitionist sympathies did not enhance the popularity of the
MacIntoshes. Old Angus had never manumitted a
single slave and had committed the unpardonable social breach of selling some of his negroes to passing
slave traders en route to the cane fields of Louisiana,
but the rumors persisted.
“He’s an Abolitionist, no doubt,” observed Gerald
to John Wilkes. “But, in an Orangeman, when a principle comes up against Scotch tightness, the principle
fares ill.”
The Slatterys were another affair. Being poor white,
they were not even accorded the grudging respect
that Angus MacIntosh’s dour independence wrung
from neighboring families. Old Slattery, who clung
persistently to his few acres, in spite of repeated
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offers from Gerald and John Wilkes, was shiftless
and whining. His wife was a snarly-haired woman,
sickly and washed-out of appearance, the mother of a
brood of sullen and rabbity-looking children– a brood
which was increased regularly every year. Tom Slattery owned no slaves, and he and his two oldest
boys spasmodically worked their few acres of cotton, while the wife and younger children tended what
was supposed to be a vegetable garden. But, somehow, the cotton always failed, and the garden, due
to Mrs. Slattery’s constant childbearing, seldom furnished enough to feed her flock.
The sight of Tom Slattery dawdling on his neighbors’ porches, begging cotton seed for planting or a
side of bacon to “tide him over,” was a familiar one.
Slattery hated his neighbors with what little energy
he possessed, sensing their contempt beneath their
courtesy, and especially did he hate “rich folks’ uppity niggers.” The house negroes of the County considered themselves superior to white trash, and their
unconcealed scorn stung him, while their more secure position in life stirred his envy. By contrast with
his own miserable existence, they were well-fed, wellclothed and looked after in sickness and old age. They
were proud of the good names of their owners and,
for the most part, proud to belong to people who were
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quality, while he was despised by all.
Tom Slattery could have sold his farm for three
times its value to any of the planters in the County.
They would have considered it money well spent to
rid the community of an eyesore, but he was well satisfied to remain and to subsist miserably on the proceeds of a bale of cotton a year and the charity of his
neighbors.
With all the rest of the County, Gerald was on
terms of amity and some intimacy. The Wilkeses, the
Calverts, the Tarletons, the Fontaines, all smiled when
the small figure on the big white horse galloped up
their driveways, smiled and signaled for tall glasses
in which a pony of Bourbon had been poured over a
teaspoon of sugar and a sprig of crushed mint. Gerald was likable, and the neighbors learned in time
what the children, negroes and dogs discovered at
first sight, that a kind heart, a ready and sympathetic
ear and an open pocketbook lurked just behind his
bawling voice and his truculent manner.
His arrival was always amid a bedlam of hounds
barking and small black children shouting as they
raced to meet him, quarreling for the privilege of
holding his horse and squirming and grinning under
his good-natured insults. The white children clam100
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ored to sit on his knee and be trotted, while he denounced to their elders the infamy of Yankee politicians; the daughters of his friends took him into their
confidence about their love affairs, and the youths
of the neighborhood, fearful of confessing debts of
honor upon the carpets of their fathers, found him a
friend in need.
“So, you’ve been owning this for a month, you
young rascal!” he would shout. “And, in God’s name,
why haven’t you been asking me for the money before this?”
His rough manner of speech was too well known to
give offense, and it only made the young men grin
sheepishly and reply: “Well, sir, I hated to trouble
you, and my father–”
“Your father’s a good man, and no denying it, but
strict, and so take this and let’s be hearing no more of
it.”
The planters’ ladies were the last to capitulate. But,
when Mrs. Wilkes, “a great lady and with a rare gift
for silence,” as Gerald characterized her, told her husband one evening, after Gerald’s horse had pounded
down the driveway. “He has a rough tongue, but he
is a gentleman,” Gerald had definitely arrived.
He did not know that he had taken nearly ten years
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to arrive, for it never occurred to him that his neighbors had eyed him askance at first. In his own mind,
there had never been any doubt that he belonged,
from the moment he first set foot on Tara.
When Gerald was forty-three, so thickset of body
and florid of face that he looked like a hunting squire
out of a sporting print, it came to him that Tara, dear
though it was, and the County folk, with their open
hearts and open houses, were not enough. He wanted
a wife.
Tara cried out for a mistress. The fat cook, a yard
negro elevated by necessity to the kitchen, never had
the meals on time, and the chambermaid, formerly a
field hand, let dust accumulate on the furniture and
never seemed to have clean linen on hand, so that the
arrival of guests was always the occasion of much stirring and to-do. Pork, the only trained house negro on
the place, had general supervision over the other servants, but even he had grown slack and careless after
several years of exposure to Gerald’s happy-go-lucky
mode of living. As valet, he kept Gerald’s bedroom
in order, and, as butler, he served the meals with dignity and style, but otherwise he pretty well let matters
follow their own course.
With unerring African instinct, the negroes had all
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discovered that Gerald had a loud bark and no bite
at all, and they took shameless advantage of him.
The air was always thick with threats of selling slaves
south and of direful whippings, but there never had
been a slave sold from Tara and only one whipping,
and that administered for not grooming down Gerald’s pet horse after a long day’s hunting.
Gerald’s sharp blue eyes noticed how efficiently his
neighbors’ houses were run and with what ease the
smooth-haired wives in rustling skirts managed their
servants. He had no knowledge of the dawn-tillmidnight activities of these women, chained to supervision of cooking, nursing, sewing and laundering.
He only saw the outward results, and those results
impressed him.
The urgent need of a wife became clear to him one
morning when he was dressing to ride to town for
Court Day. Pork brought forth his favorite ruffled
shirt, so inexpertly mended by the chambermaid as
to be unwearable by anyone except his valet.
“Mist’ Gerald,” said Pork, gratefully rolling up the
shirt as Gerald fumed, “whut you needs is a wife, and
a wife whut has got plen’y of house niggers.”
Gerald upbraided Pork for his impertinence, but he
knew that he was right. He wanted a wife and he
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wanted children and, if he did not acquire them soon,
it would be too late. But he was not going to marry
just anyone, as Mr. Calvert had done, taking to wife
the Yankee governess of his motherless children. His
wife must be a lady and a lady of blood, with as many
airs and graces as Mrs. Wilkes and the ability to manage Tara as well as Mrs. Wilkes ordered her own domain.
But there were two difficulties in the way of marriage into the County families. The first was the
scarcity of girls of marriageable age. The second,
and more serious one, was that Gerald was a “new
man,” despite his nearly ten years’ residence, and a
foreigner. No one knew anything about his family.
While the society of up-country Georgia was not so
impregnable as that of the Coast aristocrats, no family
wanted a daughter to wed a man about whose grandfather nothing was known.
Gerald knew that despite the genuine liking of
the County men with whom he hunted, drank and
talked politics there was hardly one whose daughter he could marry. And he did not intend to have
it gossiped about over supper tables that this, that or
the other father had regretfully refused to let Gerald
O’Hara pay court to his daughter. This knowledge
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did not make Gerald feel inferior to his neighbors.
Nothing could ever make Gerald feel that he was inferior in any way to anyone. It was merely a quaint
custom of the County that daughters only married
into families who had lived in the South much longer
than twenty-two years, had owned land and slaves
and been addicted only to the fashionable vices during that time.
“Pack up. We’re going to Savannah,” he told Pork.
“And if I hear you say ‘Whist!’ or ‘Faith!’ but once, it’s
selling you I’ll be doing, for they are words I seldom
say meself.”
James and Andrew might have some advice to offer
on this subject of marriage, and there might be daughters among their old friends who would both meet his
requirements and find him acceptable as a husband.
James and Andrew listened to his story patiently but
they gave him little encouragement. They had no Savannah relatives to whom they might look for assistance, for they had been married when they came to
America. And the daughters of their old friends had
long since married and were raising small children of
their own.
“You’re not a rich man and you haven’t a great family,” said James.
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“I’ve made me money and I can make a great family.
And I won’t be marrying just anyone.”
“You fly high,” observed Andrew, dryly.
But they did their best for Gerald. James and Andrew were old men and they stood well in Savannah.
They had many friends, and for a month they carried
Gerald from home to home, to suppers, dances and
picnics.
“There’s only one who takes me eye,” Gerald said
finally. “And she not even born when I landed here.”
“And who is it takes your eye?”
“Miss Ellen Robillard,” said Gerald, trying to speak
casually, for the slightly tilting dark eyes of Ellen Robillard had taken more than his eye. Despite a mystifying listlessness of manner, so strange in a girl of fifteen, she charmed him. Moreover, there was a haunting look of despair about her that went to his heart
and made him more gentle with her than he had ever
been with any person in all the world.
“And you old enough to be her father!”
“And me in me prime!” cried Gerald stung.
James spoke gently.
“Jerry, there’s no girl in Savannah you’d have less
chance of marrying. Her father is a Robillard, and
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those French are proud as Lucifer. And her mother–
God rest her soul–was a very great lady.”
“I care not,” said Gerald heatedly. “Besides, her
mother is dead, and old man Robillard likes me.”
“As a man, yes, but as a son-in-law, no.”
“The girl wouldn’t have you anyway,” interposed
Andrew. “She’s been in love with that wild buck of
a cousin of hers, Philippe Robillard, for a year now,
despite her family being at her morning and night to
give him up.”
“He’s been gone to Louisiana this month now,” said
Gerald.
“And how do you know?”
“I know,” answered Gerald, who did not care to disclose that Pork had supplied this valuable bit of information, or that Philippe had departed for the West at
the express desire of his family. “And I do not think
she’s been so much in love with him that she won’t
forget him. Fifteen is too young to know much about
love.”
“They’d rather have that breakneck cousin for her
than you.”
So, James and Andrew were as startled as anyone
when the news came out that the daughter of Pierre
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Robillard was to marry the little Irishman from up the
country. Savannah buzzed behind its doors and speculated about Philippe Robillard, who had gone West,
but the gossiping brought no answer. Why the loveliest of the Robillard daughters should marry a loudvoiced, red-faced little man who came hardly up to
her ears remained a mystery to all.
Gerald himself never quite knew how it all came
about. He only knew that a miracle had happened.
And, for once in his life, he was utterly humble when
Ellen, very white but very calm, put a light hand on
his arm and said: “I will marry you, Mr. O’Hara.”
The thunderstruck Robillards knew the answer in
part, but only Ellen and her mammy ever knew the
whole story of the night when the girl sobbed till the
dawn like a broken-hearted child and rose up in the
morning a woman with her mind made up.
With foreboding, Mammy had brought her young
mistress a small package, addressed in a strange hand
from New Orleans, a package containing a miniature
of Ellen, which she flung to the floor with a cry, four
letters in her own handwriting to Philippe Robillard,
and a brief letter from a New Orleans priest, announcing the death of her cousin in a barroom brawl.
“They drove him away, Father and Pauline and Eu108
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lalie. They drove him away. I hate them. I hate them
all. I never want to see them again. I want to get away.
I will go away where I’ll never see them again, or this
town, or anyone who reminds me of–of– him.”
And when the night was nearly spent, Mammy, who
had cried herself out over her mistress’ dark head,
protested, “But, honey, you kain do dat!”
“I will do it. He is a kind man. I will do it or go into
the convent at Charleston.”
It was the threat of the convent that finally won the
assent of bewildered and heartstricken Pierre Robillard. He was staunchly Presbyterian, even though his
family were Catholic, and the thought of his daughter
becoming a nun was even worse than that of her marrying Gerald O’Hara. After all, the man had nothing
against him but a lack of family.
So, Ellen, no longer Robillard, turned her back on
Savannah, never to see it again, and with a middleaged husband, Mammy, and twenty “house niggers”
journeyed toward Tara.
The next year, their first child was born and they
named her Katie Scarlett, after Gerald’s mother. Gerald was disappointed, for he had wanted a son, but
he nevertheless was pleased enough over his small
black-haired daughter to serve rum to every slave at
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Tara and to get roaringly, happily drunk himself.
If Ellen had ever regretted her sudden decision to
marry him, no one ever knew it, certainly not Gerald, who almost burst with pride whenever he looked
at her. She had put Savannah and its memories behind her when she left that gently mannered city by
the sea, and, from the moment of her arrival in the
County, north Georgia was her home.
When she departed from her father’s house forever,
she had left a home whose lines were as beautiful and
flowing as a woman’s body, as a ship in full sail; a pale
pink stucco house built in the French colonial style,
set high from the ground in a dainty manner, approached by swirling stairs, banistered with wrought
iron as delicate as lace; a dim, rich house, gracious but
aloof.
She had left not only that graceful dwelling but also
the entire civilization that was behind the building
of it, and she found herself in a world that was as
strange and different as if she had crossed a continent.
Here in north Georgia was a rugged section held
by a hardy people. High up on the plateau at the
foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, she saw rolling red
hills wherever she looked, with huge outcroppings
of the underlying granite and gaunt pines towering
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somberly everywhere. It all seemed wild and untamed to her coast- bred eyes accustomed to the quiet
jungle beauty of the sea islands draped in their gray
moss and tangled green, the white stretches of beach
hot beneath a semitropic sun, the long flat vistas of
sandy land studded with palmetto and palm.
This was a section that knew the chill of winter, as
well as the heat of summer, and there was a vigor and
energy in the people that was strange to her. They
were a kindly people, courteous, generous, filled with
abounding good nature, but sturdy, virile, easy to
anger. The people of the Coast which she had left
might pride themselves on taking all their affairs,
even their duels and their feuds, with a careless air
but these north Georgia people had a streak of violence in them. On the coast, life had mellowed–here
it was young and lusty and new.
All the people Ellen had known in Savannah might
have been cast from the same mold, so similar were
their view points and traditions, but here was a variety of people. North Georgia’s settlers were coming in from many different places, from other parts
of Georgia, from the Carolinas and Virginia, from Europe and the North. Some of them, like Gerald, were
new people seeking their fortunes. Some, like Ellen,
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were members of old families who had found life intolerable in their former homes and sought haven in a
distant land. Many had moved for no reason at all, except that the restless blood of pioneering fathers still
quickened in their veins.
These people, drawn from many different places
and with many different backgrounds, gave the
whole life of the County an informality that was new
to Ellen, an informality to which she never quite accustomed herself. She instinctively knew how Coast
people would act in any circumstance. There was
never any telling what north Georgians would do.
And, quickening all of the affairs of the section, was
the high tide of prosperity then rolling over the South.
All of the world was crying out for cotton, and the
new land of the County, unworn and fertile, produced
it abundantly. Cotton was the heartbeat of the section, the planting and the picking were the diastole
and systole of the red earth. Wealth came out of the
curving furrows, and arrogance came too–arrogance
built on green bushes and the acres of fleecy white. If
cotton could make them rich in one generation, how
much richer they would be in the next!
This certainty of the morrow gave zest and enthusiasm to life, and the County people enjoyed life with
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a heartiness that Ellen could never understand. They
had money enough and slaves enough to give them
time to play, and they liked to play. They seemed
never too busy to drop work for a fish fry, a hunt or
a horse race, and scarcely a week went by without its
barbecue or ball.
Ellen never would, or could, quite become one of
them–she had left too much of herself in Savannah–
but she respected them and, in time, learned to admire the frankness and forthrightness of these people, who had few reticences and who valued a man
for what he was.
She became the best-loved neighbor in the County.
She was a thrifty and kind mistress, a good mother
and a devoted wife. The heartbreak and selflessness
that she would have dedicated to the Church were devoted instead to the service of her child, her household and the man who had taken her out of Savannah
and its memories and had never asked any questions.
When Scarlett was a year old, and more healthy
and vigorous than a girl baby had any right to be, in
Mammy’s opinion, Ellen’s second child, named Susan Elinor, but always called Suellen, was born, and
in due time came Carreen, listed in the family Bible as
Caroline Irene. Then followed three little boys, each
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of whom died before he had learned to walk–three little boys who now lay under the twisted cedars in the
burying ground a hundred yards from the house, beneath three stones, each bearing the name of “Gerald
O’Hara, Jr.”
From the day when Ellen first came to Tara, the
place had been transformed. If she was only fifteen
years old, she was nevertheless ready for the responsibilities of the mistress of a plantation. Before marriage, young girls must be, above all other things,
sweet, gentle, beautiful and ornamental, but, after
marriage, they were expected to manage households
that numbered a hundred people or more, white and
black, and they were trained with that in view.
Ellen had been given this preparation for marriage
which any well- brought-up young lady received, and
she also had Mammy, who could galvanize the most
shiftless negro into energy. She quickly brought order,
dignity and grace into Gerald’s household, and she
gave Tara a beauty it had never had before.
The house had been built according to no architectural plan whatever, with extra rooms added where
and when it seemed convenient, but, with Ellen’s care
and attention, it gained a charm that made up for its
lack of design. The avenue of cedars leading from the
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main road to the house–that avenue of cedars without
which no Georgia planter’s home could be complete–
had a cool dark shadiness that gave a brighter tinge,
by contrast, to the green of the other trees. The
wistaria tumbling over the verandas showed bright
against the whitewashed brick, and it joined with the
pink crepe myrtle bushes by the door and the whiteblossomed magnolias in the yard to disguise some of
the awkward lines of the house.
In spring time and summer, the Bermuda grass and
clover on the lawn became emerald, so enticing an
emerald that it presented an irresistible temptation
to the flocks of turkeys and white geese that were
supposed to roam only the regions in the rear of
the house. The elders of the flocks continually led
stealthy advances into the front yard, lured on by the
green of the grass and the luscious promise of the
cape jessamine buds and the zinnia beds. Against
their depredations, a small black sentinel was stationed on the front porch. Armed with a ragged
towel, the little negro boy sitting on the steps was part
of the picture of Tara–and an unhappy one, for he was
forbidden to chunk the fowls and could only flap the
towel at them and shoo them.
Ellen set dozens of little black boys to this task, the
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first position of responsibility a male slave had at
Tara. After they had passed their tenth year, they
were sent to old Daddy the plantation cobbler to learn
his trade, or to Amos the wheelwright and carpenter,
or Philip the cow man, or Cuffee the mule boy. If they
showed no aptitude for any of these trades, they became field hands and, in the opinion of the negroes,
they had lost their claim to any social standing at all.
Ellen’s life was not easy, nor was it happy, but she
did not expect life to be easy, and, if it was not happy,
that was woman’s lot. It was a man’s world, and she
accepted it as such. The man owned the property, and
the woman managed it. The man took the credit for
the management, and the woman praised his cleverness. The man roared like a bull when a splinter was
in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of
childbirth, lest she disturb him. Men were rough of
speech and often drunk. Women ignored the lapses
of speech and put the drunkards to bed without bitter
words. Men were rude and outspoken, women were
always kind, gracious and forgiving.
She had been reared in the tradition of great ladies,
which had taught her how to carry her burden and
still retain her charm, and she intended that her three
daughters should be great ladies also. With her
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younger daughters, she had success, for Suellen was
so anxious to be attractive she lent an attentive and
obedient ear to her mother’s teachings, and Carreen
was shy and easily led. But Scarlett, child of Gerald,
found the road to ladyhood hard.
To Mammy’s indignation, her preferred playmates
were not her demure sisters or the well-brought-up
Wilkes girls but the negro children on the plantation
and the boys of the neighborhood, and she could
climb a tree or throw a rock as well as any of them.
Mammy was greatly perturbed that Ellen’s daughter
should display such traits and frequently adjured her
to “ack lak a lil lady.” But Ellen took a more tolerant
and long-sighted view of the matter. She knew that
from childhood playmates grew beaux in later years,
and the first duty of a girl was to get married. She
told herself that the child was merely full of life and
there was still time in which to teach her the arts and
graces of being attractive to men.
To this end, Ellen and Mammy bent their efforts, and
as Scarlett grew older she became an apt pupil in this
subject, even though she learned little else. Despite a
succession of governesses and two years at the nearby Fayetteville Female Academy, her education was
sketchy, but no girl in the County danced more grace117
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fully than she. She knew how to smile so that her
dimples leaped, how to walk pigeon-toed so that her
wide hoop skirts swayed entrancingly, how to look
up into a man’s face and then drop her eyes and bat
the lids rapidly so that she seemed a- tremble with
gentle emotion. Most of all she learned how to conceal from men a sharp intelligence beneath a face as
sweet and bland as a baby’s.
Ellen, by soft-voiced admonition, and Mammy, by
constant carping, labored to inculcate in her the qualities that would make her truly desirable as a wife.
“You must be more gentle, dear, more sedate,” Ellen
told her daughter. “You must not interrupt gentlemen when they are speaking, even if you do think
you know more about matters than they do. Gentlemen do not like forward girls.”
“Young misses whut frowns an pushes out dey
chins an’ says ‘Ah will’ and ‘Ah woan’ mos’ gener’ly
doan ketch husbands,” prophesied Mammy gloomily.
“Young misses should cas’ down dey eyes an’ say,
‘Well, suh, Ah mout’ an’ ‘Jes’ as you say, suh.”’
Between them, they taught her all that a gentlewoman should know, but she learned only the outward signs of gentility. The inner grace from which
these signs should spring, she never learned nor did
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she see any reason for learning it. Appearances were
enough, for the appearances of ladyhood won her
popularity and that was all she wanted. Gerald
bragged that she was the belle of five counties, and
with some truth, for she had received proposals from
nearly all the young men in the neighborhood and
many from places as far away as Atlanta and Savannah.
At sixteen, thanks to Mammy and Ellen, she looked
sweet, charming and giddy, but she was, in reality,
self-willed, vain and obstinate. She had the easily
stirred passions of her Irish father and nothing except
the thinnest veneer of her mother’s unselfish and forbearing nature. Ellen never fully realized that it was
only a veneer, for Scarlett always showed her best face
to her mother, concealing her escapades, curbing her
temper and appearing as sweet-natured as she could
in Ellen’s presence, for her mother could shame her to
tears with a reproachful glance.
But Mammy was under no illusions about her
and was constantly alert for breaks in the veneer.
Mammy’s eyes were sharper than Ellen’s, and Scarlett could never recall in all her life having fooled
Mammy for long.
It was not that these two loving mentors deplored
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Scarlett’s high spirits, vivacity and charm. These were
traits of which Southern women were proud. It was
Gerald’s headstrong and impetuous nature in her that
gave them concern, and they sometimes feared they
would not be able to conceal her damaging qualities until she had made a good match. But Scarlett
intended to marry–and marry Ashley–and she was
willing to appear demure, pliable and scatterbrained,
if those were the qualities that attracted men. Just
why men should be this way, she did not know. She
only knew that such methods worked. It never interested her enough to try to think out the reason
for it, for she knew nothing of the inner workings
of any human being’s mind, not even her own. She
knew only that if she did or said thus-and-so, men
would unerringly respond with the complementary
thus-and-so. It was like a mathematical formula and
no more difficult, for mathematics was the one subject
that had come easy to Scarlett in her schooldays.
If she knew little about men’s minds, she knew even
less about the minds of women, for they interested
her less. She had never had a girl friend, and she
never felt any lack on that account. To her, all women,
including her two sisters, were natural enemies in
pursuit of the same prey–man.
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All women with the one exception of her mother.
Ellen O’Hara was different, and Scarlett regarded
her as something holy and apart from all the rest of
humankind. When Scarlett was a child, she had confused her mother with the Virgin Mary, and now that
she was older she saw no reason for changing her
opinion. To her, Ellen represented the utter security
that only Heaven or a mother can give. She knew that
her mother was the embodiment of justice, truth, loving tenderness and profound wisdom–a great lady.
Scarlett wanted very much to be like her mother.
The only difficulty was that by being just and truthful
and tender and unselfish, one missed most of the joys
of life, and certainly many beaux. And life was too
short to miss such pleasant things. Some day when
she was married to Ashley and old, some day when
she had time for it, she intended to be like Ellen. But,
until then . . .
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supper, Scarlett went through the motions of presiding over the table in her mother’s absence, but her mind was in a ferment over the dreadful news she had heard about Ashley and Melanie.
Desperately she longed for her mother’s return from
the Slatterys’, for, without her, she felt lost and alone.
What right had the Slatterys and their everlasting
sickness to take Ellen away from home just at this
time when she, Scarlett, needed her so much?
Throughout the dismal meal, Gerald’s booming
voice battered against her ears until she thought she
could endure it no longer. He had forgotten completely about his conversation with her that afternoon
and was carrying on a monologue about the latest
news from Fort Sumter, which he punctuated by hammering his fist on the table and waving his arms in the
air. Gerald made a habit of dominating the conversation at mealtimes, and usually Scarlett, occupied with
her own thoughts, scarcely heard him; but tonight she
could not shut out his voice, no matter how much she
strained to listen for the sound of carriage wheels that
would herald Ellen’s return.
Of course, she did not intend to tell her mother
what was so heavy on her heart, for Ellen would be
T HAT
NIGHT AT
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shocked and grieved to know that a daughter of hers
wanted a man who was engaged to another girl. But,
in the depths of the first tragedy she had ever known,
she wanted the very comfort of her mother’s presence. She always felt secure when Ellen was by her,
for there was nothing so bad that Ellen could not better it, simply by being there.
She rose suddenly from her chair at the sound of
creaking wheels in the driveway and then sank down
again as they went on around the house to the back
yard. It could not be Ellen, for she would alight at the
front steps. Then there was an excited babble of negro
voices in the darkness of the yard and high-pitched
negro laughter. Looking out the window, Scarlett saw
Pork, who had left the room a moment before, holding high a flaring pine knot, while indistinguishable
figures descended from a wagon. The laughter and
talking rose and fell in the dark night air, pleasant,
homely, carefree sounds, gutturally soft, musically
shrill. Then feet shuffled up the back-porch stairs and
into the passageway leading to the main house, stopping in the hall just outside the dining room. There
was a brief interval of whispering, and Pork entered,
his usual dignity gone, his eyes rolling and his teeth
a-gleam.
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“Mist’ Gerald,” he announced, breathing hard, the
pride of a bridegroom all over his shining face, “you’
new ‘oman done come.”
“New woman? I didn’t buy any new woman,” declared Gerald, pretending to glare.
“Yassah, you did, Mist’ Gerald! Yassah! An’ she
out hyah now wanting ter speak wid you,” answered
Pork, giggling and twisting his hands in excitement.
“Well, bring in the bride,” said Gerald, and Pork,
turning, beckoned into the hall to his wife, newly arrived from the Wilkes plantation to become part of
the household of Tara. She entered, and behind her,
almost hidden by her voluminous calico skirts, came
her twelve-year-old daughter, squirming against her
mother’s legs.
Dilcey was tall and bore herself erectly. She might
have been any age from thirty to sixty, so unlined was
her immobile bronze face. Indian blood was plain
in her features, overbalancing the negroid characteristics. The red color of her skin, narrow high forehead, prominent cheek bones and the hawk-bridged
nose which flattened at the end above thick negro lips,
all showed the mixture of two races. She was selfpossessed and walked with a dignity that surpassed
even Mammy’s, for Mammy had acquired her dignity
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and Dilcey’s was in her blood.
When she spoke, her voice was not so slurred as
most negroes’ and she chose her words more carefully.
“Good evenin’, young Misses. Mist’ Gerald, I is
sorry to ‘sturb you, but I wanted to come here and
thank you agin fo’ buyin’ me and my chile. Lots of
gentlemens might a’ bought me but they wouldn’t a’
bought my Prissy, too, jes’ to keep me frum grievin’
and I thanks you. I’m gwine do my bes’ fo’ you and
show you I ain’t forgettin’.”
“Hum–hurrump,” said Gerald, clearing his throat
in embarrassment at being caught openly in an act of
kindness.
Dilcey turned to Scarlett and something like a smile
wrinkled the corners of her eyes. “Miss Scarlett, Poke
done tole me how you ast Mist Gerald to buy me.
And so I’m gwine give you my Prissy fo’ yo’ own
maid.”
She reached behind her and jerked the little girl forward. She was a brown little creature, with skinny
legs like a bird and a myriad of pigtails carefully
wrapped with twine sticking stiffly out from her
head. She had sharp, knowing eyes that missed nothing and a studiedly stupid look on her face.
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“Thank you, Dilcey,” Scarlett replied, “but I’m
afraid Mammy will have something to say about that.
She’s been my maid ever since I was born.”
“Mammy getting ole,” said Dilcey, with a calmness that would have enraged Mammy. “She a good
mammy, but you a young lady now and needs a good
maid, and my Prissy been maidin’ fo’ Miss India fo’ a
year now. She kin sew and fix hair good as a grown
pusson.”
Prodded by her mother, Prissy bobbed a sudden
curtsy and grinned at Scarlett, who could not help
grinning back.
“A sharp little wench,” she thought, and said aloud:
“Thank you, Dilcey, we’ll see about it when Mother
comes home.”
“Thankee, Ma’m. I gives you a good night,” said
Dilcey and, turning, left the room with her child, Pork
dancing attendance. The supper things cleared away,
Gerald resumed his oration, but with little satisfaction
to himself and none at all to his audience. His thunderous predictions of immediate war and his rhetorical questions as to whether the South would stand
for further insults from the Yankees only produced
faintly bored, “Yes, Papas” and “No, Pas.” Carreen,
sitting on a hassock under the big lamp, was deep
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in the romance of a girl who had taken the veil after
her lover’s death and, with silent tears of enjoyment
oozing from her eyes, was pleasurably picturing herself in a white coif. Suellen, embroidering on what
she gigglingly called her “hope chest,” was wondering if she could possibly detach Stuart Tarleton from
her sister’s side at the barbecue tomorrow and fascinate him with the sweet womanly qualities which she
possessed and Scarlett did not. And Scarlett was in a
tumult about Ashley.
How could Pa talk on and on about Fort Sumter and
the Yankees when he knew her heart was breaking?
As usual in the very young, she marveled that people could be so selfishly oblivious to her pain and the
world rock along just the same, in spite of her heartbreak.
Her mind was as if a cyclone had gone through it,
and it seemed strange that the dining room where
they sat should be so placid, so unchanged from what
it had always been. The heavy mahogany table and
sideboards, the massive silver, the bright rag rugs on
the shining floor were all in their accustomed places,
just as if nothing had happened. It was a friendly and
comfortable room and, ordinarily, Scarlett loved the
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per; but tonight she hated the sight of it and, if she
had not feared her father’s loudly bawled questions,
she would have slipped away, down the dark hall to
Ellen’s little office and cried out her sorrow on the old
sofa.
That was the room that Scarlett liked the best in all
the house. There, Ellen sat before her tall secretary
each morning, keeping the accounts of the plantation
and listening to the reports of Jonas Wilkerson, the
overseer. There also the family idled while Ellen’s
quill scratched across her ledgers. Gerald in the old
rocker, the girls on the sagging cushions of the sofa
that was too battered and worn for the front of the
house. Scarlett longed to be there now, alone with
Ellen, so she could put her head in her mother’s lap
and cry in peace. Wouldn’t Mother ever come home?
Then, wheels ground sharply on the graveled driveway, and the soft murmur of Ellen’s voice dismissing the coachman floated into the room. The whole
group looked up eagerly as she entered rapidly, her
hoops swaying, her face tired and sad. There entered
with her the faint fragrance of lemon verbena sachet,
which seemed always to creep from the folds of her
dresses, a fragrance that was always linked in Scarlett’s mind with her mother. Mammy followed at a
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few paces, the leather bag in her hand, her underlip
pushed out and her brow lowering. Mammy muttered darkly to herself as she waddled, taking care
that her remarks were pitched too low to be understood but loud enough to register her unqualified disapproval.
“I am sorry I am so late,” said Ellen, slipping her
plaid shawl from drooping shoulders and handing it
to Scarlett, whose cheek she patted in passing.
Gerald’s face had brightened as if by magic at her
entrance.
“Is the brat baptized?” he questioned.
“Yes, and dead, poor thing,” said Ellen. “I feared
Emmie would die too, but I think she will live.”
The girls’ faces turned to her, startled and questioning, and Gerald wagged his head philosophically.
“Well, ‘tis better so that the brat is dead, no doubt,
poor fatherle–”
“It is late. We had better have prayers now,” interrupted Ellen so smoothly that, if Scarlett had not
known her mother well, the interruption would have
passed unnoticed.
It would be interesting to know who was the father of Emmie Slattery’s baby, but Scarlett knew she
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would never learn the truth of the matter if she waited
to hear it from her mother. Scarlett suspected Jonas
Wilkerson, for she had frequently seen him walking
down the road with Emmie at nightfall. Jonas was
a Yankee and a bachelor, and the fact that he was an
overseer forever barred him from any contact with the
County social life. There was no family of any standing into which he could marry, no people with whom
he could associate except the Slatterys and riffraff like
them. As he was several cuts above the Slatterys in
education, it was only natural that he should not want
to marry Emmie, no matter how often he might walk
with her in the twilight.
Scarlett sighed, for her curiosity was sharp. Things
were always happening under her mother’s eyes
which she noticed no more than if they had not happened at all. Ellen ignored all things contrary to her
ideas of propriety and tried to teach Scarlett to do the
same, but with poor success.
Ellen had stepped to the mantel to take her rosary
beads from the small inlaid casket in which they always reposed when Mammy spoke up with firmness.
“Miss Ellen, you gwine eat some supper befo’ you
does any prayin’.”
“Thank you. Mammy, but I am not hungry.”
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“Ah gwine fix yo’ supper mahseff an’ you eats it,”
said Mammy, her brow furrowed with indignation as
she started down the hall for the kitchen. “Poke!” she
called, “tell Cookie stir up de fiah. Miss Ellen home.”
As the boards shuddered under her weight, the soliloquy she had been muttering in the front hall grew
louder and louder, coming clearly to the ears of the
family in the dining room.
“Ah has said time an’ again, it doan do no good
doin’ nuthin’ fer w’ite trash. Dey is de shiflesses, mos’
ungrateful passel of no- counts livin’. An’ Miss Ellen
got no bizness weahin’ herseff out waitin’ on folks dat
did dey be wuth shootin’ dey’d have niggers ter wait
on dem. An’ Ah has said–”
Her voice trailed off as she went down the long open
passageway, covered only by a roof, that led into the
kitchen. Mammy had her own method of letting her
owners know exactly where she stood on all matters.
She knew it was beneath the dignity of quality white
folks to pay the slightest attention to what a darky
said when she was just grumbling to herself. She
knew that to uphold this dignity, they must ignore
what she said, even if she stood in the next room and
almost shouted. It protected her from reproof, and it
left no doubt in anyone’s mind as to her exact views
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on any subject.
Pork entered the room, bearing a plate, silver and a
napkin. He was followed closely by Jack, a black little boy of ten, hastily buttoning a white linen jacket
with one hand and bearing in the other a fly-swisher,
made of thin strips of newspaper tied to a reed longer
than he was. Ellen had a beautiful peacock-feather
fly-brusher, but it was used only on very special occasions and then only after domestic struggle, due to
the obstinate conviction of Pork, Cookie and Mammy
that peacock feathers were bad luck.
Ellen sat down in the chair which Gerald pulled out
for her and four voices attacked her.
“Mother, the lace is loose on my new ball dress and
I want to wear it tomorrow night at Twelve Oaks.
Won’t you please fix it?”
“Mother, Scarlett’s new dress is prettier than mine
and I look like a fright in pink. Why can’t she wear
my pink and let me wear her green? She looks all
right in pink.”
“Mother, can I stay up for the ball tomorrow night?
I’m thirteen now–”
“Mrs. O’Hara, would you believe it– Hush, you
girls, before I take me crop to you! Cade Calvert was
in Atlanta this morning and he says–will you be quiet
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and let me be hearing me own voice?– and he says it’s
all upset they are there and talking nothing but war,
militia drilling, troops forming. And he says the news
from Charleston is that they will be putting up with
no more Yankee insults.”
Ellen’s tired mouth smiled into the tumult as she addressed herself first to her husband, as a wife should.
“If the nice people of Charleston feel that way, I’m
sure we will all feel the same way soon,” she said, for
she had a deeply rooted belief that, excepting only Savannah, most of the gentle blood of the whole continent could be found in that small seaport city, a belief
shared largely by Charlestonians.
“No, Carreen, next year, dear. Then you can stay
up for balls and wear grown-up dresses, and what
a good time my little pink cheeks will have! Don’t
pout, dear. You can go to the barbecue, remember
that, and stay up through supper, but no balls until
you are fourteen.
“Give me your gown, Scarlett, I will whip the lace
for you after prayers.
“Suellen, I do not like your tone, dear. Your pink
gown is lovely and suitable to your complexion, Scarlett’s is to hers. But you may wear my garnet necklace
tomorrow night.”
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Suellen, behind her mother’s hack, wrinkled her
nose triumphantly at Scarlett, who had been planning to beg the necklace for herself. Scarlett put out
her tongue at her. Suellen was an annoying sister
with her whining and selfishness, and had it not been
for Ellen’s restraining hand, Scarlett would frequently
have boxed her ears.
“Now, Mr. O’Hara, tell me more about what Mr.
Calvert said about Charleston,” said Ellen.
Scarlett knew her mother cared nothing at all about
war and politics and thought them masculine matters
about which no lady could intelligently concern herself. But it gave Gerald pleasure to air his views, and
Ellen was unfailingly thoughtful of her husband’s
pleasure.
While Gerald launched forth on his news, Mammy
set the plates before her mistress, golden-topped biscuits, breast of fried chicken and a yellow yam open
and steaming, with melted butter dripping from it.
Mammy pinched small Jack, and he hastened to his
business of slowly swishing the paper ribbons back
and forth behind Ellen. Mammy stood beside the table, watching every forkful that traveled from plate
to mouth, as though she intended to force the food
down Ellen’s throat should she see signs of flagging.
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Ellen ate diligently, but Scarlett could see that she
was too tired to know what she was eating. Only
Mammy’s implacable face forced her to it.
When the dish was empty and Gerald only midway
in his remarks on the thievishness of Yankees who
wanted to free darkies and yet offered no penny to
pay for their freedom, Ellen rose.
“We’ll be having prayers?” he questioned, reluctantly.
“Yes. It is so late–why, it is actually ten o’clock,” as
the clock with coughing and tinny thumps marked
the hour. “Carreen should have been asleep long
ago. The lamp, please, Pork, and my prayer book,
Mammy.”
Prompted by Mammy’s hoarse whisper, Jack set his
fly-brush in the corner and removed the dishes, while
Mammy fumbled in the sideboard drawer for Ellen’s
worn prayer book. Pork, tiptoeing, reached the ring
in the chain and drew the lamp slowly down until
the table top was brightly bathed in light and the ceiling receded into shadows. Ellen arranged her skirts
and sank to the floor on her knees, laying the open
prayer book on the table before her and clasping her
hands upon it. Gerald knelt beside her, and Scarlett
and Suellen took their accustomed places on the op135
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posite side of the table, folding their voluminous petticoats in pads under their knees, so they would ache
less from contact with the hard floor. Carreen, who
was small for her age, could not kneel comfortably at
the table and so knelt facing a chair, her elbows on
the seat. She liked this position, for she seldom failed
to go to sleep during prayers and, in this postures it
escaped her mother’s notice.
The house servants shuffled and rustled in the hall
to kneel by the doorway, Mammy groaning aloud as
she sank down, Pork straight as a ramrod, Rosa and
Teena, the maids, graceful in their spreading bright
calicoes, Cookie gaunt and yellow beneath her snowy
head rag, and Jack, stupid with sleep, as far away
from Mammy’s pinching fingers as possible. Their
dark eyes gleamed expectantly, for praying with their
white folks was one of the events of the day. The old
and colorful phrases of the litany with its Oriental imagery meant little to them but it satisfied something
in their hearts, and they always swayed when they
chanted the responses: “Lord, have mercy on us,”
“Christ, have mercy on us.”
Ellen closed her eyes and began praying, her voice
rising and falling, lulling and soothing. Heads bowed
in the circle of yellow light as Ellen thanked God for
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the health and happiness of her home, her family and
her negroes.
When she had finished her prayers for those beneath the roof of Tara, her father, mother, sisters, three
dead babies and “all the poor souls in Purgatory,” she
clasped her white beads between long fingers and began the Rosary. Like the rushing of a soft wind, the
responses from black throats and white throats rolled
back:
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,
now, and at the hour of our death.”
Despite her heartache and the pain of unshed tears,
a deep sense of quiet and peace fell upon Scarlett as it
always did at this hour. Some of the disappointment
of the day and the dread of the morrow departed from
her, leaving a feeling of hope. It was not the lifting
up of her heart to God that brought this balm, for religion went no more than lip deep with her. It was
the sight of her mother’s serene face upturned to the
throne of God and His saints and angels, praying for
blessings on those whom she loved. When Ellen intervened with Heaven, Scarlett felt certain that Heaven
heard.
Ellen finished and Gerald, who could never find his
beads at prayer time, began furtively counting his
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decade on his fingers. As his voice droned on, Scarlett’s thoughts strayed, in spite of herself. She knew
she should be examining her conscience. Ellen had
taught her that at the end of each day it was her duty
to examine her conscience thoroughly, to admit her
numerous faults and pray to God for forgiveness and
strength never to repeat them. But Scarlett was examining her heart.
She dropped her head upon her folded hands so that
her mother could not see her face, and her thoughts
went sadly back to Ashley. How could he be planning
to marry Melanie when he really loved her, Scarlett?
And when he knew how much she loved him? How
could he deliberately break her heart?
Then, suddenly, an idea, shining and new, flashed
like a comet through her brain.
“Why, Ashley hasn’t an idea that I’m in love with
him!”
She almost gasped aloud in the shock of its unexpectedness. Her mind stood still as if paralyzed for a
long, breathless instant, and then raced forward.
“How could he know? I’ve always acted so prissy
and ladylike and touch-me-not around him he probably thinks I don’t care a thing about him except as a
friend. Yes, that’s why he’s never spoken! He thinks
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his love is hopeless. And that’s why he’s looked so–”
Her mind went swiftly back to those times when she
had caught him looking at her in that strange manner,
when the gray eyes that were such perfect curtains
for his thoughts had been wide and naked and had in
them a look of torment and despair.
“He’s been broken hearted because he thinks I’m in
love with Brent or Stuart or Cade. And probably he
thinks that if he can’t have me, he might as well please
his family and marry Melanie. But if he knew I did
love him–”
Her volatile spirits shot up from deepest depression
to excited happiness. This was the answer to Ashley’s
reticence, to his strange conduct. He didn’t know!
Her vanity leaped to the aid of her desire to believe,
making belief a certainty. If he knew she loved him,
he would hasten to her side. She had only to–
“Oh!” she thought rapturously, digging her fingers
into her lowered brow. “What a fool I’ve been not to
think of this till now! I must think of some way to let
him know. He wouldn’t marry her if he knew I loved
him! How could he?”
With a start, she realized that Gerald had finished
and her mother’s eyes were on her. Hastily she began her decade, telling off the beads automatically
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but with a depth of emotion in her voice that caused
Mammy to open her eyes and shoot a searching
glance at her. As she finished her prayers and Suellen,
then Carreen, began their decades, her mind was still
speeding onward with her entrancing new thought.
Even now, it wasn’t too late! Too often the County
had been scandalized by elopements when one or the
other of the participating parties was practically at the
altar with a third. And Ashley’s engagement had not
even been announced yet! Yes, there was plenty of
time!
If no love lay between Ashley and Melanie but only
a promise given long ago, then why wasn’t it possible
for him to break that promise and marry her? Surely
he would do it, if he knew that she, Scarlett, loved
him. She must find some way to let him know. She
would find some way! And then–
Scarlett came abruptly out of her dream of delight,
for she had neglected to make the responses and her
mother was looking at her reprovingly. As she resumed the ritual, she opened her eyes briefly and cast
a quick glance around the room. The kneeling figures,
the soft glow of the lamp, the dim shadows where
the negroes swayed, even the familiar objects that had
been so hateful to her sight an hour ago, in an instant
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took on the color of her own emotions, and the room
seemed once more a lovely place. She would never
forget this moment or this scene!
“Virgin most faithful,” her mother intoned. The
Litany of the Virgin was beginning, and obediently
Scarlett responded: “Pray for us,” as Ellen praised in
soft contralto the attributes of the Mother of God.
As always since childhood, this was, for Scarlett, a
moment for adoration of Ellen, rather than the Virgin. Sacrilegious though it might be, Scarlett always saw, through her closed eyes, the upturned face
of Ellen and not the Blessed Virgin, as the ancient
phrases were repeated. “Health of the Sick,” “Seat
of Wisdom,” “Refuge of Sinners,” “Mystical Rose”–
they were beautiful because they were the attributes
of Ellen. But tonight, because of the exaltation of
her own spirit, Scarlett found in the whole ceremonial, the softly spoken words, the murmur of the responses, a surpassing beauty beyond any that she had
ever experienced before. And her heart went up to
God in sincere thankfulness that a pathway for her
feet had been opened–out of her misery and straight
to the arms of Ashley.
When the last “Amen” sounded, they all rose, somewhat stiffly, Mammy being hauled to her feet by the
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combined efforts of Teena and Rosa. Pork took a long
spiller from the mantelpiece, lit it from the lamp flame
and went into the hall. Opposite the winding stair
stood a walnut sideboard, too large for use in the dining room, bearing on its wide top several lamps and a
long row of candles in candlesticks. Pork lit one lamp
and three candles and, with the pompous dignity of a
first chamberlain of the royal bedchamber lighting a
king and queen to their rooms, he led the procession
up the stairs, holding the light high above his head.
Ellen, on Gerald’s arm, followed him, and the girls,
each taking her own candlestick, mounted after them.
Scarlett entered her room, set the candle on the tall
chest of drawers and fumbled in the dark closet for
the dancing dress that needed stitching. Throwing it
across her arm, she crossed the hall quietly. The door
of her parents’ bedroom was slightly ajar and, before
she could knock, Ellen’s voice, low but stern, came to
her ears.
“Mr. O’Hara, you must dismiss Jonas Wilkerson.”
Gerald exploded. “And where will I be getting another overseer who wouldn’t be cheating me out of
my eyeteeth?”
“He must be dismissed, immediately, tomorrow
morning. Big Sam is a good foreman and he can take
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over the duties until you can hire another overseer.”
“Ah, ha!” came Gerald’s voice. “So, I understand!
Then the worthy Jonas sired the–”
“He must be dismissed.”
“So, he is the father of Emmie Slattery’s baby,”
thought Scarlett. “Oh, well, what else can you expect
from a Yankee man and a white- trash girl?”
Then, after a discreet pause which gave Gerald’s
splutterings time to die away, she knocked on the
door and handed the dress to her mother.
By the time Scarlett had undressed and blown out
the candle, her plan for tomorrow had worked itself
out in every detail. It was a simple plan, for, with Gerald’s single-mindedness of purpose, her eyes were
centered on the goal and she thought only of the most
direct steps by which to reach it.
First, she would be “prideful,” as Gerald had commanded. From the moment she arrived at Twelve
Oaks, she would be her gayest, most spirited self.
No one would suspect that she had ever been downhearted because of Ashley and Melanie. And she
would flirt with every man there. That would be cruel
to Ashley, but it would make him yearn for her all
the more. She wouldn’t overlook a man of marriageable age, from ginger-whiskered old Frank Kennedy,
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who was Suellen’s beau, on down to shy, quiet, blushing Charles Hamilton, Melanie’s brother. They would
swarm around her like bees around a hive, and certainly Ashley would be drawn from Melanie to join
the circle of her admirers. Then somehow she would
maneuver to get a few minutes alone with him, away
from the crowd. She hoped everything would work
out that way, because it would be more difficult otherwise. But if Ashley didn’t make the first move, she
would simply have to do it herself.
When they were finally alone, he would have fresh
in his mind the picture of the other men thronging
about her, he would be newly impressed with the
fact that every one of them wanted her, and that look
of sadness and despair would be in his eyes. Then
she would make him happy again by letting him discover that, popular though she was, she preferred
him above any other man in all the world. And when
she admitted it, modestly and sweetly, she would
look a thousand things more. Of course, she would do
it all in a ladylike way. She wouldn’t even dream of
saying to him boldly that she loved him–that would
never do. But the manner of telling him was a detail
that troubled her not at all. She had managed such
situations before and she could do it again.
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Lying in the bed with the moonlight streaming
dimly over her, she pictured the whole scene in her
mind. She saw the look of surprise and happiness that
would come over his face when he realized that she
really loved him, and she heard the words he would
say asking her to be his wife.
Naturally, she would have to say then that she simply couldn’t think of marrying a man when he was
engaged to another girl, but he would insist and finally she would let herself be persuaded. Then they
would decide to run off to Jonesboro that very afternoon and–
Why, by this time tomorrow night, she might be
Mrs. Ashley Wilkes!
She sat up in bed, hugging her knees, and for a
long happy moment she WAS Mrs. Ashley Wilkes–
Ashley’s bride! Then a slight chill entered her heart.
Suppose it didn’t work out this way? Suppose Ashley
didn’t beg her to run away with him? Resolutely she
pushed the thought from her mind.
“I won’t think of that now,” she said firmly. “If I
think of it now, it will upset me. There’s no reason
why things won’t come out the way I want them–if
he loves me. And I know he does!”
She raised her chin and her pale, black-fringed eyes
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sparkled in the moonlight. Ellen had never told her
that desire and attainment were two different matters;
life had not taught her that the race was not to the
swift. She lay in the silvery shadows with courage rising and made the plans that a sixteen- year-old makes
when life has been so pleasant that defeat is an impossibility and a pretty dress and a clear complexion are
weapons to vanquish fate.
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o’clock in the morning. The day was warm
for April and the golden sunlight streamed brilliantly
into Scarlett’s room through the blue curtains of the
wide windows. The cream-colored walls glowed
with light and the depths of the mahogany furniture
gleamed deep red like wine, while the floor glistened
as if it were glass, except where the rag rugs covered
it and they were spots of gay color.
Already summer was in the air, the first hint of
Georgia summer when the high tide of spring gives
way reluctantly before a fiercer heat. A balmy, soft
warmth poured into the room, heavy with velvety
smells, redolent of many blossoms, of newly fledged
trees and of the moist, freshly turned red earth.
Through the window Scarlett could see the bright riot
of the twin lanes of daffodils bordering the graveled
driveway and the golden masses of yellow jessamine
spreading flowery sprangles modestly to the earth
like crinolines. The mockingbirds and the jays, engaged in their old feud for possession of the magnolia tree beneath her window, were bickering, the jays
strident, acrimonious, the mockers sweet voiced and
plaintive.
Such a glowing morning usually called Scarlett to
IT
WAS TEN
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the window, to lean arms on the broad sill and drink
in the scents and sounds of Tara. But, today she had
no eye for sun or azure sky beyond a hasty thought,
“Thank God, it isn’t raining.” On the bed lay the
apple-green, watered-silk ball dress with its festoons
of ecru lace, neatly packed in a large cardboard box. It
was ready to be carried to Twelve Oaks to be donned
before the dancing began, but Scarlett shrugged at the
sight of it. If her plans were successful, she would not
wear that dress tonight. Long before the ball began,
she and Ashley would be on their way to Jonesboro
to be married. The troublesome question was–what
dress should she wear to the barbecue?
What dress would best set off her charms and make
her most irresistible to Ashley? Since eight o’clock
she had been trying on and rejecting dresses, and now
she stood dejected and irritable in lace pantalets, linen
corset cover and three billowing lace and linen petticoats. Discarded garments lay about her on the floor,
the bed, the chairs, in bright heaps of color and straying ribbons.
The rose organdie with long pink sash was becoming, but she had worn it last summer when Melanie
visited Twelve Oaks and she’d be sure to remember
it. And might be catty enough to mention it. The
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black bombazine, with its puffed sleeves and princess
lace collar, set off her white skin superbly, but it did
make her look a trifle elderly. Scarlett peered anxiously in the mirror at her sixteen-year-old face as
if expecting to see wrinkles and sagging chin muscles. It would never do to appear sedate and elderly
before Melanie’s sweet youthfulness. The lavender
barred muslin was beautiful with those wide insets
of lace and net about the hem, but it had never suited
her type. It would suit Carreen’s delicate profile and
wishy-washy expression perfectly, but Scarlett felt
that it made her look like a schoolgirl. It would never
do to appear schoolgirlish beside Melanie’s poised
self. The green plaid taffeta, frothing with flounces
and each flounce edged in green velvet ribbon, was
most becoming, in fact her favorite dress, for it darkened her eyes to emerald. But there was unmistakably a grease spot on the front of the basque. Of
course, her brooch could be pinned over the spot,
but perhaps Melanie had sharp eyes. There remained
varicolored cotton dresses which Scarlett felt were not
festive enough for the occasion, ball dresses and the
green sprigged muslin she had worn yesterday. But
it was an afternoon dress. It was not suitable for a
barbecue, for it had only tiny puffed sleeves and the
neck was low enough for a dancing dress. But there
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was nothing else to do but wear it. After all she was
not ashamed of her neck and arms and bosom, even
if it was not correct to show them in the morning.
As she stood before the mirror and twisted herself about to get a side view, she thought that there
was absolutely nothing about her figure to cause her
shame. Her neck was short but rounded and her arms
plump and enticing. Her breasts, pushed high by
her stays, were very nice breasts. She had never had
to sew tiny rows of silk ruffles in the lining of her
basques, as most sixteen-year- old girls did, to give
their figures the desired curves and fullness. She was
glad she had inherited Ellen’s slender white hands
and tiny feet, and she wished she had Ellen’s height,
too, but her own height pleased her very well. What a
pity legs could not be shown, she thought, pulling up
her petticoats and regretfully viewing them, plump
and neat under pantalets. She had such nice legs.
Even the girls at the Fayetteville Academy had admitted as much. And as for her waist–there was no one
in Fayetteville, Jonesboro or in three counties, for that
matter, who had so small a waist.
The thought of her waist brought her back to practical matters. The green muslin measured seventeen
inches about the waist, and Mammy had laced her for
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the eighteen-inch bombazine. Mammy would have
to lace her tighter. She pushed open the door, listened and heard Mammy’s heavy tread in the downstairs hall. She shouted for her impatiently, knowing
she could raise her voice with impunity, as Ellen was
in the smokehouse, measuring out the day’s food to
Cookie.
“Some folks thinks as how Ah kin fly,” grumbled
Mammy, shuffling up the stairs. She entered puffing, with the expression of one who expects battle
and welcomes it. In her large black hands was a tray
upon which food smoked, two large yams covered
with butter, a pile of buckwheat cakes dripping syrup,
and a large slice of ham swimming in gravy. Catching sight of Mammy’s burden, Scarlett’s expression
changed from one of minor irritation to obstinate belligerency. In the excitement of trying on dresses she
had forgotten Mammy’s ironclad rule that, before going to any party, the O’Hara girls must be crammed
so full of food at home they would be unable to eat
any refreshments at the party.
“It’s no use. I won’t eat it. You can just take it back
to the kitchen.”
Mammy set the tray on the table and squared herself, hands on hips.
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“Yas’m, you is! Ah ain’ figgerin’ on havin’ happen
whut happen at dat las’ barbecue w’en Ah wuz too
sick frum dem chittlins Ah et ter fetch you no tray
befo’ you went. You is gwine eat eve’y bite of dis.”
“I am not! Now, come here and lace me tighter because we are late already. I heard the carriage come
round to the front of the house.”
Mammy’s tone became wheedling.
“Now, Miss Scarlett, you be good an’ come eat jes’a
lil. Miss Carreen an’ Miss Suellen done eat all dey’n.”
“They would,” said Scarlett contemptuously. “They
haven’t any more spirit than a rabbit. But I won’t!
I’m through with trays. I’m not forgetting the time I
ate a whole tray and went to the Calverts’ and they
had ice cream out of ice they’d brought all the way
from Savannah, and I couldn’t eat but a spoonful. I’m
going to have a good time today and eat as much as I
please.”
At this defiant heresy, Mammy’s brow lowered with
indignation. What a young miss could do and what
she could not do were as different as black and white
in Mammy’s mind; there was no middle ground of
deportment between. Suellen and Carreen were clay
in her powerful hands and harkened respectfully to
her warning. But it had always been a struggle
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to teach Scarlett that most of her natural impulses
were unladylike. Mammy’s victories over Scarlett
were hard-won and represented guile unknown to
the white mind.
“Ef you doan care ‘bout how folks talks ‘bout dis
fainbly, Ah does,” she rumbled. “Ah ain’ gwine stand
by an’ have eve’ybody at de pahty sayin’ how you
ain’ fotched up right. Ah has tole you an’ tole you dat
you kin allus tell a lady by dat she eat lak a bird. An’
Ah ain’ aimin’ ter have you go ter Mist’ Wilkes’ an’
eat lak a fe’el han’ an’ gobble lak a hawg.”
“Mother is a lady and she eats,” countered Scarlett.
“W’en you is mahied, you kin eat, too,” retorted
Mammy. “W’en Miss Ellen yo’ age, she never et
nuthin’ w’en she went out, an’ needer yo’ Aunt
Pauline nor yo’ Aunt Eulalie. An’ dey all done
mahied. Young misses whut eats heavy mos’ gener’ly
doan never ketch husbands.”
“I don’t believe it. At that barbecue when you were
sick and I didn’t eat beforehand, Ashley Wilkes told
me he LIKED to see a girl with a healthy appetite.”
Mammy shook her head ominously.
“Whut gempmums says an’ whut dey thinks is two
diffunt things. An’ Ah ain’ noticed Mist’ Ashley axing
fer ter mahy you.”
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Scarlett scowled, started to speak sharply and then
caught herself. Mammy had her there and there was
no argument. Seeing the obdurate look on Scarlett’s
face, Mammy picked up the tray and, with the bland
guile of her race, changed her tactics. As she started
for the door, she sighed.
“Well’m, awright. Ah wuz tellin’ Cookie w’ile she
wuz a-fixin’ dis tray. ‘You kin sho tell a lady by whut
she DOAN eat,’ an’ Ah say ter Cookie. ‘Ah ain’ seed
no w’ite lady who et less’n Miss Melly Hamilton did
las’ time she wuz visitin’ Mist’ Ashley’–Ah means,
visitin’ Miss India.”
Scarlett shot a look of sharp suspicion at her, but
Mammy’s broad face carried only a look of innocence
and of regret that Scarlett was not the lady Melanie
Hamilton was.
“Put down that tray and come lace me tighter,” said
Scarlett irritably. “And I’ll try to eat a little afterwards.
If I ate now I couldn’t lace tight enough.”
Cloaking her triumph, Mammy set down the tray.
“Whut mah lamb gwine wear?”
“That,” answered Scarlett, pointing at the fluffy
mass of green flowered muslin. Instantly Mammy
was in arms.
“No, you ain’. It ain’ fittin’ fer mawnin’. You kain
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show yo’ buzzum befo’ three o’clock an’ dat dress ain’
got no neck an’ no sleeves. An’ you’ll git freckled sho
as you born, an’ Ah ain’ figgerin’ on you gittin’ freckled affer all de buttermilk Ah been puttin’ on you all
dis winter, bleachin’ dem freckles you got at Savannah settin’ on de beach. Ah sho gwine speak ter yo’
Ma ‘bout you.”
“If you say one word to her before I’m dressed
I won’t eat a bite,” said Scarlett coolly. “Mother
won’t have time to send me back to change once I’m
dressed.”
Mammy sighed resignedly, beholding herself outguessed. Between the two evils, it was better to have
Scarlett wear an afternoon dress at a morning barbecue than to have her gobble like a hog.
“Hole onter sumpin’ an’ suck in yo’ breaf,” she commanded.
Scarlett obeyed, bracing herself and catching firm
hold of one of the bedposts. Mammy pulled and
jerked vigorously and, as the tiny circumference of
whalebone-girdled waist grew smaller, a proud, fond
look came into her eyes.
“Ain’ nobody got a wais’ lak mah lamb,” she said
approvingly. “Eve’y time Ah pulls Miss Suellen littler
dan twenty inches, she up an’ faint.”
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“Pooh!” gasped Scarlctt, speaking with difficulty. “I
never fainted in my life.”
“Well, ‘twouldn’ do no hahm ef you wuz ter faint
now an’ den,” advised Mammy. “You is so brash
sometimes, Miss Scarlett. Ah been aimin’ ter tell you,
it jes’ doan look good de way you doan faint ‘bout
snakes an’ mouses an’ sech. Ah doan mean round
home but w’en you is out in comp’ny. An’ Ah has
tole you an’–”
“Oh, hurry! Don’t talk so much. I’ll catch a husband. See if I don’t, even if I don’t scream and faint.
Goodness, but my stays are tight! Put on the dress.”
Mammy carefully dropped the twelve yards of
green sprigged muslin over the mountainous petticoats and hooked up the back of the tight, low-cut
basque.
“You keep yo’ shawl on yo’ shoulders w’en you is
in de sun, an’ doan you go takin’ off yo’ hat w’en you
is wahm,” she commanded. “Elsewise you be comin’
home lookin’ brown lak Ole Miz Slattery. Now, you
come eat, honey, but doan eat too fas’. No use havin’
it come right back up agin.”
Scarlett obediently sat down before the tray, wondering if she would be able to get any food into her
stomach and still have room to breathe. Mammy
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plucked a large towel from the washstand and carefully tied it around Scarlett’s neck, spreading the
white folds over her lap. Scarlett began on the ham,
because she liked ham, and forced it down.
“I wish to Heaven I was married,” she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. “I’m
tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I’m tired of acting like I
don’t eat more than a bird, and walking when I want
to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I
could dance for two days and never get tired. I’m
tired of saying, ‘How wonderful you are!’ to fool men
who haven’t got one-half the sense I’ve got, and I’m
tired of pretending I don’t know anything, so men can
tell me things and feel important while they’re doing
it. . . . I can’t eat another bite.”
“Try a hot cake,” said Mammy inexorably.
“Why is it a girl has to be so silly to catch a husband?”
“Ah specs it’s kase gempmums doan know whut
dey wants. Dey jes’ knows whut dey thinks dey
wants. An’ givin’ dem whut dey thinks dey wants
saves a pile of mizry an’ bein’ a ole maid. An’ dey
thinks dey wants mousy lil gals wid bird’s tastes an’
no sense at all. It doan make a gempmum feel lak
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mahyin’ a lady ef he suspicions she got mo’ sense dan
he has.”
“Don’t you suppose men get surprised after they’re
married to find that their wives do have sense?”
“Well, it’s too late den. Dey’s already mahied.
‘Sides, gempmums specs dey wives ter have sense.”
“Some day I’m going to do and say everything I
want to do and say, and if people don’t like it I don’t
care.”
“No, you ain’,” said Mammy grimly. “Not while Ah
got breaf. You eat dem cakes. Sop dem in de gravy,
honey.”
“I don’t think Yankee girls have to act like such
fools. When we were at Saratoga last year, I noticed
plenty of them acting like they had right good sense
and in front of men, too.”
Mammy snorted.
“Yankee gals! Yas’m, Ah guess dey speaks dey
minds awright, but Ah ain’ noticed many of dem gittin’ proposed ter at Saratoga.”
“But Yankees must get married,” argued Scarlett.
“They don’t just grow. They must get married and
have children. There’s too many of them.”
“Men mahys dem fer dey money,” said Mammy
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firmly.
Scarlett sopped the wheat cake in the gravy and put
it in her mouth. Perhaps there was something to what
Mammy said. There must be something in it, for Ellen
said the same things, in different and more delicate
words. In fact, the mothers of all her girl friends
impressed on their daughters the necessity of being
helpless, clinging, doe-eyed creatures. Really, it took a
lot of sense to cultivate and hold such a pose. Perhaps
she had been too brash. Occasionally she had argued
with Ashley and frankly aired her opinions. Perhaps
this and her healthy enjoyment of walking and riding
had turned him from her to the frail Melanie. Perhaps
if she changed her tactics– But she felt that if Ashley succumbed to premeditated feminine tricks, she
could never respect him as she now did. Any man
who was fool enough to fall for a simper, a faint and
an “Oh, how wonderful you are!” wasn’t worth having. But they all seemed to like it.
If she had used the wrong tactics with Ashley in the
past–well, that was the past and done with. Today she
would use different ones, the right ones. She wanted
him and she had only a few hours in which to get
him. If fainting, or pretending to faint, would do the
trick, then she would faint. If simpering, coquetry
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or empty-headedness would attract him, she would
gladly play the flirt and be more empty-headed than
even Cathleen Calvert. And if bolder measures were
necessary, she would take them. Today was the day!
There was no one to tell Scarlett that her own personality, frighteningly vital though it was, was more
attractive than any masquerade she might adopt.
Had she been told, she would have been pleased but
unbelieving. And the civilization of which she was a
part would have been unbelieving too, for at no time,
before or since, had so low a premium been placed on
feminine naturalness.
As the carriage bore her down the red road toward
the Wilkes plantation, Scarlett had a feeling of guilty
pleasure that neither her mother nor Mammy was
with the party. There would be no one at the barbecue
who, by delicately lifted brows or out-thrust underlip, could interfere with her plan of action. Of course,
Suellen would be certain to tell tales tomorrow, but if
all went as Scarlett hoped, the excitement of the family over her engagement to Ashley or her elopement
would more than overbalance their displeasure. Yes,
she was very glad Ellen had been forced to stay at
home.
Gerald, primed with brandy, had given Jonas Wilk160
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erson his dismissal that morning, and Ellen had remained at Tara to go over the accounts of the plantation before he took his departure. Scarlett had kissed
her mother good-by in the little office where she sat
before the tall secretary with its paper-stuffed pigeonholes. Jonas Wilkerson, hat in hand, stood beside her,
his sallow tight-skinned face hardly concealing the
fury of hate that possessed him at being so unceremoniously turned out of the best overseer’s job in the
County. And all because of a bit of minor philandering. He had told Gerald over and over that Emmie
Slattery’s baby might have been fathered by any one
of a dozen men as easily as himself–an idea in which
Gerald concurred–but that had not altered his case so
far as Ellen was concerned. Jonas hated all Southerners. He hated their cool courtesy to him and their contempt for his social status, so inadequately covered by
their courtesy. He hated Ellen O’Hara above anyone
else, for she was the epitome of all that he hated in
Southerners.
Mammy, as head woman of the plantation, had remained to help Ellen, and it was Dilcey who rode
on the driver’s seat beside Toby, the girls’ dancing
dresses in a long box across her lap. Gerald rode beside the carriage on his big hunter, warm with brandy
and pleased with himself for having gotten through
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with the unpleasant business of Wilkerson so speedily. He had shoved the responsibility onto Ellen, and
her disappointment at missing the barbecue and the
gathering of her friends did not enter his mind; for
it was a fine spring day and his fields were beautiful
and the birds were singing and he felt too young and
frolicsome to think of anyone else. Occasionally he
burst out with “Peg in a Low- backed Car” and other
Irish ditties or the more lugubrious lament for Robert
Emmet, “She is far from the land where her young
hero sleeps.”
He was happy, pleasantly excited over the prospect
of spending the day shouting about the Yankees and
the war, and proud of his three pretty daughters in
their bright spreading hoop skirts beneath foolish little lace parasols. He gave no thought to his conversation of the day before with Scarlett, for it had completely slipped his mind. He only thought that she
was pretty and a great credit to him and that, today,
her eyes were as green as the hills of Ireland. The
last thought made him think better of himself, for it
had a certain poetic ring to it, and so he favored the
girls with a loud and slightly off-key rendition of “The
Wearin’ o’ the Green.”
Scarlett, looking at him with the affectionate con162
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tempt that mothers feel for small swaggering sons,
knew that he would be very drunk by sundown.
Coming home in the dark, he would try, as usual,
to jump every fence between Twelve Oaks and Tara
and, she hoped, by the mercy of Providence and the
good sense of his horse, would escape breaking his
neck. He would disdain the bridge and swim his
horse through the river and come home roaring, to
be put to bed on the sofa in the office by Pork who always waited up with a lamp in the front hall on such
occasions.
He would ruin his new gray broadcloth suit, which
would cause him to swear horribly in the morning
and tell Ellen at great length how his horse fell off
the bridge in the darkness–a palpable lie which would
fool no one but which would be accepted by all and
make him feel very clever.
Pa is a sweet, selfish, irresponsible darling, Scarlett thought, with a surge of affection for him. She
felt so excited and happy this morning that she included the whole world, as well as Gerald, in her affection. She was pretty and she knew it; she would
have Ashley for her own before the day was over;
the sun was warm and tender and the glory of the
Georgia spring was spread before her eyes. Along
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the roadside the blackberry brambles were concealing
with softest green the savage red gulches cut by the
winter’s rains, and the bare granite boulders pushing up through the red earth were being draped with
sprangles of Cherokee roses and compassed about by
wild violets of palest purple hue. Upon the wooded
hills above the river, the dogwood blossoms lay glistening and white, as if snow still lingered among the
greenery. The flowering crab trees were bursting their
buds and rioting from delicate white to deepest pink
and, beneath the trees where the sunshine dappled
the pine straw, the wild honeysuckle made a varicolored carpet of scarlet and orange and rose. There was
a faint wild fragrance of sweet shrub on the breeze
and the world smelled good enough to eat.
“I’ll remember how beautiful this day is till I die,”
thought Scarlett. “Perhaps it will be my wedding
day!”
And she thought with a tingling in her heart how
she and Ashley might ride swiftly through this
beauty of blossom and greenery this very afternoon,
or tonight by moonlight, toward Jonesboro and a
preacher. Of course, she would have to be remarried
by a priest from Atlanta, but that would be something
for Ellen and Gerald to worry about. She quailed a lit164
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tle as she thought how white with mortification Ellen
would be at hearing that her daughter had eloped
with another girl’s fiance, but she knew Ellen would
forgive her when she saw her happiness. And Gerald would scold and bawl but, for all his remarks of
yesterday about not wanting her to marry Ashley, he
would be pleased beyond words at an alliance between his family and the Wilkes.
“But that’ll be something to worry about after I’m
married,” she thought, tossing the worry from her.
It was impossible to feel anything but palpitating joy
in this warm sun, in this spring, with the chimneys of
Twelve Oaks just beginning to show on the hill across
the river.
“I’ll live there all my life and I’ll see fifty springs like
this and maybe more, and I’ll tell my children and my
grandchildren how beautiful this spring was, lovelier than any they’ll ever see.” She was so happy at
this thought that she joined in the last chorus of “The
Wearin’ o’ the Green” and won Gerald’s shouted approval.
“I don’t know why you’re so happy this morning,” said Suellen crossly, for the thought still rankled in her mind that she would look far better in
Scarlett’s green silk dancing frock than its rightful
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owner would. And why was Scarlett always so selfish
about lending her clothes and bonnets? And why did
Mother always back her up, declaring green was not
Suellen’s color? “You know as well as I do that Ashley’s engagement is going to be announced tonight.
Pa said so this morning. And I know you’ve been
sweet on him for months.”
“That’s all you know,” said Scarlett, putting out her
tongue and refusing to lose her good humor. How
surprised Miss Sue would be by this time tomorrow
morning!
“Susie, you know that’s not so,” protested Carreen,
shocked. “It’s Brent that Scarlett cares about.”
Scarlett turned smiling green eyes upon her younger
sister, wondering how anyone could be so sweet. The
whole family knew that Carreen’s thirteen-year-old
heart was set upon Brent Tarleton, who never gave
her a thought except as Scarlett’s baby sister. When
Ellen was not present, the O’Haras teased her to tears
about him.
“Darling, I don’t care a thing about Brent,” declared
Scarlett, happy enough to be generous. “And he
doesn’t care a thing about me. Why, he’s waiting for
you to grow up!”
Carreen’s round little face became pink, as pleasure
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struggled with incredulity.
“Oh, Scarlett, really?”
“Scarlett, you know Mother said Carreen was too
young to think about beaux yet, and there you go
putting ideas in her head.”
“Well, go and tattle and see if I care,” replied Scarlett. “You want to hold Sissy back, because you know
she’s going to be prettier than you in a year or so.”
“You’ll be keeping civil tongues in your heads this
day, or I’ll be taking me crop to you,” warned Gerald.
“Now whist! Is it wheels I’m hearing? That’ll be the
Tarletons or the Fontaines.”
As they neared the intersecting road that came
down the thickly wooded hill from Mimosa and
Fairhill, the sound of hooves and carriage wheels became plainer and clamorous feminine voices raised
in pleasant dispute sounded from behind the screen
of trees. Gerald, riding ahead, pulled up his horse
and signed to Toby to stop the carriage where the two
roads met.
“‘Tis the Tarleton ladies,” he announced to his
daughters, his florid face abeam, for excepting Ellen
there was no lady in the County he liked more than
the red-haired Mrs. Tarleton. “And ‘tis herself at
the reins. Ah, there’s a woman with fine hands for a
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horse! Feather light and strong as rawhide, and pretty
enough to kiss for all that. More’s the pity none of you
have such hands,” he added, casting fond but reproving glances at his girls. “With Carreen afraid of the
poor beasts and Sue with hands like sadirons when it
comes to reins and you, Puss–”
“Well, at any rate I’ve never been thrown,” cried
Scarlett indignantly. “And Mrs. Tarleton takes a toss
at every hunt.”
“And breaks a collar bone like a man,” said Gerald.
“No fainting, no fussing. Now, no more of it, for here
she comes.”
He stood up in his stirrups and took off his hat
with a sweep, as the Tarleton carriage, overflowing
with girls in bright dresses and parasols and fluttering veils, came into view, with Mrs. Tarleton on the
box as Gerald had said. With her four daughters,
their mammy and their ball dresses in long cardboard
boxes crowding the carriage, there was no room for
the coachman. And, besides, Beatrice Tarleton never
willingly permitted anyone, black or white, to hold
reins when her arms were out of slings. Frail, fineboned, so white of skin that her flaming hair seemed
to have drawn all the color from her face into its vital burnished mass, she was nevertheless possessed of
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exuberant health and untiring energy. She had borne
eight children, as red of hair and as full of life as she,
and had raised them most successfully, so the County
said, because she gave them all the loving neglect and
the stern discipline she gave the colts she bred. “Curb
them but don’t break their spirits,” was Mrs. Tarleton’s motto.
She loved horses and talked horses constantly. She
understood them and handled them better than any
man in the County. Colts overflowed the paddock
onto the front lawn, even as her eight children overflowed the rambling house on the hill, and colts and
sons and daughters and hunting dogs tagged after
her as she went about the plantation. She credited
her horses, especially her red mare, Nellie, with human intelligence; and if the cares of the house kept
her busy beyond the time when she expected to take
her daily ride, she put the sugar bowl in the hands of
some small pickaninny and said: “Give Nellie a handful and tell her I’ll be out terrectly.”
Except on rare occasions she always wore her riding habit, for whether she rode or not she always expected to ride and in that expectation put on her habit
upon arising. Each morning, rain or shine, Nellie
was saddled and walked up and down in front of the
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house, waiting for the time when Mrs. Tarleton could
spare an hour away from her duties. But Fairhill was
a difficult plantation to manage and spare time hard
to get, and more often than not Nellie walked up and
down riderless hour after hour, while Beatrice Tarleton went through the day with the skirt of her habit
absently looped over her arm and six inches of shining boot showing below it.
Today, dressed in dull black silk over unfashionably
narrow hoops, she still looked as though in her habit,
for the dress was as severely tailored as her riding
costume and the small black hat with its long black
plume perched over one warm, twinkling, brown eye
was a replica of the battered old hat she used for hunting.
She waved her whip when she saw Gerald and drew
her dancing pair of red horses to a halt, and the
four girls in the back of the carriage leaned out and
gave such vociferous cries of greeting that the team
pranced in alarm. To a casual observer it would seem
that years had passed since the Tarletons had seen the
O’Haras, instead of only two days. But they were a
sociable family and liked their neighbors, especially
the O’Hara girls. That is, they liked Suellen and Carreen. No girl in the County, with the possible ex170
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ception of the empty-headed Cathleen Calvert, really
liked Scarlett.
In summers, the County averaged a barbecue and
ball nearly every week, but to the red-haired Tarletons
with their enormous capacity for enjoying themselves, each barbecue and each ball was as exciting as
if it were the first they had ever attended. They were
a pretty, buxom quartette, so crammed into the carriage that their hoops and flounces overlapped and
their parasols nudged and bumped together above
their wide leghorn sun hats, crowned with roses and
dangling with black velvet chin ribbons. All shades of
red hair were represented beneath these hats, Hetty’s
plain red hair, Camilla’s strawberry blonde, Randa’s
coppery auburn and small Betsy’s carrot top.
“That’s a fine bevy, Ma’m,” said Gerald gallantly,
reining his horse alongside the carriage. “But it’s far
they’ll go to beat their mother.”
Mrs. Tarleton rolled her red-brown eyes and sucked
in her lower lip in burlesqued appreciation, and the
girls cried, “Ma, stop making eyes or we’ll tell Pa!” “I
vow, Mr. O’Hara, she never gives us a chance when
there’s a handsome man like you around!”
Scarlett laughed with the rest at these sallies but, as
always, the freedom with which the Tarletons treated
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their mother came as a shock. They acted as if she
were one of themselves and not a day over sixteen.
To Scarlett, the very idea of saying such things to
her own mother was almost sacrilegious. And yet–
and yet–there was something very pleasant about the
Tarleton girls’ relations with their mother, and they
adored her for all that they criticized and scolded and
teased her. Not, Scarlett loyally hastened to tell herself, that she would prefer a mother like Mrs. Tarleton to Ellen, but still it would be fun to romp with
a mother. She knew that even that thought was disrespectful to Ellen and felt ashamed of it. She knew no
such troublesome thoughts ever disturbed the brains
under the four flaming thatches in the carriage and, as
always when she felt herself different from her neighbors, an irritated confusion fell upon her.
Quick though her brain was, it was not made for
analysis, but she half-consciously realized that, for
all the Tarleton girls were as unruly as colts and
wild as March hares, there was an unworried singlemindedness about them that was part of their inheritance. On both their mother’s and their father’s
side they were Georgians, north Georgians, only a
generation away from pioneers. They were sure of
themselves and of their environment. They knew instinctively what they were about, as did the Wilke172
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ses, though in widely divergent ways, and in them
there was no such conflict as frequently raged in
Scarlett’s bosom where the blood of a soft- voiced,
overbred Coast aristocrat mingled with the shrewd,
earthy blood of an Irish peasant. Scarlett wanted to
respect and adore her mother like an idol and to rumple her hair and tease her too. And she knew she
should be altogether one way or the other. It was the
same conflicting emotion that made her desire to appear a delicate and high-bred lady with boys and to
be, as well, a hoyden who was not above a few kisses.
“Where’s Ellen this morning?” asked Mrs. Tarleton.
“She’s after discharging our overseer and stayed
home to go over the accounts with him. Where’s himself and the lads?”
“Oh, they rode over to Twelve Oaks hours ago–to
sample the punch and see if it was strong enough, I
dare say, as if they wouldn’t have from now till tomorrow morning to do it! I’m going to ask John Wilkes
to keep them overnight, even if he has to bed them
down in the stable. Five men in their cups are just too
much for me. Up to three, I do very well but–”
Gerald hastily interrupted to change the subject. He
could feel his own daughters snickering behind his
back as they remembered in what condition he had
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come home from the Wilkeses’ last barbecue the autumn before.
“And why aren’t you riding today, Mrs. Tarleton?
Sure, you don’t look yourself at all without Nellie. It’s
a stentor, you are.”
“A stentor, me ignorant broth of a boy!” cried Mrs.
Tarleton, aping his brogue. “You mean a centaur.
Stentor was a man with a voice like a brass gong.”
“Stentor or centaur, ‘tis no matter,” answered Gerald, unruffled by his error. “And ‘tis a voice like brass
you have, Ma’m, when you’re urging on the hounds,
so it is.”
“That’s one on you, Ma,” said Betty. “I told you you
yelled like a Comanche whenever you saw a fox.”
“But not as loud as you yell when Mammy washes
your ears,” returned Mrs. Tarleton. “And you sixteen!
Well, as to why I’m not riding today, Nellie foaled
early this morning.”
“Did she now!” cried Gerald with real interest, his
Irishman’s passion for horses shining in his eyes, and
Scarlett again felt the sense of shock in comparing her
mother with Mrs. Tarleton. To Ellen, mares never
foaled nor cows calved. In fact, hens almost didn’t
lay eggs. Ellen ignored these matters completely. But
Mrs. Tarleton had no such reticences.
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“A little filly, was it?”
“No, a fine little stallion with legs two yards long.
You must ride over and see him, Mr. O’Hara. He’s a
real Tarleton horse. He’s as red as Hetty’s curls.”
“And looks a lot like Betty, too,” said Camilla, and
then disappeared shrieking amid a welter of skirts
and pantalets and bobbing hats, as Betty, who did
have a long face, began pinching her.
“My fillies are feeling their oats this morning,” said
Mrs. Tarleton. “They’ve been kicking up their heels
ever since we heard the news this morning about Ashley and that little cousin of his from Atlanta. What’s
her name? Melanie? Bless the child, she’s a sweet little thing, but I can never remember either her name or
her face. Our cook is the broad wife of the Wilkes butler, and he was over last night with the news that the
engagement would be announced tonight and Cookie
told us this morning. The girls are all excited about
it, though I can’t see why. Everybody’s known for
years that Ashley would marry her, that is, if he didn’t
marry one of his Burr cousins from Macon. Just like
Honey Wilkes is going to marry Melanie’s brother,
Charles. Now, tell me, Mr. O’Hara, is it illegal for
the Wilkes to marry outside of their family? Because
if–”
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Scarlett did not hear the rest of the laughing words.
For one short instant, it was as though the sun had
ducked behind a cool cloud, leaving the world in
shadow, taking the color out of things. The freshly
green foliage looked sickly, the dogwood pallid, and
the flowering crab, so beautifully pink a moment ago,
faded and dreary. Scarlett dug her fingers into the upholstery of the carriage and for a moment her parasol
wavered. It was one thing to know that Ashley was
engaged but it was another to hear people talk about
it so casually. Then her courage flowed strongly back
and the sun came out again and the landscape glowed
anew. She knew Ashley loved her. That was certain. And she smiled as she thought how surprised
Mrs. Tarleton would be when no engagement was
announced that night–how surprised if there were an
elopement. And she’d tell neighbors what a sly boots
Scarlett was to sit there and listen to her talk about
Melanie when all the time she and Ashley– She dimpled at her own thoughts and Betty, who had been
watching sharply the effect of her mother’s words,
sank back with a small puzzled frown.
“I don’t care what you say, Mr. O’Hara,” Mrs. Tarleton was saying emphatically. “It’s all wrong, this
marrying of cousins. It’s bad enough for Ashley to
be marrying the Hamilton child, but for Honey to be
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marrying that pale-looking Charles Hamilton–”
“Honey’ll never catch anybody else if she doesn’t
marry Charlie,” said Randa, cruel and secure in her
own popularity. “She’s never had another beau except him. And he’s never acted very sweet on her, for
all that they’re engaged. Scarlett, you remember how
he ran after you last Christmas–”
“Don’t be a cat, Miss,” said her mother. “Cousins
shouldn’t marry, even second cousins. It weakens the
strain. It isn’t like horses. You can breed a mare to
a brother or a sire to a daughter and get good results
if you know your blood strains, but in people it just
doesn’t work. You get good lines, perhaps, but no
stamina. You–”
“Now, Ma’m, I’m taking issue with you on that! Can
you name me better people than the Wilkes? And
they’ve been intermarrying since Brian Boru was a
boy.”
“And high time they stopped it, for it’s beginning
to show. Oh, not Ashley so much, for he’s a goodlooking devil, though even he– But look at those two
washed-out-looking Wilkes girls, poor things! Nice
girls, of course, but washed out. And look at little
Miss Melanie. Thin as a rail and delicate enough for
the wind to blow away and no spirit at all. Not a no177
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tion of her own. ‘No, Ma’m!’ ‘Yes, Ma’m!’ That’s
all she has to say. You see what I mean? That family needs new blood, fine vigorous blood like my red
heads or your Scarlett. Now, don’t misunderstand
me. The Wilkes are fine folks in their way, and you
know I’m fond of them all, but be frank! They are
overbred and inbred too, aren’t they? They’ll do fine
on a dry track, a fast track, but mark my words, I
don’t believe the Wilkes can run on a mud track. I
believe the stamina has been bred out of them, and
when the emergency arises I don’t believe they can
run against odds. Dry-weather stock. Give me a big
horse who can run in any weather! And their intermarrying has made them different from other folks
around here. Always fiddling with the piano or sticking their heads in a book. I do believe Ashley would
rather read than hunt! Yes, I honestly believe that, Mr.
O’Hara! And just look at the bones on them. Too slender. They need dams and sires with strength–”
“Ah-ah-hum,” said Gerald, suddenly and guiltily
aware that the conversation, a most interesting and
entirely proper one to him, would seem quite otherwise to Ellen. In fact, he knew she would never recover should she learn that her daughters had been
exposed to so frank a conversation. But Mrs. Tarleton
was, as usual, deaf to all other ideas when pursuing
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her favorite topic, breeding, whether it be horses or
humans.
“I know what I’m talking about because I had some
cousins who married each other and I give you my
word their children all turned out as popeyed as bullfrogs, poor things. And when my family wanted me
to marry a second cousin, I bucked like a colt. I said,
‘No, Ma. Not for me. My children will all have
spavins and heaves.’ Well, Ma fainted when I said
that about spavins, but I stood firm and Grandma
backed me up. She knew a lot about horse breeding
too, you see, and said I was right. And she helped
me run away with Mr. Tarleton. And look at my children! Big and healthy and not a sickly one or a runt
among them, though Boyd is only five feet ten. Now,
the Wilkes–”
“Not meaning to change the subject, Ma’m,” broke
in Gerald hurriedly, for he had noticed Carreen’s bewildered look and the avid curiosity on Suellen’s
face and feared lest they might ask Ellen embarrassing questions which would reveal how inadequate
a chaperon he was. Puss, he was glad to notice,
appeared to be thinking of other matters as a lady
should.
Betty Tarleton rescued him from his predicament.
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“Good Heavens, Ma, do let’s get on!” she cried impatiently. “This sun is broiling me and I can just hear
freckles popping out on my neck.”
“Just a minute, Ma’m, before you go,” said Gerald.
“But what have you decided to do about selling us the
horses for the Troop? War may break any day now
and the boys want the matter settled. It’s a Clayton
County troop and it’s Clayton County horses we want
for them. But you, obstinate creature that you are, are
still refusing to sell us your fine beasts.”
“Maybe there won’t be any war,” Mrs. Tarleton
temporized, her mind diverted completely from the
Wilkeses’ odd marriage habits.
“Why, Ma’m, you can’t–”
“Ma,” Betty interrupted again, “can’t you and Mr.
O’Hara talk about the horses at Twelve Oaks as well
as here?”
“That’s just it, Miss Betty,” said Gerald. “And I
won’t be keeping you but one minute by the clock.
We’ll be getting to Twelve Oaks in a little bit, and every man there, old and young, wanting to know about
the horses. Ah, but it’s breaking me heart to see such
a fine pretty lady as your mother so stingy with her
beasts! Now, where’s your patriotism, Mrs. Tarleton?
Does the Confederacy mean nothing to you at all?”
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“Ma,” cried small Betsy, “Randa’s sitting on my
dress and I’m getting all wrinkled.”
“Well, push Randa off you, Betsy, and hush. Now,
listen to me, Gerald O’Hara,” she retorted, her eyes
beginning to snap. “Don’t you go throwing the Confederacy in my face! I reckon the Confederacy means
as much to me as it does to you, me with four boys in
the Troop and you with none. But my boys can take
care of themselves and my horses can’t. I’d gladly
give the horses free of charge if I knew they were going to be ridden by boys I know, gentlemen used to
thoroughbreds. No, I wouldn’t hesitate a minute. But
let my beauties be at the mercy of back-woodsmen
and Crackers who are used to riding mules! No,
sir! I’d have nightmares thinking they were being
ridden with saddle galls and not groomed properly.
Do you think I’d let ignorant fools ride my tendermouthed darlings and saw their mouths to pieces and
beat them till their spirits were broken? Why, I’ve got
goose flesh this minute, just thinking about it! No, Mr.
O’Hara, you’re mighty nice to want my horses, but
you’d better go to Atlanta and buy some old plugs
for your clodhoppers. They’ll never know the difference.”
“Ma, can’t we please go on?” asked Camilla, joining
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the impatient chorus. “You know mighty well you’re
going to end up giving them your darlings anyhow.
When Pa and the boys get through talking about the
Confederacy needing them and so on, you’ll cry and
let them go.”
Mrs. Tarleton grinned and shook the lines.
“I’ll do no such thing,” she said, touching the horses
lightly with the whip. The carriage went off swiftly.
“That’s a fine woman,” said Gerald, putting on his
hat and taking his place beside his own carriage.
“Drive on, Toby. We’ll wear her down and get the
horses yet. Of course, she’s right. She’s right. If a
man’s not a gentleman, he’s no business on a horse.
The infantry is the place for him. But more’s the pity,
there’s not enough planters’ sons in this County to
make up a full troop. What did you say, Puss?”
“Pa, please ride behind us or in front of us. You
kick up such a heap of dust that we’re choking,” said
Scarlett, who felt that she could endure conversation
no longer. It distracted her from her thoughts and
she was very anxious to arrange both her thoughts
and her face in attractive lines before reaching Twelve
Oaks. Gerald obediently put spurs to his horse and
was off in a red cloud after the Tarleton carriage
where he could continue his horsy conversation.
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river and the carriage mounted the
hill. Even before Twelve Oaks came into view Scarlett saw a haze of smoke hanging lazily in the tops of
the tall trees and smelled the mingled savory odors of
burning hickory logs and roasting pork and mutton.
The barbecue pits, which had been slowly burning
since last night, would now be long troughs of rosered embers, with the meats turning on spits above
them and the juices trickling down and hissing into
the coals. Scarlett knew that the fragrance carried on
the faint breeze came from the grove of great oaks in
the rear of the big house. John Wilkes always held
his barbecues there, on the gentle slope leading down
to the rose garden, a pleasant shady place and a far
pleasanter place, for instance, than that used by the
Calverts. Mrs. Calvert did not like barbecue food
and declared that the smells remained in the house
for days, so her guests always sweltered on a flat unshaded spot a quarter of a mile from the house. But
John Wilkes, famed throughout the state for his hospitality, really knew how to give a barbecue.
The long trestled picnic tables, covered with the
finest of the Wilkeses’ linen, always stood under the
thickest shade, with backless benches on either side;
T HEY
CROSSED THE
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and chairs, hassocks and cushions from the house
were scattered about the glade for those who did not
fancy the benches. At a distance great enough to keep
the smoke away from the guests were the long pits
where the meats cooked and the huge iron wash-pots
from which the succulent odors of barbecue sauce
and Brunswick stew floated. Mr. Wilkes always had
at least a dozen darkies busy running back and forth
with trays to serve the guests. Over behind the barns
there was always another barbecue pit, where the
house servants and the coachmen and maids of the
guests had their own feast of hoecakes and yams and
chitterlings, that dish of hog entrails so dear to negro
hearts, and, in season, watermelons enough to satiate.
As the smell of crisp fresh pork came to her, Scarlett
wrinkled her nose appreciatively, hoping that by the
time it was cooked she would feel some appetite. As
it was she was so full of food and so tightly laced that
she feared every moment she was going to belch. That
would be fatal, as only old men and very old ladies
could belch without fear of social disapproval.
They topped the rise and the white house reared its
perfect symmetry before her, tall of columns, wide of
verandas, flat of roof, beautiful as a woman is beautiful who is so sure of her charm that she can be gen184
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erous and gracious to all. Scarlett loved Twelve Oaks
even more than Tara, for it had a stately beauty, a mellowed dignity that Gerald’s house did not possess.
The wide curving driveway was full of saddle
horses and carriages and guests alighting and calling greetings to friends. Grinning negroes, excited
as always at a party, were leading the animals to the
barnyard to be unharnessed and unsaddled for the
day. Swarms of children, black and white, ran yelling
about the newly green lawn, playing hopscotch and
tag and boasting how much they were going to eat.
The wide hall which ran from front to back of the
house was swarming with people, and as the O’Hara
carriage drew up at the front steps, Scarlett saw girls
in crinolines, bright as butterflies, going up and coming down the stairs from the second floor, arms about
each other’s waists, stopping to lean over the delicate handrail of the banisters, laughing and calling to
young men in the hall below them.
Through the open French windows, she caught
glimpses of the older women seated in the drawing
room, sedate in dark silks as they sat fanning themselves and talking of babies and sicknesses and who
had married whom and why. The Wilkes butler, Tom,
was hurrying through the halls, a silver tray in his
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hands, bowing and grinning, as he offered tall glasses
to young men in fawn and gray trousers and fine ruffled linen shirts.
The sunny front veranda was thronged with guests.
Yes, the whole County was here, thought Scarlett. The
four Tarleton boys and their father leaned against the
tall columns, the twins, Stuart and Brent, side by side
inseparable as usual, Boyd and Tom with their father,
James Tarleton. Mr. Calvert was standing close by the
side of his Yankee wife, who even after fifteen years
in Georgia never seemed to quite belong anywhere.
Everyone was very polite and kind to her because he
felt sorry for her, but no one could forget that she had
compounded her initial error of birth by being the
governess of Mr. Calvert’s children. The two Calvert
boys, Raiford and Cade, were there with their dashing blonde sister, Cathleen, teasing the dark-faced Joe
Fontaine and Sally Munroe, his pretty bride-to-be.
Alex and Tony Fontaine were whispering in the ears
of Dimity Munroe and sending her into gales of giggles. There were families from as far as Lovejoy, ten
miles away, and from Fayetteville and Jonesboro, a
few even from Atlanta and Macon. The house seemed
bursting with the crowd, and a ceaseless babble of
talking and laughter and giggles and shrill feminine
squeaks and screams rose and fell.
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On the porch steps stood John Wilkes, silver-haired,
erect, radiating the quiet charm and hospitality that
was as warm and never failing as the sun of Georgia summer. Beside him Honey Wilkes, so called because she indiscriminately addressed everyone from
her father to the field hands by that endearment, fidgeted and giggled as she called greetings to the arriving guests.
Honey’s nervously obvious desire to be attractive to
every man in sight contrasted sharply with her father’s poise, and Scarlett had the thought that perhaps there was something in what Mrs. Tarleton
said, after all. Certainly the Wilkes men got the family looks. The thick deep-gold lashes that set off the
gray eyes of John Wilkes and Ashley were sparse and
colorless in the faces of Honey and her sister India.
Honey had the odd lashless look of a rabbit, and India could be described by no other word than plain.
India was nowhere to be seen, but Scarlett knew she
probably was in the kitchen giving final instructions
to the servants. Poor India, thought Scarlett, she’s had
so much trouble keeping house since her mother died
that she’s never had the chance to catch any beau except Stuart Tarleton, and it certainly wasn’t my fault
if he thought I was prettier than she.
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John Wilkes came down the steps to offer his arm to
Scarlett. As she descended from the carriage, she saw
Suellen smirk and knew that she must have picked
out Frank Kennedy in the crowd.
If I couldn’t catch a better beau than that old maid in
britches! she thought contemptuously, as she stepped
to the ground and smiled her thanks to John Wilkes.
Frank Kennedy was hurrying to the carriage to assist Suellen, and Suellen was bridling in a way that
made Scarlett want to slap her. Frank Kennedy
might own more land than anyone in the County and
he might have a very kind heart, but these things
counted for nothing against the fact that he was forty,
slight and nervous and had a thin ginger-colored
beard and an old-maidish, fussy way about him.
However, remembering her plan, Scarlett smothered
her contempt and cast such a flashing smile of greeting at him that he stopped short, his arm outheld to
Suellen and goggled at Scarlett in pleased bewilderment.
Scarlett’s eyes searched the crowd for Ashley, even
while she made pleasant small talk with John Wilkes,
but he was not on the porch. There were cries of greeting from a dozen voices and Stuart and Brent Tarleton
moved toward her. The Munroe girls rushed up to
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exclaim over her dress, and she was speedily the center of a circle of voices that rose higher and higher
in efforts to be heard above the din. But where was
Ashley? And Melanie and Charles? She tried not to
be obvious as she looked about and peered down the
hall into the laughing group inside.
As she chattered and laughed and cast quick glances
into the house and the yard, her eyes fell on a stranger,
standing alone in the hall, staring at her in a cool
impertinent way that brought her up sharply with a
mingled feeling of feminine pleasure that she had attracted a man and an embarrassed sensation that her
dress was too low in the bosom. He looked quite old,
at least thirty-five. He was a tall man and powerfully built. Scarlett thought she had never seen a man
with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility. When her eye caught
his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a
close-clipped black mustache. He was dark of face,
swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and
black as any pirate’s appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished. There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth
as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath.
She felt that she should be insulted by such a look and
was annoyed with herself because she did not feel in189
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sulted. She did not know who he could be, but there
was undeniably a look of good blood in his dark face.
It showed in the thin hawk nose over the full red lips,
the high forehead and the wide-set eyes.
She dragged her eyes away from his without smiling back, and he turned as someone called: “Rhett!
Rhett Butler! Come here! I want you to meet the most
hardhearted girl in Georgia.”
Rhett Butler? The name had a familiar sound,
somehow connected with something pleasantly scandalous, but her mind was on Ashley and she dismissed the thought.
“I must run upstairs and smooth my hair,” she told
Stuart and Brent, who were trying to get her cornered
from the crowd. “You boys wait for me and don’t run
off with any other girl or I’ll be furious.”
She could see that Stuart was going to be difficult to
handle today if she flirted with anyone else. He had
been drinking and wore the arrogant looking-for-afight expression that she knew from experience meant
trouble. She paused in the hall to speak to friends and
to greet India who was emerging from the back of the
house, her hair untidy and tiny beads of perspiration
on her forehead. Poor India! It would be bad enough
to have pale hair and eyelashes and a jutting chin that
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meant a stubborn disposition, without being twenty
years old and an old maid in the bargain. She wondered if India resented very much her taking Stuart
away from her. Lots of people said she was still in
love with him, but then you could never tell what a
Wilkes was thinking about. If she did resent it, she
never gave any sign of it, treating Scarlett with the
same slightly aloof, kindly courtesy she had always
shown her.
Scarlett spoke pleasantly to her and started up the
wide stairs. As she did, a shy voice behind her called
her name and, turning, she saw Charles Hamilton.
He was a nice-looking boy with a riot of soft brown
curls on his white forehead and eyes as deep brown,
as clean and as gentle as a collie dog’s. He was well
turned out in mustard-colored trousers and black coat
and his pleated shirt was topped by the widest and
most fashionable of black cravats. A faint blush was
creeping over his face as she turned for he was timid
with girls. Like most shy men he greatly admired airy,
vivacious, always-at-ease girls like Scarlett. She had
never given him more than perfunctory courtesy before, and so the beaming smile of pleasure with which
she greeted him and the two hands outstretched to his
almost took his breath away.
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“Why Charles Hamilton, you handsome old thing,
you! I’ll bet you came all the way down here from
Atlanta just to break my poor heart!”
Charles almost stuttered with excitement, holding
her warm little hands in his and looking into the dancing green eyes. This was the way girls talked to other
boys but never to him. He never knew why but girls
always treated him like a younger brother and were
very kind, but never bothered to tease him. He had
always wanted girls to flirt and frolic with him as they
did with boys much less handsome and less endowed
with this world’s goods than he. But on the few occasions when this had happened he could never think
of anything to say and he suffered agonies of embarrassment at his dumbness. Then he lay awake at night
thinking of all the charming gallantries he might have
employed; but he rarely got a second chance, for the
girls left him alone after a trial or two.
Even with Honey, with whom he had an unspoken understanding of marriage when he came into
his property next fall, he was diffident and silent. At
times, he had an ungallant feeling that Honey’s coquetries and proprietary airs were no credit to him,
for she was so boy-crazy he imagined she would
use them on any man who gave her the opportunity.
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Charles was not excited over the prospect of marrying her, for she stirred in him none of the emotions of
wild romance that his beloved books had assured him
were proper for a lover. He had always yearned to be
loved by some beautiful, dashing creature full of fire
and mischief.
And here was Scarlett O’Hara teasing him about
breaking her heart!
He tried to think of something to say and couldn’t,
and silently he blessed her because she kept up a
steady chatter which relieved him of any necessity for
conversation. It was too good to be true.
“Now, you wait right here till I come back, for I want
to eat barbecue with you. And don’t you go off philandering with those other girls, because I’m mighty
jealous,” came the incredible words from red lips with
a dimple on each side; and briskly black lashes swept
demurely over green eyes.
“I won’t,” he finally managed to breathe, never
dreaming that she was thinking he looked like a calf
waiting for the butcher.
Tapping him lightly on the arm with her folded fan,
she turned to start up the stairs and her eyes again fell
on the man called Rhett Butler who stood alone a few
feet away from Charles. Evidently he had overheard
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the whole conversation, for he grinned up at her as
maliciously as a tomcat, and again his eyes went over
her, in a gaze totally devoid of the deference she was
accustomed to.
“God’s nightgown!” said Scarlett to herself in indignation, using Gerald’s favorite oath. “He looks as if–
as if he knew what I looked like without my shimmy,”
and, tossing her head, she went up the steps.
In the bedroom where the wraps were laid, she
found Cathleen Calvert preening before the mirror
and biting her lips to make them look redder. There
were fresh roses in her sash that matched her cheeks,
and her cornflower-blue eyes were dancing with excitement.
“Cathleen,” said Scarlett, trying to pull the corsage
of her dress higher, “who is that nasty man downstairs named Butler?”
“My dear, don’t you know?” whispered Cathleen
excitedly, a weather eye on the next room where Dilcey and the Wilkes girls’ mammy were gossiping. “I
can’t imagine how Mr. Wilkes must feel having him
here, but he was visiting Mr. Kennedy in Jonesboro–
something about buying cotton–and, of course, Mr.
Kennedy had to bring him along with him. He
couldn’t just go off and leave him.”
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“What is the matter with him?”
“My dear, he isn’t received!”
“Not really!”
“No.”
Scarlett digested this in silence, for she had never before been under the same roof with anyone who was
not received. It was very exciting.
“What did he do?”
“Oh, Scarlett, he has the most terrible reputation.
His name is Rhett Butler and he’s from Charleston
and his folks are some of the nicest people there, but
they won’t even speak to him. Caro Rhett told me
about him last summer. He isn’t any kin to her family,
but she knows all about him, everybody does. He was
expelled from West Point. Imagine! And for things
too bad for Caro to know. And then there was that
business about the girl he didn’t marry.”
“Do tell me!”
“Darling, don’t you know anything? Caro told me
all about it last summer and her mama would die if
she thought Caro even knew about it. Well, this Mr.
Butler took a Charleston girl out buggy riding. I never
did know who she was, but I’ve got my suspicions.
She couldn’t have been very nice or she wouldn’t
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have gone out with him in the late afternoon without a chaperon. And, my dear, they stayed out nearly
all night and walked home finally, saying the horse
had run away and smashed the buggy and they had
gotten lost in the woods. And guess what–”
“I can’t guess. Tell me,” said Scarlett enthusiastically, hoping for the worst.
“He refused to marry her the next day!”
“Oh,” said Scarlett, her hopes dashed.
“He said he hadn’t–er–done anything to her and he
didn’t see why he should marry her. And, of course,
her brother called him out, and Mr. Butler said he’d
rather be shot than marry a stupid fool. And so they
fought a duel and Mr. Butler shot the girl’s brother
and he died, and Mr. Butler had to leave Charleston
and now nobody receives him,” finished Cathleen triumphantly, and just in time, for Dilcey came back into
the room to oversee the toilet of her charge.
“Did she have a baby?” whispered Scarlett in Cathleen’s ear.
Cathleen shook her head violently. “But she was ruined just the same,” she hissed back.
I wish I had gotten Ashley to compromise me,
thought Scarlett suddenly. He’d be too much of a gentleman not to marry me. But somehow, unbidden, she
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had a feeling of respect for Rhett Butler for refusing to
marry a girl who was a fool.
Scarlett sat on a high rosewood ottoman, under
the shade of a huge oak in the rear of the house,
her flounces and ruffles billowing about her and two
inches of green morocco slippers–all that a lady could
show and still remain a lady–peeping from beneath
them. She had scarcely touched plate in her hands
and seven cavaliers about her. The barbecue had
reached its peak and the warm air was full of laughter
and talk, the click of silver on porcelain and the rich
heavy smells of roasting meats and redolent gravies.
Occasionally when the slight breeze veered, puffs of
smoke from the long barbecue pits floated over the
crowd and were greeted with squeals of mock dismay
from the ladies and violent flappings of palmetto fans.
Most of the young ladies were seated with partners
on the long benches that faced the tables, but Scarlett,
realizing that a girl has only two sides and only one
man can sit on each of these sides, had elected to sit
apart so she could gather about her as many men as
possible.
Under the arbor sat the married women, their dark
dresses decorous notes in the surrounding color and
gaiety. Matrons, regardless of their ages, always
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grouped together apart from the bright-eyed girls,
beaux and laughter, for there were no married belles
in the South. From Grandma Fontaine, who was
belching frankly with the privilege of her age, to
seventeen-year-old Alice Munroe, struggling against
the nausea of a first pregnancy, they had their heads
together in the endless genealogical and obstetrical
discussions that made such gatherings very pleasant
and instructive affairs.
Casting contemptuous glances at them, Scarlett
thought that they looked like a clump of fat crows.
Married women never had any fun. It did not occur
to her that if she married Ashley she would automatically be relegated to arbors and front parlors with
staid matrons in dull silks, as staid and dull as they
and not a part of the fun and frolicking. Like most
girls, her imagination carried her just as far as the altar and no further. Besides, she was too unhappy now
to pursue an abstraction.
She dropped her eyes to her plate and nibbled daintily on a beaten biscuit with an elegance and an utter
lack of appetite that would have won Mammy’s approval. For all that she had a superfluity of beaux,
she had never been more miserable in her life. In
some way that she could not understand, her plans of
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last night had failed utterly so far as Ashley was concerned. She had attracted other beaux by the dozens,
but not Ashley, and all the fears of yesterday afternoon were sweeping back upon her, making her heart
beat fast and then slow, and color flame and whiten in
her cheeks.
Ashley had made no attempt to join the circle about
her, in fact she had not had a word alone with him
since arriving, or even spoken to him since their first
greeting. He had come forward to welcome her when
she came into the back garden, but Melanie had been
on his arm then, Melanie who hardly came up to his
shoulder.
She was a tiny, frailly built girl, who gave the appearance of a child masquerading in her mother’s
enormous hoop skirts–an illusion that was heightened by the shy, almost frightened look in her too
large brown eyes. She had a cloud of curly dark hair
which was so sternly repressed beneath its net that
no vagrant tendrils escaped, and this dark mass, with
its long widow’s peak, accentuated the heart shape of
her face. Too wide across the cheek bones, too pointed
at the chin, it was a sweet, timid face but a plain face,
and she had no feminine tricks of allure to make observers forget its plainness. She looked–and was–as
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simple as earth, as good as bread, as transparent as
spring water. But for all her plainness of feature and
smallness of stature, there was a sedate dignity about
her movements that was oddly touching and far older
than her seventeen years.
Her gray organdie dress, with its cherry-colored
satin sash, disguised with its billows and ruffles how
childishly undeveloped her body was, and the yellow
hat with long cherry streamers made her creamy skin
glow. Her heavy earbobs with their long gold fringe
hung down from loops of tidily netted hair, swinging
close to her brown eyes, eyes that had the still gleam
of a forest pool in winter when brown leaves shine up
through quiet water.
She had smiled with timid liking when she greeted
Scarlett and told her how pretty her green dress
was, and Scarlett had been hard put to be even civil
in reply, so violently did she want to speak alone
with Ashley. Since then, Ashley had sat on a stool
at Melanie’s feet, apart from the other guests, and
talked quietly with her, smiling the slow drowsy
smile that Scarlett loved. What made matters worse
was that under his smile a little sparkle had come into
Melanie’s eyes, so that even Scarlett had to admit that
she looked almost pretty. As Melanie looked at Ash200
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ley, her plain face lit up as with an inner fire, for if
ever a loving heart showed itself upon a face, it was
showing now on Melanie Hamilton’s.
Scarlett tried to keep her eyes from these two but
could not, and after each glance she redoubled her
gaiety with her cavaliers, laughing, saying daring
things, teasing, tossing her head at their compliments
until her earrings danced. She said “fiddle-dee-dee”
many times, declared that the truth wasn’t in any of
them, and vowed that she’d never believe anything
any man told her. But Ashley did not seem to notice
her at all. He only looked up at Melanie and talked
on, and Melanie looked down at him with an expression that radiated the fact that she belonged to him.
So, Scarlett was miserable.
To the outward eye, never had a girl less cause to
be miserable. She was undoubtedly the belle of the
barbecue, the center of attention. The furore she was
causing among the men, coupled with the heart burnings of the other girls, would have pleased her enormously at any other time.
Charles Hamilton, emboldened by her notice, was
firmly planted on her right, refusing to be dislodged
by the combined efforts of the Tarleton twins. He held
her fan in one hand and his untouched plate of barbe201
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cue in the other and stubbornly refused to meet the
eyes of Honey, who seemed on the verge of an outburst of tears. Cade lounged gracefully on her left,
plucking at her skirt to attract her attention and staring up with smoldering eyes at Stuart. Already the
air was electric between him and the twins and rude
words had passed. Frank Kennedy fussed about like
a hen with one chick, running back and forth from
the shade of the oak to the tables to fetch dainties to
tempt Scarlett, as if there were not a dozen servants
there for that purpose. As a result, Suellen’s sullen
resentment had passed beyond the point of ladylike
concealment and she glowered at Scarlett. Small Carreen could have cried because, for all Scarlett’s encouraging words that morning, Brent had done no
more than say “Hello, Sis” and jerk her hair ribbon
before turning his full attention to Scarlett. Usually
he was so kind and treated her with a careless deference that made her feel grown up, and Carreen secretly dreamed of the day when she would put her
hair up and her skirts down and receive him as a real
beau. And now it seemed that Scarlett had him. The
Munroe girls were concealing their chagrin at the defection of the swarthy Fontaine boys, but they were
annoyed at the way Tony and Alex stood about the
circle, jockeying for a position near Scarlett should
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any of the others arise from their places.
They telegraphed their disapproval of Scarlett’s conduct to Hetty Tarleton by delicately raised eyebrows.
“Fast” was the only word for Scarlett. Simultaneously, the three young ladies raised lacy parasols, said
they had had quite enough to eat, thank you, and, laying light fingers on the arms of the men nearest them,
clamored sweetly to see the rose garden, the spring
and the summerhouse. This strategic retreat in good
order was not lost on a woman present or observed
by a man.
Scarlett giggled as she saw three men dragged out
of the line of her charms to investigate landmarks familiar to the girls from childhood, and cut her eye
sharply to see if Ashley had taken note. But he was
playing with the ends of Melanie’s sash and smiling
up at her. Pain twisted Scarlett’s heart. She felt that
she could claw Melanie’s ivory skin till the blood ran
and take pleasure in doing it.
As her eyes wandered from Melanie, she caught the
gaze of Rhett Butler, who was not mixing with the
crowd but standing apart talking to John Wilkes. He
had been watching her and when she looked at him
he laughed outright. Scarlett had an uneasy feeling
that this man who was not received was the only one
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present who knew what lay behind her wild gaiety
and that it was affording him sardonic amusement.
She could have clawed him with pleasure too.
“If I can just live through this barbecue till this afternoon,” she thought, “all the girls will go upstairs to
take naps to be fresh for tonight and I’ll stay downstairs and get to talk to Ashley. Surely he must have
noticed how popular I am.” She soothed her heart
with another hope: “Of course, he has to be attentive
to Melanie because, after all, she is his cousin and she
isn’t popular at all, and if he didn’t look out for her
she’d just be a wallflower.”
She took new courage at this thought and redoubled
her efforts in the direction of Charles, whose brown
eyes glowed down eagerly at her. It was a wonderful day for Charles, a dream day, and he had fallen
in love with Scarlett with no effort at all. Before this
new emotion, Honey receded into a dim haze. Honey
was a shrill- voiced sparrow and Scarlett a gleaming
hummingbird. She teased him and favored him and
asked him questions and answered them herself, so
that he appeared very clever without having to say
a word. The other boys were puzzled and annoyed
by her obvious interest in him, for they knew Charles
was too shy to hitch two consecutive words together,
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and politeness was being severely strained to conceal
their growing rage. Everyone was smoldering, and it
would have been a positive triumph for Scarlett, except for Ashley.
When the last forkful of pork and chicken and mutton had been eaten, Scarlett hoped the time had come
when India would rise and suggest that the ladies retire to the house. It was two o’clock and the sun was
warm overhead, but India, wearied with the threeday preparations for the barbecue, was only too glad
to remain sitting beneath the arbor, shouting remarks
to a deaf old gentleman from Fayetteville.
A lazy somnolence descended on the crowd. The
negroes idled about, clearing the long tables on which
the food had been laid. The laughter and talking became less animated and groups here and there fell
silent. All were waiting for their hostess to signal the
end of the morning’s festivities. Palmetto fans were
wagging more slowly, and several gentlemen were
nodding from the heat and overloaded stomachs. The
barbecue was over and all were content to take their
ease while sun was at its height.
In this interval between the morning party and the
evening’s ball, they seemed a placid, peaceful lot.
Only the young men retained the restless energy
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which had filled the whole throng a short while before. Moving from group to group, drawling in their
soft voices, they were as handsome as blooded stallions and as dangerous. The languor of midday had
taken hold of the gathering, but underneath lurked
tempers that could rise to killing heights in a second and flare out as quickly. Men and women, they
were beautiful and wild, all a little violent under their
pleasant ways and only a little tamed.
Some time dragged by while the sun grew hotter,
and Scarlett and others looked again toward India.
Conversation was dying out when, in the lull, everyone in the grove heard Gerald’s voice raised in furious
accents. Standing some little distance away from the
barbecue tables, he was at the peak of an argument
with John Wilkes.
“God’s nightgown, man! Pray for a peaceable settlement with the Yankees after we’ve fired on the rascals
at Fort Sumter? Peaceable? The South should show
by arms that she cannot be insulted and that she is
not leaving the Union by the Union’s kindness but by
her own strength!”
“Oh, my God!” thought Scarlett. “He’s done it!
Now, we’ll all sit here till midnight.”
In an instant, the somnolence had fled from the
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lounging throng and something electric went snapping through the air. The men sprang from benches
and chairs, arms in wide gestures, voices clashing
for the right to be heard above other voices. There
had been no talk of politics or impending war all
during the morning, because of Mr. Wilkes’ request
that the ladies should not be bored. But now Gerald
had bawled the words “Fort Sumter,” and every man
present forgot his host’s admonition.
“Of course we’ll fight–” “Yankee thieves–” “We
could lick them in a month–” “Why, one Southerner
can lick twenty Yankees–” “Teach them a lesson they
won’t soon forget–” “Peaceably? They won’t let us go
in peace–” “No, look how Mr. Lincoln insulted our
Commissioners!” “Yes, kept them hanging around
for weeks– swearing he’d have Sumter evacuated!”
“They want war; we’ll make them sick of war–” And
above all the voices, Gerald’s boomed. All Scarlett
could hear was “States’ rights, by God!” shouted over
and over. Gerald was having an excellent time, but
not his daughter.
Secession, war–these words long since had become
acutely boring to Scarlett from much repetition, but
now she hated the sound of them, for they meant that
the men would stand there for hours haranguing one
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another and she would have no chance to corner Ashley. Of course there would be no war and the men all
knew it. They just loved to talk and hear themselves
talk.
Charles Hamilton had not risen with the others and,
finding himself comparatively alone with Scarlett, he
leaned closer and, with the daring born of new love,
whispered a confession.
“Miss O’Hara–I–I had already decided that if we did
fight, I’d go over to South Carolina and join a troop
there. It’s said that Mr. Wade Hampton is organizing
a cavalry troop, and of course I would want to go with
him. He’s a splendid person and was my father’s best
friend.”
Scarlett thought, “What am I supposed to do–give
three cheers?” for Charles’ expression showed that he
was baring his heart’s secrets to her. She could think
of nothing to say and so merely looked at him, wondering why men were such fools as to think women
interested in such matters. He took her expression
to mean stunned approbation and went on rapidly,
daringly–
“If I went–would–would you be sorry, Miss
O’Hara?”
“I should cry into my pillow every night,” said Scar208
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lett, meaning to be flippant, but he took the statement at face value and went red with pleasure. Her
hand was concealed in the folds of her dress and he
cautiously wormed his hand to it and squeezed it,
overwhelmed at his own boldness and at her acquiescence.
“Would you pray for me?”
“What a fool!” thought Scarlett bitterly, casting a
surreptitious glance about her in the hope of being
rescued from the conversation.
“Would you?”
“Oh–yes, indeed, Mr. Hamilton. Three Rosaries a
night, at least!”
Charles gave a swift look about him, drew in his
breath, stiffened the muscles of his stomach. They
were practically alone and he might never get another such opportunity. And, even given another
such Godsent occasion, his courage might fail him.
“Miss O’Hara–I must tell you something. I–I love
you!”
“Um?” said Scarlett absently, trying to peer through
the crowd of arguing men to where Ashley still sat
talking at Melanie’s feet.
“Yes!” whispered Charles, in a rapture that she had
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neither laughed, screamed nor fainted, as he had always imagined young girls did under such circumstances. “I love you! You are the most–the most–” and
he found his tongue for the first time in his life. “The
most beautiful girl I’ve ever known and the sweetest
and the kindest, and you have the dearest ways and
I love you with all my heart. I cannot hope that you
could love anyone like me but, my dear Miss O’Hara,
if you can give me any encouragement, I will do anything in the world to make you love me. I will–”
Charles stopped, for he couldn’t think of anything
difficult enough of accomplishment to really prove to
Scarlett the depth of his feeling, so he said simply: “I
want to marry you.”
Scarlett came back to earth with a jerk, at the sound
of the word “marry.” She had been thinking of marriage and of Ashley, and she looked at Charles with
poorly concealed irritation. Why must this calf-like
fool intrude his feelings on this particular day when
she was so worried she was about to lose her mind?
She looked into the pleading brown eyes and she saw
none of the beauty of a shy boy’s first love, of the
adoration of an ideal come true or the wild happiness
and tenderness that were sweeping through him like
a flame. Scarlett was used to men asking her to marry
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them, men much more attractive than Charles Hamilton, and men who had more finesse than to propose
at a barbecue when she had more important matters
on her mind. She only saw a boy of twenty, red as a
beet and looking very silly. She wished that she could
tell him how silly he looked. But automatically, the
words Ellen had taught her to say in such emergencies rose to her lips and casting down her eyes, from
force of long habit, she murmured: “Mr. Hamilton, I
am not unaware of the honor you have bestowed on
me in wanting me to become your wife, but this is all
so sudden that I do not know what to say.”
That was a neat way of smoothing a man’s vanity
and yet keeping him on the string, and Charles rose
to it as though such bait were new and he the first to
swallow it.
“I would wait forever! I wouldn’t want you unless
you were quite sure. Please, Miss O’Hara, tell me that
I may hope!”
“Um,” said Scarlett, her sharp eyes noting that Ashley, who had not risen to take part in the war talk, was
smiling up at Melanie. If this fool who was grappling
for her hand would only keep quiet for a moment,
perhaps she could hear what they were saying. She
must hear what they said. What did Melanie say to
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him that brought that look of interest to his eyes?
Charles’ words blurred the voices she strained to
hear.
“Oh, hush!” she hissed at him, pinching his hand
and not even looking at him.
Startled, at first abashed, Charles blushed at the rebuff and then, seeing how her eyes were fastened
on his sister, he smiled. Scarlett was afraid someone
might hear his words. She was naturally embarrassed
and shy, and in agony lest they be overheard. Charles
felt a surge of masculinity such as he had never experienced, for this was the first time in his life that he
had ever embarrassed any girl. The thrill was intoxicating. He arranged his face in what he fancied was
an expression of careless unconcern and cautiously
returned Scarlett’s pinch to show that he was man of
the world enough to understand and accept her reproof.
She did not even feel his pinch, for she could
hear clearly the sweet voice that was Melanie’s chief
charm: “I fear I cannot agree with you about Mr.
Thackeray’s works. He is a cynic. I fear he is not the
gentleman Mr. Dickens is.”
What a silly thing to say to a man, thought Scarlett, ready to giggle with relief. Why, she’s no more
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than a bluestocking and everyone knows what men
think of bluestockings. . . . The way to get a man
interested and to hold his interest was to talk about
him, and then gradually lead the conversation around
to yourself– and keep it there. Scarlett would have
felt some cause for alarm if Melanie had been saying: “How wonderful you are!” or “How do you
ever think of such things? My little ole brain would
bust if I even tried to think about them!” But here she
was, with a man at her feet, talking as seriously as if
she were in church. The prospect looked brighter to
Scarlett, so bright in fact that she turned beaming eyes
on Charles and smiled from pure joy. Enraptured at
this evidence of her affection, he grabbed up her fan
and plied it so enthusiastically her hair began to blow
about untidily.
“Ashley, you have not favored us with your opinion,” said Jim Tarleton, turning from the group of
shouting men, and with an apology Ashley excused
himself and rose. There was no one there so handsome, thought Scarlett, as she marked how graceful was his negligent pose and how the sun gleamed
on his gold hair and mustache. Even the older men
stopped to listen to his words.
“Why, gentlemen, if Georgia fights, I’ll go with her.
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Why else would I have joined the Troop?” he said.
His gray eyes opened wide and their drowsiness disappeared in an intensity that Scarlett had never seen
before. “But, like Father, I hope the Yankees will let
us go in peace and that there will be no fighting–” He
held up his hand with a smile, as a babel of voices
from the Fontaine and Tarleton boys began. “Yes, yes,
I know we’ve been insulted and lied to–but if we’d
been in the Yankees’ shoes and they were trying to
leave the Union, how would we have acted? Pretty
much the same. We wouldn’t have liked it.”
“There he goes again,” thought Scarlett. “Always
putting himself in the other fellow’s shoes.” To her,
there was never but one fair side to an argument.
Sometimes, there was no understanding Ashley.
“Let’s don’t be too hot headed and let’s don’t have
any war. Most of the misery of the world has been
caused by wars. And when the wars were over, no
one ever knew what they were all about.”
Scarlett sniffed. Lucky for Ashley that he had an
unassailable reputation for courage, or else there’d be
trouble. As she thought this, the clamor of dissenting
voices rose up about Ashley, indignant, fiery.
Under the arbor, the deaf old gentleman from Fayetteville punched India.
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“What’s it all about? What are they saying?”
“War!” shouted India, cupping her hand to his ear.
“They want to fight the Yankees!”
“War, is it?” he cried, fumbling about him for his
cane and heaving himself out of his chair with more
energy than he had shown in years. “I’ll tell ‘um
about war. I’ve been there.” It was not often that Mr.
McRae had the opportunity to talk about war, the way
his women folks shushed him.
He stumped rapidly to the group, waving his cane
and shouting and, because he could not hear the
voices about him, he soon had undisputed possession
of the field.
“You fire-eating young bucks, listen to me. You
don’t want to fight. I fought and I know. Went out
in the Seminole War and was a big enough fool to go
to the Mexican War, too. You all don’t know what
war is. You think it’s riding a pretty horse and having the girls throw flowers at you and coming home a
hero. Well, it ain’t. No, sir! It’s going hungry, and getting the measles and pneumonia from sleeping in the
wet. And if it ain’t measles and pneumonia, it’s your
bowels. Yes sir, what war does to a man’s bowels–
dysentery and things like that–”
The ladies were pink with blushes. Mr. McRae was
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a reminder of a cruder era, like Grandma Fontaine
and her embarrassingly loud belches, an era everyone
would like to forget.
“Run get your grandpa,” hissed one of the old gentleman’s daughters to a young girl standing near by.
“I declare,” she whispered to the fluttering matrons
about her, “he gets worse every day. Would you believe it, this very morning he said to Mary–and she’s
only sixteen: ‘Now, Missy . . .”’ And the voice went
off into a whisper as the granddaughter slipped out
to try to induce Mr. McRae to return to his seat in the
shade.
Of all the group that milled about under the trees,
girls smiling excitedly, men talking impassionedly,
there was only one who seemed calm. Scarlett’s eyes
turned to Rhett Butler, who leaned against a tree,
his hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets. He
stood alone, since Mr. Wilkes had left his side, and
had uttered no word as the conversation grew hotter.
The red lips under the close-clipped black mustache
curled down and there was a glint of amused contempt in his black eyes–contempt, as if he listened to
the braggings of children. A very disagreeable smile,
Scarlett thought. He listened quietly until Stuart Tarleton, his red hair tousled and his eyes gleaming, re216
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peated: “Why, we could lick them in a month! Gentlemen always fight better than rabble. A month– why,
one battle–”
“Gentlemen,” said Rhett Butler, in a flat drawl that
bespoke his Charleston birth, not moving from his position against the tree or taking his hands from his
pockets, “may I say a word?”
There was contempt in his manner as in his eyes,
contempt overlaid with an air of courtesy that somehow burlesqued their own manners.
The group turned toward him and accorded him the
politeness always due an outsider.
“Has any one of you gentlemen ever thought that
there’s not a cannon factory south of the MasonDixon Line? Or how few iron foundries there are in
the South? Or woolen mills or cotton factories or tanneries? Have you thought that we would not have
a single warship and that the Yankee fleet could bottle up our harbors in a week, so that we could not
sell our cotton abroad? But–of course–you gentlemen
have thought of these things.”
“Why, he means the boys are a passel of fools!”
thought Scarlett indignantly, the hot blood coming to
her cheeks.
Evidently, she was not the only one to whom this
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idea occurred, for several of the boys were beginning to stick out their chins. John Wilkes casually but
swiftly came back to his place beside the speaker, as if
to impress on all present that this man was his guest
and that, moreover, there were ladies present.
“The trouble with most of us Southerners,” continued Rhett Butler, “is that we either don’t travel
enough or we don’t profit enough by our travels.
Now, of course, all you gentlemen are well traveled.
But what have you seen? Europe and New York and
Philadelphia and, of course, the ladies have been to
Saratoga” (he bowed slightly to the group under the
arbor). “You’ve seen the hotels and the museums and
the balls and the gambling houses. And you’ve come
home believing that there’s no place like the South.
As for me, I was Charleston born, but I have spent the
last few years in the North.” His white teeth showed
in a grin, as though he realized that everyone present
knew just why he no longer lived in Charleston, and
cared not at all if they did know. “I have seen many
things that you all have not seen. The thousands of
immigrants who’d be glad to fight for the Yankees for
food and a few dollars, the factories, the foundries,
the shipyards, the iron and coal mines–all the things
we haven’t got. Why, all we have is cotton and slaves
and arrogance. They’d lick us in a month.”
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For a tense moment, there was silence. Rhett Butler removed a fine linen handkerchief from his coat
pocket and idly flicked dust from his sleeve. Then
an ominous murmuring arose in the crowd and from
under the arbor came a humming as unmistakable as
that of a hive of newly disturbed bees. Even while
she felt the hot blood of wrath still in her cheeks,
something in Scarlett’s practical mind prompted the
thought that what this man said was right, and it
sounded like common sense. Why, she’d never even
seen a factory, or known anyone who had seen a factory. But, even if it were true, he was no gentleman
to make such a statement–and at a party, too, where
everyone was having a good time.
Stuart Tarleton, brows lowering, came forward with
Brent close at his heels. Of course, the Tarleton twins
had nice manners and they wouldn’t make a scene
at a barbecue, even though tremendously provoked.
Just the same, all the ladies felt pleasantly excited, for
it was so seldom that they actually saw a scene or a
quarrel. Usually they had to hear of it third-hand.
“Sir,” said Stuart heavily, “what do you mean?”
Rhett looked at him with polite but mocking eyes.
“I mean,” he answered, “what Napoleon–perhaps
you’ve heard of him?–remarked once, ‘God is on the
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side of the strongest battalion!”’ and, turning to John
Wilkes, he said with courtesy that was unfeigned:
“You promised to show me your library, sir. Would
it be too great a favor to ask to see it now? I fear I
must go back to Jonesboro early this afternoon where
a bit of business calls me.”
He swung about, facing the crowd, clicked his heels
together and bowed like a dancing master, a bow that
was graceful for so powerful a man, and as full of impertinence as a slap in the face. Then he walked across
the lawn with John Wilkes, his black head in the air,
and the sound of his discomforting laughter floated
back to the group about the tables.
There was a startled silence and then the buzzing
broke out again. India rose tiredly from her seat beneath the arbor and went toward the angry Stuart Tarleton. Scarlett could not hear what she said, but the
look in her eyes as she gazed up into his lowering face
gave Scarlett something like a twinge of conscience.
It was the same look of belonging that Melanie wore
when she looked at Ashley, only Stuart did not see it.
So India did love him. Scarlett thought for an instant
that if she had not flirted so blatantly with Stuart at
that political speaking a year ago, he might have married India long ere this. But then the twinge passed
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with the comforting thought that it wasn’t her fault if
other girls couldn’t keep their men.
Finally Stuart smiled down at India, an unwilling
smile, and nodded his head. Probably India had been
pleading with him not to follow Mr. Butler and make
trouble. A polite tumult broke out under the trees as
the guests arose, shaking crumbs from laps. The married women called to nurses and small children and
gathered their broods together to take their departure,
and groups of girls started off, laughing and talking,
toward the house to exchange gossip in the upstairs
bedrooms and to take their naps.
All the ladies except Mrs. Tarleton moved out of the
back yard, leaving the shade of oaks and arbor to the
men. She was detained by Gerald, Mr. Calvert and
the others who wanted an answer from her about the
horses for the Troop.
Ashley strolled over to where Scarlett and Charles
sat, a thoughtful and amused smile on his face.
“Arrogant devil, isn’t he?” he observed, looking after Butler. “He looks like one of the Borgias.”
Scarlett thought quickly but could remember no
family in the County or Atlanta or Savannah by that
name.
“I don’t know them. Is he kin to them? Who are
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they?”
An odd look came over Charles’ face, incredulity
and shame struggling with love. Love triumphed as
he realized that it was enough for a girl to be sweet
and gentle and beautiful, without having an education to hamper her charms, and he made swift answer: “The Borgias were Italians.”
“Oh,” said Scarlett, losing interest, “foreigners.”
She turned her prettiest smile on Ashley, but for
some reason he was not looking at her. He was looking at Charles, and there was understanding in his
face and a little pity.
Scarlett stood on the landing and peered cautiously
over the banisters into the hall below. It was empty.
From the bedrooms on the floor above came an unending hum of low voices, rising and falling, punctuated with squeaks of laughter and, “Now, you didn’t,
really!” and “What did he say then?” On the beds
and couches of the six great bedrooms, the girls were
resting, their dresses off, their stays loosed, their hair
flowing down their backs. Afternoon naps were a
custom of the country and never were they so necessary as on the all-day parties, beginning early in the
morning and culminating in a ball. For half an hour,
the girls would chatter and laugh, and then servants
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would pull the shutters and in the warm half-gloom
the talk would die to whispers and finally expire in
silence broken only by soft regular breathing.
Scarlett had made certain that Melanie was lying
down on the bed with Honey and Hetty Tarleton before she slipped into the hall and started down the
stairs. From the window on the landing, she could
see the group of men sitting under the arbor, drinking from tall glasses, and she knew they would remain there until late afternoon. Her eyes searched the
group but Ashley was not among them. Then she listened and she heard his voice. As she had hoped, he
was still in the front driveway bidding good-by to departing matrons and children.
Her heart in her throat, she went swiftly down the
stairs. What if she should meet Mr. Wilkes? What
excuse could she give for prowling about the house
when all the other girls were getting their beauty
naps? Well, that had to be risked.
As she reached the bottom step, she heard the servants moving about in the dining room under the butler’s orders, lifting out the table and chairs in preparation for the dancing. Across the wide hall was the
open door of the library and she sped into it noiselessly. She could wait there until Ashley finished his
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adieux and then call to him when he came into the
house.
The library was in semidarkness, for the blinds had
been drawn against the sun. The dim room with
towering walls completely filled with dark books depressed her. It was not the place which she would
have chosen for a tryst such as she hoped this one
would be. Large numbers of books always depressed
her, as did people who liked to read large numbers of
books. That is–all people except Ashley. The heavy
furniture rose up at her in the half- light, high-backed
chairs with deep seats and wide arms, made for the
tall Wilkes men, squatty soft chairs of velvet with
velvet hassocks before them for the girls. Far across
the long room before the hearth, the seven-foot sofa,
Ashley’s favorite seat, reared its high back, like some
huge sleeping animal.
She closed the door except for a crack and tried to
make her heart beat more slowly. She tried to remember just exactly what she had planned last night to
say to Ashley, but she couldn’t recall anything. Had
she thought up something and forgotten it–or had she
only planned that Ashley should say something to
her? She couldn’t remember, and a sudden cold fright
fell upon her. If her heart would only stop pounding
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in her ears, perhaps she could think of what to say.
But the quick thudding only increased as she heard
him call a final farewell and walk into the front hall.
All she could think of was that she loved him–
everything about him, from the proud lift of his gold
head to his slender dark boots, loved his laughter
even when it mystified her, loved his bewildering silences. Oh, if only he would walk in on her now and
take her in his arms, so she would be spared the need
of saying anything. He must love her–“Perhaps if I
prayed–” She squeezed her eyes tightly and began
gabbling to herself “Hail Mary, full of grace–”
“Why, Scarlett!” said Ashley’s voice, breaking in
through the roaring in her ears and throwing her into
utter confusion. He stood in the hall peering at her
through the partly opened door, a quizzical smile on
his face.
“Who are you hiding from–Charles or the Tarletons?”
She gulped. So he had noticed how the men had
swarmed about her! How unutterably dear he was
standing there with his eyes twinkling, all unaware
of her excitement. She could not speak, but she put
out a hand and drew him into the room. He entered,
puzzled but interested. There was a tenseness about
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her, a glow in her eyes that he had never seen before,
and even in the dim light he could see the rosy flush
on her cheeks. Automatically he closed the door behind him and took her hand.
“What is it?” he said, almost in a whisper.
At the touch of his hand, she began to tremble. It
was going to happen now, just as she had dreamed
it. A thousand incoherent thoughts shot through her
mind, and she could not catch a single one to mold
into a word. She could only shake and look up into
his face. Why didn’t he speak?
“What is it?” he repeated. “A secret to tell me?”
Suddenly she found her tongue and just as suddenly all the years of Ellen’s teachings fell away, and
the forthright Irish blood of Gerald spoke from his
daughter’s lips.
“Yes–a secret. I love you.”
For an instance there was a silence so acute it
seemed that neither of them even breathed. Then the
trembling fell away from her, as happiness and pride
surged through her. Why hadn’t she done this before?
How much simpler than all the ladylike maneuverings she had been taught. And then her eyes sought
his.
There was a look of consternation in them, of in226
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credulity and something more–what was it? Yes, Gerald had looked that way the day his pet hunter had
broken his leg and he had had to shoot him. Why did
she have to think of that now? Such a silly thought.
And why did Ashley look so oddly and say nothing?
Then something like a well-trained mask came down
over his face and he smiled gallantly.
“Isn’t it enough that you’ve collected every other
man’s heart here today?” he said, with the old, teasing, caressing note in his voice. “Do you want to make
it unanimous? Well, you’ve always had my heart, you
know. You cut your teeth on it.”
Something was wrong–all wrong! This was not the
way she had planned it. Through the mad tearing of
ideas round and round in her brain, one was beginning to take form. Somehow–for some reason–Ashley
was acting as if he thought she was just flirting with
him. But he knew differently. She knew he did.
“Ashley–Ashley–tell me–you must–oh, don’t tease
me now! Have I your heart? Oh, my dear, I lo–”
His hand went across her lips, swiftly. The mask
was gone.
“You must not say these things, Scarlett! You
mustn’t. You don’t mean them. You’ll hate yourself for saying them, and you’ll hate me for hearing
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them!”
She jerked her head away. A hot swift current was
running through her.
“I couldn’t ever hate you. I tell you I love you
and I know you must care about me because–” She
stopped. Never before had she seen so much misery
in anyone’s face. “Ashley, do you care–you do, don’t
you?”
“Yes,” he said dully. “I care.”
If he had said he loathed her, she could not have
been more frightened. She plucked at his sleeve,
speechless.
“Scarlett,” he said, “can’t we go away and forget
that we have ever said these things?”
“No,” she whispered. “I can’t. What do you mean?
Don’t you want to–to marry me?”
He replied, “I’m going to marry Melanie.”
Somehow she found that she was sitting on the low
velvet chair and Ashley, on the hassock at her feet,
was holding both her hands in his, in a hard grip. He
was saying things–things that made no sense. Her
mind was quite blank, quite empty of all the thoughts
that had surged through it only a moment before,
and his words made no more impression than rain on
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glass. They fell on unhearing ears, words that were
swift and tender and full of pity, like a father speaking to a hurt child.
The sound of Melanie’s name caught in her consciousness and she looked into his crystal-gray eyes.
She saw in them the old remoteness that had always
baffled her–and a look of self-hatred.
“Father is to announce the engagement tonight. We
are to be married soon. I should have told you, but
I thought you knew. I thought everyone knew–had
known for years. I never dreamed that you– You’ve
so many beaux. I thought Stuart–”
Life and feeling and comprehension were beginning
to flow back into her.
“But you just said you cared for me.”
His warm hands hurt hers.
“My dear, must you make me say things that will
hurt you?”
Her silence pressed him on.
“How can I make you see these things, my dear. You
who are so young and unthinking that you do not
know what marriage means.”
“I know I love you.”
“Love isn’t enough to make a successful marriage
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when two people are as different as we are. You
would want all of a man, Scarlett, his body, his heart,
his soul, his thoughts. And if you did not have them,
you would be miserable. And I couldn’t give you all
of me. I couldn’t give all of me to anyone. And I
would not want all of your mind and your soul. And
you would be hurt, and then you would come to hate
me–how bitterly! You would hate the books I read
and the music I loved, because they took me away
from you even for a moment. And I–perhaps I–”
“Do you love her?”
“She is like me, part of my blood, and we understand each other. Scarlett! Scarlett! Can’t I make you
see that a marriage can’t go on in any sort of peace
unless the two people are alike?”
Some one else had said that: “Like must marry like
or there’ll be no happiness.” Who was it? It seemed a
million years since she had heard that, but it still did
not make sense.
“But you said you cared.”
“I shouldn’t have said it.”
Somewhere in her brain, a slow fire rose and rage
began to blot out everything else.
“Well, having been cad enough to say it–”
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His face went white.
“I was a cad to say it, as I’m going to marry Melanie.
I did you a wrong and Melanie a greater one. I should
not have said it, for I knew you wouldn’t understand.
How could I help caring for you– you who have all
the passion for life that I have not? You who can love
and hate with a violence impossible to me? Why you
are as elemental as fire and wind and wild things and
I–”
She thought of Melanie and saw suddenly her quiet
brown eyes with their far-off look, her placid little
hands in their black lace mitts, her gentle silences.
And then her rage broke, the same rage that drove
Gerald to murder and other Irish ancestors to misdeeds that cost them their necks. There was nothing
in her now of the well-bred Robillards who could bear
with white silence anything the world might cast.
“Why don’t you say it, you coward! You’re afraid
to marry me! You’d rather live with that stupid little
fool who can’t open her mouth except to say ‘Yes’ or
‘No’ and raise a passel of mealy- mouthed brats just
like her! Why–”
“You must not say these things about Melanie!”
“‘I mustn’t’ be damned to you! Who are you to tell
me I mustn’t? You coward, you cad, you– You made
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me believe you were going to marry me–”
“Be fair,” his voice pleaded. “Did I ever–”
She did not want to be fair, although she knew what
he said was true. He had never once crossed the borders of friendliness with her and, when she thought
of this fresh anger rose, the anger of hurt pride and
feminine vanity. She had run after him and he would
have none of her. He preferred a whey-faced little fool
like Melanie to her. Oh, far better that she had followed Ellen and Mammy’s precepts and never, never
revealed that she even liked him–better anything than
to be faced with this scorching shame!
She sprang to her feet, her hands clenched and he
rose towering over her, his face full of the mute misery of one forced to face realities when realities are
agonies.
“I shall hate you till I die, you cad–you lowdown–
lowdown–” What was the word she wanted? She
could not think of any word bad enough.
“Scarlett–please–”
He put out his hand toward her and, as he did, she
slapped him across the face with all the strength she
had. The noise cracked like a whip in the still room
and suddenly her rage was gone, and there was desolation in her heart.
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The red mark of her hand showed plainly on his
white tired face. He said nothing but lifted her limp
hand to his lips and kissed it. Then he was gone before she could speak again, closing the door softly behind him.
She sat down again very suddenly, the reaction from
her rage making her knees feel weak. He was gone
and the memory of his stricken face would haunt her
till she died.
She heard the soft muffled sound of his footsteps dying away down the long hall, and the complete enormity of her actions came over her. She had lost him
forever. Now he would hate her and every time he
looked at her he would remember how she threw herself at him when he had given her no encouragement
at all.
“I’m as bad as Honey Wilkes,” she thought suddenly, and remembered how everyone, and she more
than anyone else, had laughed contemptuously at
Honey’s forward conduct. She saw Honey’s awkward wigglings and heard her silly titters as she hung
onto boys’ arms, and the thought stung her to new
rage, rage at herself, at Ashley, at the world. Because
she hated herself, she hated them all with the fury of
the thwarted and humiliated love of sixteen. Only a
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little true tenderness had been mixed into her love.
Mostly it had been compounded out of vanity and
complacent confidence in her own charms. Now she
had lost and, greater than her sense of loss, was the
fear that she had made a public spectacle of herself.
Had she been as obvious as Honey? Was everyone
laughing at her? She began to shake at the thought.
Her hand dropped to a little table beside her, fingering a tiny china rose-bowl on which two china
cherubs smirked. The room was so still she almost
screamed to break the silence. She must do something
or go mad. She picked up the bowl and hurled it viciously across the room toward the fireplace. It barely
cleared the tall back of the sofa and splintered with a
little crash against the marble mantelpiece.
“This,” said a voice from the depths of the sofa, “is
too much.”
Nothing had ever startled or frightened her so
much, and her mouth went too dry for her to utter
a sound. She caught hold of the back of the chair, her
knees going weak under her, as Rhett Butler rose from
the sofa where he had been lying and made her a bow
of exaggerated politeness.
“It is bad enough to have an afternoon nap disturbed by such a passage as I’ve been forced to hear,
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but why should my life be endangered?”
He was real. He wasn’t a ghost. But, saints preserve
us, he had heard everything! She rallied her forces
into a semblance of dignity.
“Sir, you should have made known your presence.”
“Indeed?” His white teeth gleamed and his bold
dark eyes laughed at her. “But you were the intruder. I was forced to wait for Mr. Kennedy, and
feeling that I was perhaps persona non grata in the
back yard, I was thoughtful enough to remove my
unwelcome presence here where I thought I would
be undisturbed. But, alas!” he shrugged and laughed
softly.
Her temper was beginning to rise again at the
thought that this rude and impertinent man had
heard everything–heard things she now wished she
had died before she ever uttered.
“Eavesdroppers–” she began furiously.
“Eavesdroppers often hear highly entertaining and
instructive things,” he grinned. “From a long experience in eavesdropping, I–”
“Sir,” she said, “you are no gentleman!”
“An apt observation,” he answered airily. “And,
you, Miss, are no lady.” He seemed to find her very
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amusing, for he laughed softly again. “No one can remain a lady after saying and doing what I have just
overheard. However, ladies have seldom held any
charms for me. I know what they are thinking, but
they never have the courage or lack of breeding to
say what they think. And that, in time, becomes a
bore. But you, my dear Miss O’Hara, are a girl of rare
spirit, very admirable spirit, and I take off my hat to
you. I fail to understand what charms the elegant Mr.
Wilkes can hold for a girl of your tempestuous nature.
He should thank God on bended knee for a girl with
your–how did he put it?–‘passion for living,’ but being a poor-spirited wretch–”
“You aren’t fit to wipe his boots!” she shouted in
rage.
“And you were going to hate him all your life!” He
sank down on the sofa and she heard him laughing.
If she could have killed him, she would have done
it. Instead, she walked out of the room with such dignity as she could summon and banged the heavy door
behind her.
She went up the stairs so swiftly that when she
reached the landing, she thought she was going to
faint. She stopped, clutching the banisters, her heart
hammering so hard from anger, insult and exertion
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that it seemed about to burst through her basque.
She tried to draw deep breaths but Mammy’s lacings
were too tight. If she should faint and they should
find her here on the landing, what would they think?
Oh, they’d think everything. Ashley and that vile
Butler man and those nasty girls who were so jealous! For once in her life, she wished that she carried
smelling salts, like the other girls, but she had never
even owned a vinaigrette. She had always been so
proud of never feeling giddy. She simply could not
let herself faint now!
Gradually the sickening feeling began to depart. In
a minute, she’d feel all right and then she’d slip quietly into the little dressing room adjoining India’s
room, unloose her stays and creep in and lay herself
on one of the beds beside the sleeping girls. She tried
to quiet her heart and fix her face into more composed
lines, for she knew she must look like a crazy woman.
If any of the girls were awake, they’d know something was wrong. And no one must ever, ever know
that anything had happened.
Through the wide bay window on the lawn she
could see the men still lounging in their chairs under the trees and in the shade of the arbor. How
she envied them! How wonderful to be a man and
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never have to undergo miseries such as she had just
passed through. As she stood watching them, hot
eyed and dizzy, she heard the rapid pounding of a
horse’s hooves on the front drive, the scattering of
gravel and the sound of an excited voice calling a
question to one of the negroes. The gravel flew again
and across her vision a man on horseback galloped
over the green lawn toward the lazy group under the
trees.
Some late-come guest, but why did he ride his horse
across the turf that was India’s pride? She could not
recognize him, but as he flung himself from the saddle and clutched John Wilkes’ arm, she could see that
there was excitement in every line of him. The crowd
swarmed about him, tall glasses and palmetto fans
abandoned on tables and on the ground. In spite of
the distance, she could hear the hubbub of voices,
questioning, calling, feel the fever- pitch tenseness of
the men. Then above the confused sounds Stuart Tarleton’s voice rose, in an exultant shout “Yee-aay-ee!”
as if he were on the hunting field. And she heard for
the first time, without knowing it, the Rebel yell.
As she watched, the four Tarletons followed by the
Fontaine boys broke from the group and began hurrying toward the stable, yelling as they ran, “Jeems!
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You, Jeems! Saddle the horses!”
“Somebody’s house must have caught fire,” Scarlett
thought. But fire or no fire, her job was to get herself
back into the bedroom before she was discovered.
Her heart was quieter now and she tiptoed up the
steps into the silent hall. A heavy warm somnolence lay over the house, as if it slept at ease like
the girls, until night when it would burst into its full
beauty with music and candle flames. Carefully, she
eased open the door of the dressing room and slipped
in. Her hand was behind her, still holding the knob,
when Honey Wilkes’ voice, low pitched, almost in a
whisper, came to her through the crack of the opposite door leading into the bedroom.
“I think Scarlett acted as fast as a girl could act today.”
Scarlett felt her heart begin its mad racing again
and she clutched her hand against it unconsciously,
as if she would squeeze it into submission. “Eavesdroppers often hear highly instructive things,” jibed a
memory. Should she slip out again? Or make herself
known and embarrass Honey as she deserved? But
the next voice made her pause. A team of mules could
not have dragged her away when she heard Melanie’s
voice.
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“Oh, Honey, no! Don’t be unkind. She’s just high
spirited and vivacious. I thought her most charming.”
“Oh,” thought Scarlett, clawing her nails into her
basque. “To have that mealymouthed little mess take
up for me!”
It was harder to bear than Honey’s out-and-out cattiness. Scarlett had never trusted any woman and
had never credited any woman except her mother
with motives other than selfish ones. Melanie knew
she had Ashley securely, so she could well afford
to show such a Christian spirit. Scarlett felt it was
just Melanie’s way of parading her conquest and getting credit for being sweet at the same time. Scarlett
had frequently used the same trick herself when discussing other girls with men, and it had never failed
to convince foolish males of her sweetness and unselfishness.
“Well, Miss,” said Honey tartly, her voice rising,
“you must be blind.”
“Hush, Honey,” hissed the voice of Sally Munroe.
“They’ll hear you all over the house!”
Honey lowered her voice but went on.
“Well, you saw how she was carrying on with every
man she could get hold of–even Mr. Kennedy and
he’s her own sister’s beau. I never saw the like! And
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she certainly was going after Charles.” Honey giggled self-consciously. “And you know, Charles and
I–”
“Are you really?” whispered voices excitedly.
“Well, don’t tell anybody, girls–not yet!”
There were more gigglings and the bed springs
creaked as someone squeezed Honey. Melanie murmured something about how happy she was that
Honey would be her sister.
“Well, I won’t be happy to have Scarlett for my sister, because she’s a fast piece if ever I saw one,” came
the aggrieved voice of Hefty Tarleton. “But she’s as
good as engaged to Stuart. Brent says she doesn’t give
a rap about him, but, of course, Brent’s crazy about
her, too.”
“If you should ask me,” said Honey with mysterious
importance, “there’s only one person she does give a
rap about. And that’s Ashley!”
As the whisperings merged together violently, questioning, interrupting, Scarlett felt herself go cold with
fear and humiliation. Honey was a fool, a silly, a
simpleton about men, but she had a feminine instinct
about other women that Scarlett had underestimated.
The mortification and hurt pride that she had suffered in the library with Ashley and with Rhett But241
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ler were pin pricks to this. Men could be trusted to
keep their mouths shut, even men like Mr. Butler,
but with Honey Wilkes giving tongue like a hound in
the field, the entire County would know about it before six o’clock. And Gerald had said only last night
that he wouldn’t be having the County laughing at
his daughter. And how they would all laugh now!
Clammy perspiration, starting under her armpits, began to creep down her ribs.
Melanie’s voice, measured and peaceful, a little reproving, rose above the others.
“Honey, you know that isn’t so. And it’s so unkind.”
“It is too, Melly, and if you weren’t always so busy
looking for the good in people that haven’t got any
good in them, you’d see it. And I’m glad it’s so. It
serves her right. All Scarlett O’Hara has ever done
has been to stir up trouble and try to get other girls’
beaux. You know mighty well she took Stuart from
India and she didn’t want him. And today she tried
to take Mr. Kennedy and Ashley and Charles–”
“I must get home!” thought Scarlett. “I must get
home!”
If she could only be transferred by magic to Tara and
to safety. If she could only be with Ellen, just to see
her, to hold onto her skirt, to cry and pour out the
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whole story in her lap. If she had to listen to another
word, she’d rush in and pull out Honey’s straggly
pale hair in big handfuls and spit on Melanie Hamilton to show her just what she thought of her charity. But she’d already acted common enough today,
enough like white trash–that was where all her trouble lay.
She pressed her hands hard against her skirts, so
they would not rustle and backed out as stealthily as
an animal. Home, she thought, as she sped down the
hall, past the closed doors and still rooms, I must go
home.
She was already on the front porch when a new
thought brought her up sharply–she couldn’t go
home! She couldn’t run away! She would have to
see it through, bear all the malice of the girls and her
own humiliation and heartbreak. To run away would
only give them more ammunition.
She pounded her clenched fist against the tall white
pillar beside her, and she wished that she were Samson, so that she could pull down all of Twelve Oaks
and destroy every person in it. She’d make them
sorry. She’d show them. She didn’t quite see how
she’d show them, but she’d do it all the same. She’d
hurt them worse than they hurt her.
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For the moment, Ashley as Ashley was forgotten.
He was not the tall drowsy boy she loved but part and
parcel of the Wilkeses, Twelve Oaks, the County–and
she hated them all because they laughed. Vanity was
stronger than love at sixteen and there was no room
in her hot heart now for anything but hate.
“I won’t go home,” she thought. “I’ll stay here and
I’ll make them sorry. And I’ll never tell Mother. No,
I’ll never tell anybody.” She braced herself to go back
into the house, to reclimb the stairs and go into another bedroom.
As she turned, she saw Charles coming into the
house from the other end of the long hall. When he
saw her, he hurried toward her. His hair was tousled
and his face near geranium with excitement.
“Do you know what’s happened?” he cried, even
before he reached her. “Have you heard? Paul Wilson
just rode over from Jonesboro with the news!”
He paused, breathless, as he came up to her. She
said nothing and only stared at him.
“Mr. Lincoln has called for men, soldiers–I mean
volunteers– seventy-five thousand of them!”
Mr. Lincoln again! Didn’t men ever think about anything that really mattered? Here was this fool expecting her to be excited about Mr. Lincoln’s didoes when
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her heart was broken and her reputation as good as
ruined.
Charles stared at her. Her face was paper white and
her narrow eyes blazing like emeralds. He had never
seen such fire in any girl’s face, such a glow in anyone’s eyes.
“I’m so clumsy,” he said. “I should have told you
more gently. I forgot how delicate ladies are. I’m
sorry I’ve upset you so. You don’t feel faint, do you?
Can I get you a glass of water?”
“No,” she said, and managed a crooked smile.
“Shall we go sit on the bench?” he asked, taking her
arm.
She nodded and he carefully handed her down the
front steps and led her across the grass to the iron
bench beneath the largest oak in the front yard. How
fragile and tender women are, he thought, the mere
mention of war and harshness makes them faint. The
idea made him feel very masculine and he was doubly gentle as he seated her. She looked so strangely,
and there was a wild beauty about her white face that
set his heart leaping. Could it be that she was distressed by the thought that he might go to the war?
No, that was too conceited for belief. But why did she
look at him so oddly? And why did her hands shake
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as they fingered her lace handkerchief. And her thick
sooty lashes–they were fluttering just like the eyes of
girls in romances he had read, fluttering with timidity
and love.
He cleared his throat three times to speak and failed
each time. He dropped his eyes because her own
green ones met his so piercingly, almost as if she were
not seeing him.
“He has a lot of money,” she was thinking swiftly, as
a thought and a plan went through her brain. “And
he hasn’t any parents to bother me and he lives in Atlanta. And if I married him right away, it would show
Ashley that I didn’t care a rap–that I was only flirting
with him. And it would just kill Honey. She’d never,
never catch another beau and everybody’d laugh fit
to die at her. And it would hurt Melanie, because
she loves Charles so much. And it would hurt Stu
and Brent–” She didn’t quite know why she wanted
to hurt them, except that they had catty sisters. “And
they’d all be sorry when I came back here to visit in
a fine carriage and with lots of pretty clothes and a
house of my own. And they would never, never laugh
at me.”
“Of course, it will mean fighting,” said Charles, after
several more embarrassed attempts. “But don’t you
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fret, Miss Scarlett, it’ll be over in a month and we’ll
have them howling. Yes, sir! Howling! I wouldn’t
miss it for anything. I’m afraid there won’t be much
of a ball tonight, because the Troop is going to meet at
Jonesboro. The Tarleton boys have gone to spread the
news. I know the ladies will be sorry.”
She said, “Oh,” for want of anything better, but it
sufficed.
Coolness was beginning to come back to her and
her mind was collecting itself. A frost lay over all
her emotions and she thought that she would never
feel anything warmly again. Why not take this pretty,
flushed boy? He was as good as anyone else and she
didn’t care. No, she could never care about anything
again, not if she lived to be ninety.
“I can’t decide now whether to go with Mr. Wade
Hampton’s South Carolina Legion or with the Atlanta
Gate City Guard.”
She said, “Oh,” again and their eyes met and the
fluttering lashes were his undoing.
“Will you wait for me, Miss Scarlett? It–it would
be Heaven just knowing that you were waiting for
me until after we licked them!” He hung breathless
on her words, watching the way her lips curled up
at the corners, noting for the first time the shadows
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about these corners and thinking what it would mean
to kiss them. Her hand, with palm clammy with perspiration, slid into his.
“I wouldn’t want to wait,” she said and her eyes
were veiled.
He sat clutching her hand, his mouth wide open.
Watching him from under her lashes, Scarlett thought
detachedly that he looked like a gigged frog. He stuttered several times, closed his mouth and opened it
again, and again became geranium colored.
“Can you possibly love me?”
She said nothing but looked down into her lap, and
Charles was thrown into new states of ecstasy and
embarrassment. Perhaps a man should not ask a girl
such a question. Perhaps it would be unmaidenly for
her to answer it. Having never possessed the courage
to get himself into such a situation before, Charles
was at a loss as to how to act. He wanted to shout and
to sing and to kiss her and to caper about the lawn
and then run tell everyone, black and white, that she
loved him. But he only squeezed her hand until he
drove her rings into the flesh.
“You will marry me soon, Miss Scarlett?”
“Um,” she said, fingering a fold of her dress.
“Shall we make it a double wedding with Mel–”
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“No,” she said quickly, her eyes glinting up at him
ominously. Charles knew again that he had made an
error. Of course, a girl wanted her own wedding–not
shared glory. How kind she was to overlook his blunderings. If it were only dark and he had the courage of
shadows and could kiss her hand and say the things
he longed to say.
“When may I speak to your father?”
“The sooner the better,” she said, hoping that perhaps he would release the crushing pressure on her
rings before she had to ask him to do it.
He leaped up and for a moment she thought he was
going to cut a caper, before dignity claimed him. He
looked down at her radiantly, his whole clean simple heart in his eyes. She had never had anyone
look at her thus before and would never have it from
any other man, but in her queer detachment she only
thought that he looked like a calf.
“I’ll go now and find your father,” he said, smiling
all over his face. “I can’t wait. Will you excuse me–
dear?” The endearment came hard but having said it
once, he repeated it again with pleasure.
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll wait here. It’s so cool and nice
here.”
He went off across the lawn and disappeared
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around the house, and she was alone under the
rustling oak. From the stables, men were streaming
out on horseback, negro servants riding hard behind
their masters. The Munroe boys tore past waving
their hats, and the Fontaines and Calverts went down
the road yelling. The four Tarletons charged across
the lawn by her and Brent shouted: “Mother’s going
to give us the horses! Yee-aay-ee!” Turf flew and they
were gone, leaving her alone again.
The white house reared its tall columns before her,
seeming to withdraw with dignified aloofness from
her. It would never be her house now. Ashley would
never carry her over the threshold as his bride. Oh,
Ashley, Ashley! What have I done? Deep in her, under layers of hurt pride and cold practicality, something stirred hurtingly. An adult emotion was being born, stronger than her vanity or her willful selfishness. She loved Ashley and she knew she loved
him and she had never cared so much as in that instant when she saw Charles disappearing around the
curved graveled walk.
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Scarlett had become a wife, and
within two months more she was a widow. She was
soon released from the bonds she had assumed with
so much haste and so little thought, but she was never
again to know the careless freedom of her unmarried
days. Widowhood had crowded closely on the heels
of marriage but, to her dismay, motherhood soon followed.
In after years when she thought of those last days
of April, 1861, Scarlett could never quite remember
details. Time and events were telescoped, jumbled together like a nightmare that had no reality or reason.
Till the day she died there would be blank spots in
her memories of those days. Especially vague were
her recollections of the time between her acceptance
of Charles and her wedding. Two weeks! So short an
engagement would have been impossible in times of
peace. Then there would have been a decorous interval of a year or at least six months. But the South was
aflame with war, events roared along as swiftly as if
carried by a mighty wind and the slow tempo of the
old days was gone. Ellen had wrung her hands and
counseled delay, in order that Scarlett might think the
matter over at greater length. But to her pleadings,
W ITHIN
TWO WEEKS
�PART ONE
Scarlett turned a sullen face and a deaf ear. Marry she
would! and quickly too. Within two weeks.
Learning that Ashley’s wedding had been moved
up from the autumn to the first of May, so he could
leave with the Troop as soon as it was called into service, Scarlett set the date of her wedding for the day
before his. Ellen protested but Charles pleaded with
new-found eloquence, for he was impatient to be off
to South Carolina to join Wade Hampton’s Legion,
and Gerald sided with the two young people. He
was excited by the war fever and pleased that Scarlett had made so good a match, and who was he to
stand in the way of young love when there was a
war? Ellen, distracted, finally gave in as other mothers throughout the South were doing. Their leisured
world had been turned topsy-turvy, and their pleadings, prayers and advice availed nothing against the
powerful forces sweeping them along.
The South was intoxicated with enthusiasm and excitement. Everyone knew that one battle would end
the war and every young man hastened to enlist before the war should end–hastened to marry his sweetheart before he rushed off to Virginia to strike a blow
at the Yankees. There were dozens of war weddings
in the County and there was little time for the sor252
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row of parting, for everyone was too busy and excited for either solemn thoughts or tears. The ladies
were making uniforms, knitting socks and rolling
bandages, and the men were drilling and shooting.
Train loads of troops passed through Jonesboro daily
on their way north to Atlanta and Virginia. Some detachments were gaily uniformed in the scarlets and
light blues and greens of select social-militia companies; some small groups were in homespun and coonskin caps; others, ununiformed, were in broadcloth
and fine linen; all were half-drilled, half-armed, wild
with excitement and shouting as though en route to a
picnic. The sight of these men threw the County boys
into a panic for fear the war would be over before they
could reach Virginia, and preparations for the Troop’s
departure were speeded.
In the midst of this turmoil, preparations went forward for Scarlett’s wedding and, almost before she
knew it, she was clad in Ellen’s wedding dress and
veil, coming down the wide stairs of Tara on her father’s arm, to face a house packed full with guests.
Afterward she remembered, as from a dream, the
hundreds of candles flaring on the walls, her mother’s
face, loving, a little bewildered, her lips moving in
a silent prayer for her daughter’s happiness, Gerald
flushed with brandy and pride that his daughter was
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marrying both money, a fine name and an old one–
and Ashley, standing at the bottom of the steps with
Melanie’s arm through his.
When she saw the look on his face, she thought:
“This can’t be real. It can’t be. It’s a nightmare. I’ll
wake up and find it’s all been a nightmare. I mustn’t
think of it now, or I’ll begin screaming in front of all
these people. I can’t think now. I’ll think later, when I
can stand it–when I can’t see his eyes.”
It was all very dreamlike, the passage through the
aisle of smiling people, Charles’ scarlet face and stammering voice and her own replies, so startlingly clear,
so cold. And the congratulations afterward and the
kissing and the toasts and the dancing–all, all like
a dream. Even the feel of Ashley’s kiss upon her
cheek, even Melanie’s soft whisper, “Now, we’re really and truly sisters,” were unreal. Even the excitement caused by the swooning spell that overtook
Charles’ plump emotional aunt, Miss Pittypat Hamilton, had the quality of a nightmare.
But when the dancing and toasting were finally
ended and the dawn was coming, when all the Atlanta guests who could be crowded into Tara and the
overseer’s house had gone to sleep on beds, sofas and
pallets on the floor and all the neighbors had gone
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home to rest in preparation for the wedding at Twelve
Oaks the next day, then the dreamlike trance shattered like crystal before reality. The reality was the
blushing Charles, emerging from her dressing room
in his nightshirt, avoiding the startled look she gave
him over the high-pulled sheet.
Of course, she knew that married people occupied
the same bed but she had never given the matter a
thought before. It seemed very natural in the case
of her mother and father, but she had never applied
it to herself. Now for the first time since the barbecue she realized just what she had brought on herself.
The thought of this strange boy whom she hadn’t really wanted to marry getting into bed with her, when
her heart was breaking with an agony of regret at her
hasty action and the anguish of losing Ashley forever,
was too much to be borne. As he hesitatingly approached the bed she spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“I’ll scream out loud if you come near me. I will! I
will–at the top of my voice! Get away from me! Don’t
you dare touch me!”
So Charles Hamilton spent his wedding night in an
armchair in the corner, not too unhappily, for he understood, or thought he understood, the modesty and
delicacy of his bride. He was willing to wait until her
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fears subsided, only–only– He sighed as he twisted
about seeking a comfortable position, for he was going away to the war so very soon.
Nightmarish as her own wedding had been, Ashley’s wedding was even worse. Scarlett stood in
her apple-green “second-day” dress in the parlor of
Twelve Oaks amid the blaze of hundreds of candles,
jostled by the same throng as the night before, and
saw the plain little face of Melanie Hamilton glow
into beauty as she became Melanie Wilkes. Now, Ashley was gone forever. Her Ashley. No, not her Ashley now. Had he ever been hers? It was all so mixed
up in her mind and her mind was so tired, so bewildered. He had said he loved her, but what was it
that had separated them? If she could only remember. She had stilled the County’s gossiping tongue
by marrying Charles, but what did that matter now?
It had seemed so important once, but now it didn’t
seem important at all. All that mattered was Ashley.
Now he was gone and she was married to a man she
not only did not love but for whom she had an active
contempt.
Oh, how she regretted it all. She had often heard of
people cutting off their noses to spite their faces but
heretofore it had been only a figure of speech. Now
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she knew just what it meant. And mingled with her
frenzied desire to be free of Charles and safely back at
Tara, an unmarried girl again, ran the knowledge that
she had only herself to blame. Ellen had tried to stop
her and she would not listen.
So she danced through the night of Ashley’s wedding in a daze and said things mechanically and
smiled and irrelevantly wondered at the stupidity of
people who thought her a happy bride and could not
see that her heart was broken. Well, thank God, they
couldn’t see!
That night after Mammy had helped her undress
and had departed and Charles had emerged shyly
from the dressing room, wondering if he was to spend
a second night in the horsehair chair, she burst into
tears. She cried until Charles climbed into bed beside
her and tried to comfort her, cried without words until no more tears would come and at last she lay sobbing quietly on his shoulder.
If there had not been a war, there would have been
a week of visiting about the County, with balls and
barbecues in honor of the two newly married couples
before they set off to Saratoga or White Sulphur for
wedding trips. If there had not been a war, Scarlett
would have had third-day and fourth-day and fifth257
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day dresses to wear to the Fontaine and Calvert and
Tarleton parties in her honor. But there were no parties now and no wedding trips. A week after the wedding Charles left to join Colonel Wade Hampton, and
two weeks later Ashley and the Troop departed, leaving the whole County bereft.
In those two weeks, Scarlett never saw Ashley alone,
never had a private word with him. Not even at the
terrible moment of parting, when he stopped by Tara
on his way to the train, did she have a private talk.
Melanie, bonneted and shawled, sedate in newly acquired matronly dignity, hung on his arm and the entire personnel of Tara, black and white, turned out to
see Ashley off to the war.
Melanie said: “You must kiss Scarlett, Ashley. She’s
my sister now,” and Ashley bent and touched her
cheek with cold lips, his face drawn and taut. Scarlett
could hardly take any joy from that kiss, so sullen was
her heart at Melly’s prompting it. Melanie smothered
her with an embrace at parting.
“You will come to Atlanta and visit me and Aunt
Pittypat, won’t you? Oh, darling, we want to have
you so much! We want to know Charlie’s wife better.”
Five weeks passed during which letters, shy, ecstatic, loving, came from Charles in South Carolina
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telling of his love, his plans for the future when the
war was over, his desire to become a hero for her
sake and his worship of his commander, Wade Hampton. In the seventh week, there came a telegram from
Colonel Hampton himself, and then a letter, a kind,
dignified letter of condolence. Charles was dead. The
colonel would have wired earlier, but Charles, thinking his illness a trifling one, did not wish to have his
family worried. The unfortunate boy had not only
been cheated of the love he thought he had won but
also of his high hopes of honor and glory on the field
of battle. He had died ignominiously and swiftly of
pneumonia, following measles, without ever having
gotten any closer to the Yankees than the camp in
South Carolina.
In due time, Charles’ son was born and, because
it was fashionable to name boys after their fathers’
commanding officers, he was called Wade Hampton Hamilton. Scarlett had wept with despair at the
knowledge that she was pregnant and wished that
she were dead. But she carried the child through its
time with a minimum of discomfort, bore him with
little distress and recovered so quickly that Mammy
told her privately it was downright common–ladies
should suffer more. She felt little affection for the
child, hide the fact though she might. She had not
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wanted him and she resented his coming and, now
that he was here, it did not seem possible that he was
hers, a part of her.
Though she recovered physically from Wade’s birth
in a disgracefully short time, mentally she was dazed
and sick. Her spirits drooped, despite the efforts of
the whole plantation to revive them. Ellen went about
with a puckered, worried forehead and Gerald swore
more frequently than usual and brought her useless
gifts from Jonesboro. Even old Dr. Fontaine admitted
that he was puzzled, after his tonic of sulphur, molasses and herbs failed to perk her up. He told Ellen
privately that it was a broken heart that made Scarlett
so irritable and listless by turns. But Scarlett, had she
wished to speak, could have told them that it was a
far different and more complex trouble. She did not
tell them that it was utter boredom, bewilderment at
actually being a mother and, most of all, the absence
of Ashley that made her look so woebegone.
Her boredom was acute and ever present. The
County had been devoid of any entertainment or social life ever since the Troop had gone away to war.
All of the interesting young men were gone– the
four Tarletons, the two Calverts, the Fontaines, the
Munroes and everyone from Jonesboro, Fayetteville
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and Lovejoy who was young and attractive. Only the
older men, the cripples and the women were left, and
they spent their time knitting and sewing, growing
more cotton and corn, raising more hogs and sheep
and cows for the army. There was never a sight of
a real man except when the commissary troop under Suellen’s middle-aged beau, Frank Kennedy, rode
by every month to collect supplies. The men in the
commissary were not very exciting, and the sight of
Frank’s timid courting annoyed her until she found it
difficult to be polite to him. If he and Suellen would
only get it over with!
Even if the commissary troop had been more interesting, it would not have helped her situation any.
She was a widow and her heart was in the grave. At
least, everyone thought it was in the grave and expected her to act accordingly. This irritated her for, try
as she would, she could recall nothing about Charles
except the dying-calf look on his face when she told
him she would marry him. And even that picture
was fading. But she was a widow and she had to
watch her behavior. Not for her the pleasures of unmarried girls. She had to be grave and aloof. Ellen
had stressed this at great length after catching Frank’s
lieutenant swinging Scarlett in the garden swing and
making her squeal with laughter. Deeply distressed,
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Ellen had told her how easily a widow might get herself talked about. The conduct of a widow must be
twice as circumspect as that of a matron.
“And God only knows,” thought Scarlett, listening
obediently to her mother’s soft voice, “matrons never
have any fun at all. So widows might as well be
dead.”
A widow had to wear hideous black dresses without
even a touch of braid to enliven them, no flower or
ribbon or lace or even jewelry, except onyx mourning
brooches or necklaces made from the deceased’s hair.
And the black crepe veil on her bonnet had to reach
to her knees, and only after three years of widowhood could it be shortened to shoulder length. Widows could never chatter vivaciously or laugh aloud.
Even when they smiled, it must be a sad, tragic smile.
And, most dreadful of all, they could in no way indicate an interest in the company of gentlemen. And
should a gentleman be so ill bred as to indicate an interest in her, she must freeze him with a dignified but
well-chosen reference to her dead husband. Oh, yes,
thought Scarlett, drearily, some widows do remarry
eventually, when they are old and stringy. Though
Heaven knows how they manage it, with their neighbors watching. And then it’s generally to some des262
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perate old widower with a large plantation and a
dozen children.
Marriage was bad enough, but to be widowed–oh,
then life was over forever! How stupid people were
when they talked about what a comfort little Wade
Hampton must be to her, now that Charles was gone.
How stupid of them to say that now she had something to live for! Everyone talked about how sweet it
was that she had this posthumous token of her love
and she naturally did not disabuse their minds. But
that thought was farthest from her mind. She had
very little interest in Wade and sometimes it was difficult to remember that he was actually hers.
Every morning she woke up and for a drowsy moment she was Scarlett O’Hara again and the sun was
bright in the magnolia outside her window and the
mockers were singing and the sweet smell of frying
bacon was stealing to her nostrils. She was carefree
and young again. Then she heard the fretful hungry wail and always–always there was a startled moment when she thought: “Why, there’s a baby in the
house!” Then she remembered that it was her baby. It
was all very bewildering.
And Ashley! Oh, most of all Ashley! For the first
time in her life, she hated Tara, hated the long red
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road that led down the hill to the river, hated the
red fields with springing green cotton. Every foot of
ground, every tree and brook, every lane and bridle
path reminded her of him. He belonged to another
woman and he had gone to the war, but his ghost still
haunted the roads in the twilight, still smiled at her
from drowsy gray eyes in the shadows of the porch.
She never heard the sound of hooves coming up the
river road from Twelve Oaks that for a sweet moment
she did not think–Ashley!
She hated Twelve Oaks now and once she had loved
it. She hated it but she was drawn there, so she could
hear John Wilkes and the girls talk about him–hear
them read his letters from Virginia. They hurt her but
she had to hear them. She disliked the stiff- necked
India and the foolish prattling Honey and knew they
disliked her equally, but she could not stay away from
them. And every time she came home from Twelve
Oaks, she lay down on her bed morosely and refused
to get up for supper.
It was this refusal of food that worried Ellen and
Mammy more than anything else. Mammy brought
up tempting trays, insinuating that now she was a
widow she might eat as much as she pleased, but
Scarlett had no appetite.
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When Dr. Fontaine told Ellen gravely that heartbreak frequently led to a decline and women pined
away into the grave, Ellen went white, for that fear
was what she had carried in her heart.
“Isn’t there anything to be done, Doctor?”
“A change of scene will be the best thing in the
world for her,” said the doctor, only too anxious to
be rid of an unsatisfactory patient.
So Scarlett, unenthusiastic, went off with her child,
first to visit her O’Hara and Robillard relatives in Savannah and then to Ellen’s sisters, Pauline and Eulalie, in Charleston. But she was back at Tara a month
before Ellen expected her, with no explanation of her
return. They had been kind in Savannah, but James
and Andrew and their wives were old and content
to sit quietly and talk of a past in which Scarlett had
no interest. It was the same with the Robillards, and
Charleston was terrible, Scarlett thought.
Aunt Pauline and her husband, a little old man, with
a formal, brittle courtesy and the absent air of one living in an older age, lived on a plantation on the river,
far more isolated than Tara. Their nearest neighbor
was twenty miles away by dark roads through still
jungles of cypress swamp and oak. The live oaks with
their waving curtains of gray moss gave Scarlett the
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creeps and always brought to her mind Gerald’s stories of Irish ghosts roaming in shimmering gray mists.
There was nothing to do but knit all day and at night
listen to Uncle Carey read aloud from the improving
works of Mr. Bulwer-Lytton.
Eulalie, hidden behind a high-walled garden in a
great house on the Battery in Charleston, was no more
entertaining. Scarlett, accustomed to wide vistas of
rolling red hills, felt that she was in prison. There
was more social life here than at Aunt Pauline’s, but
Scarlett did not like the people who called, with their
airs and their traditions and their emphasis on family. She knew very well they all thought she was a
child of a mesalliance and wondered how a Robillard
ever married a newly come Irishman. Scarlett felt that
Aunt Eulalie apologized for her behind her back. This
aroused her temper, for she cared no more about family than her father. She was proud of Gerald and what
he had accomplished unaided except by his shrewd
Irish brain.
And the Charlestonians took so much upon themselves about Fort Sumter! Good Heavens, didn’t they
realize that if they hadn’t been silly enough to fire the
shot that started the war some other fools would have
done it? Accustomed to the brisk voices of upland
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Georgia, the drawling flat voices of the low country seemed affected to her. She thought if she ever
again heard voices that said “paams” for “palms” and
“hoose” for “house” and “woon’t” for “won’t” and
“Maa and Paa” for “Ma and Pa,” she would scream.
It irritated her so much that during one formal call
she aped Gerald’s brogue to her aunt’s distress. Then
she went back to Tara. Better to be tormented with
memories of Ashley than Charleston accents.
Ellen, busy night and day, doubling the productiveness of Tara to aid the Confederacy, was terrified when her eldest daughter came home from
Charleston thin, white and sharp tongued. She had
known heartbreak herself, and night after night she
lay beside the snoring Gerald, trying to think of some
way to lessen Scarlett’s distress. Charles’ aunt, Miss
Pittypat Hamilton, had written her several times, urging her to permit Scarlett to come to Atlanta for a long
visit, and now for the first time Ellen considered it seriously.
She and Melanie were alone in a big house “and
without male protection,” wrote Miss Pittypat, “now
that dear Charlie has gone. Of course, there is my
brother Henry but he does not make his home with
us. But perhaps Scarlett has told you of Henry. Deli267
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cacy forbids my putting more concerning him on paper. Melly and I would feel so much easier and safer if
Scarlett were with us. Three lonely women are better
than two. And perhaps dear Scarlett could find some
ease for her sorrow, as Melly is doing, by nursing our
brave boys in the hospitals here–and, of course, Melly
and I are longing to see the dear baby. . . .”
So Scarlett’s trunk was packed again with her
mourning clothes and off she went to Atlanta with
Wade Hampton and his nurse Prissy, a headful of admonitions as to her conduct from Ellen and Mammy
and a hundred dollars in Confederate bills from Gerald. She did not especially want to go to Atlanta. She
thought Aunt Pitty the silliest of old ladies and the
very idea of living under the same roof with Ashley’s
wife was abhorrent. But the County with its memories was impossible now, and any change was welcome.
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carried Scarlett northward that May
morning in 1862, she thought that Atlanta couldn’t
possibly be so boring as Charleston and Savannah
had been and, in spite of her distaste for Miss Pittypat
and Melanie, she looked forward with some curiosity
toward seeing how the town had fared since her last
visit, in the winter before the war began.
Atlanta had always interested her more than any
other town because when she was a child Gerald had
told her that she and Atlanta were exactly the same
age. She discovered when she grew older that Gerald
had stretched the truth somewhat, as was his habit
when a little stretching would improve a story; but
Atlanta was only nine years older than she was, and
that still left the place amazingly young by comparison with any other town she had ever heard of. Savannah and Charleston had the dignity of their years,
one being well along in its second century and the
other entering its third, and in her young eyes they
had always seemed like aged grandmothers fanning
themselves placidly in the sun. But Atlanta was of
her own generation, crude with the crudities of youth
and as headstrong and impetuous as herself.
The story Gerald had told her was based on the
AS
THE TRAIN
�PART TWO
fact that she and Atlanta were christened in the same
year. In the nine years before Scarlett was born,
the town had been called, first, Terminus and then
Marthasville, and not until the year of Scarlett’s birth
had it become Atlanta.
When Gerald first moved to north Georgia, there
had been no Atlanta at all, not even the semblance of
a village, and wilderness rolled over the site. But the
next year, in 1836, the State had authorized the building of a railroad northwestward through the territory
which the Cherokees had recently ceded. The destination of the proposed railroad, Tennessee and the
West, was clear and definite, but its beginning point
in Georgia was somewhat uncertain until, a year later,
an engineer drove a stake in the red clay to mark the
southern end of the line, and Atlanta, born Terminus,
had begun.
There were no railroads then in north Georgia, and
very few anywhere else. But during the years before
Gerald married Ellen, the tiny settlement, twenty-five
miles north of Tara, slowly grew into a village and
the tracks slowly pushed northward. Then the railroad building era really began. From the old city of
Augusta, a second railroad was extended westward
across the state to connect with the new road to Ten271
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nessee. From the old city of Savannah, a third railroad
was built first to Macon, in the heart of Georgia, and
then north through Gerald’s own county to Atlanta,
to link up with the other two roads and give Savannah’s harbor a highway to the West. From the same
junction point, the young Atlanta, a fourth railroad
was constructed southwestward to Montgomery and
Mobile.
Born of a railroad, Atlanta grew as its railroads grew.
With the completion of the four lines, Atlanta was
now connected with the West, with the South, with
the Coast and, through Augusta, with the North and
East. It had become the crossroads of travel north and
south and east and west, and the little village leaped
to life.
In a space of time but little longer than Scarlett’s
seventeen years, Atlanta had grown from a single
stake driven in the ground into a thriving small city
of ten thousand that was the center of attention for
the whole state. The older, quieter cities were wont to
look upon the bustling new town with the sensations
of a hen which has hatched a duckling. Why was the
place so different from the other Georgia towns? Why
did it grow so fast? After all, they thought, it had
nothing whatever to recommend it–only its railroads
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and a bunch of mighty pushy people.
The people who settled the town called successively
Terminus, Marthasville and Atlanta, were a pushy
people. Restless, energetic people from the older sections of Georgia and from more distant states were
drawn to this town that sprawled itself around the
junction of the railroads in its center. They came with
enthusiasm. They built their stores around the five
muddy red roads that crossed near the depot. They
built their fine homes on Whitehall and Washington
streets and along the high ridge of land on which
countless generations of moccasined Indian feet had
beaten a path called the Peachtree Trail. They were
proud of the place, proud of its growth, proud of
themselves for making it grow. Let the older towns
call Atlanta anything they pleased. Atlanta did not
care.
Scarlett had always liked Atlanta for the very same
reasons that made Savannah, Augusta and Macon
condemn it. Like herself, the town was a mixture
of the old and new in Georgia, in which the old often came off second best in its conflicts with the selfwilled and vigorous new. Moreover, there was something personal, exciting about a town that was born–
or at least christened–the same year she was chris273
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tened.
The night before had been wild and wet with rain,
but when Scarlett arrived in Atlanta a warm sun was
at work, bravely attempting to dry the streets that
were winding rivers of red mud. In the open space
around the depot, the soft ground had been cut and
churned by the constant flow of traffic in and out until
it resembled an enormous hog wallow, and here and
there vehicles were mired to the hubs in the ruts. A
never-ceasing line of army wagons and ambulances,
loading and unloading supplies and wounded from
the trains, made the mud and confusion worse as they
toiled in and struggled out, drivers swearing, mules
plunging and mud spattering for yards.
Scarlett stood on the lower step of the train, a pale
pretty figure in her black mourning dress, her crepe
veil fluttering almost to her heels. She hesitated, unwilling to soil her slippers and hems, and looked
about in the shouting tangle of wagons, buggies and
carriages for Miss Pittypat. There was no sign of that
chubby pink-cheeked lady, but as Scarlett searched
anxiously a spare old negro, with grizzled kinks and
an air of dignified authority, came toward her through
the mud, his hat in his hand.
“Dis Miss Scarlett, ain’ it? Dis hyah Peter, Miss
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Pitty’s coachman. Doan step down in dat mud,” he
ordered severely, as Scarlett gathered up her skirts
preparatory to descending. “You is as bad as Miss
Pitty an’ she lak a chile ‘bout gittin’ her feets wet.
Lemme cahy you.”
He picked Scarlett up with ease despite his apparent frailness and age and, observing Prissy standing
on the platform of the train, the baby in her arms, he
paused: “Is dat air chile yo’ nuss? Miss Scarlett, she
too young ter be handlin’ Mist’ Charles’ onlies’ baby!
But we ten’ to dat later. You gal, foller me, an’ doan
you go drappin’ dat baby.”
Scarlett submitted meekly to being carried toward
the carriage and also to the peremptory manner in
which Uncle Peter criticized her and Prissy. As they
went through the mud with Prissy sloshing, pouting,
after them, she recalled what Charles had said about
Uncle Peter.
“He went through all the Mexican campaigns with
Father, nursed him when he was wounded–in fact, he
saved his life. Uncle Peter practically raised Melanie
and me, for we were very young when Father and
Mother died. Aunt Pitty had a falling out with her
brother, Uncle Henry, about that time, so she came
to live with us and take care of us. She is the most
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helpless soul–just like a sweet grown-up child, and
Uncle Peter treats her that way. To save her life, she
couldn’t make up her mind about anything, so Peter
makes it up for her. He was the one who decided I
should have a larger allowance when I was fifteen,
and he insisted that I should go to Harvard for my
senior year, when Uncle Henry wanted me to take my
degree at the University. And he decided when Melly
was old enough to put up her hair and go to parties.
He tells Aunt Pitty when it’s too cold or too wet for
her to go calling and when she should wear a shawl.
. . . He’s the smartest old darky I’ve ever seen and
about the most devoted. The only trouble with him is
that he owns the three of us, body and soul, and he
knows it.”
Charles’ words were confirmed as Peter climbed
onto the box and took the whip.
“Miss Pitty in a state bekase she din’ come ter meet
you. She’s feared you mout not unnerstan’ but Ah
tole her she an’ Miss Melly jes’ git splashed wid mud
an’ ruin dey new dresses an’ Ah’d ‘splain ter you.
Miss Scarlett, you better tek dat chile. Dat lil pickaninny gwine let it drap.”
Scarlett looked at Prissy and sighed. Prissy was not
the most adequate of nurses. Her recent graduation
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from a skinny pickaninny with brief skirts and stiffly
wrapped braids into the dignity of a calico dress and
starched white turban was an intoxicating affair. She
would never have arrived at this eminence so early in
life had not the exigencies of war and the demands of
the commissary department on Tara made it impossible for Ellen to spare Mammy or Dilcey or even Rosa
or Teena. Prissy had never been more than a mile
away from Twelve Oaks or Tara before, and the trip
on the train plus her elevation to nurse was almost
more than the brain in her little black skull could bear.
The twenty-mile journey from Jonesboro to Atlanta
had so excited her that Scarlett had been forced to
hold the baby all the way. Now, the sight of so many
buildings and people completed Prissy’s demoralization. She twisted from side to side, pointed, bounced
about and so jounced the baby that he wailed miserably.
Scarlett longed for the fat old arms of Mammy.
Mammy had only to lay hands on a child and it
hushed crying. But Mammy was at Tara and there
was nothing Scarlett could do. It was useless for
her to take little Wade from Prissy. He yelled just as
loudly when she held him as when Prissy did. Besides, he would tug at the ribbons of her bonnet and,
no doubt, rumple her dress. So she pretended she had
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not heard Uncle Peter’s suggestion.
“Maybe I’ll learn about babies sometime,” she
thought irritably, as the carriage jolted and swayed
out of the morass surrounding the station, “but I’m
never going to like fooling with them.” And as
Wade’s face went purple with his squalling, she
snapped crossly: “Give him that sugar-tit in your
pocket, Priss. Anything to make him hush. I know
he’s hungry, but I can’t do anything about that now.”
Prissy produced the sugar-tit, given her that morning by Mammy, and the baby’s wails subsided. With
quiet restored and with the new sights that met her
eyes, Scarlest’s spirits began to rise a little. When Uncle Peter finally maneuvered the carriage out of the
mudholes and onto Peachtree Street, she felt the first
surge of interest she had known in months. How
the town had grown! It was not much more than a
year since she had last been here, and it did not seem
possible that the little Atlanta she knew could have
changed so much.
For the past year, she had been so engrossed in her
own woes, so bored by any mention of war, she did
not know that from the minute the fighting first began, Atlanta had been transformed. The same railroads which had made the town the crossroads of
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commerce in time of peace were now of vital strategic importance in time of war. Far from the battle
lines, the town and its railroads provided the connecting link between the two armies of the Confederacy,
the army in Virginia and the army in Tennessee and
the West. And Atlanta likewise linked both of the
armies with the deeper South from which they drew
their supplies. Now, in response to the needs of war,
Atlanta had become a manufacturing center, a hospital base and one of the South’s chief depots for the
collecting of food and supplies for the armies in the
field.
Scarlett looked about her for the little town she remembered so well. It was gone. The town she was
now seeing was like a baby grown overnight into a
busy, sprawling giant.
Atlanta was humming like a beehive, proudly conscious of its importance to the Confederacy, and work
was going forward night and day toward turning an
agricultural section into an industrial one. Before the
war there had been few cotton factories, woolen mills,
arsenals and machine shops south of Maryland–a fact
of which all Southerners were proud. The South produced statesmen and soldiers, planters and doctors,
lawyers and poets, but certainly not engineers or me279
�PART TWO
chanics. Let the Yankees adopt such low callings. But
now the Confederate ports were stoppered with Yankee gunboats, only a trickle of blockade-run goods
was slipping in from Europe, and the South was desperately trying to manufacture her own war materials. The North could call on the whole world for supplies and for soldiers, and thousands of Irish and Germans were pouring into the Union Army, lured by the
bounty money offered by the North. The South could
only turn in upon itself.
In Atlanta, there were machine factories tediously
turning out machinery to manufacture war materials–
tediously, because there were few machines in the
South from which they could model and nearly every wheel and cog had to be made from drawings that
came through the blockade from England. There were
strange faces on the streets of Atlanta now, and citizens who a year ago would have pricked up their ears
at the sound of even a Western accent paid no heed
to the foreign tongues of Europeans who had run the
blockade to build machines and turn out Confederate munitions. Skilled men these, without whom the
Confederacy would have been hard put to make pistols, rifles, cannon and powder.
Almost the pulsing of the town’s heart could be felt
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as the work went forward night and day, pumping
the materials of war up the railway arteries to the two
battle fronts. Trains roared in and out of the town
at all hours. Soot from the newly erected factories
fell in showers on the white houses. By night, the
furnaces glowed and the hammers clanged long after townsfolk were abed. Where vacant lots had been
a year before, there were now factories turning out
harness, saddles and shoes, ordnance-supply plants
making rifles and cannon, rolling mills and foundries
producing iron rails and freight cars to replace those
destroyed by the Yankees, and a variety of industries manufacturing spurs, bridle bits, buckles, tents,
buttons, pistols and swords. Already the foundries
were beginning to feel the lack of iron, for little or
none came through the blockade, and the mines in
Alabama were standing almost idle while the miners
were at the front. There were no iron picket fences,
iron summerhouses, iron gates or even iron statuary
on the lawns of Atlanta now, for they had early found
their way into the melting pots of the rolling mills.
Here along Peachtree Street and near-by streets were
the headquarters of the various army departments,
each office swarming with uniformed men, the commissary, the signal corps, the mail service, the railway transport, the provost marshal. On the outskirts
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of town were the remount depots where horses and
mules milled about in large corrals, and along side
streets were the hospitals. As Uncle Peter told her
about them, Scarlett felt that Atlanta must be a city of
the wounded, for there were general hospitals, contagious hospitals, convalescent hospitals without number. And every day the trains just below Five Points
disgorged more sick and more wounded.
The little town was gone and the face of the rapidly
growing city was animated with never-ceasing energy and bustle. The sight of so much hurrying made
Scarlett, fresh from rural leisure and quiet, almost
breathless, but she liked it. There was an exciting atmosphere about the place that uplifted her. It was as
if she could actually feel the accelerated steady pulse
of the town’s heart beating in time with her own.
As they slowly made their way through the mudholes of the town’s chief street, she noted with interest all the new buildings and the new faces. The sidewalks were crowded with men in uniform, bearing
the insignia of all ranks and all service branches; the
narrow street was jammed with vehicles–carriages,
buggies, ambulances, covered army wagons with
profane drivers swearing as the mules struggled
through the ruts; gray-clad couriers dashed spatter282
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ing through the streets from one headquarters to another, bearing orders and telegraphic dispatches; convalescents limped about on crutches, usually with a
solicitous lady at either elbow; bugle and drum and
barked orders sounded from the drill fields where the
recruits were being turned into soldiers; and with her
heart in her throat, Scarlett had her first sight of Yankee uniforms, as Uncle Peter pointed with his whip
to a detachment of dejected-looking bluecoats being
shepherded toward the depot by a squad of Confederates with fixed bayonets, to entrain for the prison
camp.
“Oh,” thought Scarlett, with the first feeling of real
pleasure she had experienced since the day of the barbecue, “I’m going to like it here! It’s so alive and exciting!”
The town was even more alive than she realized, for
there were new barrooms by the dozens; prostitutes,
following the army, swarmed the town and bawdy
houses were blossoming with women to the consternation of the church people. Every hotel, boarding
house and private residence was crammed with visitors who had come to be near wounded relatives in
the big Atlanta hospitals. There were parties and balls
and bazaars every week and war weddings without
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number, with the grooms on furlough in bright gray
and gold braid and the brides in blockade-run finery, aisles of crossed swords, toasts drunk in blockaded champagne and tearful farewells. Nightly the
dark tree-lined streets resounded with dancing feet,
and from parlors tinkled pianos where soprano voices
blended with those of soldier guests in the pleasing
melancholy of “The Bugles Sang Truce” and “Your
Letter Came, but Came Too Late”–plaintive ballads
that brought exciting tears to soft eyes which had
never known the tears of real grief.
As they progressed down the street, through the
sucking mud, Scarlett bubbled over with questions
and Peter answered them, pointing here and there
with his whip, proud to display his knowledge.
“Dat air de arsenal. Yas’m, dey keeps guns an’ sech
lak dar. No’m, dem air ain’ sto’s, dey’s blockade
awfisses. Law, Miss Scarlett, doan you know whut
blockade awfisses is? Dey’s awfisses whar furriners
stays dat buy us Confedruts’ cotton an’ ship it outer
Cha’ston and Wilmin’ton an’ ship us back gunpowder. No’m, Ah ain’ sho whut kine of furriners dey is.
Miss Pitty, she say dey is Inlish but kain nobody unnerstan a’ wud dey says. Yas’m ‘tis pow’ful smoky an’
de soot jes’ ruinin’ Miss Pitty’s silk cuttins. It’ frum de
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foun’ry an’ de rollin’ mills. An’ de noise dey meks at
night! Kain nobody sleep. No’m, Ah kain stop fer
you ter look around. Ah done promise Miss Pitty Ah
bring you straight home. . . . Miss Scarlett, mek
yo’ cu’tsy. Dar’s Miss Merriwether an’ Miss Elsing
a-bowin’ to you.”
Scarlett vaguely remembered two ladies of those
names who came from Atlanta to Tara to attend her
wedding and she remembered that they were Miss
Pittypat’s best friends. So she turned quickly where
Uncle Peter pointed and bowed. The two were sitting
in a carriage outside a drygoods store. The proprietor
and two clerks stood on the sidewalk with armfuls of
bolts of cotton cloth they had been displaying. Mrs.
Merriwether was a tall, stout woman and so tightly
corseted that her bust jutted forward like the prow of
a ship. Her iron-gray hair was eked out by a curled
false fringe that was proudly brown and disdained to
match the rest of her hair. She had a round, highly
colored face in which was combined good-natured
shrewdness and the habit of command. Mrs. Elsing was younger, a thin frail woman, who had been
a beauty, and about her there still clung a faded freshness, a dainty imperious air.
These two ladies with a third, Mrs. Whiting, were
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the pillars of Atlanta. They ran the three churches to
which they belonged, the clergy, the choirs and the
parishioners. They organized bazaars and presided
over sewing circles, they chaperoned balls and picnics, they knew who made good matches and who
did not, who drank secretly, who were to have babies and when. They were authorities on the genealogies of everyone who was anyone in Georgia,
South Carolina and Virginia and did not bother their
heads about the other states, because they believed
that no one who was anybody ever came from states
other than these three. They knew what was decorous behavior and what was not and they never failed
to make their opinions known–Mrs. Merriwether at
the top of her voice, Mrs. Elsing in an elegant dieaway drawl and Mrs. Whiting in a distressed whisper
which showed how much she hated to speak of such
things. These three ladies disliked and distrusted one
another as heartily as the First Triumvirate of Rome,
and their close alliance was probably for the same reason.
“I told Pitty I had to have you in my hospital,” called
Mrs. Merriweather, smiling. “Don’t you go promising Mrs. Meade or Mrs. Whiting!”
“I won’t,” said Scarlett, having no idea what Mrs.
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Merriwether was talking about but feeling a glow of
warmth at being welcomed and wanted. “I hope to
see you again soon.”
The carriage plowed its way farther and halted
for a moment to permit two ladies with baskets of
bandages on their arms to pick precarious passages
across the sloppy street on stepping stones. At the
same moment, Scarlett’s eye was caught by a figure on the sidewalk in a brightly colored dress–too
bright for street wear– covered by a Paisley shawl
with fringes to the heels. Turning she saw a tall handsome woman with a bold face and a mass of red hair,
too red to be true. It was the first time she had ever
seen any woman who she knew for certain had “done
something to her hair” and she watched her, fascinated.
“Uncle Peter, who is that?” she whispered.
“Ah doan know.”
“You do, too. I can tell. Who is she?”
“Her name Belle Watling,” said Uncle Peter, his
lower lip beginning to protrude.
Scarlett was quick to catch the fact that he had not
preceded the name with “Miss” or “Mrs.”
“Who is she?”
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“Miss Scarlett,” said Peter darkly, laying the whip
on the startled horse, “Miss Pitty ain’ gwine ter lak
it you astin’ questions dat ain’ none of yo’ bizness.
Dey’s a passel of no- count folks in dis town now dat
it ain’ no use talkin’ about.”
“Good Heavens!” thought Scarlett, reproved into silence. “That must be a bad woman!”
She had never seen a bad woman before and she
twisted her head and stared after her until she was
lost in the crowd.
The stores and the new war buildings were farther
apart now, with vacant lots between. Finally the business section fell behind and the residences came into
view. Scarlett picked them out as old friends, the
Leyden house, dignified and stately; the Bonnells’,
with little white columns and green blinds; the closelipped red- brick Georgian home of the McLure family, behind its low box hedges. Their progress was
slower now, for from porches and gardens and sidewalks ladies called to her. Some she knew slightly,
others she vaguely remembered, but most of them she
knew not at all. Pittypat had certainly broadcast her
arrival. Little Wade had to be held up time and again,
so that ladies who ventured as far through the ooze
as their carriage blocks could exclaim over him. They
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all cried to her that she must join their knitting and
sewing circles and their hospital committees, and no
one else’s, and she promised recklessly to right and
left.
As they passed a rambling green clapboard house, a
little black girl posted on the front steps cried, “Hyah
she come,” and Dr. Meade and his wife and little thirteen-year-old Phil emerged, calling greetings.
Scarlett recalled that they too had been at her wedding. Mrs. Meade mounted her carriage block and
craned her neck for a view of the baby, but the doctor, disregarding the mud, plowed through to the side
of the carriage. He was tall and gaunt and wore a
pointed beard of iron gray, and his clothes hung on
his spare figure as though blown there by a hurricane. Atlanta considered him the root of all strength
and all wisdom and it was not strange that he had
absorbed something of their belief. But for all his
habit of making oracular statements and his slightly
pompous manner, he was as kindly a man as the town
possessed.
After shaking her hand and prodding Wade in
the stomach and complimenting him, the doctor announced that Aunt Pittypat had promised on oath
that Scarlett should be on no other hospital and
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bandage-rolling committee save Mrs. Meade’s.
“Oh, dear, but I’ve promised a thousand ladies already!” said Scarlett.
“Mrs. Merriwether, I’ll be bound!” cried Mrs.
Meade indignantly. “Drat the woman! I believe she
meets every train!”
“I promised because I hadn’t a notion what it was all
about,” Scarlett confessed. “What are hospital committees anyway?”
Both the doctor and his wife looked slightly shocked
at her ignorance.
“But, of course, you’ve been buried in the country
and couldn’t know,” Mrs. Meade apologized for her.
“We have nursing committees for different hospitals
and for different days. We nurse the men and help the
doctors and make bandages and clothes and when the
men are well enough to leave the hospitals we take
them into our homes to convalesce till they are able to
go back in the army. And we look after the wives and
families of some of the wounded who are destitute–
yes, worse than destitute. Dr. Meade is at the Institute
hospital where my committee works, and everyone
says he’s marvelous and–”
“There, there, Mrs. Meade,” said the doctor fondly.
“Don’t go bragging on me in front of folks. It’s little
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enough I can do, since you wouldn’t let me go in the
army.”
“‘Wouldn’t let!”’ she cried indignantly. “Me? The
town wouldn’t let you and you know it. Why, Scarlett, when folks heard he was intending to go to Virginia as an army surgeon, all the ladies signed a petition begging him to stay here. Of course, the town
couldn’t do without you.”
“There, there, Mrs. Meade,” said the doctor, basking
obviously in the praise. “Perhaps with one boy at the
front, that’s enough for the time being.”
“And I’m going next year!” cried little Phil hopping
about excitedly. “As a drummer boy. I’m learning
how to drum now. Do you want to hear me? I’ll run
get my drum.”
“No, not now,” said Mrs. Meade, drawing him
closer to her, a sudden look of strain coming over her
face. “Not next year, darling. Maybe the year after.”
“But the war will be over then!” he cried petulantly,
pulling away from her. “And you promised!”
Over his head the eyes of the parents met and Scarlett saw the look. Darcy Meade was in Virginia and
they were clinging closer to the little boy that was left.
Uncle Peter cleared his throat.
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“Miss Pitty were in a state when Ah lef’ home an’ ef
Ah doan git dar soon, she’ll done swooned.”
“Good-by. I’ll be over this afternoon,” called Mrs.
Meade. “And you tell Pitty for me that if you aren’t
on my committee, she’s going to be in a worse state.”
The carriage slipped and slid down the muddy road
and Scarlett leaned back on the cushions and smiled.
She felt better now than she had felt in months. Atlanta, with its crowds and its hurry and its undercurrent of driving excitement, was very pleasant, very
exhilarating, so very much nicer than the lonely plantation out from Charleston, where the bellow of alligators broke the night stillness; better than Charleston
itself, dreaming in its gardens behind its high walls;
better than Savannah with its wide streets lined with
palmetto and the muddy river beside it. Yes, and temporarily even better than Tara, dear though Tara was.
There was something exciting about this town with
its narrow muddy streets, lying among rolling red
hills, something raw and crude that appealed to the
rawness and crudeness underlying the fine veneer
that Ellen and Mammy had given her. She suddenly
felt that this was where she belonged, not in serene
and quiet old cities, flat beside yellow waters.
The houses were farther and farther apart now, and
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leaning out Scarlett saw the red brick and slate roof of
Miss Pittypat’s house. It was almost the last house on
the north side of town. Beyond it, Peachtree road narrowed and twisted under great trees out of sight into
thick quiet woods. The neat wooden-paneled fence
had been newly painted white and the front yard it
inclosed was yellow starred with the last jonquils of
the season. On the front steps stood two women in
black and behind them a large yellow woman with
her hands under her apron and her white teeth showing in a wide smile. Plump Miss Pittypat was teetering excitedly on tiny feet, one hand pressed to her
copious bosom to still her fluttering heart. Scarlett
saw Melanie standing by her and, with a surge of dislike, she realized that the fly in the ointment of Atlanta would be this slight little person in black mourning dress, her riotous dark curls subdued to matronly
smoothness and a loving smile of welcome and happiness on her heart-shaped face.
When a Southerner took the trouble to pack a trunk
and travel twenty miles for a visit, the visit was seldom of shorter duration than a month, usually much
longer. Southerners were as enthusiastic visitors as
they were hosts, and there was nothing unusual in
relatives coming to spend the Christmas holidays and
remaining until July. Often when newly married cou293
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ples went on the usual round of honeymoon visits,
they lingered in some pleasant home until the birth of
their second child. Frequently elderly aunts and uncles came to Sunday dinner and remained until they
were buried years later. Visitors presented no problem, for houses were large, servants numerous and
the feeding of several extra mouths a minor matter in
that land of plenty. All ages and sexes went visiting,
honeymooners, young mothers showing off new babies, convalescents, the bereaved, girls whose parents
were anxious to remove them from the dangers of unwise matches, girls who had reached the danger age
without becoming engaged and who, it was hoped,
would make suitable matches under the guidance of
relatives in other places. Visitors added excitement
and variety to the slow-moving Southern life and they
were always welcome.
So Scarlett had come to Atlanta with no idea as to
how long she would remain. If her visit proved as
dull as those in Savannah and Charleston, she would
return home in a month. If her stay was pleasant,
she would remain indefinitely. But no sooner had she
arrived than Aunt Pitty and Melanie began a campaign to induce her to make her home permanently
with them. They brought up every possible argument. They wanted her for her own self because they
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loved her. They were lonely and often frightened at
night in the big house, and she was so brave she gave
them courage. She was so charming that she cheered
them in their sorrow. Now that Charles was dead, her
place and her son’s place were with his kindred. Besides, half the house now belonged to her, through
Charles’ will. Last, the Confederacy needed every
pair of hands for sewing, knitting, bandage rolling
and nursing the wounded.
Charles’ Uncle Henry Hamilton, who lived in bachelor state at the Atlanta Hotel near the depot, also
talked seriously to her on this subject. Uncle Henry
was a short, pot-bellied, irascible old gentleman with
a pink face, a shock of long silver hair and an utter lack of patience with feminine timidities and vaporings. It was for the latter reason that he was
barely on speaking terms with his sister, Miss Pittypat. From childhood, they had been exact opposites in temperament and they had been further estranged by his objections to the manner in which she
had reared Charles– “Making a damn sissy out of a
soldier’s son!” Years before, he had so insulted her
that now Miss Pitty never spoke of him except in
guarded whispers and with so great reticence that a
stranger would have thought the honest old lawyer
a murderer, at the least. The insult had occurred on
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a day when Pitty wished to draw five hundred dollars from her estate, of which he was trustee, to invest
in a non-existent gold mine. He had refused to permit it and stated heatedly that she had no more sense
than a June bug and furthermore it gave him the fidgets to be around her longer than five minutes. Since
that day, she only saw him formally, once a month,
when Uncle Peter drove her to his office to get the
housekeeping money. After these brief visits, Pitty always took to her bed for the rest of the day with tears
and smelling salts. Melanie and Charles, who were
on excellent terms with their uncle, had frequently offered to relieve her of this ordeal, but Pitty always set
her babyish mouth firmly and refused. Henry was
her cross and she must bear him. From this, Charles
and Melanie could only infer that she took a profound
pleasure in this occasional excitement, the only excitement in her sheltered life.
Uncle Henry liked Scarlett immediately because, he
said, he could see that for all her silly affectations she
had a few grains of sense. He was trustee, not only of
Pitty’s and Melanie’s estates, but also of that left Scarlett by Charles. It came to Scarlett as a pleasant surprise that she was now a well-to-do young woman,
for Charles had not only left her half of Aunt Pitty’s
house but farm lands and town property as well. And
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the stores and warehouses along the railroad track
near the depot, which were part of her inheritance,
had tripled in value since the war began. It was when
Uncle Henry was giving her an account of her property that he broached the matter of her permanent residence in Atlanta.
“When Wade Hampton comes of age, he’s going to
be a rich young man,” he said. “The way Atlanta is
growing his property will be ten times more valuable
in twenty years, and it’s only right that the boy should
be raised where his property is, so he can learn to
take care of it–yes, and of Pitty’s and Melanie’s, too.
He’ll be the only man of the Hamilton name left before long, for I won’t be here forever.”
As for Uncle Peter, he took it for granted that Scarlett had come to stay. It was inconceivable to him that
Charles’ only son should be reared where he could
not supervise the rearing. To all these arguments,
Scarlett smiled but said nothing, unwilling to commit herself before learning how she would like Atlanta and constant association with her in-laws. She
knew, too, that Gerald and Ellen would have to be
won over. Moreover, now that she was away from
Tara, she missed it dreadfully, missed the red fields
and the springing green cotton and the sweet twilight
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silences. For the first time, she realized dimly what
Gerald had meant when he said that the love of the
land was in her blood.
So she gracefully evaded, for the time being, a definite answer as to the duration of her visit and slipped
easily into the life of the red-brick house at the quiet
end of Peachtree Street.
Living with Charles’ blood kin, seeing the home
from which he came. Scarlett could now understand
a little better the boy who had made her wife, widow
and mother in such rapid succession. It was easy to
see why he had been so shy, so unsophisticated, so
idealistic. If Charles had inherited any of the qualities
of the stern, fearless, hot-tempered soldier who had
been his father, they had been obliterated in childhood by the ladylike atmosphere in which he had
been reared. He had been devoted to the childlike
Pitty and closer than brothers usually are to Melanie,
and two more sweet, unworldly women could not be
found.
Aunt Pittypat had been christened Sarah Jane
Hamilton sixty years before, but since the long-past
day when her doting father had fastened his nickname upon her, because of her airy, restless, pattering little feet, no one had called her anything else.
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In the years that followed that second christening,
many changes had taken place in her that made the
pet name incongruous. Of the swiftly scampering
child, all that now remained were two tiny feet, inadequate to her weight, and a tendency to prattle happily and aimlessly. She was stout, pink-cheeked and
silver-haired and always a little breathless from too
tightly laced stays. She was unable to walk more than
a block on the tiny feet which she crammed into too
small slippers. She had a heart which fluttered at any
excitement and she pampered it shamelessly, fainting
at any provocation. Everyone knew that her swoons
were generally mere ladylike pretenses but they loved
her enough to refrain from saying so. Everyone loved
her, spoiled her like a child and refused to take her
seriously–everyone except her brother Henry.
She liked gossip better than anything else in the
world, even more than she liked the pleasures of the
table, and she prattled on for hours about other people’s affairs in a harmless kindly way. She had no
memory for names, dates or places and frequently
confused the actors in one Atlanta drama with the actors in another, which misled no one for no one was
foolish enough to take seriously anything she said.
No one ever told her anything really shocking or scandalous, for her spinster state must be protected even
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if she was sixty years old, and her friends were in a
kindly conspiracy to keep her a sheltered and petted
old child.
Melanie was like her aunt in many ways. She had
her shyness, her sudden blushes, her modesty, but
she did have common sense–“Of a sort, I’ll admit
that,” Scarlett thought grudgingly. Like Aunt Pitty,
Melanie had the face of a sheltered child who had
never known anything but simplicity and kindness,
truth and love, a child who had never looked upon
harshness or evil and would not recognize them if
she saw them. Because she had always been happy,
she wanted everyone about her to be happy or, at
least, pleased with themselves. To this end, she always saw the best in everyone and remarked kindly
upon it. There was no servant so stupid that she did
not find some redeeming trait of loyalty and kindheartedness, no girl so ugly and disagreeable that she
could not discover grace of form or nobility of character in her, and no man so worthless or so boring that
she did not view him in the light of his possibilities
rather than his actualities.
Because of these qualities that came sincerely and
spontaneously from a generous heart, everyone
flocked about her, for who can resist the charm of
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one who discovers in others admirable qualities undreamed of even by himself? She had more girl
friends than anyone in town and more men friends
too, though she had few beaux for she lacked the willfulness and selfishness that go far toward trapping
men’s hearts.
What Melanie did was no more than all Southern
girls were taught to do–to make those about them
feel at ease and pleased with themselves. It was this
happy feminine conspiracy which made Southern society so pleasant. Women knew that a land where
men were contented, uncontradicted and safe in possession of unpunctured vanity was likely to be a very
pleasant place for women to live. So, from the cradle to the grave, women strove to make men pleased
with themselves, and the satisfied men repaid lavishly with gallantry and adoration. In fact, men willingly gave the ladies everything in the world except
credit for having intelligence. Scarlett exercised the
same charms as Melanie but with a studied artistry
and consummate skill. The difference between the
two girls lay in the fact that Melanie spoke kind and
flattering words from a desire to make people happy,
if only temporarily, and Scarlett never did it except to
further her own aims.
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From the two he loved best, Charles had received
no toughening influences, learned nothing of harshness or reality, and the home in which he grew to
manhood was as soft as a bird’s nest. It was such
a quiet, old-fashioned, gentle home compared with
Tara. To Scarlett, this house cried out for the masculine smells of brandy, tobacco and Macassar oil,
for hoarse voices and occasional curses, for guns, for
whiskers, for saddles and bridles and for hounds underfoot. She missed the sounds of quarreling voices
that were always heard at Tara when Ellen’s back
was turned, Mammy quarreling with Pork, Rosa and
Teena bickering, her own acrimonious arguments
with Suellen, Gerald’s bawling threats. No wonder
Charles had been a sissy, coming from a home like
this. Here, excitement never entered in, voices were
never raised, everyone deferred gently to the opinions of others, and, in the end, the black grizzled autocrat in the kitchen had his way. Scarlett, who had
hoped for a freer rein when she escaped Mammy’s supervision, discovered to her sorrow that Uncle Peter’s
standards of ladylike conduct, especially for Mist’
Charles’ widow, were even stricter than Mammy’s.
In such a household, Scarlett came back to herself,
and almost before she realized it her spirits rose to
normal. She was only seventeen, she had superb
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health and energy, and Charles’ people did their best
to make her happy. If they fell a little short of this,
it was not their fault, for no one could take out of
her heart the ache that throbbed whenever Ashley’s
name was mentioned. And Melanie mentioned it so
often! But Melanie and Pitty were tireless in planning
ways to soothe the sorrow under which they thought
she labored. They put their own grief into the background in order to divert her. They fussed about her
food and her hours for taking afternoon naps and for
taking carriage rides. They not only admired her extravagantly, her high-spiritedness, her figure, her tiny
hands and feet, her white skin, but they said so frequently, petting, hugging and kissing her to emphasize their loving words.
Scarlett did not care for the caresses, but she basked
in the compliments. No one at Tara had ever said so
many charming things about her. In fact, Mammy
had spent her time deflating her conceit. Little Wade
was no longer an annoyance, for the family, black
and white, and the neighbors idolized him and there
was a never-ceasing rivalry as to whose lap he should
occupy. Melanie especially doted on him. Even
in his worst screaming spells, Melanie thought him
adorable and said so, adding, “Oh, you precious darling! I just wish you were mine!”
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Sometimes Scarlett found it hard to dissemble her
feelings, for she still thought Aunt Pitty the silliest of
old ladies and her vagueness and vaporings irritated
her unendurably. She disliked Melanie with a jealous
dislike that grew as the days went by, and sometimes
she had to leave the room abruptly when Melanie,
beaming with loving pride, spoke of Ashley or read
his letters aloud. But, all in all, life went on as happily
as was possible under the circumstances. Atlanta was
more interesting than Savannah or Charleston or Tara
and it offered so many strange war-time occupations
she had little time to think or mope. But, sometimes,
when she blew out the candle and burrowed her head
into the pillow, she sighed and thought: “If only Ashley wasn’t married! If only I didn’t have to nurse in
that plagued hospital! Oh, if only I could have some
beaux!”
She had immediately loathed nursing but she could
not escape this duty because she was on both Mrs.
Meade’s and Mrs. Merriwether’s committees. That
meant four mornings a week in the sweltering, stinking hospital with her hair tied up in a towel and a hot
apron covering her from neck to feet. Every matron,
old or young, in Atlanta nursed and did it with an
enthusiasm that seemed to Scarlett little short of fanatic. They took it for granted that she was imbued
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with their own patriotic fervor and would have been
shocked to know how slight an interest in the war she
had. Except for the ever-present torment that Ashley
might be killed, the war interested her not at all, and
nursing was something she did simply because she
didn’t know how to get out of it.
Certainly there was nothing romantic about nursing. To her, it meant groans, delirium, death and
smells. The hospitals were filled with dirty, bewhiskered, verminous men who smelled terribly and
bore on their bodies wounds hideous enough to turn
a Christian’s stomach. The hospitals stank of gangrene, the odor assaulting her nostrils long before
the doors were reached, a sickish sweet smell that
clung to her hands and hair and haunted her in her
dreams. Flies, mosquitoes and gnats hovered in droning, singing swarms over the wards, tormenting the
men to curses and weak sobs; and Scarlett, scratching
her own mosquito bites, swung palmetto fans until
her shoulders ached and she wished that all the men
were dead.
Melanie, however, did not seem to mind the smells,
the wounds or the nakedness, which Scarlett thought
strange in one who was the most timorous and modest of women. Sometimes when holding basins and
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instruments while Dr. Meade cut out gangrened flesh,
Melanie looked very white. And once, alter such an
operation, Scarlett found her in the linen closet vomiting quietly into a towel. But as long as she was
where the wounded could see her, she was gentle,
sympathetic and cheerful, and the men in the hospitals called her an angel of mercy. Scarlett would
have liked that title too, but it involved touching
men crawling with lice, running fingers down throats
of unconscious patients to see if they were choking
on swallowed tobacco quids, bandaging stumps and
picking maggots out of festering flesh. No, she did
not like nursing!
Perhaps it might have been endurable if she had
been permitted to use her charms on the convalescent
men, for many of them were attractive and well born,
but this she could not do in her widowed state. The
young ladies of the town, who were not permitted to
nurse for fear they would see sights unfit for virgin
eyes, had the convalescent wards in their charge. Unhampered by matrimony or widowhood, they made
vast inroads on the convalescents, and even the least
attractive girls, Scarlett observed gloomily, had no
difficulty in getting engaged.
With the exception of desperately ill and severely
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wounded men, Scarlett’s was a completely feminized
world and this irked her, for she neither liked nor
trusted her own sex and, worse still, was always
bored by it. But on three afternoons a week she had
to attend sewing circles and bandage-rolling committees of Melanie’s friends. The girls who had all
known Charles were very kind and attentive to her
at these gatherings, especially Fanny Elsing and Maybelle Merriwether, the daughters of the town dowagers. But they treated her deferentially, as if she were
old and finished, and their constant chatter of dances
and beaux made her both envious of their pleasures
and resentful that her widowhood barred her from
such activities. Why, she was three times as attractive as Fanny and Maybelle! Oh, how unfair life was!
How unfair that everyone should think her heart was
in the grave when it wasn’t at all! It was in Virginia
with Ashley!
But in spite of these discomforts, Atlanta pleased
her very well. And her visit lengthened as the weeks
slipped by.
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the window of her bedroom that
midsummer morning and disconsolately watched the
wagons and carriages full of girls, soldiers and chaperons ride gaily out Peachtree road in search of woodland decorations for the bazaar which was to be held
that evening for the benefit of the hospitals. The red
road lay checkered in shade and sun glare beneath
the over-arching trees and the many hooves kicked
up little red clouds of dust. One wagon, ahead of the
others, bore four stout negroes with axes to cut evergreens and drag down the vines, and the back of
this wagon was piled high with napkin-covered hampers, split-oak baskets of lunch and a dozen watermelons. Two of the black bucks were equipped with
banjo and harmonica and they were rendering a spirited version of “If You Want to Have a Good Time,
Jine the Cavalry.” Behind them streamed the merry
cavalcade, girls cool in flowered cotton dresses, with
light shawls, bonnets and mitts to protect their skins
and little parasols held over their heads; elderly ladies
placid and smiling amid the laughter and carriage- tocarriage calls and jokes; convalescents from the hospitals wedged in between stout chaperons and slender
girls who made great fuss and to-do over them; ofS CARLETT
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ficers on horseback idling at snail’s pace beside the
carriages–wheels creaking, spurs jingling, gold braid
gleaming, parasols bobbing, fans swishing, negroes
singing. Everybody was riding out Peachtree road to
gather greenery and have a picnic and melon cutting.
Everybody, thought Scarlett, morosely, except me.
They all waved and called to her as they went by
and she tried to respond with a good grace, but it was
difficult. A hard little pain had started in her heart
and was traveling slowly up toward her throat where
it would become a lump and the lump would soon become tears. Everybody was going to the picnic except
her. And everybody was going to the bazaar and the
ball tonight except her. That is everybody except her
and Pittypat and Melly and the other unfortunates in
town who were in mourning. But Melly and Pittypat
did not seem to mind. It had not even occurred to
them to want to go. It had occurred to Scarlett. And
she did want to go, tremendously.
It simply wasn’t fair. She had worked twice as
hard as any girl in town, getting things ready for the
bazaar. She had knitted socks and baby caps and
afghans and mufflers and tatted yards of lace and
painted china hair receivers and mustache cups. And
she had embroidered half a dozen sofa-pillow cases
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with the Confederate flag on them. (The stars were
a bit lopsided, to be sure, some of them being almost
round and others having six or even seven points, but
the effect was good.) Yesterday she had worked until she was worn out in the dusty old barn of an Armory draping yellow and pink and green cheesecloth
on the booths that lined the walls. Under the supervision of the Ladies’ Hospital Committee, this was
plain hard work and no fun at all. It was never fun
to be around Mrs. Merriwether and Mrs. Elsing and
Mrs. Whiting and have them boss you like you were
one of the darkies. And have to listen to them brag
about how popular their daughters were. And, worst
of all, she had burned two blisters on her fingers helping Pittypat and Cookie make layer cakes for raffling.
And now, having worked like a field hand, she had
to retire decorously when the fun was just beginning.
Oh, it wasn’t fair that she should have a dead husband and a baby yelling in the next room and be out
of everything that was pleasant. Just a little over a
year ago, she was dancing and wearing bright clothes
instead of this dark mourning and was practically engaged to three boys. She was only seventeen now and
there was still a lot of dancing left in her feet. Oh,
it wasn’t fair! Life was going past her, down a hot
shady summer road, life with gray uniforms and jin310
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gling spurs and flowered organdie dresses and banjos
playing. She tried not to smile and wave too enthusiastically to the men she knew best, the ones she’d
nursed in the hospital, but it was hard to subdue her
dimples, hard to look as though her heart were in the
grave–when it wasn’t.
Her bowing and waving were abruptly halted when
Pittypat entered the room, panting as usual from
climbing the stairs, and jerked her away from the window unceremoniously.
“Have you lost your mind, honey, waving at men
out of your bedroom window? I declare, Scarlett, I’m
shocked! What would your mother say?”
“Well, they didn’t know it was my bedroom.”
“But they’d suspect it was your bedroom and that’s
just as bad. Honey, you mustn’t do things like that.
Everybody will be talking about you and saying you
are fast–and anyway, Mrs. Merriwether knew it was
your bedroom.”
“And I suppose she’ll tell all the boys, the old cat.”
“Honey, hush! Dolly Merriwether’s my best friend.”
“Well, she’s a cat just the same–oh, I’m sorry, Auntie, don’t cry! I forgot it was my bedroom window. I
won’t do it again–I– I just wanted to see them go by. I
wish I was going.”
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“Honey!”
“Well, I do. I’m so tired of sitting at home.”
“Scarlett, promise me you won’t say things like that.
People would talk so. They’d say you didn’t have the
proper respect for poor Charlie–”
“Oh, Auntie, don’t cry!”
“Oh, now I’ve made you cry, too,” sobbed Pittypat,
in a pleased way, fumbling in her skirt pocket for her
handkerchief.
The hard little pain had at last reached Scarlett’s
throat and she wailed out loud–not, as Pittypat
thought, for poor Charlie but because the last sounds
of the wheels and the laughter were dying away.
Melanie rustled in from her room, a worried frown
puckering her forehead, a brush in her hands, her
usually tidy black hair, freed of its net, fluffing about
her face in a mass of tiny curls and waves.
“Darlings! What is the matter?”
“Charlie!” sobbed Pittypat, surrendering utterly to
the pleasure of her grief and burying her head on
Melly’s shoulder.
“Oh,” said Melly, her lip quivering at the mention of
her brother’s name. “Be brave, dear. Don’t cry. Oh,
Scarlett!”
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Scarlett had thrown herself on the bed and was sobbing at the top of her voice, sobbing for her lost youth
and the pleasures of youth that were denied her, sobbing with the indignation and despair of a child who
once could get anything she wanted by sobbing and
now knows that sobbing can no longer help her. She
burrowed her head in the pillow and cried and kicked
her feet at the tufted counterpane.
“I might as well be dead!” she sobbed passionately.
Before such an exhibition of grief, Pittypat’s easy tears
ceased and Melly flew to the bedside to comfort her
sister-in-law.
“Dear, don’t cry! Try to think how much Charlie
loved you and let that comfort you! Try to think of
your darling baby.”
Indignation at being misunderstood mingled with
Scarlett’s forlorn feeling of being out of everything
and strangled all utterance. That was fortunate, for
if she could have spoken she would have cried out
truths couched in Gerald’s forthright words. Melanie
patted her shoulder and Pittypat tiptoed heavily
about the room pulling down the shades.
“Don’t do that!” shouted Scarlett, raising a red and
swollen face from the pillow. “I’m not dead enough
for you to pull down the shades–though I might as
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well be. Oh, do go away and leave me alone!”
She sank her face into the pillow again and, after a
whispered conference, the two standing over her tiptoed out. She heard Melanie say to Pittypat in a low
voice as they went down the stairs:
“Aunt Pitty, I wish you wouldn’t speak of Charles to
her. You know how it always affects her. Poor thing,
she gets that queer look and I know she’s trying not
to cry. We mustn’t make it harder for her.”
Scarlett kicked the coverlet in impotent rage, trying
to think of something bad enough to say.
“God’s nightgown!” she cried at last, and felt somewhat relieved. How could Melanie be content to stay
at home and never have any fun and wear crepe for
her brother when she was only eighteen years old?
Melanie did not seem to know, or care, that life was
riding by with jingling spurs.
“But she’s such a stick,” thought Scarlett, pounding
the pillow. “And she never was popular like me, so
she doesn’t miss the things I miss. And–and besides
she’s got Ashley and I–I haven’t got anybody!” And
at this fresh woe, she broke into renewed outcries.
She remained gloomily in her room until afternoon
and then the sight of the returning picnickers with
wagons piled high with pine boughs, vines and ferns
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did not cheer her. Everyone looked happily tired as
they waved to her again and she returned their greetings drearily. Life was a hopeless affair and certainly
not worth living.
Deliverance came in the form she least expected
when, during the after-dinner-nap period, Mrs. Merriwether and Mrs. Elsing drove up. Startled at
having callers at such an hour, Melanie, Scarlett
and Aunt Pittypat roused themselves, hastily hooked
their basques, smoothed their hair and descended to
the parlor.
“Mrs. Bonnell’s children have the measles,” said
Mrs. Merriwether abruptly, showing plainly that she
held Mrs. Bonnell personally responsible for permitting such a thing to happen.
“And the McLure girls have been called to Virginia,”
said Mrs. Elsing in her die-away voice, fanning herself languidly as if neither this nor anything else mattered very much. “Dallas McLure is wounded.”
“How dreadful!” chorused their hostesses. “Is poor
Dallas–”
“No. Just through the shoulder,” said Mrs. Merriwether briskly. “But it couldn’t possibly have happened at a worse time. The girls are going North to
bring him home. But, skies above, we haven’t time to
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sit here talking. We must hurry back to the Armory
and get the decorating done. Pitty, we need you and
Melly tonight to take Mrs. Bonnell’s and the McLure
girls’ places.”
“Oh, but, Dolly, we can’t go.”
“Don’t say ‘can’t’ to me, Pittypat Hamilton,” said
Mrs. Merriwether vigorously. “We need you to watch
the darkies with the refreshments. That was what
Mrs. Bonnell was to do. And Melly, you must take
the McLure girls’ booth.”
“Oh, we just couldn’t–with poor Charlie dead only
a–”
“I know how you feel but there isn’t any sacrifice
too great for the Cause,” broke in Mrs. Elsing in a soft
voice that settled matters.
“Oh, we’d love to help but–why can’t you get some
sweet pretty girls to take the booths?”
Mrs. Merriwether snorted a trumpeting snort.
“I don’t know what’s come over the young people
these days. They have no sense of responsibility. All
the girls who haven’t already taken booths have more
excuses than you could shake a stick at. Oh, they
don’t fool me! They just don’t want to be hampered
in making up to the officers, that’s all. And they’re
afraid their new dresses won’t show off behind booth
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counters. I wish to goodness that blockade runner–
what’s his name?”
“Captain Butler,” supplied Mrs. Elsing.
“I wish he’d bring in more hospital supplies and less
hoop skirts and lace. If I’ve had to look at one dress
today I’ve had to look at twenty dresses that he ran
in. Captain Butler–I’m sick of the name. Now, Pitty, I
haven’t time to argue. You must come. Everybody
will understand. Nobody will see you in the back
room anyway, and Melly won’t be conspicuous. The
poor McLure girls’ booth is way down at the end and
not very pretty so nobody will notice you.”
“I think we should go,” said Scarlett, trying to curb
her eagerness and to keep her face earnest and simple.
“It is the least we can do for the hospital.”
Neither of the visiting ladies had even mentioned
her name, and they turned and looked sharply at her.
Even in their extremity, they had not considered asking a widow of scarcely a year to appear at a social
function. Scarlett bore their gaze with a wide-eyed
childlike expression.
“I think we should go and help to make it a success,
all of us. I think I should go in the booth with Melly
because–well, I think it would look better for us both
to be there instead of just one. Don’t you think so,
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Melly?”
“Well,” began Melly helplessly. The idea of appearing publicly at a social gathering while in mourning
was so unheard of she was bewildered.
“Scarlett’s right,” said Mrs. Merriwether, observing
signs of weakening. She rose and jerked her hoops
into place. “Both of you–all of you must come. Now,
Pitty, don’t start your excuses again. Just think how
much the hospital needs money for new beds and
drugs. And I know Charlie would like you to help
the Cause he died for.”
“Well,” said Pittypat, helpless as always in the presence of a stronger personality, “if you think people
will understand.”
“Too good to be true! Too good to be true!” said
Scarlett’s joyful heart as she slipped unobtrusively
into the pink-and-yellow-draped booth that was to
have been the McLure girls’. Actually she was at
a party! After a year’s seclusion, after crepe and
hushed voices and nearly going crazy with boredom,
she was actually at a party, the biggest party Atlanta
had ever seen. And she could see people and many
lights and hear music and view for herself the lovely
laces and frocks and frills that the famous Captain
Butler had run through the blockade on his last trip.
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She sank down on one of the little stools behind
the counter of the booth and looked up and down
the long hall which, until this afternoon, had been
a bare and ugly drill room. How the ladies must
have worked today to bring it to its present beauty.
It looked lovely. Every candle and candlestick in Atlanta must be in this hall tonight, she thought, silver ones with a dozen sprangling arms, china ones
with charming figurines clustering their bases, old
brass stands, erect and dignified, laden with candles
of all sizes and colors, smelling fragrantly of bayberries, standing on the gun racks that ran the length of
the hall, on the long flower-decked tables, on booth
counters, even on the sills of the open windows where
the draughts of warm summer air were just strong
enough to make them flare.
In the center of the hall the huge ugly lamp, hanging from the ceiling by rusty chains, was completely
transformed by twining ivy and wild grapevines that
were already withering from the heat. The walls
were banked with pine branches that gave out a spicy
smell, making the corners of the room into pretty
bowers where the chaperons and old ladies would sit.
Long graceful ropes of ivy and grapevine and smilax were hung everywhere, in looping festoons on the
walls, draped above the windows, twined in scallops
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all over the brightly colored cheesecloth booths. And
everywhere amid the greenery, on flags and bunting,
blazed the bright stars of the Confederacy on their
background of red and blue.
The raised platform for the musicians was especially artistic. It was completely hidden from view
by the banked greenery and starry bunting and Scarlett knew that every potted and tubbed plant in town
was there, coleus, geranium, hydrangea, oleander,
elephant ear–even Mrs. Elsing’s four treasured rubber plants, which were given posts of honor at the
four corners.
At the other end of the hall from the platform, the
ladies had eclipsed themselves. On this wall hung
large pictures of President Davis and Georgia’s own
“Little Alec” Stephens, Vice- President of the Confederacy. Above them was an enormous flag and, beneath, on long tables was the loot of the gardens of
the town, ferns, banks of roses, crimson and yellow
and white, proud sheaths of golden gladioli, masses
of varicolored nasturtiums, tall stiff hollyhocks rearing deep maroon and creamy heads above the other
flowers. Among them, candles burned serenely like
altar fires. The two faces looked down on the scene,
two faces as different as could be possible in two men
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at the helm of so momentous an undertaking: Davis
with the flat cheeks and cold eyes of an ascetic, his
thin proud lips set firmly; Stephens with dark burning eyes deep socketed in a face that had known nothing but sickness and pain and had triumphed over
them with humor and with fire–two faces that were
greatly loved.
The elderly ladies of the committee in whose hands
rested the responsibility for the whole bazaar rustled in as importantly as full-rigged ships, hurried the
belated young matrons and giggling girls into their
booths, and then swept through the doors into the
back rooms where the refreshments were being laid
out. Aunt Pitty panted out after them.
The musicians clambered upon their platform,
black, grinning, their fat cheeks already shining with
perspiration, and began tuning their fiddles and sawing and whanging with their bows in anticipatory
importance. Old Levi, Mrs. Merriwether’s coachman, who had led the orchestras for every bazaar, ball
and wedding since Atlanta was named Marthasville,
rapped with his bow for attention. Few except the
ladies who were conducting the bazaar had arrived
yet, but all eyes turned toward him. Then the fiddles, bull fiddles, accordions, banjos and knuckle321
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bones broke into a slow rendition of “Lorena”–too
slow for dancing, the dancing would come later when
the booths were emptied of their wares. Scarlett felt
her heart beat faster as the sweet melancholy of the
waltz came to her:
“The years creep slowly by, Lorena! The snow is on
the grass again. The sun’s far down the sky, Lorena .
. .”
One-two-three, one-two-three, dip-sway–three,
turn–two-three. What a beautiful waltz! She extended her hands slightly, closed her eyes and
swayed with the sad haunting rhythm. There was
something about the tragic melody and Lorena’s
lost love that mingled with her own excitement and
brought a lump into her throat.
Then, as if brought into being by the waltz music,
sounds floated in from the shadowy moonlit street
below, the trample of horses’ hooves and the sound
of carriage wheels, laughter on the warm sweet air
and the soft acrimony of negro voices raised in argument over hitching places for the horses. There was
confusion on the stairs and light-hearted merriment,
the mingling of girls’ fresh voices with the bass notes
of their escorts, airy cries of greeting and squeals of
joy as girls recognized friends from whom they had
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parted only that afternoon.
Suddenly the hall burst into life. It was full of girls,
girls who floated in butterfly bright dresses, hooped
out enormously, lace pantalets peeping from beneath;
round little white shoulders bare, and faintest traces
of soft little bosoms showing above lace flounces; lace
shawls carelessly hanging from arms; fans spangled
and painted, fans of swan’s-down and peacock feathers, dangling at wrists by tiny velvet ribbons; girls
with masses of golden curls about their necks and
fringed gold earbobs that tossed and danced with
their dancing curls. Laces and silks and braid and
ribbons, all blockade run, all the more precious and
more proudly worn because of it, finery flaunted with
an added pride as an extra affront to the Yankees.
Not all the flowers of the town were standing in
tribute to the leaders of the Confederacy. The smallest, the most fragrant blossoms bedecked the girls.
Tea roses tucked behind pink ears, cape jessamine
and bud roses in round little garlands over cascades
of side curls, blossoms thrust demurely into satin
sashes, flowers that before the night was over would
find their way into the breast pockets of gray uniforms as treasured souvenirs.
There were so many uniforms in the crowd–so many
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uniforms on so many men whom Scarlett knew, men
she had met on hospital cots, on the streets, at the drill
ground. They were such resplendent uniforms, brave
with shining buttons and dazzling with twined gold
braid on cuffs and collars, the red and yellow and blue
stripes on the trousers, for the different branches of
the service, setting off the gray to perfection. Scarlet and gold sashes swung to and fro, sabers glittered
and banged against shining boots, spurs rattled and
jingled.
Such handsome men, thought Scarlett, with a swell
of pride in her heart, as the men called greetings,
waved to friends, bent low over the hands of elderly
ladies. All of them were so young looking, even with
their sweeping yellow mustaches and full black and
brown beards, so handsome, so reckless, with their
arms in slings, with head bandages startlingly white
across sun-browned faces. Some of them were on
crutches and how proud were the girls who solicitously slowed their steps to their escorts’ hopping
pace! There was one gaudy splash of color among the
uniforms that put the girls’ bright finery to shame and
stood out in the crowd like a tropical bird–a Louisiana
Zouave, with baggy blue and white striped pants,
cream gaiters and tight little red jacket, a dark, grinning little monkey of a man, with his arm in a black
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silk sling. He was Maybelle Merriwether’s especial
beau, Rene Picard. The whole hospital must have
turned out, at least everybody who could walk, and
all the men on furlough and sick leave and all the railroad and mail service and hospital and commissary
departments between here and Macon. How pleased
the ladies would be! The hospital should make a mint
of money tonight.
There was a ruffle of drums from the street below,
the tramp of feet, the admiring cries of coachmen. A
bugle blared and a bass voice shouted the command
to break ranks. In a moment, the Home Guard and
the militia unit in their bright uniforms shook the narrow stairs and crowded into the room, bowing, saluting, shaking hands. There were boys in the Home
Guard, proud to be playing at war, promising themselves they would be in Virginia this time next year, if
the war would just last that long; old men with white
beards, wishing they were younger, proud to march
in uniform in the reflected glory of sons at the front.
In the militia, there were many middle-aged men and
some older men but there was a fair sprinkling of men
of military age who did not carry themselves quite so
jauntily as their elders or their juniors. Already people were beginning to whisper, asking why they were
not with Lee.
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How would they all get into the hall! It had seemed
such a large place a few minutes before, and now it
was packed, warm with summer-night odors of sachet and cologne water and hair pomade and burning
bayberry candles, fragrant with flowers, faintly dusty
as many feet trod the old drill floors. The din and
hubbub of voices made it almost impossible to hear
anything and, as if feeling the joy and excitement of
the occasion, old Levi choked off “Lorena” in mid-bar,
rapped sharply with his bow and, sawing away for
dear life, the orchestra burst into “Bonnie Blue Flag.”
A hundred voices took it up, sang it, shouted it like
a cheer. The Home Guard bugler, climbing onto the
platform, caught up with the music just as the chorus
began, and the high silver notes soared out thrillingly
above the massed singing, causing goose bumps to
break out on bare arms and cold chills of deeply felt
emotion to fly down spines:
“Hurrah! Hurrah! For the Southern Rights, hurrah!
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag That bears a single
star!”
They crashed into the second verse and Scarlett,
singing with the rest, heard the high sweet soprano
of Melanie mounting behind her, clear and true and
thrilling as the bugle notes. Turning, she saw that
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Melly was standing with her hands clasped to her
breast, her eyes closed, and tiny tears oozing from
the corners. She smiled at Scarlett, whimsically, as the
music ended, making a little moue of apology as she
dabbed with her handkerchief.
“I’m so happy,” she whispered, “and so proud of the
soldiers that I just can’t help crying about it.”
There was a deep, almost fanatic glow in her eyes
that for a moment lit up her plain little face and made
it beautiful.
The same look was on the faces of all the women
as the song ended, tears of pride on cheeks, pink or
wrinkled, smiles on lips, a deep hot glow in eyes, as
they turned to their men, sweetheart to lover, mother
to son, wife to husband. They were all beautiful
with the blinding beauty that transfigures even the
plainest woman when she is utterly protected and utterly loved and is giving back that love a thousandfold.
They loved their men, they believed in them, they
trusted them to the last breaths of their bodies. How
could disaster ever come to women such as they when
their stalwart gray line stood between them and the
Yankees? Had there ever been such men as these
since the first dawn of the world, so heroic, so reck327
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less, so gallant, so tender? How could anything but
overwhelming victory come to a Cause as just and
right as theirs? A Cause they loved as much as they
loved their men, a Cause they served with their hands
and their hearts, a Cause they talked about, thought
about, dreamed about–a Cause to which they would
sacrifice these men if need be, and bear their loss as
proudly as the men bore their battle flags.
It was high tide of devotion and pride in their hearts,
high tide of the Confederacy, for final victory was at
hand. Stonewall Jackson’s triumphs in the Valley and
the defeat of the Yankees in the Seven Days’ Battle
around Richmond showed that clearly. How could it
be otherwise with such leaders as Lee and Jackson?
One more victory and the Yankees would be on their
knees yelling for peace and the men would be riding
home and there would be kissing and laughter. One
more victory and the war was over!
Of course, there were empty chairs and babies who
would never see their fathers’ faces and unmarked
graves by lonely Virginia creeks and in the still mountains of Tennessee, but was that too great a price to
pay for such a Cause? Silks for the ladies and tea and
sugar were hard to get, but that was something to joke
about. Besides, the dashing blockade runners were
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bringing in these very things under the Yankees’ disgruntled noses, and that made the possession of them
many times more thrilling. Soon Raphael Semmes
and the Confederate Navy would tend to those Yankee gunboats and the ports would be wide open. And
England was coming in to help the Confederacy win
the war, because the English mills were standing idle
for want of Southern cotton. And naturally the British
aristocracy sympathized with the Confederacy, as one
aristocrat with another, against a race of dollar lovers
like the Yankees.
So the women swished their silks and laughed and,
looking on their men with hearts bursting with pride,
they knew that love snatched in the face of danger
and death was doubly sweet for the strange excitement that went with it.
When first she looked at the crowd, Scarlett’s
heart had thump- thumped with the unaccustomed
excitement of being at a party, but as she halfcomprehendingly saw the high-hearted look on the
faces about her, her joy began to evaporate. Every
woman present was blazing with an emotion she did
not feel. It bewildered and depressed her. Somehow,
the ball did not seem so pretty nor the girls so dashing, and the white heat of devotion to the Cause that
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was still shining on every face seemed–why, it just
seemed silly!
In a sudden flash of self-knowledge that made her
mouth pop open with astonishment, she realized that
she did not share with these women their fierce pride,
their desire to sacrifice themselves and everything
they had for the Cause. Before horror made her think:
“No–no! I mustn’t think such things! They’re wrong–
sinful,” she knew the Cause meant nothing at all to
her and that she was bored with hearing other people talk about it with that fanatic look in their eyes.
The Cause didn’t seem sacred to her. The war didn’t
seem to be a holy affair, but a nuisance that killed men
senselessly and cost money and made luxuries hard
to get. She saw that she was tired of the endless knitting and the endless bandage rolling and lint picking that roughened the cuticle of her nails. And oh,
she was so tired of the hospital! Tired and bored and
nauseated with the sickening gangrene smells and the
endless moaning, frightened by the look that coming
death gave to sunken faces.
She looked furtively around her, as the treacherous,
blasphemous thoughts rushed through her mind,
fearful that someone might find them written clearly
upon her face. Oh, why couldn’t she feel like those
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other women! They were whole hearted and sincere
in their devotion to the Cause. They really meant everything they said and did. And if anyone should
ever suspect that she– No, no one must ever know!
She must go on making a pretense of enthusiasm and
pride in the Cause which she could not feel, acting out
her part of the widow of a Confederate officer who
bears her grief bravely, whose heart is in the grave,
who feels that her husband’s death meant nothing if
it aided the Cause to triumph.
Oh, why was she different, apart from these loving
women? She could never love anything or anyone so
selflessly as they did. What a lonely feeling it was–
and she had never been lonely either in body or spirit
before. At first she tried to stifle the thoughts, but
the hard self-honesty that lay at the base of her nature
would not permit it. And so, while the bazaar went
on, while she and Melanie waited on the customers
who came to their booth, her mind was busily working, trying to justify herself to herself–a task which
she seldom found difficult.
The other women were simply silly and hysterical
with their talk of patriotism and the Cause, and the
men were almost as bad with their talk of vital issues
and States’ Rights. She, Scarlett O’Hara Hamilton,
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alone had good hard-headed Irish sense. She wasn’t
going to make a fool out of herself about the Cause,
but neither was she going to make a fool out of herself
by admitting her true feelings. She was hard-headed
enough to be practical about the situation, and no one
would ever know how she felt. How surprised the
bazaar would be if they knew what she really was
thinking! How shocked if she suddenly climbed on
the bandstand and declared that she thought the war
ought to stop, so everybody could go home and tend
to their cotton and there could be parties and beaux
again and plenty of pale green dresses.
For a moment, her self-justification buoyed her up
but still she looked about the hall with distaste. The
McLure girls’ booth was inconspicuous, as Mrs. Merriwether had said, and there were long intervals when
no one came to their corner and Scarlett had nothing to do but look enviously on the happy throng.
Melanie sensed her moodiness but, crediting it to
longing for Charlie, did not try to engage her in conversation. She busied herself arranging the articles
in the booth in more attractive display, while Scarlett
sat and looked glumly around the room. Even the
banked flowers below the pictures of Mr. Davis and
Mr. Stephens displeased her.
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“It looks like an altar,” she sniffed. “And the way
they all carry on about those two, they might as well
be the Father and the Son!” Then smitten with sudden fright at her irreverence she began hastily to cross
herself by way of apology but caught herself in time.
“Well, it’s true,” she argued with her conscience.
“Everybody carries on like they were holy and they
aren’t anything but men, and mighty unattractive
looking ones at that.”
Of course, Mr. Stephens couldn’t help how he
looked for he had been an invalid all his life, but Mr.
Davis– She looked up at the cameo clean, proud face.
It was his goatee that annoyed her the most. Men
should either be clean shaven, mustached or wear full
beards.
“That little wisp looks like it was just the best he
could do,” she thought, not seeing in his face the cold
hard intelligence that was carrying the weight of a
new nation.
No, she was not happy now, and at first she had
been radiant with the pleasure of being in a crowd.
Now just being present was not enough. She was
at the bazaar but not a part of it. No one paid her
any attention and she was the only young unmarried
woman present who did not have a beau. And all
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her life she had enjoyed the center of the stage. It
wasn’t fair! She was seventeen years old and her feet
were patting the floor, wanting to skip and dance. She
was seventeen years old and she had a husband lying at Oakland Cemetery and a baby in his cradle at
Aunt Pittypat’s and everyone thought she should be
content with her lot. She had a whiter bosom and a
smaller waist and a tinier foot than any girl present,
but for all they mattered she might just as well be
lying beside Charles with “Beloved Wife of” carved
over her.
She wasn’t a girl who could dance and flirt and she
wasn’t a wife who could sit with other wives and criticize the dancing and flirting girls. And she wasn’t
old enough to be a widow. Widows should be old–
so terribly old they didn’t want to dance and flirt and
be admired. Oh, it wasn’t fair that she should have
to sit here primly and be the acme of widowed dignity and propriety when she was only seventeen. It
wasn’t fair that she must keep her voice low and her
eyes cast modestly down, when men, attractive ones,
too, came to their booth.
Every girl in Atlanta was three deep in men. Even
the plainest girls were carrying on like belles–and,
oh, worst of all, they were carrying on in such lovely,
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lovely dresses!
Here she sat like a crow with hot black taffeta to
her wrists and buttoned up to her chin, with not
even a hint of lace or braid, not a jewel except Ellen’s
onyx mourning brooch, watching tacky- looking girls
hanging on the arms of good-looking men. All because Charles Hamilton had had the measles. He
didn’t even die in a fine glow of gallantry in battle,
so she could brag about him.
Rebelliously she leaned her elbows on the counter
and looked at the crowd, flouting Mammy’s oftrepeated admonition against leaning on elbows and
making them ugly and wrinkled. What did it matter if
they did get ugly? She’d probably never get a chance
to show them again. She looked hungrily at the frocks
floating by, butter-yellow watered silks with garlands
of rosebuds; pink satins with eighteen flounces edged
with tiny black velvet ribbons; baby blue taffeta, ten
yards in the skirt and foamy with cascading lace; exposed bosoms; seductive flowers. Maybelle Merriwether went toward the next booth on the arm of the
Zouave, in an apple- green tarlatan so wide that it reduced her waist to nothingness. It was showered and
flounced with cream-colored Chantilly lace that had
come from Charleston on the last blockader, and May335
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belle was flaunting it as saucily as if she and not the
famous Captain Butler had run the blockade.
“How sweet I’d look in that dress,” thought Scarlett, a savage envy in her heart. “Her waist is as big
as a cow’s. That green is just my color and it would
make my eyes look– Why will blondes try to wear
that color? Her skin looks as green as an old cheese.
And to think I’ll never wear that color again, not even
when I do get out of mourning. No, not even if I do
manage to get married again. Then I’ll have to wear
tacky old grays and tans and lilacs.”
For a brief moment she considered the unfairness
of it all. How short was the time for fun, for pretty
clothes, for dancing, for coquetting! Only a few, too
few years! Then you married and wore dull-colored
dresses and had babies that ruined your waist line
and sat in corners at dances with other sober matrons and only emerged to dance with your husband
or with old gentlemen who stepped on your feet. If
you didn’t do these things, the other matrons talked
about you and then your reputation was ruined and
your family disgraced. It seemed such a terrible waste
to spend all your little girlhood learning how to be
attractive and how to catch men and then only use
the knowledge for a year or two. When she consid336
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ered her training at the hands of Ellen and Mammy,
she knew it had been thorough and good because it
had always reaped results. There were set rules to be
followed, and if you followed them success crowned
your efforts.
With old ladies you were sweet and guileless and
appeared as simple minded as possible, for old ladies
were sharp and they watched girls as jealously as cats,
ready to pounce on any indiscretion of tongue or eye.
With old gentlemen, a girl was pert and saucy and almost, but not quite, flirtatious, so that the old fools’
vanities would be tickled. It made them feel devilish
and young and they pinched your cheek and declared
you were a minx. And, of course, you always blushed
on such occasions, otherwise they would pinch you
with more pleasure than was proper and then tell
their sons that you were fast.
With young girls and young married women, you
slopped over with sugar and kissed them every time
you met them, even if it was ten times a day. And
you put your arms about their waists and suffered
them to do the same to you, no matter how much you
disliked it. You admired their frocks or their babies
indiscriminately and teased about beaux and complimented husbands and giggled modestly and de337
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nied that you had any charms at all compared with
theirs. And, above all, you never said what you really thought about anything, any more than they said
what they really thought.
Other women’s husbands you let severely alone,
even if they were your own discarded beaux, and no
matter how temptingly attractive they were. If you
were too nice to young husbands, their wives said
you were fast and you got a bad reputation and never
caught any beaux of your own.
But with young bachelors–ah, that was a different
matter! You could laugh softly at them and when they
came flying to see why you laughed, you could refuse
to tell them and laugh harder and keep them around
indefinitely trying to find out. You could promise,
with your eyes, any number of exciting things that
would make a man maneuver to get you alone. And,
having gotten you alone, you could be very, very hurt
or very, very angry when he tried to kiss you. You
could make him apologize for being a cur and forgive
him so sweetly that he would hang around trying to
kiss you a second time. Sometimes, but not often,
you did let him kiss you. (Ellen and Mammy had not
taught her that but she learned it was effective.) Then
you cried and declared you didn’t know what had
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come over you and that he couldn’t ever respect you
again. Then he had to dry your eyes and usually he
proposed, to show just how much he did respect you.
And then there were– Oh, there were so many things
to do to bachelors and she knew them all, the nuance
of the sidelong glance, the half-smile behind the fan,
the swaying of the hips so that skirts swung like a bell,
the tears, the laughter, the flattery, the sweet sympathy. Oh, all the tricks that never failed to work–except
with Ashley.
No, it didn’t seem right to learn all these smart
tricks, use them so briefly and then put them away
forever. How wonderful it would be never to marry
but to go on being lovely in pale green dresses and
forever courted by handsome men. But, if you went
on too long, you got to be an old maid like India
Wilkes and everyone said “poor thing” in that smug
hateful way. No, after all it was better to marry and
keep your self-respect even if you never had any more
fun.
Oh, what a mess life was! Why had she been such
an idiot as to marry Charles of all people and have her
life end at sixteen?
Her indignant and hopeless reverie was broken
when the crowd began pushing back against the
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walls, the ladies carefully holding their hoops so that
no careless contact should turn them up against their
bodies and show more pantalets than was proper.
Scarlett tiptoed above the crowd and saw the captain
of the militia mounting the orchestra platform. He
shouted orders and half of the Company fell into line.
For a few minutes they went through a brisk drill that
brought perspiration to their foreheads and cheers
and applause from the audience. Scarlett clapped
her hands dutifully with the rest and, as the soldiers pushed forward toward the punch and lemonade booths after they were dismissed, she turned to
Melanie, feeling that she had better begin her deception about the Cause as soon as possible.
“They looked fine, didn’t they?” she said.
Melanie was fussing about with the knitted things
on the counter.
“Most of them would look a lot finer in gray uniforms and in Virginia,” she said, and she did not trouble to lower her voice.
Several of the proud mothers of members of the
militia were standing close by and overheard the remark. Mrs. Guinan turned scarlet and then white, for
her twenty-five-year-old Willie was in the company.
Scarlett was aghast at such words coming from
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Melly of all people.
“Why, Melly!”
“You know it’s true, Scarlet. I don’t mean the little
boys and the old gentlemen. But a lot of the militia
are perfectly able to tote a rifle and that’s what they
ought to be doing this minute.”
“But–but–” began Scarlett, who had never considered the matter before. “Somebody’s got to stay home
to–” What was it Willie Guinan had told her by way
of excusing his presence in Atlanta? “Somebody’s got
to stay home to protect the state from invasion.”
“Nobody’s invading us and nobody’s going to,”
said Melly coolly, looking toward a group of the militia. “And the best way to keep out invaders is to go
to Virginia and beat the Yankees there. And as for
all this talk about the militia staying here to keep the
darkies from rising–why, it’s the silliest thing I ever
heard of. Why should our people rise? It’s just a good
excuse for cowards. I’ll bet we could lick the Yankees
in a month if all the militia of all the states went to
Virginia. So there!”
“Why, Melly!” cried Scarlett again, staring.
Melly’s soft dark eyes were flashing angrily. “My
husband wasn’t afraid to go and neither was yours.
And I’d rather they’d both be dead than here at
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home– Oh, darling, I’m sorry. How thoughtless and
cruel of me!”
She stroked Scarlett’s arm appealingly and Scarlett
stared at her. But it was not of dead Charles she was
thinking. It was of Ashley. Suppose he too were to
die? She turned quickly and smiled automatically as
Dr. Meade walked up to their booth.
“Well, girls,” he greeted them, “it was nice of you
to come. I know what a sacrifice it must have been
for you to come out tonight. But it’s all for the Cause.
And I’m going to tell you a secret. I’ve a surprise way
for making some more money tonight for the hospital, but I’m afraid some of the ladies are going to be
shocked about it.”
He stopped and chuckled as he tugged at his gray
goatee.
“Oh, what? Do tell!”
“On second thought I believe I’ll keep you guessing,
too. But you girls must stand up for me if the church
members want to run me out of town for doing it.
However, it’s for the hospital. You’ll see. Nothing
like this has ever been done before.”
He went off pompously toward a group of chaperons in one corner, and just as the two girls had turned
to each other to discuss the possibilities of the secret,
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two old gentlemen bore down on the booth, declaring in loud voices that they wanted ten miles of tatting. Well, after all, old gentlemen were better than
no gentlemen at all, thought Scarlett, measuring out
the tatting and submitting demurely to being chucked
under the chin. The old blades charged off toward
the lemonade booth and others took their places at
the counter. Their booth did not have so many customers as did the other booths where the tootling
laugh of Maybelle Merriwether sounded and Fanny
Elsing’s giggles and the Whiting girls’ repartee made
merriment. Melly sold useless stuff to men who could
have no possible use for it as quietly and serenely as
a shopkeeper, and Scarlett patterned her conduct on
Melly’s.
There were crowds in front of every other counter
but theirs, girls chattering, men buying. The few who
came to them talked about how they went to the university with Ashley and what a fine soldier he was or
spoke in respectful tones of Charles and how great a
loss to Atlanta his death had been.
Then the music broke into the rollicking strains
of “Johnny Booker, he’p dis Nigger!” and Scarlett
thought she would scream. She wanted to dance.
She wanted to dance. She looked across the floor
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and tapped her foot to the music and her green eyes
blazed so eagerly that they fairly snapped. All the
way across the floor, a man, newly come and standing in the doorway, saw them, started in recognition
and watched closely the slanting eyes in the sulky, rebellious face. Then he grinned to himself as he recognized the invitation that any male could read.
He was dressed in black broadcloth, a tall man, towering over the officers who stood near him, bulky
in the shoulders but tapering to a small waist and
absurdly small feet in varnished boots. His severe
black suit, with fine ruffled shirt and trousers smartly
strapped beneath high insteps, was oddly at variance with his physique and face, for he was foppishly
groomed, the clothes of a dandy on a body that was
powerful and latently dangerous in its lazy grace. His
hair was jet black, and his black mustache was small
and closely clipped, almost foreign looking compared
with the dashing, swooping mustaches of the cavalrymen near by. He looked, and was, a man of lusty and
unashamed appetites. He had an air of utter assurance, of displeasing insolence about him, and there
was a twinkle of malice in his bold eyes as he stared
at Scarlett, until finally, feeling his gaze, she looked
toward him.
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Somewhere in her mind, the bell of recognition rang,
but for the moment she could not recall who he was.
But he was the first man in months who had displayed an interest in her, and she threw him a gay
smile. She made a little curtsy as he bowed, and then,
as he straightened and started toward her with a peculiarly lithe Indian-like gait, her hand went to her
mouth in horror, for she knew who he was.
Thunderstruck, she stood as if paralyzed while he
made his way through the crowd. Then she turned
blindly, bent on flight into the refreshment rooms, but
her skirt caught on a nail of the booth. She jerked
furiously at it, tearing it and, in an instant, he was
beside her.
“Permit me,” he said bending over and disentangling the flounce. “I hardly hoped that you would
recall me, Miss O’Hara.”
His voice was oddly pleasant to the ear, the wellmodulated voice of a gentleman, resonant and overlaid with the flat slow drawl of the Charlestonian.
She looked up at him imploringly, her face crimson
with the shame of their last meeting, and met two of
the blackest eyes she had ever seen, dancing in merciless merriment. Of all the people in the world to turn
up here, this terrible person who had witnessed that
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scene with Ashley which still gave her nightmares;
this odious wretch who ruined girls and was not received by nice people; this despicable man who had
said, and with good cause, that she was not a lady.
At the sound of his voice, Melanie turned and for
the first time in her life Scarlett thanked God for the
existence of her sister- in-law.
“Why–it’s–it’s Mr. Rhett Butler, isn’t it?” said
Melanie with a little smile, putting out her hand. “I
met you–”
“On the happy occasion of the announcement of
your betrothal,” he finished, bending over her hand.
“It is kind of you to recall me.”
“And what are you doing so far from Charleston,
Mr. Butler?”
“A boring matter of business, Mrs. Wilkes. I will be
in and out of your town from now on. I find I must not
only bring in goods but see to the disposal of them.”
“Bring in–” began Melly, her brow wrinkling, and
then she broke into a delighted smile. “Why, you–you
must be the famous Captain Butler we’ve been hearing so much about–the blockade runner. Why, every
girl here is wearing dresses you brought in. Scarlett,
aren’t you thrilled–what’s the matter, dear? Are you
faint? Do sit down.”
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Scarlett sank to the stool, her breath coming so
rapidly she feared the lacings of her stays would
burst. Oh, what a terrible thing to happen! She had
never thought to meet this man again. He picked
up her black fan from the counter and began fanning
her solicitously, too solicitously, his face grave but his
eyes still dancing.
“It is quite warm in here,” he said. “No wonder Miss
O’Hara is faint. May I lead you to a window?”
“No,” said Scarlett, so rudely that Melly stared.
“She is not Miss O’Hara any longer,” said Melly.
“She is Mrs. Hamilton. She is my sister now,” and
Melly bestowed one of her fond little glances on her.
Scarlett felt that she would strangle at the expression
on Captain Butler’s swarthy piratical face.
“I am sure that is a great gain to two charming
ladies,” said he, making a slight bow. That was the
kind of remark all men made, but when he said it it
seemed to her that he meant just the opposite.
“Your husbands are here tonight, I trust, on this
happy occasion? It would be a pleasure to renew acquaintances.”
“My husband is in Virginia,” said Melly with a
proud lift of her head. “But Charles–” Her voice
broke.
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“He died in camp,” said Scarlett flatly. She almost
snapped the words. Would this creature never go
away? Melly looked at her, startled, and the Captain
made a gesture of self-reproach.
“My dear ladies–how could I! You must forgive me.
But permit a stranger to offer the comfort of saying
that to die for one’s country is to live forever.”
Melanie smiled at him through sparkling tears while
Scarlett felt the fox of wrath and impotent hate gnaw
at her vitals. Again he had made a graceful remark,
the kind of compliment any gentleman would pay
under such circumstances, but he did not mean a
word of it. He was jeering at her. He knew she hadn’t
loved Charles. And Melly was just a big enough fool
not to see through him. Oh, please God, don’t let anybody else see through him, she thought with a start
of terror. Would he tell what he knew? Of course
he wasn’t a gentleman and there was no telling what
men would do when they weren’t gentlemen. There
was no standard to judge them by. She looked up
at him and saw that his mouth was pulled down at
the corners in mock sympathy, even while he swished
the fan. Something in his look challenged her spirit
and brought her strength back in a surge of dislike.
Abruptly she snatched the fan from his hand.
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“I’m quite all right,” she said tartly. “There’s no
need to blow my hair out of place.”
“Scarlett, darling! Captain Butler, you must forgive her. She– she isn’t herself when she hears
poor Charlie’s name spoken–and perhaps, after all,
we shouldn’t have come here tonight. We’re still in
mourning, you see, and it’s quite a strain on her–all
this gaiety and music, poor child.”
“I quite understand,” he said with elaborate gravity,
but as he turned and gave Melanie a searching look
that went to the bottom of her sweet worried eyes, his
expression changed, reluctant respect and gentleness
coming over his dark face. “I think you’re a courageous little lady, Mrs. Wilkes.”
“Not a word about me!” thought Scarlett indignantly, as Melly smiled in confusion and answered,
“Dear me, no, Captain Butler! The hospital committee just had to have us for this booth because at the
last minute– A pillow case? Here’s a lovely one with
a flag on it.”
She turned to three cavalrymen who appeared at
her counter. For a moment, Melanie thought how
nice Captain Butler was. Then she wished that something more substantial than cheesecloth was between
her skirt and the spittoon that stood just outside
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the booth, for the aim of the horsemen with amber
streams of tobacco juice was not so unerring as with
their long horse pistols. Then she forgot about the
Captain, Scarlett and the spittoons as more customers
crowded to her.
Scarlett sat quietly on the stool fanning herself, not
daring to look up, wishing Captain Butler back on the
deck of his ship where he belonged.
“Your husband has been dead long?”
“Oh, yes, a long time. Almost a year.”
“An aeon, I’m sure.”
Scarlett was not sure what an aeon was, but there
was no mistaking the baiting quality of his voice, so
she said nothing.
“Had you been married long? Forgive my questions
but I have been away from this section for so long.”
“Two months,” said Scarlett, unwillingly.
“A tragedy, no less,” his easy voice continued.
Oh, damn him, she thought violently. If he was any
other man in the world I could simply freeze up and
order him off. But he knows about Ashley and he
knows I didn’t love Charlie. And my hands are tied.
She said nothing, still looking down at her fan.
“And this is your first social appearance?”
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“I know it looks quite odd,” she explained rapidly.
“But the McLure girls who were to take this booth
were called away and there was no one else, so
Melanie and I–”
“No sacrifice is too great for the Cause.”
Why, that was what Mrs. Elsing had said, but when
she said it it didn’t sound the same way. Hot words
started to her lips but she choked them back. After
all, she was here, not for the Cause, but because she
was tired of sitting home.
“I have always thought,” he said reflectively, “that
the system of mourning, of immuring women in crepe
for the rest of their lives and forbidding them normal
enjoyment is just as barbarous as the Hindu suttee.”
“Settee?”
He laughed and she blushed for her ignorance. She
hated people who used words unknown to her.
“In India, when a man dies he is burned, instead
of buried, and his wife always climbs on the funeral
pyre and is burned with him.”
“How dreadful! Why do they do it? Don’t the police
do anything about it?”
“Of course not. A wife who didn’t burn herself
would be a social outcast. All the worthy Hindu ma351
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trons would talk about her for not behaving as a wellbred lady should–precisely as those worthy matrons
in the corner would talk about you, should you appear tonight in a red dress and lead a reel. Personally,
I think suttee much more merciful than our charming
Southern custom of burying widows alive!”
“How dare you say I’m buried alive!”
“How closely women crutch the very chains that
bind them! You think the Hindu custom barbarous–
but would you have had the courage to appear here
tonight if the Confederacy hadn’t needed you?”
Arguments of this character were always confusing
to Scarlett. His were doubly confusing because she
had a vague idea there was truth in them. But now
was the time to squelch him.
“Of course, I wouldn’t have come. It would have
been–well, disrespectful to–it would have seemed as
if I hadn’t lov–”
His eyes waited on her words, cynical amusement in
them, and she could not go on. He knew she hadn’t
loved Charlie and he wouldn’t let her pretend to the
nice polite sentiments that she should express. What
a terrible, terrible thing it was to have to do with a
man who wasn’t a gentleman. A gentleman always
appeared to believe a lady even when he knew she
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was lying. That was Southern chivalry. A gentleman
always obeyed the rules and said the correct things
and made life easier for a lady. But this man seemed
not to care for rules and evidently enjoyed talking of
things no one ever talked about.
“I am waiting breathlessly.”
“I think you are horrid,” she said, helplessly, dropping her eyes.
He leaned down across the counter until his mouth
was near her ear and hissed, in a very creditable imitation of the stage villains who appeared infrequently
at the Athenaeum Hall: “Fear not, fair lady! Your
guilty secret is safe with me!”
“Oh,” she whispered, feverishly, “how can you say
such things!”
“I only thought to ease your mind. What would you
have me say? ‘Be mine, beautiful female, or I will reveal all?”’
She met his eyes unwillingly and saw they were
as teasing as a small boy’s. Suddenly she laughed.
It was such a silly situation, after all. He laughed
too, and so loudly that several of the chaperons in
the corner looked their way. Observing how good a
time Charles Hamilton’s widow appeared to be having with a perfect stranger, they put their heads to353
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gether disapprovingly.
There was a roll of drums and many voices cried
“Sh!” as Dr. Meade mounted the platform and spread
out his arms for quiet.
“We must all give grateful thanks to the charming
ladies whose indefatigable and patriotic efforts have
made this bazaar not only a pecuniary success,” he
began, “but have transformed this rough hall into
a bower of loveliness, a fit garden for the charming
rosebuds I see about me.”
Everyone clapped approvingly.
“The ladies have given their best, not only of their
time but of the labor of their hands, and these beautiful objects in the booths are doubly beautiful, made as
they are by the fair hands of our charming Southern
women.”
There were more shouts of approval, and Rhett Butler who had been lounging negligently against the
counter at Scarlett’s side whispered: “Pompous goat,
isn’t he?”
Startled, at first horrified, at this lese majesty toward
Atlanta’s most beloved citizen, she stared reprovingly
at him. But the doctor did look like a goat with his
gray chin whiskers wagging away at a great rate, and
with difficulty she stifled a giggle.
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“But these things are not enough. The good ladies
of the hospital committee, whose cool hands have
soothed many a suffering brow and brought back
from the jaws of death our brave men wounded in
the bravest of all Causes, know our needs. I will not
enumerate them. We must have more money to buy
medical supplies from England, and we have with us
tonight the intrepid captain who has so successfully
run the blockade for a year and who will run it again
to bring us the drugs we need. Captain Rhett Butler!”
Though caught unawares, the blockader made a
graceful bow–too graceful, thought Scarlett, trying to
analyze it. It was almost as if he overdid his courtesy
because his contempt for everybody present was so
great. There was a loud burst of applause as he bowed
and a craning of necks from the ladies in the corner.
So that was who poor Charles Hamilton’s widow was
carrying on with! And Charlie hardly dead a year!
“We need more gold and I am asking you for it,” the
doctor continued. “I am asking a sacrifice but a sacrifice so small compared with the sacrifices our gallant men in gray are making that it will seem laughably small. Ladies, I want your jewelry. I want your
jewelry? No, the Confederacy wants your jewelry,
the Confederacy calls for it and I know no one will
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hold back. How fair a gem gleams on a lovely wrist!
How beautifully gold brooches glitter on the bosoms
of our patriotic women! But how much more beautiful is sacrifice than all the gold and gems of the Ind.
The gold will be melted and the stones sold and the
money used to buy drugs and other medical supplies.
Ladies, there will pass among you two of our gallant wounded, with baskets and–” But the rest of his
speech was lost in the storm and tumult of clapping
hands and cheering voices.
Scarlett’s first thought was one of deep thankfulness that mourning forbade her wearing her precious earbobs and the heavy gold chain that had been
Grandma Robillard’s and the gold and black enameled bracelets and the garnet brooch. She saw the
little Zouave, a split-oak basket over his unwounded
arm, making the rounds of the crowd on her side of
the hall and saw women, old and young, laughing,
eager, tugging at bracelets, squealing in pretended
pain as earrings came from pierced flesh, helping each
other undo stiff necklace clasps, unpinning brooches
from bosoms. There was a steady little clink-clink of
metal on metal and cries of “Wait–wait! I’ve got it
unfastened now. There!” Maybelle Merriwether was
pulling off her lovely twin bracelets from above and
below her elbows. Fanny Elsing, crying “Mamma,
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may I?” was tearing from her curls the seed-pearl ornament set in heavy gold which had been in the family for generations. As each offering went into the basket, there was applause and cheering.
The grinning little man was coming to their booth
now, his basket heavy on his arm, and as he passed
Rhett Butler a handsome gold cigar case was thrown
carelessly into the basket. When he came to Scarlett
and rested his basket upon the counter, she shook her
head throwing wide her hands to show that she had
nothing to give. It was embarrassing to be the only
person present who was giving nothing. And then
she saw the bright gleam of her wide gold wedding
ring.
For a confused moment she tried to remember
Charles’ face–how he had looked when he slipped it
on her finger. But the memory was blurred, blurred
by the sudden feeling of irritation that memory of
him always brought to her. Charles–he was the reason why life was over for her, why she was an old
woman.
With a sudden wrench she seized the ring but it
stuck. The Zouave was moving toward Melanie.
“Wait!” cried Scarlett. “I have something for you!”
The ring came off and, as she started to throw it into
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the basket, heaped up with chains, watches, rings,
pins and bracelets, she caught Rhett Butler’s eye. His
lips were twisted in a slight smile. Defiantly, she
tossed the ring onto the top of the pile.
“Oh, my darling!” whispered Molly, clutching her
arm, her eyes blazing with love and pride. “You
brave, brave girl! Wait– please, wait, Lieutenant Picard! I have something for you, too!”
She was tugging at her own wedding ring, the ring
Scarlett knew had never once left that finger since
Ashley put it there. Scarlett knew, as no one did, how
much it meant to her. It came off with difficulty and
for a brief instant was clutched tightly in the small
palm. Then it was laid gently on the pile of jewelry.
The two girls stood looking after the Zouave who was
moving toward the group of elderly ladies in the corner, Scarlett defiant, Melanie with a look more pitiful
than tears. And neither expression was lost on the
man who stood beside them.
“If you hadn’t been brave enough to do it, I would
never have been either,” said Melly, putting her arm
about Scarlett’s waist and giving her a gentle squeeze.
For a moment Scarlett wanted to shake her off and cry
“Name of God!” at the top of her lungs, as Gerald did
when he was irritated, but she caught Rhett Butler’s
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eye and managed a very sour smile. It was annoying
the way Melly always misconstrued her motives–but
perhaps that was far preferable to having her suspect
the truth.
“What a beautiful gesture,” said Rhett Butler, softly.
“It is such sacrifices as yours that hearten our brave
lads in gray.”
Hot words bubbled to her lips and it was with difficulty that she checked them. There was mockery in
everything he said. She disliked him heartily, lounging there against the booth. But there was something
stimulating about him, something warm and vital
and electric. All that was Irish in her rose to the challenge of his black eyes. She decided she was going to
take this man down a notch or two. His knowledge of
her secret gave him an advantage over her that was
exasperating, so she would have to change that by
putting him at a disadvantage somehow. She stifled
her impulse to tell him exactly what she thought of
him. Sugar always caught more flies than vinegar, as
Mammy often said, and she was going to catch and
subdue this fly, so he could never again have her at
his mercy.
“Thank you,” she said sweetly, deliberately misunderstanding his jibe. “A compliment like that coming
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from so famous a man as Captain Butler is appreciated.”
He threw back his head and laughed freely–yelped,
was what Scarlett thought fiercely, her face becoming
pink again.
“Why don’t you say what you really think?” he demanded, lowering his voice so that in the clatter and
excitement of the collection, it came only to her ears.
“Why don’t you say I’m a damned rascal and no gentleman and that I must take myself off or you’ll have
one of these gallant boys in gray call me out?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to answer tartly, but
she managed by heroic control to say: “Why, Captain
Butler! How you do run on! As if everybody didn’t
know how famous you are and how brave and what
a–what a–
“I am disappointed in you,” he said.
“Disappointed?”
“Yes. On the occasion of our first eventful meeting I
thought to myself that I had at last met a girl who was
not only beautiful but who had courage. And now I
see that you are only beautiful.”
“Do you mean to call me a coward?” She was ruffling like a hen.
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“Exactly. You lack the courage to say what you really think. When I first met you, I thought: There is
a girl in a million. She isn’t like these other silly little
fools who believe everything their mammas tell them
and act on it, no matter how they feel. And conceal
all their feelings and desires and little heartbreaks behind a lot of sweet words. I thought: Miss O’Hara is a
girl of rare spirit. She knows what she wants and she
doesn’t mind speaking her mind–or throwing vases.”
“Oh,” she said, rage breaking through. “Then I’ll
speak my mind right this minute. If you’d had any
raising at all you’d never have come over here and
talked to me. You’d have known I never wanted to lay
eyes on you again! But you aren’t a gentleman! You
are just a nasty ill-bred creature! And you think that
because your rotten little boats can outrun the Yankees, you’ve the right to come here and jeer at men
who are brave and women who are sacrificing everything for the Cause–”
“Stop, stop–” he begged with a grin. “You started
off very nicely and said what you thought, but don’t
begin talking to me about the Cause. I’m tired of hearing about it and I’ll bet you are, too–”
“Why, how did–” she began, caught off her balance,
and then checked herself hastily, boiling with anger at
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herself for falling into his trap.
“I stood there in the doorway before you saw me
and I watched you,” he said. “And I watched the
other girls. And they all looked as though their faces
came out of one mold. Yours didn’t. You have an
easy face to read. You didn’t have your mind on your
business and I’ll wager you weren’t thinking about
our Cause or the hospital. It was all over your face
that you wanted to dance and have a good time and
you couldn’t. So you were mad clean through. Tell
the truth. Am I not right?”
“I have nothing more to say to you, Captain Butler,”
she said as formally as she could, trying to draw the
rags of her dignity about her. “Just because you’re
conceited at being the ‘great blockader’ doesn’t give
you the right to insult women.”
“The great blockader! That’s a joke. Pray give me
only one moment more of your precious time before
you cast me into darkness. I wouldn’t want so charming a little patriot to be left under a misapprehension
about my contribution to the Confederate Cause.”
“I don’t care to listen to your brags.”
“Blockading is a business with me and I’m making
money out of it. When I stop making money out of it,
I’ll quit. What do you think of that?”
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“I think you’re a mercenary rascal–just like the Yankees.”
“Exactly,” he grinned. “And the Yankees help me
make my money. Why, last month I sailed my boat
right into New York harbor and took on a cargo.”
“What!” cried Scarlett, interested and excited in
spite of herself. “Didn’t they shell you?”
“My poor innocent! Of course not. There are plenty
of sturdy Union patriots who are not averse to picking up money selling goods to the Confederacy. I run
my boat into New York, buy from Yankee firms, sub
rosa, of course, and away I go. And when that gets
a bit dangerous, I go to Nassau where these same
Union patriots have brought powder and shells and
hoop skirts for me. It’s more convenient than going to England. Sometimes it’s a bit difficult running
it into Charleston or Wilmington–but you’d be surprised how far a little gold goes.”
“Oh, I knew Yankees were vile but I didn’t know–”
“Why quibble about the Yankees earning an honest penny selling out the Union? It won’t matter in
a hundred years. The result will be the same. They
know the Confederacy will be licked eventually, so
why shouldn’t they cash in on it?”
“Licked–us?”
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“Of course.”
“Will you please leave me–or will it be necessary for
me to call my carriage and go home to get rid of you?”
“A red-hot little Rebel,” he said, with another sudden grin. He bowed and sauntered off, leaving her
with her bosom heaving with impotent rage and indignation. There was disappointment burning in her
that she could not quite analyze, the disappointment
of a child seeing illusions crumble. How dared he
take the glamor from the blockaders! And how dared
he say the Confederacy would be licked! He should
be shot for that–shot like a traitor. She looked about
the hall at the familiar faces, so assured of success, so
brave, so devoted, and somehow a cold little chill set
in at her heart. Licked? These people–why, of course
not! The very idea was impossible, disloyal.
“What were you two whispering about?” asked
Melanie, turning to Scarlett as her customers drifted
off. “I couldn’t help seeing that Mrs. Merriwether had
her eye on you all the time and, dear, you know how
she talks.”
“Oh, the man’s impossible–an ill-bred boor,” said
Scarlett. “And as for old lady Merriwether, let her
talk. I’m sick of acting like a ninny, just for her benefit.”
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“Why, Scarlett!” cried Melanie, scandalized.
“Sh-sh,” said Scarlett. “Dr. Meade is going to make
another announcement.”
The gathering quieted again as the doctor raised his
voice, at first in thanks to the ladies who had so willingly given their jewelry.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to propose a surprise– an innovation that may shock some
of you, but I ask you to remember that all this is done
for the hospital and for the benefit of our boys lying
there.”
Everyone edged forward, in anticipation, trying to
imagine what the sedate doctor could propose that
would be shocking.
“The dancing is about to begin and the first number will, of course, be a reel, followed by a waltz.
The dances following, the polkas, the schottisches, the
mazurkas, will be preceded by short reels. I know the
gentle rivalry to lead the reels very well and so–” The
doctor mopped his brow and cast a quizzical glance
at the corner, where his wife sat among the chaperons. “Gentlemen, if you wish to lead a reel with the
lady of your choice, you must bargain for her. I will be
auctioneer and the proceeds will go to the hospital.”
Fans stopped in mid-swish and a ripple of excited
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murmuring ran through the hall. The chaperons’ corner was in tumult and Mrs. Meade, anxious to support her husband in an action of which she heartily
disapproved, was at a disadvantage. Mrs. Elsing,
Mrs. Merriwether and Mrs. Whiting were red with
indignation. But suddenly the Home Guard gave a
cheer and it was taken up by the other uniformed
guests. The young girls clapped their hands and
jumped excitedly.
“Don’t you think it’s–it’s just–just a little like a slave
auction?” whispered Melanie, staring uncertainly at
the embattled doctor who heretofore had been perfect
in her eyes.
Scarlett said nothing but her eyes glittered and her
heart contracted with a little pain. If only she were not
a widow. If only she were Scarlett O’Hara again, out
there on the floor in an apple-green dress with darkgreen velvet ribbons dangling from her bosom and
tuberoses in her black hair–she’d lead that reel. Yes,
indeed! There’d be a dozen men battling for her and
paying over money to the doctor. Oh, to have to sit
here, a wallflower against her will and see Fanny or
Maybelle lead the first reel as the belle of Atlanta!
Above the tumult sounded the voice of the little
Zouave, his Creole accent very obvious: “Eef I may–
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twenty dollars for Mees Maybelle Merriwether.”
Maybelle collapsed with blushes against Fanny’s
shoulder and the two girls hid their faces in each
other’s necks and giggled, as other voices began calling other names, other amounts of money. Dr. Meade
had begun to smile again, ignoring completely the indignant whispers that came from the Ladies’ Hospital
Committee in the corner.
At first, Mrs. Merriwether had stated flatly and
loudly that her Maybelle would never take part in
such a proceeding; but as Maybelle’s name was called
most often and the amount went up to seventy-five
dollars, her protests began to dwindle. Scarlett leaned
her elbows on the counter and almost glared at the
excited laughing crowd surging about the platform,
their hands full of Confederate paper money.
Now, they would all dance–except her and the old
ladies. Now everyone would have a good time, except her. She saw Rhett Butler standing just below the
doctor and, before she could change the expression
of her face, he saw her and one corner of his mouth
went down and one eyebrow went up. She jerked her
chin up and turned away from him and suddenly she
heard her own name called– called in an unmistakable Charleston voice that rang out above the hubbub
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of other names.
“Mrs. Charles Hamilton–one hundred and fifty
dollars–in gold.”
A sudden hush fell on the crowd both at the mention of the sum and at the name. Scarlett was so startled she could not even move. She remained sitting
with her chin in her hands, her eyes wide with astonishment. Everybody turned to look at her. She saw
the doctor lean down from the platform and whisper
something to Rhett Butler. Probably telling him she
was in mourning and it was impossible for her to appear on the floor. She saw Rhett’s shoulders shrug
lazily.
“Another one of our belles, perhaps?” questioned
the doctor.
“No,” said Rhett clearly, his eyes sweeping the
crowd carelessly. “Mrs. Hamilton.”
“I tell you it is impossible,” said the doctor testily.
“Mrs. Hamilton will not–”
Scarlett heard a voice which, at first, she did not recognize as her own.
“Yes, I will!”
She leaped to her feet, her heart hammering so
wildly she feared she could not stand, hammering
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with the thrill of being the center of attention again,
of being the most highly desired girl present and oh,
best of all, at the prospect of dancing again.
“Oh, I don’t care! I don’t care what they say!” she
whispered, as a sweet madness swept over her. She
tossed her head and sped out of the booth, tapping
her heels like castanets, snapping open her black silk
fan to its widest.
For a fleeting instant she saw Melanie’s incredulous
face, the look on the chaperons’ faces, the petulant
girls, the enthusiastic approval of the soldiers.
Then she was on the floor and Rhett Butler was advancing toward her through the aisle of the crowd,
that nasty mocking smile on his face. But she didn’t
care–didn’t care if he were Abe Lincoln himself! She
was going to dance again. She was going to lead
the reel. She swept him a low curtsy and a dazzling
smile and he bowed, one hand on his frilled bosom.
Levi, horrified, was quick to cover the situation and
bawled: “Choose yo’ padners fo’ de Ferginny reel!”
And the orchestra crashed into that best of all reel
tunes, “Dixie.”
“How dare you make me so conspicuous, Captain
Butler?”
“But, my dear Mrs. Hamilton, you so obviously
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wanted to be conspicuous!”
“How could you call my name out in front of everybody?”
“You could have refused.”
“But–I owe it to the Cause–I–I couldn’t think of myself when you were offering so much in gold. Stop
laughing, everyone is looking at us.”
“They will look at us anyway. Don’t try to palm off
that twaddle about the Cause to me. You wanted to
dance and I gave you the opportunity. This march is
the last figure of the reel, isn’t it?”
“Yes–really, I must stop and sit down now.”
“Why? Have I stepped on your feet?”
“No–but they’ll talk about me.”
“Do you really care–down in your heart?”
“Well–”
“You aren’t committing any crime, are you? Why
not dance the waltz with me?”
“But if Mother ever–”
“Still tied to mamma’s apronstrings.”
“Oh, you have the nastiest way of making virtues
sound so stupid.”
“But virtues are stupid. Do you care if people talk?”
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“No–but–well, let’s don’t talk about it. Thank goodness the waltz is beginning. Reels always leave me
breathless.”
“Don’t dodge my questions. Has what other women
said ever mattered to you?”
“Oh, if you’re going to pin me down–no! But a girl
is supposed to mind. Tonight, though, I don’t care.”
“Bravo! Now you are beginning to think for yourself instead of letting others think for you. That’s the
beginning of wisdom.”
“Oh, but–”
“When you’ve been talked about as much as I have,
you’ll realize how little it matters. Just think, there’s
not a home in Charleston where I am received. Not
even my contribution to our just and holy Cause lifts
the ban.”
“How dreadful!”
“Oh, not at all. Until you’ve lost your reputation,
you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.”
“You do talk scandalous!”
“Scandalously and truly. Always providing you
have enough courage–or money–you can do without
a reputation.”
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“Money can’t buy everything.”
“Someone must have told you that. You’d never
think of such a platitude all by yourself. What can’t it
buy?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know–not happiness or love, anyway.”
“Generally it can. And when it can’t, it can buy
some of the most remarkable substitutes.”
“And have you so much money, Captain Butler?”
“What an ill-bred question, Mrs. Hamilton. I’m surprised. But, yes. For a young man cut off without a
shilling in early youth, I’ve done very well. And I’m
sure I’ll clean up a million on the blockade.”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes! What most people don’t seem to realize
is that there is just as much money to be made out of
the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding
of one.”
“And what does all that mean?”
“Your family and my family and everyone here
tonight made their money out of changing a wilderness into a civilization. That’s empire building.
There’s good money in empire building. But, there’s
more in empire wrecking.”
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“What empire are you talking about?”
“This empire we’re living in–the South–the
Confederacy–the Cotton Kingdom–it’s breaking
up right under our feet. Only most fools won’t
see it and take advantage of the situation created
by the collapse. I’m making my fortune out of the
wreckage.”
“Then you really think we’re going to get licked?”
“Yes. Why be an ostrich?”
“Oh, dear, it bores me to talk about such like. Don’t
you ever say pretty things, Captain Butler?”
“Would it please you if I said your eyes were twin
goldfish bowls filled to the brim with the clearest
green water and that when the fish swim to the top,
as they are doing now, you are devilishly charming?”
“Oh, I don’t like that. . . . Isn’t the music gorgeous?
Oh, I could waltz forever! I didn’t know I had missed
it so!”
“You are the most beautiful dancer I’ve ever held in
my arms.”
“Captain Butler, you must not hold me so tightly.
Everybody is looking.”
“If no one were looking, would you care?”
“Captain Butler, you forget yourself.”
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“Not for a minute. How could I, with you in my
arms? . . . What is that tune? Isn’t it new?”
“Yes. Isn’t it divine? It’s something we captured
from the Yankees.”
“What’s the name of it?”
“‘When This Cruel War Is Over.”’
“What are the words? Sing them to me.”
“Dearest one, do you remember When we last did
meet? When you told me how you loved me, Kneeling at my feet? Oh, how proud you stood before me
In your suit of gray, When you vowed from me and
country Ne’er to go astray. Weeping sad and lonely,
Sighs and tears how vain! When this cruel war is over
Pray that we meet again!”
“Of course, it was ‘suit of blue’ but we changed it
to ‘gray.’ . . . Oh, you waltz so well, Captain Butler.
Most big men don’t, you know. And to think it will
be years and years before I’ll dance again.”
“It will only be a few minutes. I’m going to bid you
in for the next reel–and the next and the next.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t! You mustn’t! My reputation will
be ruined.”
“It’s in shreds already, so what does another dance
matter? Maybe I’ll give the other boys a chance after
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I’ve had five or six, but I must have the last one.”
“Oh, all right. I know I’m crazy but I don’t care. I
don’t care a bit what anybody says. I’m so tired of
sitting at home. I’m going to dance and dance–”
“And not wear black? I loathe funeral crepe.”
“Oh, I couldn’t take off mourning–Captain Butler,
you must not hold me so tightly. I’ll be mad at you if
you do.”
“And you look gorgeous when you are mad. I’ll
squeeze you again– there–just to see if you will really get mad. You have no idea how charming you
were that day at Twelve Oaks when you were mad
and throwing things.”
“Oh, please–won’t you forget that?”
“No, it is one of my most priceless memories–a delicately nurtured Southern belle with her Irish up– You
are very Irish, you know.”
“Oh, dear, there’s the end of the music and there’s
Aunt Pittypat coming out of the back room. I know
Mrs. Merriwether must have told her. Oh, for goodness’ sakes, let’s walk over and look out the window.
I don’t want her to catch me now. Her eyes are as big
as saucers.”
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next morning, Pittypat was lachrymose, Melanie was silent and Scarlett defiant.
“I don’t care if they do talk. I’ll bet I made more
money for the hospital than any girl there–more than
all the messy old stuff we sold, too.”
“Oh, dear, what does the money matter?” wailed
Pittypat, wringing her hands. “I just couldn’t believe
my eyes, and poor Charlie hardly dead a year. . . .
And that awful Captain Butler, making you so conspicuous, and he’s a terrible, terrible person, Scarlett. Mrs. Whiting’s cousin, Mrs. Coleman, whose
husband came from Charleston, told me about him.
He’s the black sheep of a lovely family–oh, how could
any of the Butlers ever turn out anything like him?
He isn’t received in Charleston and he has the fastest
reputation and there was something about a girl–
something so bad Mrs. Coleman didn’t even know
what it was–”
“Oh, I can’t believe he’s that bad,” said Melly gently.
“He seemed a perfect gentleman and when you think
how brave he’s been, running the blockade–”
“He isn’t brave,” said Scarlett perversely, pouring
half a pitcher of syrup over her waffles. “He just does
O VER
THE WAFFLES
�PART TWO
it for money. He told me so. He doesn’t care anything
about the Confederacy and he says we’re going to get
licked. But he dances divinely.”
Her audience was speechless with horror.
“I’m tired of sitting at home and I’m not going to
do it any longer. If they all talked about me about last
night, then my reputation is already gone and it won’t
matter what else they say.”
It did not occur to her that the idea was Rhett Butler’s. It came so patly and fitted so well with what she
was thinking.
“Oh! What will your mother say when she hears?
What will she think of me?”
A cold qualm of guilt assailed Scarlett at the thought
of Ellen’s consternation, should she ever learn of her
daughter’s scandalous conduct. But she took heart at
the thought of the twenty-five miles between Atlanta
and Tara. Miss Pitty certainly wouldn’t tell Ellen. It
would put her in such a bad light as a chaperon. And
if Pitty didn’t tattle, she was safe.
“I think–” said Pitty, “yes, I think I’d better write
Henry a letter about it–much as I hate it–but he’s our
only male relative, and make him go speak reprovingly to Captain Butler– Oh, dear, if Charlie were only
alive– You must never, never speak to that man again,
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Scarlett.”
Melanie had been sitting quietly, her hands in her
lap, her waffles cooling on her plate. She arose and,
coming behind Scarlett, put her arms about her neck.
“Darling,” she said, “don’t you get upset. I understand and it was a brave thing you did last night and
it’s going to help the hospital a lot. And if anybody
dares say one little word about you, I’ll tend to them.
. . . Aunt Pitty, don’t cry. It has been hard on Scarlett,
not going anywhere. She’s just a baby.” Her fingers
played in Scarlett’s black hair. “And maybe we’d all
be better off if we went out occasionally to parties.
Maybe we’ve been very selfish, staying here with our
grief. War times aren’t like other times. When I think
of all the soldiers in town who are far from home and
haven’t any friends to call on at night–and the ones
in the hospital who are well enough to be out of bed
and not well enough to go back in the army– Why,
we have been selfish. We ought to have three convalescents in our house this minute, like everybody else,
and some of the soldiers out to dinner every Sunday.
There, Scarlett, don’t you fret. People won’t talk when
they understand. We know you loved Charlie.”
Scarlett was far from fretting and Melanie’s soft
hands in her hair were irritating. She wanted to jerk
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her head away and say “Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!” for the
warming memory was still on her of how the Home
Guard and the militia and the soldiers from the hospital had fought for her dances last night. Of all the
people in the world, she didn’t want Melly for a defender. She could defend herself, thank you, and if the
old cats wanted to squall– well, she could get along
without the old cats. There were too many nice officers in the world for her to bother about what old
women said.
Pittypat was dabbing at her eyes under Melanie’s
soothing words when Prissy entered with a bulky letter.
“Fer you. Miss Melly. A lil nigger boy brung it.”
“For me?” said Melly, wondering, as she ripped
open the envelope.
Scarlett was making headway with her waffles and
so noticed nothing until she heard a burst of tears
from Melly and, looking up, saw Aunt Pittypat’s
hand go to her heart.
“Ashley’s dead!” screamed Pittypat, throwing her
head back and letting her arms go limp.
“Oh, my God!” cried Scarlett, her blood turning to
ice water.
“No! No!” cried Melanie. “Quick! Her smelling
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salts, Scarlett! There, there, honey, do you feel better? Breathe deep. No, it’s not Ashley. I’m so sorry I
scared you. I was crying because I’m so happy,” and
suddenly she opened her clenched palm and pressed
some object that was in it to her lips. “I’m so happy,”
and burst into tears again.
Scarlett caught a fleeting glimpse and saw that it
was a broad gold ring.
“Read it,” said Melly, pointing to the letter on the
floor. “Oh, how sweet, how kind, he is!”
Scarlett, bewildered, picked up the single sheet and
saw written in a black, bold hand: “The Confederacy
may need the lifeblood of its men but not yet does it
demand the heart’s blood of its women. Accept, dear
Madam, this token of my reverence for your courage
and do not think that your sacrifice has been in vain,
for this ring has been redeemed at ten times its value.
Captain Rhett Butler.”
Melanie slipped the ring on her finger and looked at
it lovingly.
“I told you he was a gentleman, didn’t I?” she
said turning to Pittypat, her smile bright through the
teardrops on her face. “No one but a gentleman
of refinement and thoughtfulness would ever have
thought how it broke my heart to– I’ll send my gold
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chain instead. Aunt Pittypat, you must write him a
note and invite him to Sunday dinner so I can thank
him.”
In the excitement, neither of the others seemed to
have thought that Captain Butler had not returned
Scarlett’s ring, too. But she thought of it, annoyed.
And she knew it had not been Captain Butler’s refinement that had prompted so gallant a gesture. It was
that he intended to be asked into Pittypat’s house and
knew unerringly how to get the invitation.
“I was greatly disturbed to hear of your recent conduct,” ran Ellen’s letter and Scarlett, who was reading
it at the table, scowled. Bad news certainly traveled
swiftly. She had often heard in Charleston and Savannah that Atlanta people gossiped more and meddled
in other people’s business more than any other people
in the South, and now she believed it. The bazaar had
taken place Monday night and today was only Thursday. Which of the old cats had taken it upon herself
to write Ellen? For a moment she suspected Pittypat
but immediately abandoned that thought. Poor Pittypat had been quaking in her number-three shoes for
fear of being blamed for Scarlett’s forward conduct
and would be the last to notify Ellen of her own inadequate chaperonage. Probably it was Mrs. Merri381
�PART TWO
wether.
“It is difficult for me to believe that you could so forget yourself and your rearing. I will pass over the impropriety of your appearing publicly while in mourning, realizing your warm desire to be of assistance to
the hospital. But to dance, and with such a man as
Captain Butler! I have heard much of him (as who
has not?) and Pauline wrote me only last week that
he is a man of bad repute and not even received by
his own family in Charleston, except of course by his
heartbroken mother. He is a thoroughly bad character
who would take advantage of your youth and innocence to make you conspicuous and publicly disgrace
you and your family. How could Miss Pittypat have
so neglected her duty to you?”
Scarlett looked across the table at her aunt. The old
lady had recognized Ellen’s handwriting and her fat
little mouth was pursed in a frightened way, like a
baby who fears a scolding and hopes to ward it off by
tears.
“I am heartbroken to think that you could so soon
forget your rearing. I have thought of calling you
home immediately but will leave that to your father’s
discretion. He will be in Atlanta Friday to speak with
Captain Butler and to escort you home. I fear he
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will be severe with you despite my pleadings. I hope
and pray it was only youth and thoughtlessness that
prompted such forward conduct. No one can wish to
serve our Cause more than I, and I wish my daughters
to feel the same way, but to disgrace–”
There was more in the same vein but Scarlett did not
finish it. For once, she was thoroughly frightened.
She did not feel reckless and defiant now. She felt
as young and guilty as when she was ten and had
thrown a buttered biscuit at Suellen at the table. To
think of her gentle mother reproving her so harshly
and her father coming to town to talk to Captain Butler. The real seriousness of the matter grew on her.
Gerald was going to be severe. This was one time
when she knew she couldn’t wiggle out of her punishment by sitting on his knee and being sweet and
pert.
“Not–not bad news?” quavered Pittypat.
“Pa is coming tomorrow and he’s going to land on
me like a duck on a June bug,” answered Scarlett dolorously.
“Prissy, find my salts,” fluttered Pittypat, pushing
back her chair from her half-eaten meal. “I–I feel
faint.”
“Dey’s in yo’ skirt pocket,” said Prissy, who had
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been hovering behind Scarlett, enjoying the sensational drama. Mist’ Gerald in a temper was always
exciting, providing his temper was not directed at her
kinky head. Pitty fumbled at her skirt and held the
vial to her nose.
“You all must stand by me and not leave me alone
with him for one minute,” cried Scarlett. “He’s so
fond of you both, and if you are with me he can’t fuss
at me.”
“I couldn’t,” said Pittypat weakly, rising to her feet.
“I–I feel ill. I must go lie down. I shall lie down all
day tomorrow. You must give him my excuses.”
“Coward!” thought Scarlett, glowering at her.
Melly rallied to the defense, though white and
frightened at the prospect of facing the fire-eating Mr.
O’Hara. “I’ll–I’ll help you explain how you did it for
the hospital. Surely he’ll understand.”
“No, he won’t,” said Scarlett. “And oh, I shall die
if I have to go back to Tara in disgrace, like Mother
threatens!”
“Oh, you can’t go home,” cried Pittypat, bursting
into tears. “If you did I should be forced–yes, forced
to ask Henry to come live with us, and you know I
just couldn’t live with Henry. I’m so nervous with
just Melly in the house at night, with so many strange
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men in town. You’re so brave I don’t mind being here
without a man!”
“Oh, he couldn’t take you to Tara!” said Melly, looking as if she too would cry in a moment. “This is your
home now. What would we ever do without you?”
“You’d be glad to do without me if you knew what I
really think of you,” thought Scarlett sourly, wishing
there were some other person than Melanie to help
ward off Gerald’s wrath. It was sickening to be defended by someone you disliked so much.
“Perhaps we should recall our invitation to Captain
Butler–” began Pittypat.
“Oh, we couldn’t! It would be the height of rudeness!” cried Melly, distressed.
“Help me to bed. I’m going to be ill,” moaned Pittypat. “Oh, Scarlett, how could you have brought this
on me?”
Pittypat was ill and in her bed when Gerald arrived
the next afternoon. She sent many messages of regret
to him from behind her closed door and left the two
frightened girls to preside over the supper table. Gerald was ominously silent although he kissed Scarlett
and pinched Melanie’s cheek approvingly and called
her “Cousin Melly.” Scarlett would have infinitely
preferred bellowing oaths and accusations. True to
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her promise, Melanie clung to Scarlett’s skirts like a
small rustling shadow and Gerald was too much of
a gentleman to upbraid his daughter in front of her.
Scarlett had to admit that Melanie carried off things
very well, acting as if she knew nothing was amiss,
and she actually succeeded in engaging Gerald in
conversation, once the supper had been served.
“I want to know all about the County,” she said,
beaming upon him. “India and Honey are such
poor correspondents, and I know you know everything that goes on down there. Do tell us about Joe
Fontaine’s wedding.”
Gerald warmed to the flattery and said that the wedding had been a quiet affair, “not like you girls had,”
for Joe had only a few days’ furlough. Sally, the little Munroe chit, looked very pretty. No, he couldn’t
recall what she wore but he did hear that she didn’t
have a “second-day” dress.
“She didn’t!” exclaimed the girls, scandalized.
“Sure, because she didn’t have a second day,” Gerald explained and bawled with laughter before recalling that perhaps such remarks were not fit for female
ears. Scarlett’s spirits soared at his laugh and she
blessed Melanie’s tact.
“Back Joe went to Virginia the next day,” Gerald
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added hastily. “There was no visiting about and dancing afterwards. The Tarleton twins are home.”
“We heard that. Have they recovered?”
“They weren’t badly wounded. Stuart had it in the
knee and a minie ball went through Brent’s shoulder. You had it, too, that they were mentioned in dispatches for bravery?”
“No! Tell us!”
“Hare brained–both of them. I’m believing there’s
Irish in them,” said Gerald complacently. “I forget
what they did, but Brent is a lieutenant now.”
Scarlett felt pleased at hearing of their exploits,
pleased in a proprietary manner. Once a man had
been her beau, she never lost the conviction that he
belonged to her, and all his good deeds redounded to
her credit.
“And I’ve news that’ll be holding the both of you,”
said Gerald. “They’re saying Stu is courting at Twelve
Oaks again.”
“Honey or India?” questioned Melly excitedly,
while Scarlett stared almost indignantly.
“Oh, Miss India, to be sure. Didn’t she have him fast
till this baggage of mine winked at him?”
“Oh,” said Melly, somewhat embarrassed at Ger387
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ald’s outspokenness.
“And more than that, young Brent has taken to
hanging about Tara. Now!”
Scarlett could not speak. The defection of her beaux
was almost insulting. Especially when she recalled
how wildly both the twins had acted when she told
them she was going to marry Charles. Stuart had
even threatened to shoot Charles, or Scarlett, or himself, or all three. It had been most exciting.
“Suellen?”
questioned Melly, breaking into a
pleased smile. “But I thought Mr. Kennedy–”
“Oh, him?” said Gerald. “Frank Kennedy still
pussyfoots about, afraid of his shadow, and I’ll be asking him his intentions soon if he doesn’t speak up.
No, ‘tis me baby.”
“Carreen?”
“She’s nothing but a child!” said Scarlett sharply,
finding her tongue.
“She’s little more than a year younger than you
were, Miss, when you were married,” retorted Gerald. “Is it you’re grudging your old beau to your sister?”
Melly blushed, unaccustomed to such frankness,
and signaled Peter to bring in the sweet potato pie.
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Frantically she cast about in her mind for some other
topic of conversation which would not be so personal
but which would divert Mr. O’Hara from the purpose of his trip. She could think of nothing but, once
started, Gerald needed no stimulus other than an audience. He talked on about the thievery of the commissary department which every month increased its
demands, the knavish stupidity of Jefferson Davis
and the blackguardery of the Irish who were being
enticed into the Yankee army by bounty money.
When the wine was on the table and the two girls
rose to leave him, Gerald cocked a severe eye at
his daughter from under frowning brows and commanded her presence alone for a few minutes. Scarlett cast a despairing glance at Melly, who twisted her
handkerchief helplessly and went out, softly pulling
the sliding doors together.
“How now, Missy!” bawled Gerald, pouring himself a glass of port. “‘Tis a fine way to act! Is it another husband you’re trying to catch and you so fresh
a widow?”
“Not so loud, Pa, the servants–”
“They know already, to be sure, and everybody
knows of our disgrace. And your poor mother taking
to her bed with it and me not able to hold up me head.
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‘Tis shameful. No, Puss, you need not think to get
around me with tears this time,” he said hastily and
with some panic in his voice as Scarlett’s lids began to
bat and her mouth to screw up. “I know you. You’d
be flirting at the wake of your husband. Don’t cry.
There, I’ll be saying no more tonight, for I’m going
to see this fine Captain Butler who makes so light of
me daughter’s reputation. But in the morning– There
now, don’t cry. Twill do you no good at all, at all.
‘Tis firm that I am and back to Tara you’ll be going tomorrow before you’re disgracing the lot of us again.
Don’t cry, pet. Look what I’ve brought you! Isn’t that
a pretty present? See, look! How could you be putting
so much trouble on me, bringing me all the way up
here when ‘tis a busy man I am? Don’t cry!”
Melanie and Pittypat had gone to sleep hours before, but Scarlett lay awake in the warm darkness, her
heart heavy and frightened in her breast. To leave Atlanta when life had just begun again and go home
and face Ellen! She would rather die than face her
mother. She wished she were dead, this very minute,
then everyone would be sorry they had been so hateful. She turned and tossed on the hot pillow until a
noise far up the quiet street reached her ears. It was
an oddly familiar noise, blurred and indistinct though
it was. She slipped out of bed and went to the win390
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dow. The street with its over-arching trees was softly,
deeply black under a dim star-studded sky. The noise
came closer, the sound of wheels, the plod of a horse’s
hooves and voices. And suddenly she grinned for,
as a voice thick with brogue and whisky came to her,
raised in “Peg in a Low-backed Car,” she knew. This
might not be Jonesboro on Court Day, but Gerald was
coming home in the same condition.
She saw the dark bulk of a buggy stop in front of
the house and indistinct figures alight. Someone was
with him. Two figures paused at the gate and she
heard the click of the latch and Gerald’s voice came
plain,
“Now I’ll be giving you the ‘Lament for Robert Emmet.’ ‘Tis a song you should be knowing, me lad. I’ll
teach it to you.”
“I’d like to learn it,” replied his companion, a hint
of buried laughter in his flat drawling voice. “But not
now, Mr. O’Hara.”
“Oh, my God, it’s that hateful Butler man!” thought
Scarlett, at first annoyed. Then she took heart. At
least they hadn’t shot each other. And they must be
on amicable terms to be coming home together at this
hour and in this condition.
“Sing it I will and listen you will or I’ll be shooting
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you for the Orangeman you are.”
“Not Orangeman–Charlestonian.”
“‘Tis no better. ‘Tis worse. I have two sister-in-laws
in Charleston and I know.”
“Is he going to tell the whole neighborhood?”
thought Scarlett panic-stricken, reaching for her
wrapper. But what could she do? She couldn’t go
downstairs at this hour of the night and drag her father in from the street.
With no further warning, Gerald, who was hanging on the gate, threw back his head and began the
“Lament,” in a roaring bass. Scarlett rested her elbows on the window sill and listened, grinning unwillingly. It would be a beautiful song, if only her
father could carry a tune. It was one of her favorite
songs and, for a moment, she followed the fine melancholy of those verses beginning:
“She is far from the land where her young hero
sleeps And lovers are round her sighing.”
The song went on and she heard stirrings in Pittypat’s and Melly’s rooms. Poor things, they’d certainly
be upset. They were not used to full-blooded males
like Gerald. When the song had finished, two forms
merged into one, came up the walk and mounted the
steps. A discreet knock sounded at the door.
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“I suppose I must go down,” thought Scarlett. “After all he’s my father and poor Pitty would die before
she’d go.” Besides, she didn’t want the servants to
see Gerald in his present condition. And if Peter tried
to put him to bed, he might get unruly. Pork was the
only one who knew how to handle him.
She pinned the wrapper close about her throat, lit
her bedside candle and hurried down the dark stairs
into the front hall. Setting the candle on the stand,
she unlocked the door and in the wavering light she
saw Rhett Butler, not a ruffle disarranged, supporting her small, thickset father. The “Lament” had evidently been Gerald’s swan song for he was frankly
hanging onto his companion’s arm. His hat was gone,
his crisp long hair was tumbled in a white mane, his
cravat was under one ear, and there were liquor stains
down his shirt bosom.
“Your father, I believe?” said Captain Butler, his
eyes amused in his swarthy face. He took in her
dishabille in one glance that seemed to penetrate
through her wrapper.
“Bring him in,” she said shortly, embarrassed at her
attire, infuriated at Gerald for putting her in a position where this man could laugh at her.
Rhett propelled Gerald forward. “Shall I help you
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take him upstairs? You cannot manage him. He’s
quite heavy.”
Her mouth fell open with horror at the audacity of
his proposal. Just imagine what Pittypat and Melly
cowering in their beds would think, should Captain
Butler come upstairs!
“Mother of God, no! In here, in the parlor on that
settee.”
“The suttee, did you say?”
“I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head.
Here. Now lay him down.”
“Shall I take off his boots?”
“No. He’s slept in them before.”
She could have bitten off her tongue for that slip, for
he laughed softly as he crossed Gerald’s legs.
“Please go, now.”
He walked out into the dim hall and picked up the
hat he had dropped on the doorsill.
“I will be seeing you Sunday at dinner,” he said and
went out, closing the door noiselessly behind him.
Scarlett arose at five-thirty, before the servants had
come in from the back yard to start breakfast, and
slipped down the steps to the quiet lower floor. Gerald was awake, sitting on the sofa, his hands gripping
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his bullet head as if he wished to crush it between his
palms. He looked up furtively as she entered. The
pain of moving his eyes was too excruciating to be
borne and he groaned.
“Wurra the day!”
“It’s a fine way you’ve acted, Pa,” she began in a
furious whisper. “Coming home at such an hour and
waking all the neighbors with your singing.”
“I sang?”
“Sang! You woke the echoes singing the ‘Lament.”’
“‘Tis nothing I’m remembering.”
“The neighbors will remember it till their dying day
and so will Miss Pittypat and Melanie.”
“Mother of Sorrows,” moaned Gerald, moving a
thickly furred tongue around parched lips. “‘Tis little I’m remembering after the game started.”
“Game?”
“That laddybuck Butler bragged that he was the best
poker player in–”
“How much did you lose?”
“Why, I won, naturally. A drink or two helps me
game.”
“Look in your wallet.”
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As if every movement was agony, Gerald removed
his wallet from his coat and opened it. It was empty
and he looked at it in forlorn bewilderment.
“Five hundred dollars,” he said. “And ‘twas to buy
things from the blockaders for Mrs. O’Hara, and now
not even fare left to Tara.”
As she looked indignantly at the empty purse, an
idea took form in Scarlett’s mind and grew swiftly.
“I’ll not be holding up my head in this town,” she
began. “You’ve disgraced us all.”
“Hold your tongue, Puss. Can you not see me head
is bursting?”
“Coming home drunk with a man like Captain Butler, and singing at the top of your lungs for everyone
to hear and losing all that money.”
“The man is too clever with cards to be a gentleman.
He–”
“What will Mother say when she hears?”
He looked up in sudden anguished apprehension.
“You wouldn’t be telling your mother a word and upsetting her, now would you?”
Scarlett said nothing but pursed her lips.
“Think now how ‘twould hurt her and her so gentle.”
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“And to think, Pa, that you said only last night I had
disgraced the family! Me, with my poor little dance to
make money for the soldiers. Oh, I could cry.”
“Well, don’t,” pleaded Gerald. “‘Twould be more
than me poor head could stand and sure ‘tis bursting
now.”
“And you said that I–”
“Now Puss, now Puss, don’t you be hurt at what
your poor old father said and him not meaning a
thing and not understanding a thing! Sure, you’re a
fine well-meaning girl, I’m sure.”
“And wanting to take me home in disgrace.”
“Ah, darling, I wouldn’t be doing that. ‘Twas to
tease you. You won’t be mentioning the money to
your mother and her in a flutter about expenses already?”
“No,” said Scarlett frankly, “I won’t, if you’ll let me
stay here and if you’ll tell Mother that ‘twas nothing
but a lot of gossip from old cats.”
Gerald looked mournfully at his daughter.
“‘Tis blackmail, no less.”
“And last night was a scandal, no less.”
“Well,” he began wheedlingly, “we’ll be forgetting
all that. And do you think a fine pretty lady like Miss
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Pittypat would be having any brandy in the house?
The hair of the dog–”
Scarlett turned and tiptoed through the silent hall
into the dining room to get the brandy bottle that
she and Melly privately called the “swoon bottle” because Pittypat always took a sip from it when her fluttering heart made her faint–or seem to faint. Triumph
was written on her face and no trace of shame for
her unfilial treatment of Gerald. Now Ellen would
be soothed with lies if any other busybody wrote her.
Now she could stay in Atlanta. Now she could do
almost as she pleased, Pittypat being the weak vessel that she was. She unlocked the cellaret and stood
for a moment with the bottle and glass pressed to her
bosom.
She saw a long vista of picnics by the bubbling
waters of Peachtree Creek and barbecues at Stone
Mountain, receptions and balls, afternoon danceables, buggy rides and Sunday-night buffet suppers.
She would be there, right in the heart of things, right
in the center of a crowd of men. And men fell in
love so easily, after you did little things for them at
the hospital. She wouldn’t mind the hospital so much
now. Men were so easily stirred when they had been
ill. They fell into a clever girl’s hand just like the ripe
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peaches at Tara when the trees were gently shaken.
She went back toward her father with the reviving
liquor, thanking Heaven that the famous O’Hara head
had not been able to survive last night’s bout and
wondering suddenly if Rhett Butler had had anything
to do with that.
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of the following week, Scarlett came
home from the hospital weary and indignant. She
was tired from standing on her feet all morning
and irritable because Mrs. Merriwether had scolded
her sharply for sitting on a soldier’s bed while she
dressed his wounded arm. Aunt Pitty and Melanie,
bonneted in their best, were on the porch with Wade
and Prissy, ready for their weekly round of calls. Scarlett asked to be excused from accompanying them
and went upstairs to her room.
When the last sound of carriage wheels had died
away and she knew the family was safely out of sight,
she slipped quietly into Melanie’s room and turned
the key in the lock. It was a prim, virginal little
room and it lay still and warm in the slanting rays
of the four-o’clock sun. The floors were glistening
and bare except for a few bright rag rugs, and the
white walls unornamented save for one corner which
Melanie had fitted up as a shrine.
Here, under a draped Confederate flag, hung the
gold-hilted saber that Melanie’s father had carried in
the Mexican War, the same saber Charles had worn
away to war. Charles’ sash and pistol belt hung there
too, with his revolver in the holster. Between the
O N AN AFTERNOON
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saber and the pistol was a daguerreotype of Charles
himself, very stiff and proud in his gray uniform, his
great brown eyes shining out of the frame and a shy
smile on his lips.
Scarlett did not even glance at the picture but went
unhesitatingly across the room to the square rosewood writing box that stood on the table beside the
narrow bed. From it she took a pack of letters tied together with a blue ribbon, addressed in Ashley’s hand
to Melanie. On the top was the letter which had come
that morning and this one she opened.
When Scarlett first began secretly reading these letters, she had been so stricken of conscience and
so fearful of discovery she could hardly open the
envelopes for trembling. Now, her never- tooscrupulous sense of honor was dulled by repetition
of the offense and even fear of discovery had subsided. Occasionally, she thought with a sinking heart,
“What would Mother say if she knew?” She knew
Ellen would rather see her dead than know her guilty
of such dishonor. This had worried Scarlett at first,
for she still wanted to be like her mother in every respect. But the temptation to read the letters was too
great and she put the thought of Ellen out of her mind.
She had become adept at putting unpleasant thoughts
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out of her mind these days. She had learned to say, “I
won’t think of this or that bothersome thought now.
I’ll think about it tomorrow.” Generally when tomorrow came, the thought either did not occur at all or it
was so attenuated by the delay it was not very troublesome. So the matter of Ashley’s letters did not lie
very heavily on her conscience.
Melanie was always generous with the letters, reading parts of them aloud to Aunt Pitty and Scarlett.
But it was the part she did not read that tormented
Scarlett, that drove her to surreptitious reading of her
sister-in-law’s mail. She had to know if Ashley had
come to love his wife since marrying her. She had to
know if he even pretended to love her. Did he address
tender endearments to her? What sentiments did he
express and with what warmth?
She carefully smoothed out the letter.
Ashley’s small even writing leaped up at her as she
read, “My dear wife,” and she breathed in relief. He
wasn’t calling Melanie “Darling” or “Sweetheart” yet.
“My Dear wife: You write me saying you are
alarmed lest I be concealing my real thoughts from
you and you ask me what is occupying my mind these
days–”
“Mother of God!” thought Scarlett, in a panic of
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guilt. “‘Concealing his real thoughts.’ Can Melly have
read his mind? Or my mind? Does she suspect that
he and I–”
Her hands trembled with fright as she held the letter
closer, but as she read the next paragraph she relaxed.
“Dear Wife, if I have concealed aught from you it is
because I did not wish to lay a burden on your shoulders, to add to your worries for my physical safety
with those of my mental turmoil. But I can keep nothing from you, for you know me too well. Do not be
alarmed. I have no wound. I have not been ill. I
have enough to eat and occasionally a bed to sleep in.
A soldier can ask for no more. But, Melanie, heavy
thoughts lie on my heart and I will open my heart to
you.
“These summer nights I lie awake, long after the
camp is sleeping, and I look up at the stars and,
over and over, I wonder, ‘Why are you here, Ashley
Wilkes? What are you fighting for?’
“Not for honor and glory, certainly. War is a dirty
business and I do not like dirt. I am not a soldier
and I have no desire to seek the bubble reputation
even in the cannon’s mouth. Yet, here I am at the
wars–whom God never intended to be other than a
studious country gentleman. For, Melanie, bugles do
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not stir my blood nor drums entice my feet and I see
too clearly that we have been betrayed, betrayed by
our arrogant Southern selves, believing that one of us
could whip a dozen Yankees, believing that King Cotton could rule the world. Betrayed, too, by words
and catch phrases, prejudices and hatreds coming
from the mouths of those highly placed, those men
whom we respected and revered–‘King Cotton, Slavery, States’ Rights, Damn Yankees.’
“And so when I lie on my blanket and look up
at the stars and say ‘What are you fighting for?’ I
think of States’ Rights and cotton and the darkies and
the Yankees whom we have been bred to hate, and I
know that none of these is the reason why I am fighting. Instead, I see Twelve Oaks and remember how
the moonlight slants across the white columns, and
the unearthly way the magnolias look, opening under the moon, and how the climbing roses make the
side porch shady even at the hottest noon. And I see
Mother, sewing there, as she did when I was a little
boy. And I hear the darkies coming home across the
fields at dusk, tired and singing and ready for supper, and the sound of the windlass as the bucket goes
down into the cool well. And there’s the long view
down the road to the river, across the cotton fields,
and the mist rising from the bottom lands in the twi404
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light. And that is why I’m here who have no love
of death or misery or glory and no hatred for anyone.
Perhaps that is what is called patriotism, love of home
and country. But Melanie, it goes deeper than that.
For, Melanie, these things I have named are but the
symbols of the thing for which I risk my life, symbols
of the kind of life I love. For I am fighting for the old
days, the old ways I love so much but which, I fear,
are now gone forever, no matter how the die may fall.
For, win or lose, we lose just the same.
“If we win this war and have the Cotton Kingdom
of our dreams, we still have lost, for we will become
a different people and the old quiet ways will go. The
world will be at our doors clamoring for cotton and
we can command our own price. Then, I fear, we will
become like the Yankees, at whose money-making activities, acquisitiveness and commercialism we now
sneer. And if we lose, Melanie, if we lose!
“I am not afraid of danger or capture or wounds or
even death, if death must come, but I do fear that
once this war is over, we will never get back to the
old times. And I belong in those old times. I do not
belong in this mad present of killing and I fear I will
not fit into any future, try though I may. Nor will you,
my dear, for you and I are of the same blood. I do not
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know what the future will bring, but it cannot be as
beautiful or as satisfying as the past.
“I lie and look at the boys sleeping near me and I
wonder if the twins or Alex or Cade think these same
thoughts. I wonder if they know they are fighting for
a Cause that was lost the minute the first shot was
fired, for our Cause is really our own way of living
and that is gone already. But I do not think they think
these things and they are lucky.
“I had not thought of this for us when I asked you
to marry me. I had thought of life going on at Twelve
Oaks as it had always done, peacefully, easily, unchanging. We are alike, Melanie, loving the same
quiet things, and I saw before us a long stretch of
uneventful years in which to read, hear music and
dream. But not this! Never this! That this could happen to us all, this wrecking of old ways, this bloody
slaughter and hate! Melanie, nothing is worth it–
States’ Rights, nor slaves, nor cotton. Nothing is
worth what is happening to us now and what may
happen, for if the Yankees whip us the future will be
one of incredible horror. And, my dear, they may yet
whip us.
“I should not write those words. I should not even
think them. But you have asked me what was in my
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heart, and the fear of defeat is there. Do you remember at the barbecue, the day our engagement was announced, that a man named Butler, a Charlestonian
by his accent, nearly caused a fight by his remarks
about the ignorance of Southerners? Do you recall
how the twins wanted to shoot him because he said
we had few foundries and factories, mills and ships,
arsenals and machine shops? Do you recall how he
said the Yankee fleet could bottle us up so tightly we
could not ship out our cotton? He was right. We are
fighting the Yankees’ new rifles with Revolutionary
War muskets, and soon the blockade will be too tight
for even medical supplies to slip in. We should have
paid heed to cynics like Butler who knew, instead of
statesmen who felt–and talked. He said, in effect, that
the South had nothing with which to wage war but
cotton and arrogance. Our cotton is worthless and
what he called arrogance is all that is left. But I call
that arrogance matchless courage. If–”
But Scarlett carefully folded up the letter without
finishing it and thrust it back into the envelope, too
bored to read further. Besides, the tone of the letter
vaguely depressed her with its foolish talk of defeat.
After all, she wasn’t reading Melanie’s mail to learn
Ashley’s puzzling and uninteresting ideas. She had
had to listen to enough of them when he sat on the
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porch at Tara in days gone by.
All she wanted to know was whether he wrote impassioned letters to his wife. So far he had not. She
had read every letter in the writing box and there was
nothing in any one of them that a brother might not
have written to a sister. They were affectionate, humorous, discursive, but not the letters of a lover. Scarlett had received too many ardent love letters herself
not to recognize the authentic note of passion when
she saw it. And that note was missing. As always
after her secret readings, a feeling of smug satisfaction enveloped her, for she felt certain that Ashley still
loved her. And always she wondered sneeringly why
Melanie did not realize that Ashley only loved her
as a friend. Melanie evidently found nothing lacking
in her husband’s messages but Melanie had had no
other man’s love letters with which to compare Ashley’s.”
“He writes such crazy letters,” Scarlett thought. “If
ever any husband of mine wrote me such twaddletwaddle, he’d certainly hear from me! Why, even
Charlie wrote better letters than these.”
She flipped back the edges of the letters, looking
at the dates, remembering their contents. In them
there were no fine descriptive pages of bivouacs and
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charges such as Darcy Meade wrote his parents or
poor Dallas McLure had written his old-maid sisters,
Misses Faith and Hope. The Meades and McLures
proudly read these letters all over the neighborhood,
and Scarlett had frequently felt a secret shame that
Melanie had no such letters from Ashley to read aloud
at sewing circles.
It was as though when writing Melanie, Ashley tried
to ignore the war altogether, and sought to draw
about the two of them a magic circle of timelessness,
shutting out everything that had happened since Fort
Sumter was the news of the day. It was almost as if he
were trying to believe there wasn’t any war. He wrote
of books which he and Melanie had read and songs
they had sung, of old friends they knew and places
he had visited on his Grand Tour. Through the letters ran a wistful yearning to be back home at Twelve
Oaks, and for pages he wrote of the hunting and the
long rides through the still forest paths under frosty
autumn stars, the barbecues, the fish fries, the quiet
of moonlight nights and the serene charm of the old
house.
She thought of his words in the letter she had just
read: “Not this! Never this!” and they seemed to
cry of a tormented soul facing something he could
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not face, yet must face. It puzzled her for, if he
was not afraid of wounds and death, what was it he
feared? Unanalytical, she struggled with the complex
thought.
“The war disturbs him and he–he doesn’t like things
that disturb him. . . . Me, for instance. . . . He loved
me but he was afraid to marry me because–for fear
I’d upset his way of thinking and living. No, it wasn’t
exactly that he was afraid. Ashley isn’t a coward. He
couldn’t be when he’s been mentioned in dispatches
and when Colonel Sloan wrote that letter to Melly all
about his gallant conduct in leading the charge. Once
he’s made up his mind to do something, no one could
be braver or more determined but– He lives inside his
head instead of outside in the world and he hates to
come out into the world and– Oh, I don’t know what
it is! If I’d just understood this one thing about him
years ago, I know he’d have married me.”
She stood for a moment holding the letters to her
breast, thinking longingly of Ashley. Her emotions
toward him had not changed since the day when she
first fell in love with him. They were the same emotions that struck her speechless that day when she
was fourteen years old and she had stood on the
porch of Tara and seen Ashley ride up smiling, his
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hair shining silver in the morning sun. Her love was
still a young girl’s adoration for a man she could not
understand, a man who possessed all the qualities she
did not own but which she admired. He was still
a young girl’s dream of the Perfect Knight and her
dream asked no more than acknowledgment of his
love, went no further than hopes of a kiss.
After reading the letters, she felt certain he did love
her, Scarlett, even though he had married Melanie,
and that certainty was almost all that she desired. She
was still that young and untouched. Had Charles
with his fumbling awkwardness and his embarrassed
intimacies tapped any of the deep vein of passionate
feeling within her, her dreams of Ashley would not be
ending with a kiss. But those few moonlight nights
alone with Charles had not touched her emotions or
ripened her to maturity. Charles had awakened no
idea of what passion might be or tenderness or true
intimacy of body or spirit.
All that passion meant to her was servitude to inexplicable male madness, unshared by females, a
painful and embarrassing process that led inevitably
to the still more painful process of childbirth. That
marriage should be like this was no surprise to her.
Ellen had hinted before the wedding that marriage
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was something women must bear with dignity and
fortitude, and the whispered comments of other matrons since her widowhood had confirmed this. Scarlett was glad to be done with passion and marriage.
She was done with marriage but not with love, for
her love for Ashley was something different, having
nothing to do with passion or marriage, something
sacred and breathtakingly beautiful, an emotion that
grew stealthily through the long days of her enforced
silence, feeding on oft-thumbed memories and hopes.
She sighed as she carefully tied the ribbon about the
packet, wondering for the thousandth time just what
it was in Ashley that eluded her understanding. She
tried to think the matter to some satisfactory conclusion but, as always, the conclusion evaded her uncomplex mind. She put the letters back in the lap
secretary and closed the lid. Then she frowned, for
her mind went back to the last part of the letter she
had just read, to his mention of Captain Butler. How
strange that Ashley should be impressed by something that scamp had said a year ago. Undeniably
Captain Butler was a scamp, for all that he danced
divinely. No one but a scamp would say the things
about the Confederacy that he had said at the bazaar.
She crossed the room to the mirror and patted her
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smooth hair approvingly. Her spirits rose, as always
at the sight of her white skin and slanting green eyes,
and she smiled to bring out her dimples. Then she
dismissed Captain Butler from her mind as she happily viewed her reflection, remembering how Ashley
had always liked her dimples. No pang of conscience
at loving another woman’s husband or reading that
woman’s mail disturbed her pleasure in her youth
and charm and her renewed assurance of Ashley’s
love.
She unlocked the door and went down the dim
winding stair with a light heart. Halfway down she
began singing “When This Cruel War Is Over.”
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on, successfully for the most part, but
people had stopped saying “One more victory and
the war is over,” just as they had stopped saying the
Yankees were cowards. It was obvious to all now
that the Yankees were far from cowardly and that it
would take more than one victory to conquer them.
However, there were the Confederate victories in Tennessee scored by General Morgan and General Forrest
and the triumph at the Second Battle of Bull Run hung
up like visible Yankee scalps to gloat over. But there
was a heavy price on these scalps. The hospitals and
homes of Atlanta were overflowing with the sick and
wounded, and more and more women were appearing in black. The monotonous rows of soldiers’ graves
at Oakland Cemetery stretched longer every day.
Confederate money had dropped alarmingly and
the price of food and clothing had risen accordingly.
The commissary was laying such heavy levies on
foodstuffs that the tables of Atlanta were beginning
to suffer. White flour was scarce and so expensive
that corn bread was universal instead of biscuits, rolls
and waffles. The butcher shops carried almost no beef
and very little mutton, and that mutton cost so much
only the rich could afford it. However there was still
T HE
WAR WENT
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plenty of hog meat, as well as chickens and vegetables.
The Yankee blockade about the Confederate ports
had tightened, and luxuries such as tea, coffee, silks,
whalebone stays, colognes, fashion magazines and
books were scarce and dear. Even the cheapest cotton goods had skyrocketed in price and ladies were
regretfully making their old dresses do another season. Looms that had gathered dust for years had been
brought down from attics, and there were webs of
homespun to be found in nearly every parlor. Everyone, soldiers, civilians, women, children and negroes, began to wear homespun. Gray, as the color of
the Confederate uniform, practically disappeared and
homespun of a butternut shade took its place.
Already the hospitals were worrying about the
scarcity of quinine, calomel, opium, chloroform and
iodine. Linen and cotton bandages were too precious
now to be thrown away when used, and every lady
who nursed at the hospitals brought home baskets of
bloody strips to be washed and ironed and returned
for use on other sufferers.
But to Scarlett, newly emerged from the chrysalis of
widowhood, all the war meant was a time of gaiety
and excitement. Even the small privations of clothing
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and food did not annoy her, so happy was she to be
in the world again.
When she thought of the dull times of the past year,
with the days going by one very much like another,
life seemed to have quickened to an incredible speed.
Every day dawned as an exciting adventure, a day in
which she would meet new men who would ask to
call on her, tell her how pretty she was, and how it
was a privilege to fight and, perhaps, to die for her.
She could and did love Ashley with the last breath in
her body, but that did not prevent her from inveigling
other men into asking to marry her.
The ever-present war in the background lent a
pleasant informality to social relations, an informality which older people viewed with alarm. Mothers
found strange men calling on their daughters, men
who came without letters of introduction and whose
antecedents were unknown. To their horror, mothers
found their daughters holding hands with these men.
Mrs. Merriwether, who had never kissed her husband
until after the wedding ceremony, could scarcely believe her eyes when she caught Maybelle kissing the
little Zouave, Rene Picard, and her consternation was
even greater when Maybelle refused to be ashamed.
Even the fact that Rene immediately asked for her
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hand did not improve matters. Mrs. Merriwether
felt that the South was heading for a complete moral
collapse and frequently said so. Other mothers concurred heartily with her and blamed it on the war.
But men who expected to die within a week or a
month could not wait a year before they begged to call
a girl by her first name, with “Miss,” of course, preceding it. Nor would they go through the formal and
protracted courtships which good manners had prescribed before the war. They were likely to propose in
three or four months. And girls who knew very well
that a lady always refused a gentleman the first three
times he proposed rushed headlong to accept the first
time.
This informality made the war a lot of fun for Scarlett. Except for the messy business of nursing and the
bore of bandage rolling, she did not care if the war
lasted forever. In fact, she could endure the hospital
with equanimity now because it was a perfect happy
hunting ground. The helpless wounded succumbed
to her charms without a struggle. Renew their bandages, wash their faces, pat up their pillows and fan
them, and they fell in love. Oh, it was Heaven after
the last dreary year!
Scarlett was back again where she had been before
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she married Charles and it was as if she had never
married him, never felt the shock of his death, never
borne Wade. War and marriage and childbirth had
passed over her without touching any deep chord
within her and she was unchanged. She had a child
but he was cared for so well by the others in the red
brick house she could almost forget him. In her mind
and heart, she was Scarlett O’Hara again, the belle
of the County. Her thoughts and activities were the
same as they had been in the old days, but the field
of her activities had widened immensely. Careless of
the disapproval of Aunt Pitty’s friends, she behaved
as she had behaved before her marriage, went to parties, danced, went riding with soldiers, flirted, did
everything she had done as a girl, except stop wearing mourning. This she knew would be a straw that
would break the backs of Pittypat and Melanie. She
was as charming a widow as she had been a girl,
pleasant when she had her own way, obliging as long
as it did not discommode her, vain of her looks and
her popularity.
She was happy now where a few weeks before she
had been miserable, happy with her beaux and their
reassurances of her charm, as happy as she could be
with Ashley married to Melanie and in danger. But
somehow it was easier to bear the thought of Ashley
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belonging to some one else when he was far away.
With the hundreds of miles stretching between Atlanta and Virginia, he sometimes seemed as much
hers as Melanie’s.
So the autumn months of 1862 went swiftly by with
nursing, dancing, driving and bandage rolling taking up all the time she did not spend on brief visits to Tara. These visits were disappointing, for she
had little opportunity for the long quiet talks with her
mother to which she looked forward while in Atlanta,
no time to sit by Ellen while she sewed, smelling the
faint fragrance of lemon verbena sachet as her skirts
rustled, feeling her soft hands on her cheek in a gentle
caress.
Ellen was thin and preoccupied now and on her
feet from morning until long after the plantation was
asleep. The demands of the Confederate commissary
were growing heavier by the month, and hers was
the task of making Tara produce. Even Gerald was
busy, for the first time in many years, for he could
get no overseer to take Jonas Wilkerson’s place and
he was riding his own acres. With Ellen too busy for
more than a goodnight kiss and Gerald in the fields all
day, Scarlett found Tara boring. Even her sisters were
taken up with their own concerns. Suellen had now
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come to an “understanding” with Frank Kennedy and
sang “When This Cruel War Is Over” with an arch
meaning Scarlett found well-nigh unendurable, and
Carreen was too wrapped up in dreams of Brent Tarleton to be interesting company.
Though Scarlett always went home to Tara with a
happy heart, she was never sorry when the inevitable
letters came from Pitty and Melanie, begging her to
return. Ellen always sighed at these times, saddened
by the thought of her oldest daughter and her only
grandchild leaving her.
“But I mustn’t be selfish and keep you here when
you are needed to nurse in Atlanta,” she said. “Only–
only, my darling, it seems that I never get the time to
talk to you and to feel that you are my own little girl
again before you are gone from me.”
“I’m always your little girl,” Scarlett would say and
bury her head upon Ellen’s breast, her guilt rising
up to accuse her. She did not tell her mother that it
was the dancing and the beaux which drew her back
to Atlanta and not the service of the Confederacy.
There were many things she kept from her mother
these days. But, most of all, she kept secret the fact
that Rhett Butler called frequently at Aunt Pittypat’s
house.
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During the months that followed the bazaar, Rhett
called whenever he was in town, taking Scarlett riding in his carriage, escorting her to danceables and
bazaars and waiting outside the hospital to drive her
home. She lost her fear of his betraying her secret, but
there always lurked in the back of her mind the disquieting memory that he had seen her at her worst
and knew the truth about Ashley. It was this knowledge that checked her tongue when he annoyed her.
And he annoyed her frequently.
He was in his mid-thirties, older than any beau she
had ever had, and she was as helpless as a child to
control and handle him as she had handled beaux
nearer her own age. He always looked as if nothing
had ever surprised him and much had amused him
and, when he had gotten her into a speechless temper, she felt that she amused him more than anything
in the world. Frequently she flared into open wrath
under his expert baiting, for she had Gerald’s Irish
temper along with the deceptive sweetness of face she
had inherited from Ellen. Heretofore she had never
bothered to control her temper except in Ellen’s presence. Now it was painful to have to choke back words
for fear of his amused grin. If only he would ever lose
his temper too, then she would not feel at such a disadvantage.
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After tilts with him from which she seldom emerged
the victor she vowed he was impossible, ill-bred and
no gentleman and she would have nothing more to do
with him. But sooner or later, he returned to Atlanta,
called, presumably on Aunt Pitty, and presented Scarlett, with overdone gallantry, a box of bonbons he had
brought her from Nassau. Or preempted a seat by her
at a musicale or claimed her at a dance, and she was
usually so amused by his bland impudence that she
laughed and overlooked his past misdeeds until the
next occurred.
For all his exasperating qualities, she grew to look
forward to his calls. There was something exciting
about him that she could not analyze, something different from any man she had ever known. There
was something breathtaking in the grace of his big
body which made his very entrance into a room like
an abrupt physical impact, something in the impertinence and bland mockery of his dark eyes that challenged her spirit to subdue him.
“It’s almost like I was in love with him!” she
thought, bewildered. “But I’m not and I just can’t understand it.”
But the exciting feeling persisted. When he came
to call, his complete masculinity made Aunt Pitty’s
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well-bred and ladylike house seem small, pale and a
trifle fusty. Scarlett was not the only member of the
household who reacted strangely and unwillingly to
his presence, for he kept Aunt Pitty in a flutter and a
ferment.
While Pitty knew Ellen would disapprove of his
calls on her daughter, and knew also that the edict of
Charleston banning him from polite society was not
one to be lightly disregarded, she could no more resist
his elaborate compliments and hand kissing than a fly
can resist a honey pot. Moreover, he usually brought
her some little gift from Nassau which he assured her
he had purchased especially for her and blockaded
in at risk of his life– papers of pins and needles, buttons, spools of silk thread and hairpins. It was almost impossible to obtain these small luxuries now–
ladies were wearing hand-whittled wooden hairpins
and covering acorns with cloth for buttons–and Pitty
lacked the moral stamina to refuse them. Besides, she
had a childish love of surprise packages and could
not resist opening his gifts. And, having once opened
them, she did not feel that she could refuse them.
Then, having accepted his gifts, she could not summon courage enough to tell him his reputation made
it improper for him to call on three lone women who
had no male protector. Aunt Pitty always felt that she
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needed a male protector when Rhett Butler was in the
house.
“I don’t know what it is about him,” she would sigh
helplessly. “But–well, I think he’d be a nice, attractive
man if I could just feel that–well, that deep down in
his heart he respected women.”
Since the return of her wedding ring, Melanie had
felt that Rhett was a gentleman of rare refinement
and delicacy and she was shocked at this remark. He
was unfailingly courteous to her, but she was a little timid with him, largely because she was shy with
any man she had not known from childhood. Secretly
she was very sorry for him, a feeling which would
have amused him had he been aware of it. She was
certain that some romantic sorrow had blighted his
life and made him hard and bitter, and she felt that
what he needed was the love of a good woman. In all
her sheltered life she had never seen evil and could
scarcely credit its existence, and when gossip whispered things about Rhett and the girl in Charleston
she was shocked and unbelieving. And, instead
of turning her against him, it only made her more
timidly gracious toward him because of her indignation at what she fancied was a gross injustice done
him.
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Scarlett silently agreed with Aunt Pitty. She, too, felt
that he had no respect for any woman, unless perhaps for Melanie. She still felt unclothed every time
his eyes ran up and down her figure. It was not that
he ever said anything. Then she could have scorched
him with hot words. It was the bold way his eyes
looked out of his swarthy face with a displeasing air
of insolence, as if all women were his property to be
enjoyed in his own good time. Only with Melanie was
this look absent. There was never that cool look of appraisal, never mockery in his eyes, when he looked at
Melanie; and there was an especial note in his voice
when he spoke to her, courteous, respectful, anxious
to be of service.
“I don’t see why you’re so much nicer to her than
to me,” said Scarlett petulantly, one afternoon when
Melanie and Pitty had retired to take their naps and
she was alone with him.
For an hour she had watched Rhett hold the yarn
Melanie was winding for knitting, had noted the
blank inscrutable expression when Melanie talked at
length and with pride of Ashley and his promotion.
Scarlett knew Rhett had no exalted opinion of Ashley and cared nothing at all about the fact that he
had been made a major. Yet he made polite replies
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and murmured the correct things about Ashley’s gallantry.
And if I so much as mention Ashley’s name, she had
thought irritably, he cocks his eyebrow up and smiles
that nasty, knowing smile!
“I’m much prettier than she is,” she continued, “and
I don’t see why you’re nicer to her.”
“Dare I hope that you are jealous?”
“Oh, don’t presume!”
“Another hope crushed. If I am ‘nicer’ to Mrs.
Wilkes, it is because she deserves it. She is one of the
very few kind, sincere and unselfish persons I have
ever known. But perhaps you have failed to note
these qualities. And moreover, for all her youth, she is
one of the few great ladies I have ever been privileged
to know.”
“Do you mean to say you don’t think I’m a great
lady, too?”
“I think we agreed on the occasion of our first meeting that you were no lady at all.”
“Oh, if you are going to be hateful and rude enough
to bring that up again! How can you hold that bit of
childish temper against me? That was so long ago and
I’ve grown up since then and I’d forget all about it if
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you weren’t always harping and hinting about it.”
“I don’t think it was childish temper and I don’t believe you’ve changed. You are just as capable now as
then of throwing vases if you don’t get your own way.
But you usually get your way now. And so there’s no
necessity for broken bric-a-brac.”
“Oh, you are–I wish I was a man! I’d call you out
and–”
“And get killed for your pains. I can drill a dime
at fifty yards. Better stick to your own weapons–
dimples, vases and the like.”
“You are just a rascal.”
“Do you expect me to fly into a rage at that? I am
sorry to disappoint you. You can’t make me mad by
calling me names that are true. Certainly I’m a rascal,
and why not? It’s a free country and a man may be
a rascal if he chooses. It’s only hypocrites like you,
my dear lady, just as black at heart but trying to hide
it, who become enraged when called by their right
names.”
She was helpless before his calm smile and his
drawling remarks, for she had never before met
anyone who was so completely impregnable. Her
weapons of scorn, coldness and abuse blunted in her
hands, for nothing she could say would shame him.
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It had been her experience that the liar was the hottest
to defend his veracity, the coward his courage, the illbred his gentlemanliness, and the cad his honor. But
not Rhett. He admitted everything and laughed and
dared her to say more.
He came and went during these months, arriving unheralded and leaving without saying good-by.
Scarlett never discovered just what business brought
him to Atlanta, for few other blockaders found it necessary to come so far away from the coast. They
landed their cargoes at Wilmington or Charleston,
where they were met by swarms of merchants and
speculators from all over the South who assembled
to buy blockaded goods at auction. It would have
pleased her to think that he made these trips to see
her, but even her abnormal vanity refused to believe
this. If he had ever once made love to her, seemed jealous of the other men who crowded about her, even
tried to hold her hand or begged for a picture or a
handkerchief to cherish, she would have thought triumphantly he had been caught by her charms. But
he remained annoyingly unloverlike and, worst of all,
seemed to see through all her maneuverings to bring
him to his knees.
Whenever he came to town, there was a feminine
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fluttering. Not only did the romantic aura of the dashing blockader hang about him but there was also the
titillating element of the wicked and the forbidden.
He had such a bad reputation! And every time the
matrons of Atlanta gathered together to gossip, his
reputation grew worse, which only made him all the
more glamorous to the young girls. As most of them
were quite innocent, they had heard little more than
that he was “quite loose with women”–and exactly
how a man went about the business of being “loose”
they did not know. They also heard whispers that
no girl was safe with him. With such a reputation,
it was strange that he had never so much as kissed
the hand of an unmarried girl since he first appeared
in Atlanta. But that only served to make him more
mysterious and more exciting.
Outside of the army heroes, he was the most talkedabout man in Atlanta. Everyone knew in detail how
he had been expelled from West Point for drunkenness and “something about women.” That terrific
scandal concerning the Charleston girl he had compromised and the brother he had killed was public
property. Correspondence with Charleston friends
elicited the further information that his father, a
charming old gentleman with an iron will and a ramrod for a backbone, had cast him out without a penny
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when he was twenty and even stricken his name from
the family Bible. After that he had wandered to California in the gold rush of 1849 and thence to South
America and Cuba, and the reports of his activities
in these parts were none too savory. Scrapes about
women, several shootings, gun running to the revolutionists in Central America and, worst of all, professional gambling were included in his career, as Atlanta heard it.
There was hardly a family in Georgia who could not
own to their sorrow at least one male member or relative who gambled, losing money, houses, land and
slaves. But that was different. A man could gamble himself to poverty and still be a gentleman, but
a professional gambler could never be anything but
an outcast.
Had it not been for the upset conditions due to the
war and his own services to the Confederate government, Rhett Butler would never have been received
in Atlanta. But now, even the most strait laced felt
that patriotism called upon them to be more broad
minded. The more sentimental were inclined to view
that the black sheep of the Butler family had repented
of his evil ways and was making an attempt to atone
for his sins. So the ladies felt in duty bound to stretch
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a point, especially in the case of so intrepid a blockader. Everyone knew now that the fate of the Confederacy rested as much upon the skill of the blockade
boats in eluding the Yankee fleet as it did upon the
soldiers at the front.
Rumor had it that Captain Butler was one of the best
pilots in the South and that he was reckless and utterly without nerves. Reared in Charleston, he knew
every inlet, creek, shoal and rock of the Carolina coast
near that port, and he was equally at home in the waters around Wilmington. He had never lost a boat
or even been forced to dump a cargo. At the onset of the war, he had emerged from obscurity with
enough money to buy a small swift boat and now,
when blockaded goods realized two thousand per
cent on each cargo, he owned four boats. He had
good pilots and paid them well, and they slid out of
Charleston and Wilmington on dark nights, bearing
cotton for Nassau, England and Canada. The cotton
mills of England were standing idle and the workers
were starving, and any blockader who could outwit
the Yankee fleet could command his own price in Liverpool. Rhett’s boats were singularly lucky both in
taking out cotton for the Confederacy and bringing
in the war materials for which the South was desperate. Yes, the ladies felt they could forgive and forget a
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great many things for such a brave man.
He was a dashing figure and one that people turned
to look at. He spent money freely, rode a wild black
stallion, and wore clothes which were always the
height of style and tailoring. The latter in itself was
enough to attract attention to him, for the uniforms of
the soldiers were dingy and worn now and the civilians, even when turned out in their best, showed skillful patching and darning. Scarlett thought she had
never seen such elegant pants as he wore, fawn colored, shepherd’s plaid, and checked. As for his waistcoats, they were indescribably handsome, especially
the white watered-silk one with tiny pink rosebuds
embroidered on it. And he wore these garments with
a still more elegant air as though unaware of their
glory.
There were few ladies who could resist his charms
when he chose to exert them, and finally even Mrs.
Merriwether unbent and invited him to Sunday dinner.
Maybelle Merriwether was to marry her little
Zouave when he got his next furlough, and she cried
every time she thought of it, for she had set her heart
on marrying in a white satin dress and there was no
white satin in the Confederacy. Nor could she bor432
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row a dress, for the satin wedding dresses of years
past had all gone into the making of battle flags. Useless for the patriotic Mrs. Merriwether to upbraid
her daughter and point out that homespun was the
proper bridal attire for a Confederate bride. Maybelle
wanted satin. She was willing, even proud to go without hairpins and buttons and nice shoes and candy
and tea for the sake of the Cause, but she wanted a
satin wedding dress.
Rhett, hearing of this from Melanie, brought in from
England yards and yards of gleaming white satin and
a lace veil and presented them to her as a wedding
gift. He did it in such a way that it was unthinkable
to even mention paying him for them, and Maybelle
was so delighted she almost kissed him. Mrs. Merriwether knew that so expensive a gift–and a gift of
clothing at that–was highly improper, but she could
think of no way of refusing when Rhett told her in
the most florid language that nothing was too good
to deck the bride of one of our brave heroes. So Mrs.
Merriwether invited him to dinner, feeling that this
concession more than paid for the gift.
He not only brought Maybelle the satin but he was
able to give excellent hints on the making of the wedding dress. Hoops in Paris were wider this season
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and skirts were shorter. They were no longer ruffled
but were gathered up in scalloped festoons, showing
braided petticoats beneath. He said, too, that he had
seen no pantalets on the streets, so he imagined they
were “out.” Afterwards, Mrs. Merriwether told Mrs.
Elsing she feared that if she had given him any encouragement at all, he would have told her exactly
what kind of drawers were being worn by Parisiennes.
Had he been less obviously masculine, his ability to
recall details of dresses, bonnets and coiffures would
have been put down as the rankest effeminacy. The
ladies always felt a little odd when they besieged him
with questions about styles, but they did it nevertheless. They were as isolated from the world of fashion as shipwrecked mariners, for few books of fashion came through the blockade. For all they knew
the ladies of France might be shaving their heads and
wearing coonskin caps, so Rhett’s memory for furbelows was an excellent substitute for Godey’s Lady’s
Book. He could and did notice details so dear to feminine hearts, and after each trip abroad he could be
found in the center of a group of ladies, telling that
bonnets were smaller this year and perched higher,
covering most of the top of the head, that plumes and
not flowers were being used to trim them, that the
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Empress of France had abandoned the chignon for
evening wear and had her hair piled almost on the top
of her head, showing all of her ears, and that evening
frocks were shockingly low again.
For some months, he was the most popular and romantic figure the town knew, despite his previous
reputation, despite the faint rumors that he was engaged not only in blockading but in speculating on
foodstuffs, too. People who did not like him said that
after every trip he made to Atlanta, prices jumped five
dollars. But even with this under-cover gossip seeping about, he could have retained his popularity had
he considered it worth retaining. Instead, it seemed as
though, after trying the company of the staid and patriotic citizens and winning their respect and grudging liking, something perverse in him made him go
out of his way to affront them and show them that his
conduct had been only a masquerade and one which
no longer amused him.
It was as though he bore an impersonal contempt
for everyone and everything in the South, the Confederacy in particular, and took no pains to conceal it.
It was his remarks about the Confederacy that made
Atlanta look at him first in bewilderment, then coolly
and then with hot rage. Even before 1862 passed into
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1863, men were bowing to him with studied frigidity and women beginning to draw their daughters to
their sides when he appeared at a gathering.
He seemed to take pleasure not only in affronting
the sincere and red-hot loyalties of Atlanta but in presenting himself in the worst possible light. When
well-meaning people complimented him on his bravery in running the blockade, he blandly replied that
he was always frightened when in danger, as frightened as were the brave boys at the front. Everyone
knew there had never been a cowardly Confederate
soldier and they found this statement peculiarly irritating. He always referred to the soldiers as “our
brave boys” and “our heroes in gray” and did it in
such a way as to convey the utmost in insult. When
daring young ladies, hoping for a flirtation, thanked
him for being one of the heroes who fought for them,
he bowed and declared that such was not the case, for
he would do the same thing for Yankee women if the
same amount of money were involved.
Since Scarlett’s first meeting with him in Atlanta on
the night of the bazaar, he had talked with her in this
manner, but now there was a thinly veiled note of
mockery in his conversations with everyone. When
praised for his services to the Confederacy, he un436
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failingly replied that blockading was a business with
him. If he could make as much money out of government contracts, he would say, picking out with
his eyes those who had government contracts, then
he would certainly abandon the hazards of blockading and take to selling shoddy cloth, sanded sugar,
spoiled flour and rotten leather to the Confederacy.
Most of his remarks were unanswerable, which
made them all the worse. There had already been
minor scandals about those holding government contracts. Letters from men at the front complained constantly of shoes that wore out in a week, gunpowder
that would not ignite, harness that snapped at any
strain, meat that was rotten and flour that was full
of weevils. Atlanta people tried to think that the men
who sold such stuff to the government must be contract holders from Alabama or Virginia or Tennessee,
and not Georgians. For did not the Georgia contract holders include men from the very best families?
Were they not the first to contribute to the hospital
funds and to the aid of soldiers’ orphans? Were they
not the first to cheer at “Dixie” and the most rampant
seekers, in oratory at least, for Yankee blood? The full
tide of fury against those profiteering on government
contracts had not yet risen, and Rhett’s words were
taken merely as evidence of his own bad breeding.
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He not only affronted the town with insinuations of
venality on the part of men in high places and slurs on
the courage of the men in the field, but he took pleasure in tricking the dignified citizenry into embarrassing situations. He could no more resist pricking the
conceits, the hypocrisies and the flamboyant patriotism of those about him than a small boy can resist
putting a pin into a balloon. He neatly deflated the
pompous and exposed the ignorant and the bigoted,
and he did it in such subtle ways, drawing his victims out by his seemingly courteous interest, that they
never were quite certain what had happened until
they stood exposed as windy, high flown and slightly
ridiculous.
During the months when the town accepted him,
Scarlett had been under no illusions about him. She
knew that his elaborate gallantries and his florid
speeches were all done with his tongue in his cheek.
She knew that he was acting the part of the dashing and patriotic blockade runner simply because it
amused him. Sometimes he seemed to her like the
County boys with whom she had grown up, the wild
Tarleton twins with their obsession for practical jokes;
the devil-inspired Fontaines, teasing, mischievous;
the Calverts who would sit up all night planning
hoaxes. But there was a difference, for beneath Rhett’s
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seeming lightness there was something malicious, almost sinister in its suave brutality.
Though she was thoroughly aware of his insincerity,
she much preferred him in the role of the romantic
blockader. For one thing, it made her own situation
in associating with him so much easier than it had
been at first. So, she was intensely annoyed when he
dropped his masquerade and set out apparently upon
a deliberate campaign to alienate Atlanta’s good will.
It annoyed her because it seemed foolish and also because some of the harsh criticism directed at him fell
on her.
It was at Mrs. Elsing’s silver musicale for the benefit
of the convalescents that Rhett signed his final warrant of ostracism. That afternoon the Elsing home
was crowded with soldiers on leave and men from
the hospitals, members of the Home Guard and the
militia unit, and matrons, widows and young girls.
Every chair in the house was occupied, and even the
long winding stair was packed with guests. The large
cut-glass bowl held at the door by the Elsings’ butler
had been emptied twice of its burden of silver coins.
That in itself was enough to make the affair a success,
for now a dollar in silver was worth sixty dollars in
Confederate paper money.
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Every girl with any pretense to accomplishments
had sung or played the piano, and the tableaux vivants had been greeted with flattering applause. Scarlett was much pleased with herself, for not only had
she and Melanie rendered a touching duet, “When the
Dew Is on the Blossom,” followed as an encore by
the more sprightly “Oh, Lawd, Ladies, Don’t Mind
Stephen!” but she had also been chosen to represent
the Spirit of the Confederacy in the last tableau.
She had looked most fetching, wearing a modestly
draped Greek robe of white cheesecloth girdled with
red and blue and holding the Stars and Bars in one
hand, while with the other she stretched out to the
kneeling Captain Carey Ashburn, of Alabama, the
gold-hilted saber which had belonged to Charles and
his father.
When her tableau was over, she could not help seeking Rhett’s eyes to see if he had appreciated the pretty
picture she made. With a feeling of exasperation she
saw that he was in an argument and probably had not
even noticed her. Scarlett could see by the faces of the
group surrounding him that they were infuriated by
what he was saying.
She made her way toward them and, in one of those
odd silences which sometimes fall on a gathering, she
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heard Willie Guinan, of the militia outfit, say plainly:
“Do I understand, sir, that you mean the Cause for
which our heroes have died is not sacred?”
“If you were run over by a railroad train your death
wouldn’t sanctify the railroad company, would it?”
asked Rhett and his voice sounded as if he were
humbly seeking information.
“Sir,” said Willie, his voice shaking, “if we were not
under this roof–”
“I tremble to think what would happen,” said Rhett.
“For, of course, your bravery is too well known.”
Willie went scarlet and all conversation ceased. Everyone was embarrassed. Willie was strong and
healthy and of military age and yet he wasn’t at the
front. Of course, he was the only boy his mother had
and, after all, somebody had to be in the militia to protect the state. But there were a few irreverent snickers
from convalescent officers when Rhett spoke of bravery.
“Oh, why doesn’t he keep his mouth shut!” thought
Scarlett indignantly. “He’s simply spoiling the whole
party!”
Dr. Meade’s brows were thunderous.
“Nothing may be sacred to you, young man,” he
said, in the voice he always used when making
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speeches. “But there are many things sacred to the
patriotic men and ladies of the South. And the freedom of our land from the usurper is one and States’
Rights is another and–”
Rhett looked lazy and his voice had a silky, almost
bored, note.
“All wars are sacred,” he said. “To those who have
to fight them. If the people who started wars didn’t
make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to
fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators
give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble
purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one
reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in
reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and
the fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes
the rallying cry is ‘Save the Tomb of Christ from the
Heathen!’ Sometimes it’s ‘Down with Popery!’ and
sometimes ‘Liberty!’ and sometimes ‘Cotton, Slavery
and States’ Rights!”’
“What on earth has the Pope to do with it?” thought
Scarlett. “Or Christ’s tomb, either?”
But as she hurried toward the incensed group, she
saw Rhett bow jauntily and start toward the doorway
through the crowd. She started after him but Mrs.
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Elsing caught her skirt and held her.
“Let him go,” she said in a clear voice that carried
throughout the tensely quiet room. “Let him go. He
is a traitor, a speculator! He is a viper that we have
nursed to our bosoms!”
Rhett, standing in the hall, his hat in his hand, heard
as he was intended to hear and, turning, surveyed
the room for a moment. He looked pointedly at Mrs.
Elsing’s flat bosom, grinned suddenly and, bowing,
made his exit.
Mrs. Merriwether rode home in Aunt Pitty’s carriage, and scarcely had the four ladies seated themselves when she exploded.
“There now, Pittypat Hamilton! I hope you are satisfied!”
“With what?” cried Pitty, apprehensively.
“With the conduct of that wretched Butler man
you’ve been harboring.”
Pittypat fluttered, too upset by the accusation to
recall that Mrs. Merriwether had also been Rhett
Butler’s hostess on several occasions. Scarlett and
Melanie thought of this, but bred to politeness to their
elders, refrained from remarking on the matter. Instead they studiously looked down at their mittened
hands.
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“He insulted us all and the Confederacy too,” said
Mrs. Merriwether, and her stout bust heaved violently beneath its glittering passementerie trimmings.
“Saying that we were fighting for money! Saying that
our leaders had lied to us! He should be put in jail.
Yes, he should. I shall speak to Dr. Meade about it.
If Mr. Merriwether were only alive, he’d tend to him!
Now, Pitty Hamilton, you listen to me. You mustn’t
ever let that scamp come into your house again!”
“Oh,” mumbled Pitty, helplessly, looking as if she
wished she were dead. She looked appealingly at
the two girls who kept their eyes cast down and then
hopefully toward Uncle Peter’s erect back. She knew
he was listening attentively to every word and she
hoped he would turn and take a hand in the conversation, as he frequently did. She hoped he would say:
“Now, Miss Dolly, you let Miss Pitty be,” but Peter
made no move. He disapproved heartily of Rhett Butler and poor Pitty knew it. She sighed and said: “Well,
Dolly, if you think–”
“I do think,” returned Mrs. Merriwether firmly. “I
can’t imagine what possessed you to receive him in
the first place. After this afternoon, there won’t be a
decent home in town that he’ll be welcome in. Do get
up some gumption and forbid him your house.”
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She turned a sharp eye on the girls. “I hope you
two are marking my words,” she continued, “for it’s
partly your fault, being so pleasant to him. Just tell
him politely but firmly that his presence and his disloyal talk are distinctly unwelcome at your house.”
By this time Scarlett was boiling, ready to rear like
a horse at the touch of a strange rough hand on its
bridle. But she was afraid to speak. She could not
risk Mrs. Merriwether writing another letter to her
mother.
“You old buffalo!” she thought, her face crimson
with suppressed fury. “How heavenly it would be
to tell you just what I think of you and your bossy
ways!”
“I never thought to live long enough to hear such
disloyal words spoken of our Cause,” went on Mrs.
Merriwether, by this time in a ferment of righteous
anger. “Any man who does not think our Cause is
just and holy should be hanged! I don’t want to hear
of you two girls ever even speaking to him again– For
Heaven’s sake, Melly, what ails you?”
Melanie was white and her eyes were enormous.
“I will speak to him again,” she said in a low voice.
“I will not be rude to him. I will not forbid him the
house.”
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Mrs. Merriwether’s breath went out of her lungs
as explosively as though she had been punched.
Aunt Pitty’s fat mouth popped open and Uncle Peter
turned to stare.
“Now, why didn’t I have the gumption to say that?”
thought Scarlett, jealousy mixing with admiration.
“How did that little rabbit ever get up spunk enough
to stand up to old lady Merriwether?”
Melanie’s hands were shaking but she went on hurriedly, as though fearing her courage would fail her if
she delayed.
“I won’t be rude to him because of what he said,
because– It was rude of him to say it out loud–most ill
advised–but it’s–it’s what Ashley thinks. And I can’t
forbid the house to a man who thinks what my husband thinks. It would be unjust.”
Mrs. Merriwether’s breath had come back and she
charged.
“Melly Hamilton, I never heard such a lie in all my
life! There was never a Wilkes who was a coward–”
“I never said Ashley was a coward,” said Melanie,
her eyes beginning to flash. “I said he thinks what
Captain Butler thinks, only he expresses it in different
words. And he doesn’t go around saying it at musicales, I hope. But he has written it to me.”
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Scarlett’s guilty conscience stirred as she tried to recall what Ashley might have written that would lead
Melanie to make such a statement, but most of the letters she had read had gone out of her head as soon as
she finished reading them. She believed Melanie had
simply taken leave of her senses.
“Ashley wrote me that we should not be fighting
the Yankees. And that we have been betrayed into it
by statesmen and orators mouthing catchwords and
prejudices,” said Melly rapidly. “He said nothing in
the world was worth what this war was going to do
to us. He said here wasn’t anything at all to glory–it
was just misery and dirt.”
“Oh! That letter,” thought Scarlett. “Was that what
he meant?”
“I don’t believe it,” said Mrs. Merriwether firmly.
“You misunderstood his meaning.”
“I never misunderstand Ashley,” Melanie replied
quietly, though her lips were trembling. “I understand him perfectly. He meant exactly what Captain
Butler meant, only he didn’t say it in a rude way.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself, comparing a
fine man like Ashley Wilkes to a scoundrel like Captain Butler! I suppose you, too, think the Cause is
nothing!”
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“I–I don’t know what I think,” Melanie began uncertainly, her fire deserting her and panic at her outspokenness taking hold of her. “I–I’d die for the Cause,
like Ashley would. But–I mean– I mean, I’ll let the
men folks do the thinking, because they are so much
smarter.”
“I never heard the like,” snorted Mrs. Merriwether.
“Stop, Uncle Peter, you’re driving past my house!”
Uncle Peter, preoccupied with the conversation behind him, had driven past the Merriwether carriage
block and he backed up the horse. Mrs. Merriwether
alighted, her bonnet ribbons shaking like sails in a
storm.
“You’ll be sorry,” she said.
Uncle Peter whipped up the horse.
“You young misses ought ter tek shame, gittin’ Miss
Pitty in a state,” he scolded.
“I’m not in a state,” replied Pitty, surprisingly, for
less strain than this had frequently brought on fainting fits. “Melly, honey, I knew you were doing it just
to take up for me and, really, I was glad to see somebody take Dolly down a peg. She’s so bossy. How did
you have the courage? But do you think you should
have said that about Ashley?”
“But it’s true,” answered Melanie and she began
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to cry softly. “And I’m not ashamed that he thinks
that way. He thinks the war is all wrong but he’s
willing to fight and die anyway, and that takes lots
more courage than fighting for something you think
is right.”
“Lawd, Miss Melly, doan cry hyah on Peachtree
Street,” groaned Uncle Peter, hastening his horse’s
pace. “Folks’ll talk sumpin’ scan’lous. Wait till us gits
home.”
Scarlett said nothing. She did not even squeeze
the hand that Melanie had inserted into her palm
for comfort. She had read Ashley’s letters for only
one purpose–to assure herself that he still loved her.
Now Melanie had given a new meaning to passages
in the letters which Scarlett’s eyes had barely seen. It
shocked her to realize that anyone as absolutely perfect as Ashley could have any thought in common
with such a reprobate as Rhett Butler. She thought:
“They both see the truth of this war, but Ashley is
willing to die about it and Rhett isn’t. I think that
shows Rhett’s good sense.” She paused a moment,
horror struck that she could have such a thought
about Ashley. “They both see the same unpleasant
truth, but Rhett likes to look it in the face and enrage
people by talking about it–and Ashley can hardly
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bear to face it.”
It was very bewildering.
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goading, Dr. Meade took
action, in the form of a letter to the newspaper
wherein he did not mention Rhett by name, though
his meaning was obvious. The editor, sensing the social drama of the letter, put it on the second page of
the paper, in itself a startling innovation, as the first
two pages of the paper were always devoted to advertisements of slaves, mules, plows, coffins, houses for
sale or rent, cures for private diseases, abortifacients
and restoratives for lost manhood.
The doctor’s letter was the first of a chorus of indignation that was beginning to be heard all over
the South against speculators, profiteers and holders
of government contracts. Conditions in Wilmington,
the chief blockade port, now that Charleston’s port
was practically sealed by the Yankee gunboats, had
reached the proportions of an open scandal. Speculators swarmed Wilmington and, having the ready
cash, bought up boatloads of goods and held them
for a rise in prices. The rise always came, for with
the increasing scarcity of necessities, prices leaped
higher by the month. The civilian population had either to do without or buy at the speculators’ prices,
and the poor and those in moderate circumstances
U NDER M RS . M ERRIWETHER ’ S
�PART TWO
were suffering increasing hardships. With the rise in
prices, Confederate money sank, and with its rapid
fall there rose a wild passion for luxuries. Blockaders
were commissioned to bring in necessities but now it
was the higher-priced luxuries that filled their boats
to the exclusion of the things the Confederacy vitally
needed. People frenziedly bought these luxuries with
the money they had today, fearing that tomorrow’s
prices would be higher and the money worthless.
To make matters worse, there was only one railroad
line from Wilmington to Richmond and, while thousands of barrels of flour and boxes of bacon spoiled
and rotted in wayside stations for want of transportation, speculators with wines, taffetas and coffee to sell
seemed always able to get their goods to Richmond
two days after they were landed at Wilmington.
The rumor which had been creeping about underground was now being openly discussed, that Rhett
Butler not only ran his own four boats and sold the
cargoes at unheard-of prices but bought up the cargoes of other boats and held them for rises in prices.
It was said that he was at the head of a combine
worth more than a million dollars, with Wilmington
as its headquarters for the purpose of buying blockade goods on the docks. They had dozens of ware452
�PART TWO
houses in that city and in Richmond, so the story
ran, and the warehouses were crammed with food
and clothing that were being held for higher prices.
Already soldiers and civilians alike were feeling the
pinch, and the muttering against him and his fellow
speculators was bitter.
“There are many brave and patriotic men in the
blockade arm of the Confederacy’s naval service,” ran
the last of the doctor’s letter, “unselfish men who are
risking their lives and all their wealth that the Confederacy may survive. They are enshrined in the hearts
of all loyal Southerners, and no one begrudges them
the scant monetary returns they make for their risks.
They are unselfish gentlemen, and we honor them. Of
these men, I do not speak.
“But there are other scoundrels who masquerade
under the cloak of the blockader for their own selfish
gains, and I call down the just wrath and vengeance of
an embattled people, fighting in the justest of Causes,
on these human vultures who bring in satins and
laces when our men are dying for want of quinine,
who load their boats with tea and wines when our
heroes are writhing for lack of morphia. I execrate
these vampires who are sucking the lifeblood of the
men who follow Robert Lee–these men who are mak453
�PART TWO
ing the very name of blockader a stench in the nostrils
of all patriotic men. How can we endure these scavengers in our midst with their varnished boots when
our boys are tramping barefoot into battle? How can
we tolerate them with their champagnes and their
pates of Strasbourg when our soldiers are shivering
about their camp fires and gnawing moldy bacon? I
call upon every loyal Confederate to cast them out.”
Atlanta read, knew the oracle had spoken, and, as
loyal Confederates, they hastened to cast Rhett out.
Of all the homes which had received him in the
fall of 1862, Miss Pittypat’s was almost the only one
into which he could enter in 1863. And, except for
Melanie, he probably would not have been received
there. Aunt Pitty was in a state whenever he was in
town. She knew very well what her friends were saying when she permitted him to call but she still lacked
the courage to tell him he was unwelcome. Each time
he arrived in Atlanta, she set her fat mouth and told
the girls that she would meet him at the door and forbid him to enter. And each time he came, a little package in his hand and a compliment for her charm and
beauty on his lips, she wilted.
“I just don’t know what to do,” she would moan.
“He just looks at me and I–I’m scared to death of what
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he would do if I told him. He’s got such a bad reputation. Do you suppose he would strike me–or–or– Oh,
dear, if Charlie were only alive! Scarlett, YOU must
tell him not to call again–tell him in a nice way. Oh,
me! I do believe you encourage him, and the whole
town is talking and, if your mother ever finds out,
what will she say to me? Melly, you must not be so
nice to him. Be cool and distant and he will understand. Oh, Melly, do you think I’d better write Henry
a note and ask him to speak to Captain Butler?”
“No, I don’t,” said Melanie. “And I won’t be rude
to him, either. I think people are acting like chickens
with their heads off about Captain Butler. I’m sure
he can’t be all the bad things Dr. Meade and Mrs.
Merriwether say he is. He wouldn’t hold food from
starving people. Why, he even gave me a hundred
dollars for the orphans. I’m sure he’s just as loyal and
patriotic as any of us and he’s just too proud to defend
himself. You know how obstinate men are when they
get their backs up.”
Aunt Pitty knew nothing about men, either with
their backs up or otherwise, and she could only wave
her fat little hands helplessly. As for Scarlett, she had
long ago become resigned to Melanie’s habit of seeing
good in everyone. Melanie was a fool, but there was
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nothing anybody could do about it.
Scarlett knew that Rhett was not being patriotic and,
though she would have died rather than confess it,
she did not care. The little presents he brought her
from Nassau, little oddments that a lady could accept
with propriety, were what mattered most to her. With
prices as high as they were, where on earth could she
get needles and bonbons and hairpins, if she forbade
the house to him? No, it was easier to shift the responsibility to Aunt Pitty, who after all was the head
of the house, the chaperon and the arbiter of morals.
Scarlett knew the town gossiped about Rhett’s calls,
and about her too; but she also knew that in the eyes
of Atlanta Melanie Wilkes could do no wrong, and
if Melanie defended Rhett his calls were still tinged
with respectability.
However, life would be pleasanter if Rhett would
recant his heresies. She wouldn’t have to suffer the
embarrassment of seeing him cut openly when she
walked down Peachtree Street with him.
“Even if you think such things, why do you say
them?” she scolded. “If you’d just think what you
please but keep your mouth shut, everything would
be so much nicer.”
“That’s your system, isn’t it, my green-eyed hyp456
�PART TWO
ocrite? Scarlett, Scarlett! I hoped for more courageous conduct from you. I thought the Irish said what
they thought and the Divvil take the hindermost. Tell
me truthfully, don’t you sometimes almost burst from
keeping your mouth shut?”
“Well–yes,” Scarlett confessed reluctantly. “I do get
awfully bored when they talk about the Cause, morning, noon and night. But goodness, Rhett Butler, if I
admitted it nobody would speak to me and none of
the boys would dance with me!”
“Ah, yes, and one must be danced with, at all costs.
Well, I admire your self-control but I do not find myself equal to it. Nor can I masquerade in a cloak of
romance and patriotism, no matter how convenient
it might be. There are enough stupid patriots who
are risking every cent they have in the blockade and
who are going to come out of this war paupers. They
don’t need me among their number, either to brighten
the record of patriotism or to increase the roll of paupers. Let them have the haloes. They deserve them–
for once I am being sincere–and, besides, haloes will
be about all they will have in a year or so.”
“I think you are very nasty to even hint such things
when you know very well that England and France
are coming in on our side in no time and–”
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“Why, Scarlett! You must have been reading a newspaper! I’m surprised at you. Don’t do it again. It
addles women’s brains. For your information, I was
in England, not a month ago, and I’ll tell you this.
England will never help the Confederacy. England
never bets on the underdog. That’s why she’s England. Besides, the fat Dutch woman who is sitting on
the throne is a God-fearing soul and she doesn’t approve of slavery. Let the English mill workers starve
because they can’t get our cotton but never, never
strike a blow for slavery. And as for France, that weak
imitation of Napoleon is far too busy establishing the
French in Mexico to be bothered with us. In fact he
welcomes this war, because it keeps us too busy to
run his troops out of Mexico. . . . No, Scarlett, the
idea of assistance from abroad is just a newspaper invention to keep up the morale of the South. The Confederacy is doomed. It’s living on its hump now, like
the camel, and even the largest of humps aren’t inexhaustible. I give myself about six months more of
blockading and then I’m through. After that, it will
be too risky. And I’ll sell my boats to some foolish Englishman who thinks he can slip them through. But
one way or the other, it’s not bothering me. I’ve made
money enough, and it’s in English banks and in gold.
None of this worthless paper for me.”
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As always when he spoke, he sounded so plausible. Other people might call his utterances treachery
but, to Scarlett, they always rang with common sense
and truth. And she knew that this was utterly wrong,
knew she should be shocked and infuriated. Actually
she was neither, but she could pretend to be. It made
her feel more respectable and ladylike.
“I think what Dr. Meade wrote about was right,
Captain Butler. The only way to redeem yourself is to
enlist after you sell your boats. You’re a West Pointer
and–”
“You talk like a Baptist preacher making a recruiting
speech. Suppose I don’t want to redeem myself? Why
should I fight to uphold the system that cast me out?
I shall take pleasure in seeing it smashed.”
“I never heard of any system,” she said crossly.
“No? And yet you are a part of it, like I was, and I’ll
wager you don’t like it any more than I did. Well, why
am I the black sheep of the Butler family? For this reason and no other–I didn’t conform to Charleston and
I couldn’t. And Charleston is the South, only intensified. I wonder if you realize yet what a bore it is? So
many things that one must do because they’ve always
been done. So many things, quite harmless, that one
must not do for the same reason. So many things that
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annoyed me by their senselessness. Not marrying the
young lady, of whom you have probably heard, was
merely the last straw. Why should I marry a boring
fool, simply because an accident prevented me from
getting her home before dark? And why permit her
wild-eyed brother to shoot and kill me, when I could
shoot straighter? If I had been a gentleman, of course,
I would have let him kill me and that would have
wiped the blot from the Butler escutcheon. But–I like
to live. And so I’ve lived and I’ve had a good time.
. . . When I think of my brother, living among the
sacred cows of Charleston, and most reverent toward
them, and remember his stodgy wife and his Saint Cecilia Balls and his everlasting rice fields–then I know
the compensation for breaking with the system. Scarlett, our Southern way of living is as antiquated as
the feudal system of the Middle Ages. The wonder is
that it’s lasted as long as it has. It had to go and it’s
going now. And yet you expect me to listen to orators like Dr. Meade who tell me our Cause is just and
holy? And get so excited by the roll of drums that
I’ll grab a musket and rush off to Virginia to shed my
blood for Marse Robert? What kind of a fool do you
think I am? Kissing the rod that chastised me is not
in my line. The South and I are even now. The South
threw me out to starve once. I haven’t starved, and
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I am making enough money out of the South’s death
throes to compensate me for my lost birthright.”
“I think you are vile and mercenary,” said Scarlett,
but her remark was automatic. Most of what he was
saying went over her head, as did any conversation
that was not personal. But part of it made sense.
There were such a lot of foolish things about life
among nice people. Having to pretend that her heart
was in the grave when it wasn’t. And how shocked
everybody had been when she danced at the bazaar.
And the infuriating way people lifted their eyebrows
every time she did or said anything the least bit different from what every other young woman did and
said. But still, she was jarred at hearing him attack
the very traditions that irked her most. She had lived
too long among people who dissembled politely not
to feel disturbed at hearing her own thoughts put into
words.
“Mercenary? No, I’m only farsighted. Though perhaps that is merely a synonym for mercenary. At
least, people who were not as farsighted as I will call
it that. Any loyal Confederate who had a thousand
dollars in cash in 1861 could have done what I did,
but how few were mercenary enough to take advantage of their opportunities! As for instance, right after
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Fort Sumter fell and before the blockade was established, I bought up several thousand bales of cotton
at dirt-cheap prices and ran them to England. They
are still there in warehouses in Liverpool. I’ve never
sold them. I’m holding them until the English mills
have to have cotton and will give me any price I ask.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I got a dollar a pound.”
“You’ll get a dollar a pound when elephants roost in
trees!”
“I’ll believe I’ll get it. Cotton is at seventy-two cents
a pound already. I’m going to be a rich man when this
war is over, Scarlett, because I was farsighted–pardon
me, mercenary. I told you once before that there were
two times for making big money, one in the upbuilding of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow
money on the upbuilding, fast money in the crack-up.
Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to
you some day.”
“I do appreciate good advice so much,” said Scarlett, with all the sarcasm she could muster. “But I
don’t need your advice. Do you think Pa is a pauper? He’s got all the money I’ll ever need and then I
have Charles’ property besides.”
“I imagine the French aristocrats thought practically
the same thing until the very moment when they
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climbed into the tumbrils.”
Frequently Rhett pointed out to Scarlett the inconsistency of her wearing black mourning clothes when
she was participating in all social activities. He liked
bright colors and Scarlett’s funeral dresses and the
crepe veil that hung from her bonnet to her heels
both amused him and offended him. But she clung
to her dull black dresses and her veil, knowing that if
she changed them for colors without waiting several
more years, the town would buzz even more than it
was already buzzing. And besides, how would she
ever explain to her mother?
Rhett said frankly that the crepe veil made her look
like a crow and the black dresses added ten years to
her age. This ungallant statement sent her flying to
the mirror to see if she really did look twenty-eight
instead of eighteen.
“I should think you’d have more pride than to try to
look like Mrs. Merriwether,” he taunted. “And better
taste than to wear that veil to advertise a grief I’m sure
you never felt. I’ll lay a wager with you. I’ll have that
bonnet and veil off your head and a Paris creation on
it within two months.”
“Indeed, no, and don’t let’s discuss it any further,”
said Scarlett, annoyed by his reference to Charles.
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Rhett, who was preparing to leave for Wilmington for
another trip abroad, departed with a grin on his face.
One bright summer morning some weeks later, he
reappeared with a brightly trimmed hatbox in his
hand and, after finding that Scarlett was alone in the
house, he opened it. Wrapped in layers of tissue was a
bonnet, a creation that made her cry: “Oh, the darling
thing!” as she reached for it. Starved for the sight,
much less the touch, of new clothes, it seemed the
loveliest bonnet she had ever seen. It was of darkgreen taffeta, lined with water silk of a pale-jade color.
The ribbons that tied under the chin were as wide as
her hand and they, too, were pale green. And, curled
about the brim of this confection was the perkiest of
green ostrich plumes.
“Put it on,” said Rhett, smiling.
She flew across the room to the mirror and plopped
it on her head, pushing back her hair to show her earrings and tying the ribbon under her chin.
“How do I look?” she cried, pirouetting for his benefit and tossing her head so that the plume danced. But
she knew she looked pretty even before she saw confirmation in his eyes. She looked attractively saucy
and the green of the lining made her eyes dark emerald and sparkling.
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“Oh, Rhett, whose bonnet is it? I’ll buy it. I’ll give
you every cent I’ve got for it.”
“It’s your bonnet,” he said. “Who else could wear
that shade of green? Don’t you think I carried the
color of your eyes well in my mind?”
“Did you really have it trimmed just for me?”
“Yes, and there’s ‘Rue de la Paix’ on the box, if that
means anything to you.”
It meant nothing to her, smiling at her reflection in
the mirror. Just at this moment, nothing mattered to
her except that she looked utterly charming in the first
pretty hat she had put on her head in two years. What
she couldn’t do with this hat! And then her smile
faded.
“Don’t you like it?”
“Oh, it’s a dream but– Oh, I do hate to have to
cover this lovely green with crepe and dye the feather
black.”
He was beside her quickly and his deft fingers untied the wide bow under her chin. In a moment the
hat was back in its box.
“What are you doing? You said it was mine.”
“But not to change to a mourning bonnet. I shall
find some other charming lady with green eyes who
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appreciates my taste.”
“Oh, you shan’t! I’ll die if I don’t have it! Oh, please,
Rhett, don’t be mean! Let me have it.”
“And turn it into a fright like your other hats? No.”
She clutched at the box. That sweet thing that made
her look so young and enchanting to be given to some
other girl? Oh, never! For a moment she thought of
the horror of Pitty and Melanie. She thought of Ellen
and what she would say, and she shivered. But vanity
was stronger.
“I won’t change it. I promise. Now, do let me have
it.”
He gave her the box with a slightly sardonic smile
and watched her while she put it on again and
preened herself.
“How much is it?” she asked suddenly, her face
falling. “I have only fifty dollars but next month–”
“It would cost about two thousand dollars, Confederate money,” he said with a grin at her woebegone
expression.
“Oh, dear– Well, suppose I give you the fifty now
and then when I get–”
“I don’t want any money for it,” he said. “It’s a gift.”
Scarlett’s mouth dropped open. The line was so
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closely, so carefully drawn where gifts from men were
concerned.
“Candy and flowers, dear,” Ellen had said time and
again, “and perhaps a book of poetry or an album or a
small bottle of Florida water are the only things a lady
may accept from a gentleman. Never, never any expensive gift, even from your fiance. And never any
gift of jewelry or wearing apparel, not even gloves
or handkerchiefs. Should you accept such gifts, men
would know you were no lady and would try to take
liberties.”
“Oh, dear,” thought Scarlett, looking first at herself
in the mirror and then at Rhett’s unreadable face. “I
simply can’t tell him I won’t accept it. It’s too darling. I’d–I’d almost rather he took a liberty, if it was a
very small one.” Then she was horrified at herself for
having such a thought and she turned pink.
“I’ll–I’ll give you the fifty dollars–”
“If you do I will throw it in the gutter. Or, better still
buy masses for your soul. I’m sure your soul could
do with a few masses.”
She laughed unwillingly, and the laughing reflection
under the green brim decided her instantly.
“Whatever are you trying to do to me?”
“I’m tempting you with fine gifts until your girlish
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ideals are quite worn away and you are at my mercy,”
he said. “‘Accept only candy and flowers from gentlemen, dearie,”’ he mimicked, and she burst into a
giggle.
“You are a clever, black-hearted wretch, Rhett Butler, and you know very well this bonnet’s too pretty
to be refused.”
His eyes mocked her, even while they complimented her beauty.
“Of course, you can tell Miss Pitty that you gave me
a sample of taffeta and green silk and drew a picture
of the bonnet and I extorted fifty dollars from you for
it.”
“No. I shall say one hundred dollars and she’ll tell
everybody in town and everybody will be green with
envy and talk about my extravagance. But Rhett, you
mustn’t bring me anything else so expensive. It’s awfully kind of you, but I really couldn’t accept anything
else.”
“Indeed? Well, I shall bring you presents so long as
it pleases me and so long as I see things that will enhance your charms. I shall bring you dark-green watered silk for a frock to match the bonnet. And I warn
you that I am not kind. I am tempting you with bonnets and bangles and leading you into a pit. Always
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remember I never do anything without reason and I
never give anything without expecting something in
return. I always get paid.”
His black eyes sought her face and traveled to her
lips.
Scarlett cast down her eyes, excitement filling her.
Now, he was going to try to take liberties, just as Ellen
predicted. He was going to kiss her, or try to kiss
her, and she couldn’t quite make up her flurried mind
which it should be. If she refused, he might jerk the
bonnet right off her head and give it to some other
girl. On the other hand, if she permitted one chaste
peck, he might bring her other lovely presents in the
hope of getting another kiss. Men set such a store by
kisses, though Heaven alone knew why. And lots of
times, after one kiss they fell completely in love with
a girl and made most entertaining spectacles of themselves, provided the girl was clever and withheld her
kisses after the first one. It would be exciting to have
Rhett Butler in love with her and admitting it and begging for a kiss or a smile. Yes, she would let him kiss
her.
But he made no move to kiss her. She gave him a
sidelong glance from under her lashes and murmured
encouragingly.
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“So you always get paid, do you? And what do you
expect to get from me?”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Well, if you think I’ll marry you to pay for the bonnet, I won’t,” she said daringly and gave her head a
saucy flirt that set the plume to bobbing.
His white teeth gleamed under his little mustache.
“Madam, you flatter yourself, I do not want to
marry you or anyone else. I am not a marrying man.”
“Indeed!” she cried, taken aback and now determined that he should take some liberty. “I don’t even
intend to kiss you, either.”
“Then why is your mouth all pursed up in that
ridiculous way?”
“Oh!” she cried as she caught a glimpse of herself
and saw that her red lips were indeed in the proper
pose for a kiss. “Oh!” she cried again, losing her
temper and stamping her foot. “You are the horridest
man I have ever seen and I don’t care if I never lay
eyes on you again!”
“If you really felt that way, you’d stamp on the bonnet. My, what a passion you are in and it’s quite becoming, as you probably know. Come, Scarlett, stamp
on the bonnet to show me what you think of me and
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my presents.”
“Don’t you dare touch this bonnet,” she said, clutching it by the bow and retreating. He came after her,
laughing softly and took her hands in his.
“Oh, Scarlett, you are so young you wring my
heart,” he said. “And I shall kiss you, as you seem
to expect it,” and leaning down carelessly, his mustache just grazed her cheek. “Now, do you feel that
you must slap me to preserve the proprieties?”
Her lips mutinous, she looked up into his eyes and
saw so much amusement in their dark depths that she
burst into laughter. What a tease he was and how exasperating! If he didn’t want to marry her and didn’t
even want to kiss her, what did he want? If he wasn’t
in love with her, why did he call so often and bring
her presents?
“That’s better,” he said. “Scarlett, I’m a bad influence on you and if you have any sense you will send
me packing–if you can. I’m very hard to get rid of.
But I’m bad for you.”
“Are you?”
“Can’t you see it? Ever since I met you at the bazaar,
your career has been most shocking and I’m to blame
for most of it. Who encouraged you to dance? Who
forced you to admit that you thought our glorious
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Cause was neither glorious nor sacred? Who goaded
you into admitting that you thought men were fools
to die for high-sounding principles? Who has aided
you in giving the old ladies plenty to gossip about?
Who is getting you out of mourning several years too
soon? And who, to end all this, has lured you into
accepting a gift which no lady can accept and still remain a lady?”
“You flatter yourself, Captain Butler. I haven’t done
anything so scandalous and I’d have done everything
you mentioned without your aid anyway.”
“I doubt that,” he said and his face went suddenly
quiet and somber. “You’d still be the broken-hearted
widow of Charles Hamilton and famed for your good
deeds among the wounded. Eventually, however–”
But she was not listening, for she was regarding herself pleasedly in the mirror again, thinking she would
wear the bonnet to the hospital this very afternoon
and take flowers to the convalescent officers.
That there was truth in his last words did not occur
to her. She did not see that Rhett had pried open the
prison of her widowhood and set her free to queen it
over unmarried girls when her days as a belle should
have been long past. Nor did she see that under his
influence she had come a long way from Ellen’s teach472
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ings. The change had been so gradual, the flouting of
one small convention seeming to have no connection
with the flouting of another, and none of them any
connection with Rhett. She did not realize that, with
his encouragement, she had disregarded many of the
sternest injunctions of her mother concerning the proprieties, forgotten the difficult lessons in being a lady.
She only saw that the bonnet was the most becoming one she ever had, that it had not cost her a penny
and that Rhett must be in love with her, whether he
admitted it or not. And she certainly intended to find
a way to make him admit it.
The next day, Scarlett was standing in front of the
mirror with a comb in her hand and her mouth full of
hairpins, attempting a new coiffure which Maybelle,
fresh from a visit to her husband in Richmond, had
said was the rage at the Capital. It was called “Cats,
Rats and Mice” and presented many difficulties. The
hair was parted in the middle and arranged in three
rolls of graduating size on each side of the head, the
largest, nearest the part, being the “cat.” The “cat”
and the “rat” were easy to fix but the “mice” kept
slipping out of her hairpins in an exasperating manner. However, she was determined to accomplish it,
for Rhett was coming to supper and he always no473
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ticed and commented upon any innovation of dress
or hair.
As she struggled with her bushy, obstinate locks,
perspiration beading her forehead, she heard light
running feet in the downstairs hall and knew that
Melanie was home from the hospital. As she heard
her fly up the stairs, two at a time, she paused, hairpin
in mid-air, realizing that something must be wrong,
for Melanie always moved as decorously as a dowager. She went to the door and threw it open, and
Melanie ran in, her face flushed and frightened, looking like a guilty child.
There were tears on her cheeks, her bonnet was
hanging on her neck by the ribbons and her hoops
swaying violently. She was clutching something in
her hand, and the reek of heavy cheap perfume came
into the room with her.
“Oh, Scarlett!” she cried, shutting the door and sinking on the bed. “Is Auntie home yet? She isn’t? Oh,
thank the Lord! Scarlett, I’m so mortified I could die!
I nearly swooned and, Scarlett, Uncle Peter is threatening to tell Aunt Pitty!”
“Tell what?”
“That I was talking to that–to Miss–Mrs.–” Melanie
fanned her hot face with her handkerchief. “That
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woman with red hair, named Belle Watling!”
“Why, Melly!” cried Scarlett, so shocked she could
only stare.
Belle Watling was the red-haired woman she had
seen on the street the first day she came to Atlanta and
by now, she was easily the most notorious woman
in town. Many prostitutes had flocked into Atlanta,
following the soldiers, but Belle stood out above the
rest, due to her flaming hair and the gaudy, overly
fashionable dresses she wore. She was seldom seen
on Peachtree Street or in any nice neighborhood, but
when she did appear respectable women made haste
to cross the street to remove themselves from her
vicinity. And Melanie had been talking with her. No
wonder Uncle Peter was outraged.
“I shall die if Aunt Pitty finds out! You know she’ll
cry and tell everybody in town and I’ll be disgraced,”
sobbed Melanie. “And it wasn’t my fault. I–I couldn’t
run away from her. It would have been so rude. Scarlett, I–I felt sorry for her. Do you think I’m bad for
feeling that way?”
But Scarlett was not concerned with the ethics of
the matter. Like most innocent and well-bred young
women, she had a devouring curiosity about prostitutes.
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“What did she want? What does she talk like?”
“Oh, she used awful grammar but I could see she
was trying so hard to be elegant, poor thing. I came
out of the hospital and Uncle Peter and the carriage
weren’t waiting, so I thought I’d walk home. And
when I went by the Emersons’ yard, there she was
hiding behind the hedge! Oh, thank Heaven, the
Emersons are in Macon! And she said, ‘Please, Mrs.
Wilkes, do speak a minute with me.’ I don’t know
how she knew my name. I knew I ought to run as
hard as I could but–well, Scarlett, she looked so sad
and–well, sort of pleading. And she had on a black
dress and black bonnet and no paint and really looked
decent but for that red hair. And before I could answer she said. ‘I know I shouldn’t speak to you but I
tried to talk to that old peahen, Mrs. Elsing, and she
ran me away from the hospital.”’
“Did she really call her a peahen?” said Scarlett
pleasedly and laughed.
“Oh, don’t laugh. It isn’t funny. It seems that Miss–
this woman, wanted to do something for the hospital–
can you imagine it? She offered to nurse every morning and, of course, Mrs. Elsing must have nearly died
at the idea and ordered her out of the hospital. And
then she said, ‘I want to do something, too. Ain’t I a
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Confedrut, good as you?’ And, Scarlett, I was right
touched at her wanting to help. You know, she can’t
be all bad if she wants to help the Cause. Do you think
I’m bad to feel that way?”
“For Heaven’s sake, Melly, who cares if you’re bad?
What else did she say?”
“She said she’d been watching the ladies go by to
the hospital and thought I had–a–a kind face and
so she stopped me. She had some money and she
wanted me to take it and use it for the hospital and
not tell a soul where it came from. She said Mrs. Elsing wouldn’t let it be used if she knew what kind of
money it was. What kind of money! That’s when I
thought I’d swoon! And I was so upset and anxious
to get away, I just said: ‘Oh, yes, indeed, how sweet
of you’ or something idiotic, and she smiled and said:
‘That’s right Christian of you’ and shoved this dirty
handkerchief into my hand. Ugh, can you smell the
perfume?”
Melanie held out a man’s handkerchief, soiled and
highly perfumed, in which some coins were knotted.
“She was saying thank you and something about
bringing me some money every week and just then
Uncle Peter drove up and saw me!” Melly collapsed
into tears and laid her head on the pillow. “And when
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he saw who was with me, he–Scarlett, he HOLLERED
at me! Nobody has ever hollered at me before in my
whole life. And he said, ‘You git in dis hyah cah’ige
dis minute!’ Of course, I did, and all the way home
he blessed me out and wouldn’t let me explain and
said he was going to tell Aunt Pitty. Scarlett, do go
down and beg him not to tell her. Perhaps he will listen to you. It will kill Auntie if she knows I ever even
looked that woman in the face. Will you?”
“Yes, I will. But let’s see how much money is in here.
It feels heavy.”
She untied the knot and a handful of gold coins
rolled out on the bed.
“Scarlett, there’s fifty dollars here! And in gold!”
cried Melanie, awed, as she counted the bright pieces.
“Tell me, do you think it’s all right to use this kind–
well, money made–er–this way for the boys? Don’t
you think that maybe God will understand that she
wanted to help and won’t care if it is tainted? When I
think of how many things the hospital needs–”
But Scarlett was not listening. She was looking at the
dirty handkerchief, and humiliation and fury were
filling her. There was a monogram in the corner in
which were the initials “R. K. B.” In her top drawer
was a handkerchief just like this, one that Rhett Butler
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had lent her only yesterday to wrap about the stems
of wild flowers they had picked. She had planned to
return it to him when he came to supper tonight.
So Rhett consorted with that vile Watling creature
and gave her money. That was where the contribution
to the hospital came from. Blockade gold. And to
think that Rhett would have the gall to look a decent
woman in the face after being with that creature! And
to think that she could have believed he was in love
with her! This proved he couldn’t be.
Bad women and all they involved were mysterious
and revolting matters to her. She knew that men patronized these women for purposes which no lady
should mention–or, if she did mention them, in whispers and by indirection and euphemism. She had always thought that only common vulgar men visited
such women. Before this moment, it had never occurred to her that nice men– that is, men she met at
nice homes and with whom she danced–could possibly do such things. It opened up an entirely new
field of thought and one that was horrifying. Perhaps
all men did this! It was bad enough that they forced
their wives to go through such indecent performances
but to actually seek out low women and pay them
for such accommodation! Oh, men were so vile, and
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Rhett Butler was the worst of them all!
She would take this handkerchief and fling it in his
face and show him the door and never, never speak
to him again. But no, of course she couldn’t do that.
She could never, never let him know she even realized that bad women existed, much less that he visited them. A lady could never do that.
“Oh,” she thought in fury. “If I just wasn’t a lady,
what wouldn’t I tell that varmint!”
And, crumbling the handkerchief in her hand, she
went down the stairs to the kitchen in search of Uncle Peter. As she passed the stove, she shoved the
handkerchief into the flames and with impotent anger
watched it burn.
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high in every Southern heart as the
summer of 1863 came in. Despite privation and hardships, despite food speculators and kindred scourges,
despite death and sickness and suffering which had
now left their mark on nearly every family, the South
was again saying “One more victory and the war is
over,” saying it with even more happy assurance than
in the summer before. The Yankees were proving a
hard nut to crack but they were cracking at last.
H OPE
WAS ROLLING
Christmas of 1862 had been a happy one for Atlanta,
for the whole South. The Confederacy had scored a
smashing victory, at Fredericksburg and the Yankee
dead and wounded were counted in the thousands.
There was universal rejoicing in that holiday season,
rejoicing and thankfulness that the tide was turning.
The army in butternut were now seasoned fighters,
their generals had proven their mettle, and everyone
knew that when the campaign reopened in the spring,
the Yankees would be crushed for good and all.
Spring came and the fighting recommenced. May
came and the Confederacy won another great victory
at Chancellorsville. The South roared with elation.
Closer at home, a Union cavalry dash into Georgia
�PART TWO
had been turned into a Confederate triumph. Folks
were still laughing and slapping each other on the
back and saying: “Yes, sir! When old Nathan Bedford
Forrest gets after them, they better git!” Late in April,
Colonel Streight and eighteen hundred Yankee cavalry had made a surprise raid into Georgia, aiming at
Rome, only a little more than sixty miles north of Atlanta. They had ambitious plans to cut the vitally important railroad between Atlanta and Tennessee and
then swing southward into Atlanta to destroy the factories and the war supplies concentrated there in that
key city of the Confederacy.
It was a bold stroke and it would have cost the South
dearly, except for Forrest. With only one-third as
many men–but what men and what riders!–he had
started after them, engaged them before they even
reached Rome, harassed them day and night and finally captured the entire force!
The news reached Atlanta almost simultaneously
with the news of the victory at Chancellorsville,
and the town fairly rocked with exultation and with
laughter. Chancellorsville might be a more important
victory but the capture of Streight’s raiders made the
Yankees positively ridiculous.
“No, sir, they’d better not fool with old Forrest,” At482
�PART TWO
lanta said gleefully as the story was told over and
over.
The tide of the Confederacy’s fortune was running
strong and full now, sweeping the people jubilantly
along on its flood. True, the Yankees under Grant had
been besieging Vicksburg since the middle of May.
True, the South had suffered a sickening loss when
Stonewall Jackson had been fatally wounded at Chancellorsville. True, Georgia had lost one of her bravest
and most brilliant sons when General T. R. R. Cobb
had been killed at Fredericksburg. But the Yankees
just couldn’t stand any more defeats like Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. They’d have to give in,
and then this cruel war would be over.
The first days of July came and with them the rumor,
later confirmed by dispatches, that Lee was marching
into Pennsylvania. Lee in the enemy’s territory! Lee
forcing battle! This was the last fight of the war!
Atlanta was wild with excitement, pleasure and a
hot thirst for vengeance. Now the Yankees would
know what it meant to have the war carried into their
own country. Now they’d know what it meant to
have fertile fields stripped, horses and cattle stolen,
houses burned, old men and boys dragged off to
prison and women and children turned out to starve.
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Everyone knew what the Yankees had done in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Even small
children could recite with hate and fear the horrors
the Yankees had inflicted upon the conquered territory. Already Atlanta was full of refugees from east
Tennessee, and the town had heard firsthand stories
from them of what suffering they had gone through.
In that section, the Confederate sympathizers were in
the minority and the hand of war fell heavily upon
them, as it did on all the border states, neighbor informing against neighbor and brother killing brother.
These refugees cried out to see Pennsylvania one solid
sheet of flame, and even the gentlest of old ladies
wore expressions of grim pleasure.
But when the news trickled back that Lee had issued orders that no private property in Pennsylvania should be touched, that looting would be punished by death and that the army would pay for every article it requisitioned–then it needed all the reverence the General had earned to save his popularity. Not turn the men loose in the rich storehouses of
that prosperous state? What was General Lee thinking of? And our boys so hungry and needing shoes
and clothes and horses!
A hasty note from Darcy Meade to the doctor, the
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only first-hand information Atlanta received during
those first days of July, was passed from hand to hand,
with mounting indignation.
“Pa, could you manage to get me a pair of boots?
I’ve been barefooted for two weeks now and I don’t
see any prospects of getting another pair. If I didn’t
have such big feet I could get them off dead Yankees
like the other boys, but I’ve never yet found a Yankee
whose feet were near as big as mine. If you can get me
some, don’t mail them. Somebody would steal them
on the way and I wouldn’t blame them. Put Phil on
the train and send him up with them. I’ll write you
soon, where we’ll be. Right now I don’t know, except
that we’re marching north. We’re in Maryland now
and everybody says we’re going on into Pennsylvania. . . .
“Pa, I thought that we’d give the Yanks a taste of
their own medicine but the General says No, and personally I don’t care to get shot just for the pleasure of
burning some Yank’s house. Pa, today we marched
through the grandest cornfields you ever saw. We
don’t have corn like this down home. Well, I must
admit we did a bit of private looting in that corn, for
we were all pretty hungry and what the General don’t
know won’t hurt him. But that green corn didn’t do
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us a bit of good. All the boys have got dysentery anyway, and that corn made it worse. It’s easier to walk
with a leg wound than with dysentery. Pa, do try to
manage some boots for me. I’m a captain now and a
captain ought to have boots, even if he hasn’t got a
new uniform or epaulets.”
But the army was in Pennsylvania–that was all that
mattered. One more victory and the war would be
over, and then Darcy Meade could have all the boots
he wanted, and the boys would come marching home
and everybody would be happy again. Mrs. Meade’s
eyes grew wet as she pictured her soldier son home at
last, home to stay.
On the third of July, a sudden silence fell on the
wires from the north, a silence that lasted till midday
of the fourth when fragmentary and garbled reports
began to trickle into headquarters in Atlanta. There
had been hard fighting in Pennsylvania, near a little
town named Gettysburg, a great battle with all Lee’s
army massed. The news was uncertain, slow in coming, for the battle had been fought in the enemy’s territory and the reports came first through Maryland,
were relayed to Richmond and then to Atlanta.
Suspense grew and the beginnings of dread slowly
crawled over the town. Nothing was so bad as not
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knowing what was happening. Families with sons
at the front prayed fervently that their boys were
not in Pennsylvania, but those who knew their relatives were in the same regiment with Darcy Meade
clamped their teeth and said it was an honor for them
to be in the big fight that would lick the Yankees for
good and all.
In Aunt Pitty’s house, the three women looked into
one another’s eyes with fear they could not conceal.
Ashley was in Darcy’s regiment.
On the fifth came evil tidings, not from the North
but from the West. Vicksburg had fallen, fallen after
a long and bitter siege, and practically all the Mississippi River, from St. Louis to New Orleans was in the
hands of the Yankees. The Confederacy had been cut
in two. At any other time, the news of this disaster
would have brought fear and lamentation to Atlanta.
But now they could give little thought to Vicksburg.
They were thinking of Lee in Pennsylvania, forcing
battle. Vicksburg’s loss would be no catastrophe if
Lee won in the East. There lay Philadelphia, New
York, Washington. Their capture would paralyze the
North and more than cancel off the defeat on the Mississippi.
The hours dragged by and the black shadow of
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calamity brooded over the town, obscuring the hot
sun until people looked up startled into the sky as
if incredulous that it was clear and blue instead of
murky and heavy with scudding clouds. Everywhere, women gathered in knots, huddled in groups
on front porches, on sidewalks, even in the middle
of the streets, telling each other that no news is good
news, trying to comfort each other, trying to present
a brave appearance. But hideous rumors that Lee
was killed, the battle lost, and enormous casualty lists
coming in, fled up and down the quiet streets like
darting bats. Though they tried not to believe, whole
neighborhoods, swayed by panic, rushed to town, to
the newspapers, to headquarters, pleading for news,
any news, even bad news.
Crowds formed at the depot, hoping for news from
incoming trains, at the telegraph office, in front of the
harried headquarters, before the locked doors of the
newspapers. They were oddly still crowds, crowds
that quietly grew larger and larger. There was no talking. Occasionally an old man’s treble voice begged
for news, and instead of inciting the crowd to babbling it only intensified the hush as they heard the
oft-repeated: “Nothing on the wires yet from the
North except that there’s been fighting.” The fringe
of women on foot and in carriages grew greater and
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greater, and the heat of the close-packed bodies and
dust rising from restless feet were suffocating. The
women did not speak, but their pale set faces pleaded
with a mute eloquence that was louder than wailing.
There was hardly a house in town that had not sent
away a son, a brother, a father, a lover, a husband,
to this battle. They all waited to hear the news that
death had come to their homes. They expected death.
They did not expect defeat. That thought they dismissed. Their men might be dying, even now, on
the sun-parched grass of the Pennsylvania hills. Even
now the Southern ranks might be falling like grain before a hailstorm, but the Cause for which they fought
could never fall. They might be dying in thousands
but, like the fruit of the dragon’s teeth, thousands of
fresh men in gray and butternut with the Rebel yell
on their lips would spring up from the earth to take
their places. Where these men would come from, no
one knew. They only knew, as surely as they knew
there was a just and jealous God in Heaven, that Lee
was miraculous and the Army of Virginia invincible.
Scarlett, Melanie and Miss Pittypat sat in front of
the Daily Examiner office in the carriage with the
top back, sheltered beneath their parasols. Scarlett’s
hands shook so that her parasol wobbled above her
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head, Pitty was so excited her nose quivered in her
round face like a rabbit’s, but Melanie sat as though
carved of stone, her dark eyes growing larger and
larger as time went by. She made only one remark
in two hours, as she took a vial of smelling salts from
her reticule and handed it to her aunt, the only time
she had ever spoken to her, in her whole life, with
anything but tenderest affection.
“Take this, Auntie, and use it if you feel faint. I warn
you if you do faint you’ll just have to faint and let Uncle Peter take you home, for I’m not going to leave this
place till I hear about–till I hear. And I’m not going to
let Scarlett leave me, either.”
Scarlett had no intention of leaving, no intention
of placing herself where she could not have the first
news of Ashley. No, even if Miss Pitty died, she
wouldn’t leave this spot. Somewhere, Ashley was
fighting, perhaps dying, and the newspaper office
was the only place where she could learn the truth.
She looked about the crowd, picking out friends
and neighbors, Mrs. Meade with her bonnet askew
and her arm through that of fifteen- year-old Phil; the
Misses McLure trying to make their trembling upper
lips cover their buck teeth; Mrs. Elsing, erect as a
Spartan mother, betraying her inner turmoil only by
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the straggling gray locks that hung from her chignon;
and Fanny Elsing white as a ghost. (Surely Fanny
wouldn’t be so worried about her brother Hugh. Had
she a real beau at the front that no one suspected?)
Mrs. Merriwether sat in her carriage patting Maybelle’s hand. Maybelle looked so very pregnant it
was a disgrace for her to be out in public, even if she
did have her shawl carefully draped over her. Why
should she be so worried? Nobody had heard that
the Louisiana troops were in Pennsylvania. Probably
her hairy little Zouave was safe in Richmond this very
minute.
There was a movement on the outskirts of the crowd
and those on foot gave way as Rhett Butler carefully
edged his horse toward Aunt Pitty’s carriage. Scarlett
thought: He’s got courage, coming here at this time
when it wouldn’t take anything to make this mob
tear him to pieces because he isn’t in uniform. As
he came nearer, she thought she might be the first to
rend him. How dared he sit there on that fine horse,
in shining boots and handsome white linen suit, so
sleek and well fed, smoking an expensive cigar, when
Ashley and all the other boys were fighting the Yankees, barefooted, sweltering in the heat, hungry, their
bellies rotten with disease?
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Bitter looks were thrown at him as he came slowly
through the press. Old men growled in their beards,
and Mrs. Merriwether who feared nothing rose
slightly in her carriage and said clearly: “Speculator!”
in a tone that made the word the foulest and most
venomous of epithets. He paid no heed to anyone but
raised his hat to Melly and Aunt Pitty and, riding to
Scarlett’s side, leaned down and whispered: “Don’t
you think this would be the time for Dr. Meade to
give us his familiar speech about victory perching like
a screaming eagle on our banners?”
Her nerves taut with suspense, she turned on him
as swiftly as an angry cat, hot words bubbling to her
lips, but he stopped them with a gesture.
“I came to tell you ladies,” he said loudly, “that I
have been to headquarters and the first casualty lists
are coming in.”
At these words a hum rose among those near
enough to hear his remark, and the crowd surged,
ready to turn and run down Whitehall Street toward
headquarters.
“Don’t go,” he called, rising in his saddle and holding up his hand. “The lists have been sent to both
newspapers and are now being printed. Stay where
you are!”
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“Oh, Captain Butler,” cried Melly, turning to him
with tears in her eyes. “How kind of you to come
and tell us! When will they be posted?”
“They should be out any minute, Madam. The reports have been in the offices for half an hour now.
The major in charge didn’t want to let that out until the printing was done, for fear the crowd would
wreck the offices trying to get news. Ah! Look!”
The side window of the newspaper office opened
and a hand was extended, bearing a sheaf of long narrow galley proofs, smeared with fresh ink and thick
with names closely printed. The crowd fought for
them, tearing the slips in half, those obtaining them
trying to back out through the crowd to read, those
behind pushing forward, crying: “Let me through!”
“Hold the reins,” said Rhett shortly, swinging to the
ground and tossing the bridle to Uncle Peter. They
saw his heavy shoulders towering above the crowd
as he went through, brutally pushing and shoving. In
a while he was back, with half a dozen in his hands.
He tossed one to Melanie and distributed the others
among the ladies in the nearest carriages, the Misses
McLure, Mrs. Meade, Mrs. Merriwether, Mrs. Elsing.
“Quick, Melly,” cried Scarlett, her heart in her
throat, exasperation sweeping her as she saw that
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Melly’s hands were shaking so that it was impossible
for her to read.
“Take it,” whispered Melly, and Scarlett snatched it
from her. The Ws. Where were the Ws? Oh, there
they were at the bottom and all smeared up. “White,”
she read and her voice shook, “Wilkens . . . Winn . . .
Zebulon . . . Oh, Melly, he’s not on it! He’s not on it!
Oh, for God’s sake, Auntie, Melly, pick up the salts!
Hold her up, Melly.”
Melly, weeping openly with happiness, steadied
Miss Pitty’s rolling head and held the smelling salts
under her nose. Scarlett braced the fat old lady on
the other side, her heart singing with joy. Ashley was
alive. He wasn’t even wounded. How good God was
to pass him by! How–
She heard a low moan and, turning, saw Fanny Elsing lay her head on her mother’s bosom, saw the casualty list flutter to the floor of the carriage, saw Mrs.
Elsing’s thin lips quiver as she gathered her daughter
in her arms and said quietly to the coachman: “Home.
Quickly.” Scarlett took a quick glance at the lists.
Hugh Elsing was not listed. Fanny must have had
a beau and now he was dead. The crowd made way
in sympathetic silence for the Elsings’ carriage, and
after them followed the little wicker pony cart of the
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McLure girls. Miss Faith was driving, her face like
a rock, and for once, her teeth were covered by her
lips. Miss Hope, death in her face, sat erect beside her,
holding her sister’s skirt in a tight grasp. They looked
like very old women. Their young brother Dallas was
their darling and the only relative the maiden ladies
had in the world. Dallas was gone.
“Melly! Melly!” cried Maybelle, joy in her voice,
“Rene is safe! And Ashley, too! Oh, thank God!” The
shawl had slipped from her shoulders and her condition was most obvious but, for once, neither she
nor Mrs. Merriwether cared. “Oh, Mrs. Meade!
Rene–” Her voice changed, swiftly, “Melly, look!–
Mrs. Meade, please! Darcy isn’t–?”
Mrs. Meade was looking down into her lap and she
did not raise her head when her name was called, but
the face of little Phil beside her was an open book that
all might read.
“There, there, Mother,” he said, helplessly. Mrs.
Meade looked up, meeting Melanie’s eyes.
“He won’t need those boots now,” she said.
“Oh, darling!” cried Melly, beginning to sob, as she
shoved Aunt Pitty onto Scarlett’s shoulder and scrambled out of the carriage and toward that of the doctor’s wife.
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“Mother, you’ve still got me,” said Phil, in a forlorn effort at comforting the white-faced woman beside him. “And if you’ll just let me, I’ll go kill all the
Yank–”
Mrs. Meade clutched his arm as if she would never
let it go, said “No!” in a strangled voice and seemed
to choke.
“Phil Meade, you hush your mouth!” hissed
Melanie, climbing in beside Mrs. Meade and taking
her in her arms. “Do you think it’ll help your mother
to have you off getting shot too? I never heard anything so silly. Drive us home, quick!”
She turned to Scarlett as Phil picked up the reins.
“As soon as you take Auntie home, come over to
Mrs. Meade’s. Captain Butler, can you get word to
the doctor? He’s at the hospital.”
The carriage moved off through the dispersing
crowd. Some of the women were weeping with joy,
but most looked too stunned to realize the heavy
blows that had fallen upon them. Scarlett bent her
head over the blurred lists, reading rapidly, to find
names of friends. Now that Ashley was safe she could
think of other people. Oh, how long the list was! How
heavy the toll from Atlanta, from all of Georgia.
Good Heavens! “Calvert–Raiford, Lieutenant.”
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Raif! Suddenly she remembered the day, so long
ago, when they had run away together but decided
to come home at nightfall because they were hungry
and afraid of the dark.
“Fontaine–Joseph K., private.” Little bad-tempered
Joe! And Sally hardly over having her baby!
“Munroe–LaFayette, Captain.” And Lafe had been
engaged to Cathleen Calvert. Poor Cathleen! Hers
had been a double loss, a brother and a sweetheart.
But Sally’s loss was greater–a brother and a husband.
Oh, this was too terrible. She was almost afraid to
read further. Aunt Pitty was heaving and sighing
on her shoulder and, with small ceremony, Scarlett
pushed her over into a corner of the carriage and continued her reading.
Surely, surely–there couldn’t be three “Tarleton”
names on that list. Perhaps–perhaps the hurried
printer had repeated the name by error. But no.
There they were. “Tarleton–Brenton, Lieutenant.”
“Tarleton–Stuart, Corporal.” “Tarleton–Thomas, private.” And Boyd, dead the first year of the war, was
buried God knew where in Virginia. All the Tarleton
boys gone. Tom and the lazy long-legged twins with
their love of gossip and their absurd practical jokes
and Boyd who had the grace of a dancing master and
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the tongue of a wasp.
She could not read any more. She could not know if
any other of those boys with whom she had grown
up, danced, flirted, kissed were on that list. She
wished that she could cry, do something to ease the
iron fingers that were digging into her throat.
“I’m sorry, Scarlett,” said Rhett. She looked up at
him. She had forgotten he was still there. “Many of
your friends?”
She nodded and struggled to speak: “About every
family in the County–and all–all three of the Tarleton
boys.”
His face was quiet, almost somber, and there was no
mocking in his eyes.
“And the end is not yet,” he said. “These are just the
first lists and they’re incomplete. There’ll be a longer
list tomorrow.” He lowered his voice so that those in
the near-by carriages could not hear. “Scarlett, General Lee must have lost the battle. I heard at headquarters that he had retreated back into Maryland.”
She raised frightened eyes to his, but her fear did not
spring from Lee’s defeat. Longer casualty lists tomorrow! Tomorrow. She had not thought of tomorrow, so
happy was she at first that Ashley’s name was not on
that list. Tomorrow. Why, right this minute he might
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be dead and she would not know it until tomorrow,
or perhaps a week from tomorrow.
“Oh, Rhett, why do there have to be wars? It would
have been so much better for the Yankees to pay for
the darkies–or even for us to give them the darkies
free of charge than to have this happen.”
“It isn’t the darkies, Scarlett. They’re just the excuse. There’ll always be wars because men love wars.
Women don’t, but men do–yea, passing the love of
women.”
His mouth twisted in his old smile and the seriousness was gone from his face. He lifted his wide
Panama hat.
“Good-by. I’m going to find Dr. Meade. I imagine
the irony of me being the one to tell him of his son’s
death will be lost on him, just now. But later, he’ll
probably hate to think that a speculator brought the
news of a hero’s death.”
Scarlett put Miss Pitty to bed with a toddy, left
Prissy and Cookie in attendance and went down the
street to the Meade house. Mrs. Meade was upstairs
with Phil, waiting her husband’s return, and Melanie
sat in the parlor, talking in a low voice to a group
of sympathetic neighbors. She was busy with needle
and scissors, altering a mourning dress that Mrs. Els499
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ing had lent to Mrs. Meade. Already the house was
full of the acrid smell of clothes boiling in homemade
black dye for, in the kitchen, the sobbing cook was
stirring all of Mrs. Meade’s dresses in the huge wash
pot.
“How is she?” questioned Scarlett softly.
“Not a tear,” said Melanie. “It’s terrible when
women can’t cry. I don’t know how men stand things
without crying. I guess it’s because they’re stronger
and braver than women. She says she’s going to
Pennsylvania by herself to bring him home. The doctor can’t leave the hospital.”
“It will be dreadful for her! Why can’t Phil go?”
“She’s afraid he’ll join the army if he gets out of her
sight. You know he’s so big for his age and they’re
taking them at sixteen now.”
One by one the neighbors slipped away, reluctant
to be present when the doctor came home, and Scarlett and Melanie were left alone, sewing in the parlor. Melanie looked sad but tranquil, though tears
dropped down on the cloth she held in her hands. Evidently she had not thought that the battle might still
be going on and Ashley perhaps dead at this very moment. With panic in her heart, Scarlett did not know
whether to tell Melanie of Rhett’s words and have the
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dubious comfort of her misery or keep it to herself.
Finally she decided to remain quiet. It would never
do for Melanie to think her too worried about Ashley. She thanked God that everyone, Melly and Pitty
included, had been too engrossed in her own worries
that morning to notice her conduct.
After an interval of silent sewing, they heard sounds
outside and, peering through the curtains, they saw
Dr. Meade alighting from his horse. His shoulders
were sagging and his head bowed until his gray beard
spread out fanlike on his chest. He came slowly into
the house and, laying down his hat and bag, kissed
both the girls silently. Then he went tiredly up the
stairs. In a moment Phil came down, all long legs and
arms and awkwardness. The two girls looked an invitation to join them, but he went onto the front porch
and, seating himself on the top step, dropped his head
on his cupped palm.
Melly sighed.
“He’s mad because they won’t let him go fight the
Yankees. Fifteen years old! Oh, Scarlett, it would be
Heaven to have a son like that!”
“And have him get killed,” said Scarlett shortly,
thinking of Darcy.
“It would be better to have a son even if he did
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get killed than to never have one,” said Melanie and
gulped. “You can’t understand, Scarlett, because
you’ve got little Wade, but I– Oh, Scarlett, I want a
baby so bad! I know you think I’m horrid to say it
right out, but it’s true and only what every woman
wants and you know it.”
Scarlett restrained herself from sniffing.
“If God should will that Ashley should be–taken,
I suppose I could bear it, though I’d rather die if he
died. But God would give me strength to bear it. But
I could not bear having him dead and not having–not
having a child of his to comfort me. Oh, Scarlett, how
lucky you are! Though you lost Charlie, you have
his son. And if Ashley goes, I’ll have nothing. Scarlett, forgive me, but sometimes I’ve been so jealous of
you–”
“Jealous–of me?” cried Scarlett, stricken with guilt.
“Because you have a son and I haven’t. I’ve even
pretended sometimes that Wade was mine because
it’s so awful not to have a child.”
“Fiddle-dee-dee!” said Scarlett in relief. She cast a
quick glance at the slight figure with blushing face
bent over the sewing. Melanie might want children
but she certainly did not have the figure for bearing
them. She was hardly taller than a twelve-year- old
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child, her hips were as narrow as a child’s and her
breasts were very flat. The very thought of Melanie
having a child was repellent to Scarlett. It brought
up too many thoughts she couldn’t bear thinking. If
Melanie should have a child of Ashley’s, it would be
as though something were taken from Scarlett that
was her own.
“Do forgive me for saying that about Wade. You
know I love him so. You aren’t mad at me, are you?”
“Don’t be silly,” said Scarlett shortly. “And go out
on the porch and do something for Phil. He’s crying.”
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back into Virginia, went into winter
quarters on the Rapidan–a tired, depleted army since
the defeat at Gettysburg– and as the Christmas season
approached, Ashley came home on furlough. Scarlett,
seeing him for the first time in more than two years,
was frightened by the violence of her feelings. When
she had stood in the parlor at Twelve Oaks and seen
him married to Melanie, she had thought she could
never love him with a more heartbreaking intensity
than she did at that moment. But now she knew
her feelings of that long-past night were those of a
spoiled child thwarted of a toy. Now, her emotions
were sharpened by her long dreams of him, heightened by the repression she had been forced to put on
her tongue.
This Ashley Wilkes in his faded, patched uniform,
his blond hair bleached tow by summer suns, was a
different man from the easy- going, drowsy-eyed boy
she had loved to desperation before the war. And he
was a thousand times more thrilling. He was bronzed
and lean now, where he had once been fair and slender, and the long golden mustache drooping about
his mouth, cavalry style, was the last touch needed
to make him the perfect picture of a soldier.
T HE
ARMY, DRIVEN
�PART TWO
He stood with military straightness in his old uniform, his pistol in its worn holster, his battered scabbard smartly slapping his high boots, his tarnished
spurs dully gleaming–Major Ashley Wilkes, C.S.A.
The habit of command sat upon him now, a quiet
air of self-reliance and authority, and grim lines were
beginning to emerge about his mouth. There was
something new and strange about the square set of
his shoulders and the cool bright gleam of his eyes.
Where he had once been lounging and indolent, he
was now as alert as a prowling cat, with the tense
alertness of one whose nerves are perpetually drawn
as tight as the strings of a violin. In his eyes, there
was a fagged, haunted look, and the sunburned skin
was tight across the fine bones of his face–her same
handsome Ashley, yet so very different.
Scarlett had made her plans to spend Christmas
at Tara, but after Ashley’s telegram came no power
on earth, not even a direct command from the disappointed Ellen, could drag her away from Atlanta.
Had Ashley intended going to Twelve Oaks, she
would have hastened to Tara to be near him; but he
had written his family to join him in Atlanta, and Mr.
Wilkes and Honey and India were already in town.
Go home to Tara and miss seeing him, after two long
years? Miss the heart-quickening sound of his voice,
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miss reading in his eyes that he had not forgotten her?
Never! Not for all the mothers in the world.
Ashley came home four days before Christmas, with
a group of the County boys also on furlough, a sadly
diminished group since Gettysburg. Cade Calvert
was among them, a thin, gaunt Cade, who coughed
continually, two of the Munroe boys, bubbling with
the excitement of their first leave since 1861, and Alex
and Tony Fontaine, splendidly drunk, boisterous and
quarrelsome. The group had two hours to wait between trains and, as it was taxing the diplomacy of
the sober members of the party to keep the Fontaines
from fighting each other and perfect strangers in the
depot, Ashley brought them all home to Aunt Pittypat’s.
“You’d think they’d had enough fighting in Virginia,” said Cade bitterly, as he watched the two bristle like game-cocks over who should be the first to
kiss the fluttering and flattered Aunt Pitty. “But no.
They’ve been drunk and picking fights ever since we
got to Richmond. The provost guard took them up
there and if it hadn’t been for Ashley’s slick tongue,
they’d have spent Christmas in jail.”
But Scarlett hardly heard a word he said, so enraptured was she at being in the same room with Ash506
�PART TWO
ley again. How could she have thought during these
two years that other men were nice or handsome or
exciting? How could she have even endured hearing them make love to her when Ashley was in the
world? He was home again, separated from her only
by the width of the parlor rug, and it took all her
strength not to dissolve in happy tears every time she
looked at him sitting there on the sofa with Melly on
one side and India on the other and Honey hanging
over his shoulder. If only she had the right to sit there
beside him, her arm through his! If only she could pat
his sleeve every few minutes to make sure he was really there, hold his hand and use his handkerchief to
wipe away her tears of joy. For Melanie was doing all
these things, unashamedly. Too happy to be shy and
reserved, she hung on her husband’s arm and adored
him openly with her eyes, with her smiles, her tears.
And Scarlett was too happy to resent this, too glad to
be jealous. Ashley was home at last!
Now and then she put her hand up to her cheek
where he had kissed her and felt again the thrill of his
lips and smiled at him. He had not kissed her first, of
course. Melly had hurled herself into his arms crying
incoherently, holding him as though she would never
let him go. And then, India and Honey had hugged
him, fairly tearing him from Melanie’s arms. Then
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he had kissed his father, with a dignified affectionate
embrace that showed the strong quiet feeling that lay
between them. And then Aunt Pitty, who was jumping up and down on her inadequate little feet with
excitement. Finally he turned to her, surrounded by
all the boys who were claiming their kisses, and said:
“Oh, Scarlett! You pretty, pretty thing!” and kissed
her on the cheek.
With that kiss, everything she had intended to say
in welcome took wings. Not until hours later did she
recall that he had not kissed her on the lips. Then
she wondered feverishly if he would have done it had
she met him alone, bending his tall body over hers,
pulling her up on tiptoe, holding her for a long, long
time. And because it made her happy to think so, she
believed that he would. But there would be time for
all things, a whole week! Surely she could maneuver
to get him alone and say: “Do you remember those
rides we used to take down our secret bridle paths?”
“Do you remember how the moon looked that night
when we sat on the steps at Tara and you quoted that
poem?” (Good Heavens! What was the name of that
poem, anyway?) “Do you remember that afternoon
when I sprained my ankle and you carried me home
in your arms in the twilight?”
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Oh, there were so many things she would preface
with “Do you remember?” So many dear memories
that would bring back to him those lovely days when
they roamed the County like care-free children, so
many things that would call to mind the days before
Melanie Hamilton entered on the scene. And while
they talked she could perhaps read in his eyes some
quickening of emotion, some hint that behind the barrier of husbandly affection for Melanie he still cared,
cared as passionately as on that day of the barbecue
when he burst forth with the truth. It did not occur to her to plan just what they would do if Ashley should declare his love for her in unmistakable
words. It would be enough to know that he did
care. . . . Yes, she could wait, could let Melanie
have her happy hour of squeezing his arm and crying. Her time would come. After all, what did a girl
like Melanie know of love?
“Darling, you look like a ragamuffin,” said Melanie
when the first excitement of homecoming was over.
“Who did mend your uniform and why did they use
blue patches?”
“I thought I looked perfectly dashing,” said Ashley, considering his appearance. “Just compare me
with those rag-tags over there and you’ll appreciate
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me more. Mose mended the uniform and I thought
he did very well, considering that he’d never had a
needle in his hand before the war. About the blue
cloth, when it comes to a choice between having holes
in your britches or patching them with pieces of a
captured Yankee uniform–well, there just isn’t any
choice. And as for looking like a ragamuffin, you
should thank your stars your husband didn’t come
home barefooted. Last week my old boots wore completely out, and I would have come home with sacks
tied on my feet if we hadn’t had the good luck to shoot
two Yankee scouts. The boots of one of them fitted me
perfectly.”
He stretched out his long legs in their scarred high
boots for them to admire.
“And the boots of the other scout didn’t fit me,” said
Cade. “They’re two sizes too small and they’re killing
me this minute. But I’m going home in style just the
same.”
“And the selfish swine won’t give them to either of
us,” said Tony. “And they’d fit our small, aristocratic
Fontaine feet perfectly. Hell’s afire, I’m ashamed to
face Mother in these brogans. Before the war she
wouldn’t have let one of our darkies wear them.”
“Don’t worry,” said Alex, eyeing Cade’s boots.
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“We’ll take them off of him on the train going home.
I don’t mind facing Mother but I’m da–I mean I don’t
intend for Dimity Munroe to see my toes sticking
out.”
“Why, they’re my boots. I claimed them first,” said
Tony, beginning to scowl at his brother; and Melanie,
fluttering with fear at the possibility of one of the famous Fontaine quarrels, interposed and made peace.
“I had a full beard to show you girls,” said Ashley, ruefully rubbing his face where half-healed razor
nicks still showed. “It was a beautiful beard and if I
do say it myself, neither Jeb Stuart nor Nathan Bedford Forrest had a handsomer one. But when we got
to Richmond, those two scoundrels,” indicating the
Fontaines, “decided that as they were shaving their
beards, mine should come off too. They got me down
and shaved me, and it’s a wonder my head didn’t
come off along with the beard. It was only by the intervention of Evan and Cade that my mustache was
saved.”
“Snakes, Mrs. Wilkes! You ought to thank me.
You’d never have recognized him and wouldn’t have
let him in the door,” said Alex. “We did it to show
our appreciation of his talking the provost guard out
of putting us in jail. If you say the word, we’ll take
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the mustache off for you, right now.”
“Oh, no, thank you!” said Melanie hastily, clutching
Ashley in a frightened way, for the two swarthy little men looked capable of any violence. “I think it’s
perfectly lovely.”
“That’s love,” said the Fontaines, nodding gravely
at each other.
When Ashley went into the cold to see the boys off
to the depot in Aunt Pitty’s carriage, Melanie caught
Scarlett’s arm.
“Isn’t his uniform dreadful? Won’t my coat be a surprise? Oh, if only I had enough cloth for britches too!”
That coat for Ashley was a sore subject with Scarlett,
for she wished so ardently that she and not Melanie
were bestowing it as a Christmas gift. Gray wool
for uniforms was now almost literally more priceless than rubies, and Ashley was wearing the familiar homespun. Even butternut was now none too
plentiful, and many of the soldiers were dressed in
captured Yankee uniforms which had been turned
a dark-brown color with walnut-shell dye. But
Melanie, by rare luck, had come into possession of
enough gray broadcloth to make a coat–a rather short
coat but a coat just the same. She had nursed a
Charleston boy in the hospital and when he died had
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clipped a lock of his hair and sent it to his mother,
along with the scant contents of his pockets and a
comforting account of his last hours which made no
mention of the torment in which he died. A correspondence had sprung up between them and, learning that Melanie had a husband at the front, the
mother had sent her the length of gray cloth and brass
buttons which she had bought for her dead son. It
was a beautiful piece of material, thick and warm and
with a dull sheen to it, undoubtedly blockade goods
and undoubtedly very expensive. It was now in the
hands of the tailor and Melanie was hurrying him to
have it ready by Christmas morning. Scarlett would
have given anything to be able to provide the rest of
the uniform, but the necessary materials were simply
not to be had in Atlanta.
She had a Christmas present for Ashley, but it paled
in insignificance beside the glory of Melanie’s gray
coat. It was a small “housewife,” made of flannel, containing the whole precious pack of needles
Rhett had brought her from Nassau, three of her linen
handkerchiefs, obtained from the same source, two
spools of thread and a small pair of scissors. But she
wanted to give him something more personal, something a wife could give a husband, a shirt, a pair of
gauntlets, a hat. Oh, yes, a hat by all means. That lit513
�PART TWO
tle flat-topped forage cap Ashley was wearing looked
ridiculous. Scarlett had always hated them. What if
Stonewall Jackson had worn one in preference to a
slouch felt? That didn’t make them any more dignified looking. But the only hats obtainable in Atlanta
were crudely made wool hats, and they were tackier
than the monkey-hat forage caps.
When she thought of hats, she thought of Rhett Butler. He had so many hats, wide Panamas for summer,
tall beavers for formal occasions, hunting hats, slouch
hats of tan and black and blue. What need had he
for so many when her darling Ashley rode in the rain
with moisture dripping down his collar from the back
of his cap?
“I’ll make Rhett give me that new black felt of his,”
she decided. “And I’ll put a gray ribbon around the
brim and sew Ashley’s wreath on it and it will look
lovely.”
She paused and thought it might be difficult to get
the hat without some explanation. She simply could
not tell Rhett she wanted it for Ashley. He would
raise his brows in that nasty way he always had when
she even mentioned Ashley’s name and, like as not,
would refuse to give her the hat. Well, she’d make up
some pitiful story about a soldier in the hospital who
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needed it and Rhett need never know the truth.
All that afternoon, she maneuvered to be alone with
Ashley, even for a few minutes, but Melanie was beside him constantly, and India and Honey, their pale
lashless eyes glowing, followed him about the house.
Even John Wilkes, visibly proud of his son, had no
opportunity for quiet conversation with him.
It was the same at supper where they all plied him
with questions about the war. The war! Who cared
about the war? Scarlett didn’t think Ashley cared
very much for that subject either. He talked at length,
laughed frequently and dominated the conversation
more completely than she had ever seen him do before, but he seemed to say very little. He told them
jokes and funny stories about friends, talked gaily
about makeshifts, making light of hunger and long
marches in the rain, and described in detail how General Lee had looked when he rode by on the retreat
from Gettysburg and questioned: “Gentlemen, are
you Georgia troops? Well, we can’t get along without you Georgians!”
It seemed to Scarlett that he was talking fervishly
to keep them from asking questions he did not want
to answer. When she saw his eyes falter and drop before the long, troubled gaze of his father, a faint worry
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and bewilderment rose in her as to what was hidden
in Ashley’s heart. But it soon passed, for there was no
room in her mind for anything except a radiant happiness and a driving desire to be alone with him.
That radiance lasted until everyone in the circle
about the open fire began to yawn, and Mr. Wilkes
and the girls took their departure for the hotel. Then
as Ashley and Melanie and Pittypat and Scarlett
mounted the stairs, lighted by Uncle Peter, a chill fell
on her spirit. Until that moment when they stood
in the upstairs hall, Ashley had been hers, only hers,
even if she had not had a private word with him that
whole afternoon. But now, as she said good night,
she saw that Melanie’s cheeks were suddenly crimson
and she was trembling. Her eyes were on the carpet
and, though she seemed overcome with some frightening emotion, she seemed shyly happy. Melanie
did not even look up when Ashley opened the bedroom door, but sped inside. Ashley said good night
abruptly, and he did not meet Scarlett’s eyes either.
The door closed behind them, leaving Scarlett open
mouthed and suddenly desolate. Ashley was no
longer hers. He was Melanie’s. And as long as
Melanie lived, she could go into rooms with Ashley
and close the door–and close out the rest of the world.
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Now Ashley was going away, back to Virginia, back
to the long marches in the sleet, to hungry bivouacs
in the snow, to pain and hardship and to the risk of
all the bright beauty of his golden head and proud
slender body being blotted out in an instant, like an
ant beneath a careless heel. The past week with its
shimmering, dreamlike beauty, its crowded hours of
happiness, was gone.
The week had passed swiftly, like a dream, a dream
fragrant with the smell of pine boughs and Christmas
trees, bright with little candles and home-made tinsel,
a dream where minutes flew as rapidly as heartbeats.
Such a breathless week when something within her
drove Scarlett with mingled pain and pleasure to pack
and cram every minute with incidents to remember
after he was gone, happenings which she could examine at leisure in the long months ahead, extracting every morsel of comfort from them–dance, sing, laugh,
fetch and carry for Ashley, anticipate his wants, smile
when he smiles, be silent when he talks, follow him
with your eyes so that each line of his erect body, each
lift of his eyebrows, each quirk of his mouth, will be
indelibly printed on your mind–for a week goes by so
fast and the war goes on forever.
She sat on the divan in the parlor, holding her going517
�PART TWO
away gift for him in her lap, waiting while he said
good-by to Melanie, praying that when he did come
down the stairs he would be alone and she might be
granted by Heaven a few moments alone with him.
Her ears strained for sounds from upstairs, but the
house was oddly still, so still that even the sound of
her breathing seemed loud. Aunt Pittypat was crying into her pillows in her room, for Ashley had told
her good-by half an hour before. No sounds of murmuring voices or of tears came from behind the closed
door of Melanie’s bedroom. It seemed to Scarlett that
he had been in that room for hours, and she resented
bitterly each moment that he stayed, saying good-by
to his wife, for the moments were slipping by so fast
and his time was so short.
She thought of all the things she had intended to say
to him during this week. But there had been no opportunity to say them, and she knew now that perhaps she would never have the chance to say them.
Such foolish little things, some of them: “Ashley,
you will be careful, won’t you?” “Please don’t get
your feet wet. You take cold so easily.” “Don’t forget to put a newspaper across your chest under your
shirt. It keeps out the wind so well.” But there were
other things, more important things she had wanted
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to say, much more important things she had wanted
to hear him say, things she had wanted to read in his
eyes, even if he did not speak them.
So many things to say and now there was no
time! Even the few minutes that remained might
be snatched away from her if Melanie followed him
to the door, to the carriage block. Why hadn’t she
made the opportunity during this last week? But
always, Melanie was at his side, her eyes caressing
him adoringly, always friends and neighbors and relatives were in the house and, from morning till night,
Ashley was never alone. Then, at night, the door of
the bedroom closed and he was alone with Melanie.
Never once during these last days had he betrayed
to Scarlett by one look, one word, anything but the
affection a brother might show a sister or a friend, a
lifelong friend. She could not let him go away, perhaps forever, without knowing whether he still loved
her. Then, even if he died, she could nurse the warm
comfort of his secret love to the end of her days.
After what seemed an eternity of waiting, she heard
the sound of his boots in the bedroom above and the
door opening and closing. She heard him coming
down the steps. Alone! Thank God for that! Melanie
must be too overcome by the grief of parting to leave
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her room. Now she would have him for herself for a
few precious minutes.
He came down the steps slowly, his spurs clinking,
and she could hear the slap-slap of his saber against
his high boots. When he came into the parlor, his eyes
were somber. He was trying to smile but his face was
as white and drawn as a man bleeding from an internal wound. She rose as he entered, thinking with
proprietary pride that he was the handsomest soldier
she had ever seen. His long holster and belt glistened
and his silver spurs and scabbard gleamed, from the
industrious polishing Uncle Peter had given them.
His new coat did not fit very well, for the tailor had
been hurried and some of the seams were awry. The
bright new sheen of the gray coat was sadly at variance with the worn and patched butternut trousers
and the scarred boots, but if he had been clothed in
silver armor he could not have looked more the shining knight to her.
“Ashley,” she begged abruptly, “may I go to the
train with you?”
“Please don’t. Father and the girls will be there.
And anyway, I’d rather remember you saying goodby to me here than shivering at the depot. There’s so
much to memories.”
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Instantly she abandoned her plan. If India and
Honey who disliked her so much were to be present
at the leave taking, she would have no chance for a
private word.
“Then I won’t go,” she said. “See, Ashley! I’ve another present for you.”
A little shy, now that the time had come to give it to
him, she unrolled the package. It was a long yellow
sash, made of thick China silk and edged with heavy
fringe. Rhett Butler had brought her a yellow shawl
from Havana several months before, a shawl gaudily
embroidered with birds and flowers in magenta and
blue. During this last week, she had patiently picked
out all the embroidery and cut up the square of silk
and stitched it into a sash length.
“Scarlett, it’s beautiful! Did you make it yourself?
Then I’ll value it all the more. Put it on me, my dear.
The boys will be green with envy when they see me
in the glory of my new coat and sash.”
She wrapped the bright lengths about his slender
waist, above his belt, and tied the ends in a lover’s
knot. Melanie might have given him his new coat but
this sash was her gift, her own secret guerdon for him
to wear into battle, something that would make him
remember her every time he looked at it. She stood
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back and viewed him with pride, thinking that even
Jeb Stuart with his flaunting sash and plume could
not look so dashing as her cavalier.
“It’s beautiful,” he repeated, fingering the fringe.
“But I know you’ve cut up a dress or a shawl to make
it. You shouldn’t have done it, Scarlett. Pretty things
are too hard to get these days.”
“Oh, Ashley, I’d–”
She had started to say: “I’d cut up my heart for you
to wear if you wanted it,” but she finished, “I’d do
anything for you!”
“Would you?” he questioned and some of the
somberness lifted from his face. “Then, there’s something you can do for me, Scarlett, something that will
make my mind easier when I’m away.”
“What is it?” she asked joyfully, ready to promise
prodigies.
“Scarlett, will you look after Melanie for me?”
“Look after Melly?”
Her heart sank with bitter disappointment. So
this was something beautiful, something spectacular! And then anger flared. This moment was her
moment with Ashley, hers alone. And yet, though
Melanie was absent, her pale shadow lay between
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them. How could he bring up her name in their moment of farewell? How could he ask such a thing of
her?
He did not notice the disappointment on her face.
As of old, his eyes were looking through her and beyond her, at something else, not seeing her at all.
“Yes, keep an eye on her, take care of her. She’s
so frail and she doesn’t realize it. She’ll wear herself out nursing and sewing. And she’s so gentle and
timid. Except for Aunt Pittypat and Uncle Henry and
you, she hasn’t a close relative in the world, except
the Burrs in Macon and they’re third cousins. And
Aunt Pitty– Scarlett, you know she’s like a child. And
Uncle Henry is an old man. Melanie loves you so
much, not just because you were Charlie’s wife, but
because–well, because you’re you and she loves you
like a sister. Scarlett, I have nightmares when I think
what might happen to her if I were killed and she had
no one to turn to. Will you promise?”
She did not even hear his last request, so terrified
was she by those ill-omened words, “if I were killed.”
Every day she had read the casualty lists, read them
with her heart in her throat, knowing that the world
would end if anything should happen to him. But always, always, she had an inner feeling that even if the
523
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Confederate Army were entirely wiped out, Ashley
would be spared. And now he had spoken the frightful words! Goose bumps came out all over her and
fear swamped her, a superstitious fear she could not
combat with reason. She was Irish enough to believe
in second sight, especially where death premonitions
were concerned, and in his wide gray eyes she saw
some deep sadness which she could only interpret as
that of a man who has felt the cold finger on his shoulder, has heard the wail of the Banshee.
“You mustn’t say it! You mustn’t even think it. It’s
bad luck to speak of death! Oh, say a prayer, quickly!”
“You say it for me and light some candles, too,” he
said, smiling at the frightened urgency in her voice.
But she could not answer, so stricken was she by the
pictures her mind was drawing, Ashley lying dead in
the snows of Virginia, so far away from her. He went
on speaking and there was a quality in his voice, a
sadness, a resignation, that increased her fear until every vestige of anger and disappointment was blotted
out.
“I’m asking you for this reason, Scarlett. I cannot tell
what will happen to me or what will happen to any of
us. But when the end comes, I shall be far away from
here, even if I am alive, too far away to look out for
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Melanie.”
“The–the end?”
“The end of the war–and the end of the world.”
“But Ashley, surely you can’t think the Yankees will
beat us? All this week you’ve talked about how
strong General Lee–”
“All this week I’ve talked lies, like all men talk when
they’re on furlough. Why should I frighten Melanie
and Aunt Pitty before there’s any need for them to be
frightened? Yes, Scarlett, I think the Yankees have us.
Gettysburg was the beginning of the end. The people
back home don’t know it yet. They can’t realize how
things stand with us, but–Scarlett, some of my men
are barefooted now and the snow is deep in Virginia.
And when I see their poor frozen feet, wrapped in
rags and old sacks, and I see the blood prints they
leave in the snow, and know that I’ve got a whole pair
of boots–well, I feel like I should give mine away and
be barefooted too.”
“Oh, Ashley, promise me you won’t give them
away!”
“When I see things like that and then look at the
Yankees–then I see the end of everything. Why Scarlett, the Yankees are buying soldiers from Europe by
the thousands! Most of the prisoners we’ve taken re525
�PART TWO
cently can’t even speak English. They’re Germans
and Poles and wild Irishmen who talk Gaelic. But
when we lose a man, he can’t be replaced. When
our shoes wear out, there are no more shoes. We’re
bottled up, Scarlett. And we can’t fight the whole
world.”
She thought wildly: Let the whole Confederacy
crumble in the dust. Let the world end, but you must
not die! I couldn’t live if you were dead!
“I hope you will not repeat what I have said, Scarlett. I do not want to alarm the others. And, my dear,
I would not have alarmed you by saying these things,
were it not that I had to explain why I ask you to look
after Melanie. She’s so frail and weak and you’re so
strong, Scarlett. It will be a comfort to me to know
that you are together if anything happens to me. You
will promise, won’t you?”
“Oh, yes!” she cried, for at that moment, seeing
death at his elbow, she would have promised anything. “Ashley, Ashley! I can’t let you go away! I
simply can’t be brave about it!”
“You must be brave,” he said, and his voice changed
subtly. It was resonant, deeper, and his words fell
swiftly as though hurried with some inner urgency.
“You must be brave. For how else can I stand it?”
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Her eyes sought his face quickly and with joy, wondering if he meant that leaving her was breaking his
heart, even as it was breaking hers. His face was as
drawn as when he came down from bidding Melanie
good-by, but she could read nothing in his eyes. He
leaned down, took her face in his hands, and kissed
her lightly on the forehead.
“Scarlett! Scarlett! You are so fine and strong and
good. So beautiful, not just your sweet face, my dear,
but all of you, your body and your mind and your
soul.”
“Oh, Ashley,” she whispered happily, thrilling at his
words and his touch on her face. “Nobody else but
you ever–”
“I like to think that perhaps I know you better than
most people and that I can see beautiful things buried
deep in you that others are too careless and too hurried to notice.”
He stopped speaking and his hands dropped from
her face, but his eyes still clung to her eyes. She
waited a moment, breathless for him to continue, atiptoe to hear him say the magic three words. But
they did not come. She searched his face frantically,
her lips quivering, for she saw he had finished speaking.
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This second blighting of her hopes was more than
heart could bear and she cried “Oh!” in a childish
whisper and sat down, tears stinging her eyes. Then
she heard an ominous sound in the driveway, outside
the window, a sound that brought home to her even
more sharply the imminence of Ashley’s departure.
A pagan hearing the lapping of the waters around
Charon’s boat could not have felt more desolate. Uncle Peter, muffled in a quilt, was bringing out the carriage to take Ashley to the train.
Ashley said “Good-by,” very softly, caught up from
the table the wide felt hat she had inveigled from
Rhett and walked into the dark front hall. His hand
on the doorknob, he turned and looked at her, a long,
desperate look, as if he wanted to carry away with
him every detail of her face and figure. Through a
blinding mist of tears she saw his face and with a
strangling pain in her throat she knew that he was
going away, away from her care, away from the
safe haven of this house, and out of her life, perhaps forever, without having spoken the words she so
yearned to hear. Time was going by like a mill race,
and now it was too late. She ran stumbling across the
parlor and into the hall and clutched the ends of his
sash.
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“Kiss me,” she whispered. “Kiss me good-by.”
His arms went around her gently, and he bent his
head to her face. At the first touch of his lips on hers,
her arms were about his neck in a strangling grip. For
a fleeting immeasurable instant, he pressed her body
close to his. Then she felt a sudden tensing of all his
muscles. Swiftly, he dropped the hat to the floor and,
reaching up, detached her arms from his neck.
“No, Scarlett, no,” he said in a low voice, holding
her crossed wrists in a grip that hurt.
“I love you,” she said choking. “I’ve always loved
you. I’ve never loved anybody else. I just married
Charlie to–to try to hurt you. Oh, Ashley, I love you
so much I’d walk every step of the way to Virginia just
to be near you! And I’d cook for you and polish your
boots and groom your horse–Ashley, say you love me!
I’ll live on it for the rest of my life!”
He bent suddenly to retrieve his hat and she had one
glimpse of his face. It was the unhappiest face she was
ever to see, a face from which all aloofness had fled.
Written on it were his love for and joy that she loved
him, but battling them both were shame and despair.
“Good-by,” he said hoarsely.
The door clicked open and a gust of cold wind swept
the house, fluttering the curtains. Scarlett shivered
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as she watched him run down the walk to the carriage, his saber glinting in the feeble winter sunlight,
the fringe of his sash dancing jauntily.
530
�CHAPTER XVI
J ANUARY AND F EBRUARY of 1864 passed, full of cold rains
and wild winds, clouded by pervasive gloom and depression. In addition to the defeats at Gettysburg and
Vicksburg, the center of the Southern line had caved.
After hard fighting, nearly all of Tennessee was now
held by the Union troops. But even with this loss on
the top of the others, the South’s spirit was not broken. True, grim determination had taken the place of
high-hearted hopes, but people could still find a silver lining in the cloud. For one thing, the Yankees
had been stoutly repulsed in September when they
had tried to follow up their victories in Tennessee by
an advance into Georgia.
Here in the northwesternmost corner of the state, at
Chickamauga, serious fighting had occurred on Georgia soil for the first time since the war began. The Yankees had taken Chattanooga and then had marched
through the mountain passes into Georgia, but they
had been driven back with heavy losses.
Atlanta and its railroads had played a big part in
making Chickamauga a great victory for the South.
Over the railroads that led down from Virginia to
Atlanta and then northward to Tennessee, General
Longstreet’s corps had been rushed to the scene of
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the battle. Along the entire route of several hundred
miles, the tracks had been cleared and all the available
rolling stock in the Southeast had been assembled for
the movement.
Atlanta had watched while train after train rolled
through the town, hour after hour, passenger coaches,
box cars, flat cars, filled with shouting men. They had
come without food or sleep, without their horses, ambulances or supply trains and, without waiting for the
rest, they had leaped from the trains and into the battle. And the Yankees had been driven out of Georgia,
back into Tennessee.
It was the greatest feat of the war, and Atlanta took
pride and personal satisfaction in the thought that its
railroads had made the victory possible.
But the South had needed the cheering news from
Chickamauga to strengthen its morale through the
winter. No one denied now that the Yankees were
good fighters and, at last, they had good generals.
Grant was a butcher who did not care how many men
he slaughtered for a victory, but victory he would
have. Sheridan was a name to bring dread to Southern hearts. And, then, there was a man named Sherman who was being mentioned more and more often.
He had risen to prominence in the campaigns in Ten532
�PART TWO
nessee and the West, and his reputation as a determined and ruthless fighter was growing.
None of them, of course, compared with General
Lee. Faith in the General and the army was still
strong. Confidence in ultimate victory never wavered. But the war was dragging out so long. There
were so many dead, so many wounded and maimed
for life, so many widowed, so many orphaned. And
there was still a long struggle ahead, which meant
more dead, more wounded, more widows and orphans.
To make matters worse, a vague distrust of those in
high places had begun to creep over the civilian population. Many newspapers were outspoken in their denunciation of President Davis himself and the manner
in which he prosecuted the war. There were dissensions within the Confederate cabinet, disagreements
between President Davis and his generals. The currency was falling rapidly. Shoes and clothing for the
army were scarce, ordnance supplies and drugs were
scarcer. The railroads needed new cars to take the
place of old ones and new iron rails to replace those
torn up by the Yankees. The generals in the field were
crying out for fresh troops, and there were fewer and
fewer fresh troops to be had. Worst of all, some of the
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state governors, Governor Brown of Georgia among
them, were refusing to send state militia troops and
arms out of their borders. There were thousands of
able-bodied men in the state troops for whom the
army was frantic, but the government pleaded for
them in vain.
With the new fall of currency, prices soared again.
Beef, pork and butter cost thirty-five dollars a pound,
flour fourteen hundred dollars a barrel, soda one
hundred dollars a pound, tea five hundred dollars
a pound. Warm clothing, when it was obtainable at
all, had risen to such prohibitive prices that Atlanta
ladies were lining their old dresses with rags and reinforcing them with newspapers to keep out the wind.
Shoes cost from two hundred to eight hundred dollars a pair, depending on whether they were made of
“cardboard” or real leather. Ladies now wore gaiters
made of their old wool shawls and cut-up carpets.
The soles were made of wood.
The truth was that the North was holding the South
in a virtual state of siege, though many did not realize
it. The Yankee gunboats had tightened the mesh at
the ports and very few ships were now able to slip
past the blockade.
The South had always lived by selling cotton and
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buying the things it did not produce, but now it could
neither sell nor buy. Gerald O’Hara had three years’
crops of cotton stored under the shed near the gin
house at Tara, but little good it did him. In Liverpool
it would bring one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but there was no hope of getting it to Liverpool.
Gerald had changed from a wealthy man to a man
who was wondering how he would feed his family
and his negroes through the winter.
Throughout the South, most of the cotton planters
were in the same fix. With the blockade closing tighter
and tighter, there was no way to get the South’s
money crop to its market in England, no way to bring
in the necessaries which cotton money had brought
in years gone by. And the agricultural South, waging
war with the industrial North, was needing so many
things now, things it had never thought of buying in
times of peace.
It was a situation made to order for speculators
and profiteers, and men were not lacking to take advantage of it. As food and clothing grew scarcer
and prices rose higher and higher, the public outcry
against the speculators grew louder and more venomous. In those early days of 1864, no newspaper
could be opened that did not carry scathing editori535
�PART TWO
als denouncing the speculators as vultures and bloodsucking leeches and calling upon the government to
put them down with a hard hand. The government
did its best, but the efforts came to nothing, for the
government was harried by many things.
Against no one was feeling more bitter than against
Rhett Butler. He had sold his boats when blockading grew too hazardous, and he was now openly engaged in food speculation. The stories about him that
came back to Atlanta from Richmond and Wilmington made those who had received him in other days
writhe with shame.
In spite of all these trials and tribulations, Atlanta’s
ten thousand population had grown to double that
number during the war. Even the blockade had
added to Atlanta’s prestige. From time immemorial,
the coast cities had dominated the South, commercially and otherwise. But now with the ports closed
and many of the port cities captured or besieged, the
South’s salvation depended upon itself. The interior section was what counted, if the South was going to win the war, and Atlanta was now the center of things. The people of the town were suffering
hardship, privation, sickness and death as severely as
the rest of the Confederacy; but Atlanta, the city, had
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gained rather than lost as a result of the war. Atlanta,
the heart of the Confederacy, was still beating full and
strong, the railroads that were its arteries throbbing
with the never-ending flow of men, munitions and
supplies.
In other days, Scarlett would have been bitter about
her shabby dresses and patched shoes but now she
did not care, for the one person who mattered was
not there to see her. She was happy those two months,
happier than she had been in years. Had she not felt
the start of Ashley’s heart when her arms went round
his neck? seen that despairing look on his face which
was more open an avowal than any words could be?
He loved her. She was sure of that now, and this conviction was so pleasant she could even be kinder to
Melanie. She could be sorry for Melanie now, sorry
with a faint contempt for her blindness, her stupidity.
“When the war is over!” she thought. “When it’s
over–then . . .”
Sometimes she thought with a small dart of fear:
“What then?” But she put the thought from her mind.
When the war was over, everything would be settled,
somehow. If Ashley loved her, he simply couldn’t go
on living with Melanie.
But then, a divorce was unthinkable; and Ellen
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and Gerald, staunch Catholics that they were, would
never permit her to marry a divorced man. It would
mean leaving the Church! Scarlett thought it over
and decided that, in a choice between the Church and
Ashley, she would choose Ashley. But, oh, it would
make such a scandal! Divorced people were under
the ban not only of the Church but of society. No
divorced person was received. However, she would
dare even that for Ashley. She would sacrifice anything for Ashley.
Somehow it would come out all right when the war
was over. If Ashley loved her so much, he’d find a
way. She’d make him find a way. And with every day
that passed, she became more sure in her own mind of
his devotion, more certain he would arrange matters
satisfactorily when the Yankees were finally beaten.
Of course, he had said the Yankees “had” them. Scarlett thought that was just foolishness. He had been
tired and upset when he said it. But she hardly cared
whether the Yankees won or not. The thing that mattered was for the war to finish quickly and for Ashley
to come home.
Then, when the sleets of March were keeping everyone indoors, the hideous blow fell. Melanie, her eyes
shining with joy, her head ducked with embarrassed
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pride, told her she was going to have a baby.
“Dr. Meade says it will be here in late August or
September,” she said. “I’ve thought–but I wasn’t sure
till today. Oh, Scarlett, isn’t it wonderful? I’ve so envied you Wade and so wanted a baby. And I was so
afraid that maybe I wasn’t ever going to have one and,
darling, I want a dozen!”
Scarlett had been combing her hair, preparing for
bed, when Melanie spoke and she stopped, the comb
in mid-air.
“Dear God!” she said and, for a moment, realization did not come. Then there suddenly leaped to
her mind the closed door of Melanie’s bedroom and
a knifelike pain went through her, a pain as fierce as
though Ashley had been her own husband and had
been unfaithful to her. A baby. Ashley’s baby. Oh,
how could he, when he loved her and not Melanie?
“I know you’re surprised,” Melanie rattled on,
breathlessly. “And isn’t it too wonderful? Oh, Scarlett, I don’t know how I shall ever write Ashley! It
wouldn’t be so embarrassing if I could tell him or–or–
well, not say anything and just let him notice gradually, you know–”
“Dear God!” said Scarlett, almost sobbing, as she
dropped the comb and caught at the marble top of
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the dresser for support.
“Darling, don’t look like that! You know having
a baby isn’t so bad. You said so yourself. And
you mustn’t worry about me, though you are sweet
to be so upset. Of course, Dr. Meade said I was–
was,” Melanie blushed, “quite narrow but that perhaps I shouldn’t have any trouble and–Scarlett, did
you write Charlie and tell him when you found out
about Wade, or did your mother do it or maybe Mr.
O’Hara? Oh, dear, if I only had a mother to do it! I
just don’t see how–”
“Hush!” said Scarlett, violently. “Hush!”
“Oh, Scarlett, I’m so stupid! I’m sorry. I guess all
happy people are selfish. I forgot about Charlie, just
for the moment–”
“Hush!” said Scarlett again, fighting to control her
face and make her emotions quiet. Never, never must
Melanie see or suspect how she felt.
Melanie, the most tactful of women, had tears in her
eyes at her own cruelty. How could she have brought
back to Scarlett the terrible memories of Wade being
born months after poor Charlie was dead? How could
she have been so thoughtless?
“Let me help you undress, dearest,” she said
humbly. “And I’ll rub your head for you.”
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“You leave me alone,” said Scarlett, her face like
stone. And Melanie, bursting into tears of selfcondemnation, fled the room, leaving Scarlett to a
tearless bed, with wounded pride, disillusionment
and jealousy for bedfellows.
She thought that she could not live any longer in
the same house with the woman who was carrying
Ashley’s child, thought that she would go home to
Tara, home, where she belonged. She did not see how
she could ever look at Melanie again and not have
her secret read in her face. And she arose the next
morning with the fixed intention of packing her trunk
immediately after breakfast. But, as they sat at the
table, Scarlett silent and gloomy, Pitty bewildered and
Melanie miserable, a telegram came.
It was to Melanie from Ashley’s body servant, Mose.
“I have looked everywhere and I can’t find him.
Must I come home?”
No one knew what it meant but the eyes of the three
women went to one another, wide with terror, and
Scarlett forgot all thoughts of going home. Without
finishing their breakfasts they drove down to telegraph Ashley’s colonel, but even as they entered the
office, there was a telegram from him.
“Regret to inform you Major Wilkes missing since
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scouting expedition three days ago. Will keep you informed.”
It was a ghastly trip home, with Aunt Pitty crying
into her handkerchief, Melanie sitting erect and white
and Scarlett slumped, stunned in the corner of the carriage. Once in the house, Scarlett stumbled up the
stairs to her bedroom and, clutching her Rosary from
the table, dropped to her knees and tried to pray. But
the prayers would not come. There only fell on her
an abysmal fear, a certain knowledge that God had
turned His face from her for her sin. She had loved a
married man and tried to take him from his wife, and
God had punished her by killing him. She wanted to
pray but she could not raise her eyes to Heaven. She
wanted to cry but the tears would not come. They
seemed to flood her chest, and they were hot tears
that burned under her bosom, but they would not
flow.
Her door opened and Melanie entered. Her face
was like a heart cut from white paper, framed against
black hair, and her eyes were wide, like those of a
frightened child lost in the dark.
“Scarlett,” she said, putting out her hands. “You
must forgive me for what I said yesterday, for you’re–
all I’ve got now. Oh, Scarlett, I know my darling is
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dead!”
Somehow, she was in Scarlett’s arms, her small
breasts heaving with sobs, and somehow they were
lying on the bed, holding each other close, and Scarlett was crying too, crying with her face pressed close
against Melanie’s, the tears of one wetting the cheeks
of the other. It hurt so terribly to cry, but not so much
as not being able to cry. Ashley is dead–dead, she
thought, and I have killed him by loving him! Fresh
sobs broke from her, and Melanie somehow feeling
comfort in her tears tightened her arms about her
neck.
“At least,” she whispered, “at least–I’ve got his
baby.”
“And I,” thought Scarlett, too stricken now for anything so petty as jealousy, “I’ve got nothing–nothing–
nothing except the look on his face when he told me
good-by.”
The first reports were “Missing–believed killed”
and so they appeared on the casualty list. Melanie
telegraphed Colonel Sloan a dozen times and finally
a letter arrived, full of sympathy, explaining that Ashley and a squad had ridden out on a scouting expedition and had not returned. There had been reports of
a slight skirmish within the Yankee lines and Mose,
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frantic with grief, had risked his own life to search
for Ashley’s body but had found nothing. Melanie,
strangely calm now, telegraphed him money and instructions to come home.
When “Missing–believed captured” appeared on
the casualty lists, joy and hope reanimated the sad
household. Melanie could hardly be dragged away
from the telegraph office and she met every train hoping for letters. She was sick now, her pregnancy making itself felt in many unpleasant ways, but she refused to obey Dr. Meade’s commands and stay in bed.
A feverish energy possessed her and would not let her
be still; and at night, long after Scarlett had gone to
bed, she could hear her walking the floor in the next
room.
One afternoon, she came home from town, driven
by the frightened Uncle Peter and supported by Rhett
Butler. She had fainted at the telegraph office and
Rhett, passing by and observing the excitement, had
escorted her home. He carried her up the stairs to
her bedroom and while the alarmed household fled
hither and yon for hot bricks, blankets and whisky, he
propped her on the pillows of her bed.
“Mrs. Wilkes,” he questioned abruptly, “you are going to have a baby, are you not?”
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Had Melanie not been so faint, so sick, so heartsore,
she would have collapsed at his question. Even with
women friends she was embarrassed by any mention
of her condition, while visits to Dr. Meade were agonizing experiences. And for a man, especially Rhett
Butler, to ask such a question was unthinkable. But lying weak and forlorn in the bed, she could only nod.
After she had nodded, it did not seem so dreadful, for
he looked so kind and so concerned.
“Then you must take better care of yourself. All this
running about and worry won’t help you and may
harm the baby. If you will permit me, Mrs. Wilkes, I
will use what influence I have in Washington to learn
about Mr. Wilkes’ fate. If he is a prisoner, he will
be on the Federal lists, and if he isn’t–well, there’s
nothing worse than uncertainty. But I must have your
promise. Take care of yourself or, before God, I won’t
turn a hand.”
“Oh, you are so kind,” cried Melanie. “How can
people say such dreadful things about you?” Then
overcome with the knowledge of her tactlessness and
also with horror at having discussed her condition
with a man, she began to cry weakly. And Scarlett,
flying up the stairs with a hot brick wrapped in flannel, found Rhett patting her hand.
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He was as good as his word. They never knew what
wires he pulled. They feared to ask, knowing it might
involve an admission of his too close affiliations with
the Yankees. It was a month before he had news, news
that raised them to the heights when they first heard
it, but later created a gnawing anxiety in their hearts.
Ashley was not dead! He had been wounded and
taken prisoner, and the records showed that he was at
Rock Island, a prison camp in Illinois. In their first joy,
they could think of nothing except that he was alive.
But, when calmness began to return, they looked at
one another and said “Rock Island!” in the same voice
they would have said “In Hell!” For even as Andersonville was a name that stank in the North, so was
Rock Island one to bring terror to the heart of any
Southerner who had relatives imprisoned there.
When Lincoln refused to exchange prisoners, believing it would hasten the end of the war to burden the
Confederacy with the feeding and guarding of Union
prisoners, there were thousands of bluecoats at Andersonville, Georgia. The Confederates were on scant
rations and practically without drugs or bandages for
their own sick and wounded. They had little to share
with the prisoners. They fed their prisoners on what
the soldiers in the field were eating, fat pork and
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dried peas, and on this diet the Yankees died like flies,
sometimes a hundred a day. Inflamed by the reports,
the North resorted to harsher treatment of Confederate prisoners and at no place were conditions worse
than at Rock Island. Food was scanty, one blanket for
three men, and the ravages of smallpox, pneumonia
and typhoid gave the place the name of a pest-house.
Three-fourths of all the men sent there never came out
alive.
And Ashley was in that horrible place! Ashley was
alive but he was wounded and at Rock Island, and the
snow must have been deep in Illinois when he was
taken there. Had he died of his wound, since Rhett
had learned his news? Had he fallen victim to smallpox? Was he delirious with pneumonia and no blanket to cover him?
“Oh, Captain Butler, isn’t there some way– Can’t
you use your influence and have him exchanged?”
cried Melanie.
“Mr. Lincoln, the merciful and just, who cries large
tears over Mrs. Bixby’s five boys, hasn’t any tears to
shed about the thousands of Yankees dying at Andersonville,” said Rhett, his mouth twisting. “He doesn’t
care if they all die. The order is out. No exchanges.
I–I hadn’t told you before, Mrs. Wilkes, but your hus547
�PART TWO
band had a chance to get out and refused it.”
“Oh, no!” cried Melanie in disbelief.
“Yes, indeed. The Yankees are recruiting men for
frontier service to fight the Indians, recruiting them
from among Confederate prisoners. Any prisoner
who will take the oath of allegiance and enlist for Indian service for two years will be released and sent
West. Mr. Wilkes refused.”
“Oh, how could he?” cried Scarlett. “Why didn’t he
take the oath and then desert and come home as soon
as he got out of jail?”
Melanie turned on her like a small fury.
“How can you even suggest that he would do such
a thing? Betray his own Confederacy by taking that
vile oath and then betray his word to the Yankees! I
would rather know he was dead at Rock Island than
hear he had taken that oath. I’d be proud of him if
he died in prison. But if he did THAT, I would never
look on his face again. Never! Of course, he refused.”
When Scarlett was seeing Rhett to the door, she
asked indignantly: “If it were you, wouldn’t you enlist with the Yankees to keep from dying in that place
and then desert?”
“Of course,” said Rhett, his teeth showing beneath
his mustache.
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“Then why didn’t Ashley do it?”
“He’s a gentleman,” said Rhett, and Scarlett wondered how it was possible to convey such cynicism
and contempt in that one honorable word.
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�CHAPTER XVII
came–a hot dry May that wilted the
flowers in the buds–and the Yankees under General
Sherman were in Georgia again, above Dalton, one
hundred miles northwest of Atlanta. Rumor had
it that there would be heavy fighting up there near
the boundary between Georgia and Tennessee. The
Yankees were massing for an attack on the Western
and Atlantic Railroad, the line which connected Atlanta with Tennessee and the West, the same line over
which the Southern troops had been rushed last fall
to win the victory at Chickamauga.
But, for the most part, Atlanta was not disturbed by
the prospect of fighting near Dalton. The place where
the Yankees were concentrating was only a few miles
southeast of the battle field of Chickamauga. They
had been driven back once when they had tried to
break through the mountain passes of that region, and
they would be driven back again.
Atlanta–and all of Georgia–knew that the state was
far too important to the Confederacy for General Joe
Johnston to let the Yankees remain inside the state’s
borders for long. Old Joe and his army would not let
even one Yankee get south of Dalton, for too much
depended on the undisturbed functioning of GeorM AY
OF
1864
�PART THREE
gia. The unravaged state was a vast granary, machine shop and storehouse for the Confederacy. It
manufactured much of the powder and arms used by
the army and most of the cotton and woolen goods.
Lying between Atlanta and Dalton was the city of
Rome with its cannon foundry and its other industries, and Etowah and Allatoona with the largest ironworks south of Richmond. And, in Atlanta, were
not only the factories for making pistols and saddles,
tents and ammunition, but also the most extensive
rolling mills in the South, the shops of the principal
railroads and the enormous hospitals. And in Atlanta
was the junction of the four railroads on which the
very life of the Confederacy depended.
So no one worried particularly. After all, Dalton was
a long way off, up near the Tennessee line. There had
been fighting in Tennessee for three years and people
were accustomed to the thought of that state as a faraway battle field, almost as far away as Virginia or
the Mississippi River. Moreover, Old Joe and his men
were between the Yankees and Atlanta, and everyone knew that, next to General Lee himself, there was
no greater general than Johnston, now that Stonewall
Jackson was dead.
Dr. Meade summed up the civilian point of view
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on the matter, one warm May evening on the veranda of Aunt Pitty’s house, when he said that Atlanta had nothing to fear, for General Johnston was
standing in the mountains like an iron rampart. His
audience heard him with varying emotions, for all
who sat there rocking quietly in the fading twilight,
watching the first fireflies of the season moving magically through the dusk, had weighty matters on their
minds. Mrs. Meade, her hand upon Phil’s arm, was
hoping the doctor was right. If the war came closer,
she knew that Phil would have to go. He was sixteen now and in the Home Guard. Fanny Elsing, pale
and hollow eyed since Gettysburg, was trying to keep
her mind from the torturing picture which had worn
a groove in her tired mind these past several months–
Lieutenant Dallas McLure dying in a jolting ox cart in
the rain on the long, terrible retreat into Maryland.
Captain Carey Ashburn’s useless arm was hurting
him again and moreover he was depressed by the
thought that his courtship of Scarlett was at a standstill. That had been the situation ever since the news
of Ashley Wilkes’ capture, though the connection between the two events did not occur to him. Scarlett
and Melanie both were thinking of Ashley, as they always did when urgent tasks or the necessity of carrying on a conversation did not divert them. Scarlett
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was thinking bitterly, sorrowfully: He must be dead
or else we would have heard. Melanie, stemming the
tide of fear again and again, through endless hours,
was telling herself: “He can’t be dead. I’d know it–I’d
feel it if he were dead.” Rhett Butler lounged in the
shadows, his long legs in their elegant boots crossed
negligently, his dark face an unreadable blank. In his
arms Wade slept contentedly, a cleanly picked wishbone in his small hand. Scarlett always permitted
Wade to sit up late when Rhett called because the
shy child was fond of him, and Rhett oddly enough
seemed to be fond of Wade. Generally Scarlett was
annoyed by the child’s presence, but he always behaved nicely in Rhett’s arms. As for Aunt Pitty, she
was nervously trying to stifle a belch, for the rooster
they had had for supper was a tough old bird.
That morning Aunt Pitty had reached the regretful
decision that she had better kill the patriarch before
he died of old age and pining for his harem which had
long since been eaten. For days he had drooped about
the empty chicken run, too dispirited to crow. After
Uncle Peter had wrung his neck, Aunt Pitty had been
beset by conscience at the thought of enjoying him, en
famille, when so many of her friends had not tasted
chicken for weeks, so she suggested company for dinner. Melanie, who was now in her fifth month, had
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not been out in public or received guests for weeks,
and she was appalled at the idea. But Aunt Pitty, for
once, was firm. It would be selfish to eat the rooster
alone, and if Melanie would only move her top hoop
a little higher no one would notice anything and she
was so flat in the bust anyway.
“Oh, but Auntie I don’t want to see people when
Ashley–”
“It isn’t as if Ashley were–had passed away,” said
Aunt Pitty, her voice quavering, for in her heart she
was certain Ashley was dead. “He’s just as much
alive as you are and it will do you good to have company. And I’m going to ask Fanny Elsing, too. Mrs.
Elsing begged me to try to do something to arouse her
and make her see people–”
“Oh, but Auntie, it’s cruel to force her when poor
Dallas has only been dead–”
“Now, Melly, I shall cry with vexation if you argue
with me. I guess I’m your auntie and I know what’s
what. And I want a party.”
So Aunt Pitty had her party, and, at the last minute,
a guest she did not expect, or desire, arrived. Just
when the smell of roast rooster was filling the house,
Rhett Butler, back from one of his mysterious trips,
knocked at the door, with a large box of bonbons
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packed in paper lace under his arm and a mouthful
of two-edged compliments for her. There was nothing to do but invite him to stay, although Aunt Pitty
knew how the doctor and Mrs. Meade felt about him
and how bitter Fanny was against any man not in uniform. Neither the Meades nor the Elsings would have
spoken to him on the street, but in a friend’s home
they would, of course, have to be polite to him. Besides, he was now more firmly than ever under the
protection of the fragile Melanie. After he had intervened for her to get the news about Ashley, she had
announced publicly that her home was open to him
as long as he lived and no matter what other people
might say about him.
Aunt Pitty’s apprehensions quieted when she saw
that Rhett was on his best behavior. He devoted himself to Fanny with such sympathetic deference she
even smiled at him, and the meal went well. It was
a princely feast. Carey Ashburn had brought a little tea, which he had found in the tobacco pouch of
a captured Yankee en route to Andersonville, and everyone had a cup, faintly flavored with tobacco. There
was a nibble of the tough old bird for each, an adequate amount of dressing made of corn meal and seasoned with onions, a bowl of dried peas, and plenty of
rice and gravy, the latter somewhat watery, for there
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was no flour with which to thicken it. For dessert,
there was a sweet potato pie followed by Rhett’s bonbons, and when Rhett produced real Havana cigars
for the gentlemen to enjoy over their glass of blackberry wine, everyone agreed it was indeed a Lucullan
banquet.
When the gentlemen joined the ladies on the front
porch, the talk turned to war. Talk always turned to
war now, all conversations on any topic led from war
or back to war–sometimes sad, often gay, but always
war. War romances, war weddings, deaths in hospitals and on the field, incidents of camp and battle and
march, gallantry, cowardice, humor, sadness, deprivation and hope. Always, always hope. Hope firm,
unshaken despite the defeats of the summer before.
When Captain Ashburn announced he had applied
for and been granted transfer from Atlanta to the
army at Dalton, the ladies kissed his stiffened arm
with their eyes and covered their emotions of pride
by declaring he couldn’t go, for then who would beau
them about?
Young Carey looked confused and pleased at hearing such statements from settled matrons and spinsters like Mrs. Meade and Melanie and Aunt Pitty
and Fanny, and tried to hope that Scarlett really meant
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it.
“Why, he’ll be back in no time,” said the doctor,
throwing an arm over Carey’s shoulder. “There’ll be
just one brief skirmish and the Yankees will skedaddle back into Tennessee. And when they get there,
General Forrest will take care of them. You ladies
need have no alarm about the proximity of the Yankees, for General Johnston and his army stands there
in the mountains like an iron rampart. Yes, an iron
rampart,” he repeated, relishing his phrase. “Sherman will never pass. He’ll never dislodge Old Joe.”
The ladies smiled approvingly, for his lightest utterance was regarded as incontrovertible truth. After
all, men understood these matters much better than
women, and if he said General Johnston was an iron
rampart, he must be one. Only Rhett spoke. He had
been silent since supper and had sat in the twilight
listening to the war talk with a down-twisted mouth,
holding the sleeping child against his shoulder.
“I believe that rumor has it that Sherman has over
one hundred thousand men, now that his reinforcements have come up?”
The doctor answered him shortly. He had been
under considerable strain ever since he first arrived
and found that one of his fellow diners was this man
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whom he disliked so heartily. Only the respect due
Miss Pittypat and his presence under her roof as a
guest had restrained him from showing his feelings
more obviously.
“Well, sir?” the doctor barked in reply.
“I believe Captain Ashburn said just a while ago
that General Johnston had only about forty thousand,
counting the deserters who were encouraged to come
back to the colors by the last victory.”
“Sir,” said Mrs. Meade indignantly. “There are no
deserters in the Confederate army.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Rhett with mock humility.
“I meant those thousands on furlough who forgot to
rejoin their regiments and those who have been over
their wounds for six months but who remain at home,
going about their usual business or doing the spring
plowing.”
His eyes gleamed and Mrs. Meade bit her lip in a
huff. Scarlett wanted to giggle at her discomfiture,
for Rhett had caught her fairly. There were hundreds
of men skulking in the swamps and the mountains,
defying the provost guard to drag them back to the
army. They were the ones who declared it was a “rich
man’s war and a poor man’s fight” and they had had
enough of it. But outnumbering these by far were
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men who, though carried on company rolls as deserters, had no intention of deserting permanently. They
were the ones who had waited three years in vain for
furloughs and while they waited received ill-spelled
letters from home: “We air hungry” “There won’t be
no crop this year–there ain’t nobody to plow.” “We
air hungry.” “The commissary took the shoats, and
we ain’t had no money from you in months. We air
livin’ on dried peas.”
Always the rising chorus swelled: “We are hungry,
your wife, your babies, your parents. When will it be
over? When will you come home? We are hungry,
hungry.” When furloughs from the rapidly thinning
army were denied, these soldiers went home without
them, to plow their land and plant their crops, repair
their houses and build up their fences. When regimental officers, understanding the situation, saw a
hard fight ahead, they wrote these men, telling them
to rejoin their companies and no questions would
be asked. Usually the men returned when they saw
that hunger at home would be held at bay for a few
months longer. “Plow furloughs” were not looked
upon in the same light as desertion in the face of the
enemy, but they weakened the army just the same.
Dr. Meade hastily bridged over the uncomfortable
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pause, his voice cold: “Captain Butler, the numerical
difference between our troops and those of the Yankees has never mattered. One Confederate is worth a
dozen Yankees.”
The ladies nodded. Everyone knew that.
“That was true at the first of the war,” said Rhett.
“Perhaps it’s still true, provided the Confederate soldier has bullets for his gun and shoes on his feet and
food in his stomach. Eh, Captain Ashburn?”
His voice was still soft and filled with specious humility. Carey Ashburn looked unhappy, for it was obvious that he, too, disliked Rhett intensely. He gladly
would have sided with the doctor but he could not lie.
The reason he had applied for transfer to the front,
despite his useless arm, was that he realized, as the
civilian population did not, the seriousness of the situation. There were many other men, stumping on
wooden pegs, blind in one eye, fingers blown away,
one arm gone, who were quietly transferring from the
commissariat, hospital duties, mail and railroad service back to their old fighting units. They knew Old
Joe needed every man.
He did not speak and Dr. Meade thundered, losing
his temper: “Our men have fought without shoes before and without food and won victories. And they
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will fight again and win! I tell you General Johnston cannot be dislodged! The mountain fastnesses
have always been the refuge and the strong forts of
invaded peoples from ancient times. Think of–think
of Thermopylae!”
Scarlett thought hard but Thermopylae meant nothing to her.
“They died to the last man at Thermopylae, didn’t
they, Doctor?” Rhett asked, and his lips twitched with
suppressed laughter.
“Are you being insulting, young man?”
“Doctor! I beg of you! You misunderstood me! I
merely asked for information. My memory of ancient
history is poor.”
“If need be, our army will die to the last man before
they permit the Yankees to advance farther into Georgia,” snapped the doctor. “But it will not be. They
will drive them out of Georgia in one skirmish.”
Aunt Pittypat rose hastily and asked Scarlett to favor them with a piano selection and a song. She saw
that the conversation was rapidly getting into deep
and stormy water. She had known very well there
would be trouble if she invited Rhett to supper. There
was always trouble when he was present. Just how he
started it, she never exactly understood. Dear! Dear!
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What did Scarlett see in the man? And how could
dear Melly defend him?
As Scarlett went obediently into the parlor, a silence fell on the porch, a silence that pulsed with resentment toward Rhett. How could anyone not believe with heart and soul in the invincibility of General Johnston and his men? Believing was a sacred
duty. And those who were so traitorous as not to believe should, at least, have the decency to keep their
mouths shut.
Scarlett struck a few chords and her voice floated
out to them from the parlor, sweetly, sadly, in the
words of a popular song:
“Into a ward of whitewashed walls Where the dead
and dying lay– Wounded with bayonets, shells and
balls– Somebody’s darling was borne one day.
“Somebody’s darling! so young and so brave! Wearing still on his pale, sweet face– Soon to be hid by the
dust of the grave– The lingering light of his boyhood’s
grace.”
“Matted and damp are the curls of gold,” mourned
Scarlett’s faulty soprano, and Fanny half rose and said
in a faint, strangled voice: “Sing something else!”
The piano was suddenly silent as Scarlett was overtaken with surprise and embarrassment. Then she
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hastily blundered into the opening bars of “Jacket of
Gray” and stopped with a discord as she remembered
how heartrending that selection was too. The piano
was silent again for she was utterly at a loss. All the
songs had to do with death and parting and sorrow.
Rhett rose swiftly, deposited Wade in Fanny’s lap,
and went into the parlor.
“Play ‘My Old Kentucky Home,”’ he suggested
smoothly, and Scarlett gratefully plunged into it. Her
voice was joined by Rhett’s excellent bass, and as
they went into the second verse those on the porch
breathed more easily, though Heaven knew it was
none too cheery a song, either.
“Just a few more days for to tote the weary load! No
matter, ‘twill never be light! Just a few more days, till
we totter in the road! Then, my old Kentucky home,
good night!”
Dr. Meade’s prediction was right–as far as it went.
Johnston did stand like an iron rampart in the mountains above Dalton, one hundred miles away. So
firmly did he stand and so bitterly did he contest
Sherman’s desire to pass down the valley toward Atlanta that finally the Yankees drew back and took
counsel with themselves. They could not break the
gray lines by direct assault and so, under cover of
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night, they marched through the mountain passes in a
semicircle, hoping to come upon Johnston’s rear and
cut the railroad behind him at Resaca, fifteen miles
below Dalton.
With those precious twin lines of iron in danger,
the Confederates left their desperately defended rifle pits and, under the starlight, made a forced
march to Resaca by the short, direct road. When
the Yankees, swarming out of the hills, came upon
them, the Southern troops were waiting for them, entrenched behind breastworks, batteries planted, bayonets gleaming, even as they had been at Dalton.
When the wounded from Dalton brought in garbled
accounts of Old Joe’s retreat to Resaca, Atlanta was
surprised and a little disturbed. It was as though a
small, dark cloud had appeared in the northwest, the
first cloud of a summer storm. What was the General
thinking about, letting the Yankees penetrate eighteen
miles farther into Georgia? The mountains were natural fortresses, even as Dr. Meade had said. Why
hadn’t Old Joe held the Yankees there?
Johnston fought desperately at Resaca and repulsed
the Yankees again, but Sherman, employing the same
flanking movement, swung his vast army in another
semicircle, crossed the Oostanaula River and again
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struck at the railroad in the Confederate rear. Again
the gray lines were summoned swiftly from their red
ditches to defend the railroad, and, weary for sleep,
exhausted from marching and fighting, and hungry, always hungry, they made another rapid march
down the valley. They reached the little town of
Calhoun, six miles below Resaca, ahead of the Yankees, entrenched and were again ready for the attack
when the Yankees came up. The attack came, there
was fierce skirmishing and the Yankees were beaten
back. Wearily the Confederates lay on their arms and
prayed for respite and rest. But there was no rest.
Sherman inexorably advanced, step by step, swinging
his army about them in a wide curve, forcing another
retreat to defend the railroad at their back.
The Confederates marched in their sleep, too tired
to think for the most part. But when they did think,
they trusted old Joe. They knew they were retreating
but they knew they had not been beaten. They just
didn’t have enough men to hold their entrenchments
and defeat Sherman’s flanking movements, too. They
could and did lick the Yankees every time the Yankees would stand and fight. What would be the end
of this retreat, they did not know. But Old Joe knew
what he was doing and that was enough for them.
He had conducted the retreat in masterly fashion, for
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they had lost few men and the Yankees killed and captured ran high. They hadn’t lost a single wagon and
only four guns. And they hadn’t lost the railroad at
their back, either. Sherman hadn’t laid a finger on
it for all his frontal attacks, cavalry dashes and flank
movements.
The railroad. It was still theirs, that slender iron line
winding through the sunny valley toward Atlanta.
Men lay down to sleep where they could see the rails
gleaming faintly in the starlight. Men lay down to
die, and the last sight that met their puzzled eyes was
the rails shining in the merciless sun, heat shimmering along them.
As they fell back down the valley, an army of
refugees fell back before them. Planters and Crackers, rich and poor, black and white, women and children, the old, the dying, the crippled, the wounded,
the women far gone in pregnancy, crowded the road
to Atlanta on trains, afoot, on horseback, in carriages and wagons piled high with trunks and household goods. Five miles ahead of the retreating army
went the refugees, halting at Resaca, at Calhoun, at
Kingston, hoping at each stop to hear that the Yankees had been driven back so they could return to
their homes. But there was no retracing that sunny
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road. The gray troops passed by empty mansions, deserted farms, lonely cabins with doors ajar. Here and
there some lone woman remained with a few frightened slaves, and they came to the road to cheer the
soldiers, to bring buckets of well water for the thirsty
men, to bind up the wounds and bury the dead in
their own family burying grounds. But for the most
part the sunny valley was abandoned and desolate
and the untended crops stood in parching fields.
Flanked again at Calhoun, Johnston fell back to
Adairsville, where there was sharp skirmishing, then
to Cassville, then south of Cartersville. And the enemy had now advanced fifty-five miles from Dalton.
At New Hope Church, fifteen miles farther along the
hotly fought way, the gray ranks dug in for a determined stand. On came the blue lines, relentlessly,
like a monster serpent, coiling, striking venomously,
drawing its injured lengths back, but always striking
again. There was desperate fighting at New Hope
Church, eleven days of continuous fighting, with every Yankee assault bloodily repulsed. Then Johnston, flanked again, withdrew his thinning lines a few
miles farther.
The Confederate dead and wounded at New Hope
Church ran high. The wounded flooded Atlanta
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in train-loads and the town was appalled. Never,
even after the battle of Chickamauga, had the town
seen so many wounded. The hospitals overflowed
and wounded lay on the floors of empty stores and
upon cotton bales in the warehouses. Every hotel,
boarding house and private residence was crowded
with sufferers. Aunt Pitty had her share, although
she protested that it was most unbecoming to have
strange men in the house when Melanie was in a delicate condition and when gruesome sights might bring
on premature birth. But Melanie reefed up her top
hoop a little higher to hide her thickening figure and
the wounded invaded the brick house. There was
endless cooking and lifting and turning and fanning,
endless hours of washing and rerolling bandages and
picking lint, and endless warm nights made sleepless
by the babbling delirium of men in the next room. Finally the choked town could take care of no more and
the overflow of wounded was sent on to the hospitals
at Macon and Augusta.
With this backwash of wounded bearing conflicting reports and the increase of frightened refugees
crowding into the already crowded town, Atlanta
was in an uproar. The small cloud on the horizon had
blown up swiftly into a large, sullen storm cloud and
it was as though a faint, chilling wind blew from it.
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No one had lost faith in the invincibility of the
troops but everyone, the civilians at least, had lost
faith in the General. New Hope Church was only
thirty-five miles from Atlanta! The General had let
the Yankees push him back sixty-five miles in three
weeks! Why didn’t he hold the Yankees instead of everlastingly retreating? He was a fool and worse than
a fool. Graybeards in the Home Guard and members
of the state militia, safe in Atlanta, insisted they could
have managed the campaign better and drew maps
on tablecloths to prove their contentions. As his lines
grew thinner and he was forced back farther, the General called desperately on Governor Brown for these
very men, but the state troops felt reasonably safe. After all, the Governor had defied Jeff Davis’ demand
for them. Why should he accede to General Johnston?
Fight and fall back! Fight and fall back! For seventy miles and twenty-five days the Confederates had
fought almost daily. New Hope Church was behind
the gray troops now, a memory in a mad haze of
like memories, heat, dust, hunger, weariness, tramptramp on the red rutted roads, slop-slop through the
red mud, retreat, entrench, fight–retreat, entrench,
fight. New Hope Church was a nightmare of another
life and so was Big Shanty, where they turned and
fought the Yankees like demons. But, fight the Yan570
�PART THREE
kees till the fields were blue with dead, there were
always more Yankees, fresh Yankees; there was always that sinister southeast curving of the blue lines
toward the Confederate rear, toward the railroad–and
toward Atlanta!
From Big Shanty, the weary sleepless lines retreated
down the road to Kennesaw Mountain, near the little
town of Marietta, and here they spread their lines in
a ten-mile curve. On the steep sides of the mountain
they dug their rifle pits and on the towering heights
they planted their batteries. Swearing, sweating men
hauled the heavy guns up the precipitous slopes, for
mules could not climb the hillsides. Couriers and
wounded coming into Atlanta gave reassuring reports to the frightened townspeople. The heights of
Kennesaw were impregnable. So were Pine Mountain and Lost Mountain near by which were also fortified. The Yankees couldn’t dislodge Old Joe’s men
and they could hardly flank them now for the batteries on the mountain tops commanded all the roads for
miles. Atlanta breathed more easily, but–
But Kennesaw Mountain was only twenty-two
miles away!
On the day when the first wounded from Kennesaw Mountain were coming in, Mrs. Merriwether’s
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carriage was at Aunt Pitty’s house at the unheardof hour of seven in the morning, and black Uncle
Levi sent up word that Scarlett must dress immediately and come to the hospital. Fanny Elsing and
the Bonnell girls, roused early from slumber, were
yawning on the back seat and the Elsings’ mammy
sat grumpily on the box, a basket of freshly laundered bandages on her lap. Off Scarlett went, unwillingly for she had danced till dawn the night before
at the Home Guard’s party and her feet were tired.
She silently cursed the efficient and indefatigable Mrs.
Merriwether, the wounded and the whole Southern
Confederacy, as Prissy buttoned her in her oldest and
raggedest calico frock which she used for hospital
work. Gulping down the bitter brew of parched corn
and dried sweet potatoes that passed for coffee, she
went out to join the girls.
She was sick of all this nursing. This very day she
would tell Mrs. Merriwether that Ellen had written
her to come home for a visit. Much good this did
her, for that worthy matron, her sleeves rolled up, her
stout figure swathed in a large apron, gave her one
sharp look and said: “Don’t let me hear any more
such foolishness, Scarlett Hamilton. I’ll write your
mother today and tell her how much we need you,
and I’m sure she’ll understand and let you stay. Now,
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put on your apron and trot over to Dr. Meade. He
needs someone to help with the dressings.”
“Oh, God,” thought Scarlett drearily, “that’s just the
trouble. Mother will make me stay here and I shall
die if I have to smell these stinks any longer! I wish
I was an old lady so I could bully the young ones,
instead of getting bullied–and tell old cats like Mrs.
Merriwether to go to Halifax!”
Yes, she was sick of the hospital, the foul smells, the
lice, the aching, unwashed bodies. If there had ever
been any novelty and romance about nursing, that
had worn off a year ago. Besides, these men wounded
in the retreat were not so attractive as the earlier ones
had been. They didn’t show the slightest interest in
her and they had very little to say beyond: “How’s
the fightin’ goin’? What’s Old Joe doin’ now? Mighty
clever fellow, Old Joe.” She didn’t think Old Joe a
mighty clever fellow. All he had done was let the Yankees penetrate eighty-eight miles into Georgia. No,
they were not an attractive lot. Moreover, many of
them were dying, dying swiftly, silently, having little
strength left to combat the blood poisoning, gangrene,
typhoid and pneumonia which had set in before they
could reach Atlanta and a doctor.
The day was hot and the flies came in the open win573
�PART THREE
dows in swarms, fat lazy flies that broke the spirits of
the men as pain could not. The tide of smells and pain
rose and rose about her. Perspiration soaked through
her freshly starched dress as she followed Dr. Meade
about, a basin in her hand.
Oh, the nausea of standing by the doctor, trying not
to vomit when his bright knife cut into mortifying
flesh! And oh, the horror of hearing the screams from
the operating ward where amputations were going
on! And the sick, helpless sense of pity at the sight
of tense, white faces of mangled men waiting for the
doctor to get to them, men whose ears were filled with
screams, men waiting for the dreadful words: “I’m
sorry, my boy, but that hand will have to come off.
Yes, yes, I know; but look, see those red streaks? It’ll
have to come off.”
Chloroform was so scarce now it was used only
for the worst amputations and opium was a precious
thing, used only to ease the dying out of life, not the
living out of pain. There was no quinine and no iodine at all. Yes, Scarlett was sick of it all, and that
morning she wished that she, like Melanie, had the
excuse of pregnancy to offer. That was about the only
excuse that was socially acceptable for not nursing
these days.
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�PART THREE
When noon came, she put off her apron and sneaked
away from the hospital while Mrs. Merriwether was
busy writing a letter for a gangling, illiterate mountaineer. Scarlett felt that she could stand it no longer.
It was an imposition on her and she knew that when
the wounded came in on the noon train there would
be enough work to keep her busy until night-fall–and
probably without anything to eat.
She went hastily up the two short blocks to
Peachtree Street, breathing the unfouled air in as deep
gulps as her tightly laced corset would permit. She
was standing on the corner, uncertain as to what she
would do next, ashamed to go home to Aunt Pitty’s
but determined not to go back to the hospital, when
Rhett Butler drove by.
“You look like the ragpicker’s child,” he observed,
his eyes taking in the mended lavender calico,
streaked with perspiration and splotched here and
there with water which had slopped from the basin.
Scarlett was furious with embarrassment and indignation. Why did he always notice women’s clothing and why was he so rude as to remark upon her
present untidiness?
“I don’t want to hear a word out of you. You get
out and help me in and drive me somewhere where
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nobody will see me. I won’t go back to the hospital
if they hang me! My goodness, I didn’t start this war
and I don’t see any reason why I should be worked to
death and–”
“A traitor to Our Glorious Cause!”
“The pot’s calling the kettle black. You help me in.
I don’t care where you were going. You’re going to
take me riding now.”
He swung himself out of the carriage to the ground
and she suddenly thought how nice it was to see a
man who was whole, who was not minus eyes or
limbs, or white with pain or yellow with malaria, and
who looked well fed and healthy. He was so well
dressed too. His coat and trousers were actually of the
same material and they fitted him, instead of hanging
in folds or being almost too tight for movement. And
they were new, not ragged, with dirty bare flesh and
hairy legs showing through. He looked as if he had
not a care in the world and that in itself was startling
these days, when other men wore such worried, preoccupied, grim looks. His brown face was bland and
his mouth, red lipped, clear cut as a woman’s, frankly
sensual, smiled carelessly as he lifted her into the carriage.
The muscles of his big body rippled against his well576
�PART THREE
tailored clothes, as he got in beside her, and, as always, the sense of his great physical power struck her
like a blow. She watched the swell of his powerful
shoulders against the cloth with a fascination that was
disturbing, a little frightening. His body seemed so
tough and hard, as tough and hard as his keen mind.
His was such an easy, graceful strength, lazy as a panther stretching in the sun, alert as a panther to spring
and strike.
“You little fraud,” he said, clucking to the horse.
“You dance all night with the soldiers and give them
roses and ribbons and tell them how you’d die for
the Cause, and when it comes to bandaging a few
wounds and picking off a few lice, you decamp
hastily.”
“Can’t you talk about something else and drive
faster? It would be just my luck for Grandpa Merriwether to come out of his store and see me and tell
old lady–I mean, Mrs. Merriwether.”
He touched up the mare with the whip and she
trotted briskly across Five Points and across the railroad tracks that cut the town in two. The train bearing the wounded had already come in and the litter
bearers were working swiftly in the hot sun, transferring wounded into ambulances and covered ord577
�PART THREE
nance wagons. Scarlett had no qualm of conscience
as she watched them but only a feeling of vast relief
that she had made her escape.
“I’m just sick and tired of that old hospital,” she
said, settling her billowing skirts and tying her bonnet bow more firmly under her chin. “And every day
more and more wounded come in. It’s all General
Johnston’s fault. If he’d just stood up to the Yankees
at Dalton, they’d have–”
“But he did stand up to the Yankees, you ignorant
child. And if he’d kept on standing there, Sherman
would have flanked him and crushed him between
the two wings of his army. And he’d have lost the
railroad and the railroad is what Johnston is fighting
for.”
“Oh, well,” said Scarlett, on whom military strategy
was utterly lost. “It’s his fault anyway. He ought to
have done something about it and I think he ought to
be removed. Why doesn’t he stand and fight instead
of retreating?”
“You are like everyone else, screaming ‘Off with his
head’ because he can’t do the impossible. He was Jesus the Savior at Dalton, and now he’s Judas the Betrayer at Kennesaw Mountain, all in six weeks. Yet,
just let him drive the Yankees back twenty miles and
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he’ll be Jesus again. My child, Sherman has twice
as many men as Johnston, and he can afford to lose
two men for every one of our gallant laddies. And
Johnston can’t afford to lose a single man. He needs
reinforcements badly and what is he getting? ‘Joe
Brown’s Pets.’ What a help they’ll be!”
“Is the militia really going to be called out? The
Home Guard, too? I hadn’t heard. How do you
know?”
“There’s a rumor floating about to that effect. The
rumor arrived on the train from Milledgeville this
morning. Both the militia and the Home Guards are
going to be sent in to reinforce General Johnston. Yes,
Governor Brown’s darlings are likely to smell powder at last, and I imagine most of them will be much
surprised. Certainly they never expected to see action. The Governor as good as promised them they
wouldn’t. Well, that’s a good joke on them. They
thought they had bomb proofs because the Governor
stood up to even Jeff Davis and refused to send them
to Virginia. Said they were needed for the defense of
their state. Who’d have ever thought the war would
come to their own back yard and they’d really have
to defend their state?”
“Oh, how can you laugh, you cruel thing! Think
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of the old gentlemen and the little boys in the Home
Guard! Why, little Phil Meade will have to go and
Grandpa Merriwether and Uncle Henry Hamilton.”
“I’m not talking about the little boys and the Mexican War veterans. I’m talking about brave young men
like Willie Guinan who like to wear pretty uniforms
and wave swords–”
“And yourself!”
“My dear, that didn’t hurt a bit! I wear no uniform
and wave no sword and the fortunes of the Confederacy mean nothing at all to me. Moreover, I wouldn’t
be caught dead in the Home Guard or in any army, for
that matter. I had enough of things military at West
Point to do me the rest of my life. . . . Well, I wish Old
Joe luck. General Lee can’t send him any help because
the Yankees are keeping him busy in Virginia. So the
Georgia state troops are the only reinforcements Johnston can get. He deserves better, for he’s a great strategist. He always manages to get places before the Yankees do. But he’ll have to keep falling back if he wants
to protect the railroad; and mark my words, when
they push him out of the mountains and onto the flatter land around here, he’s going to be butchered.”
“Around here?” cried Scarlett. “You know mighty
well the Yankees will never get this far!”
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�PART THREE
“Kennesaw is only twenty-two miles away and I’ll
wager you–”
“Rhett, look, down the street! That crowd of men!
They aren’t soldiers. What on earth . . . ? Why,
they’re darkies!”
There was a great cloud of red dust coming up
the street and from the cloud came the sound of the
tramping of many feet and a hundred or more negro voices, deep throated, careless, singing a hymn.
Rhett pulled the carriage over to the curb, and Scarlett looked curiously at the sweating black men, picks
and shovels over their shoulders, shepherded along
by an officer and a squad of men wearing the insignia
of the engineering corps.
“What on earth . . . ?” she began again.
Then her eyes lighted on a singing black buck in the
front rank. He stood nearly six and a half feet tall, a
giant of a man, ebony black, stepping along with the
lithe grace of a powerful animal, his white teeth flashing as he led the gang in “Go Down, Moses.” Surely
there wasn’t a negro on earth as tall and loud voiced
as this one except Big Sam, the foreman of Tara. But
what was Big Sam doing here, so far away from home,
especially now that there was no overseer on the plantation and he was Gerald’s right-hand man?
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�PART THREE
As she half rose from her seat to look closer, the giant
caught sight of her and his black face split in a grin of
delighted recognition. He halted, dropped his shovel
and started toward her, calling to the negroes nearest
him: “Gawdlmighty! It’s Miss Scarlett! You, ‘Lige!
‘Postle! Prophet! Dar’s Miss Scarlett!”
There was confusion in the ranks. The crowd halted
uncertainly, grinning, and Big Sam, followed by three
other large negroes, ran across the road to the carriage, closely followed by the harried, shouting officer.
“Get back in line, you fellows! Get back, I tell you or
I’ll– Why it’s Mrs. Hamilton. Good morning, Ma’m,
and you, too, sir. What are you up to inciting mutiny
and insubordination? God knows, I’ve had trouble
enough with these boys this morning.”
“Oh, Captain Randall, don’t scold them! They are
our people. This is Big Sam our foreman, and Elijah
and Apostle and Prophet from Tara. Of course, they
had to speak to me. How are you, boys?”
She shook hands all around, her small white hand
disappearing into their huge black paws and the four
capered with delight at the meeting and with pride at
displaying before their comrades what a pretty Young
Miss they had.
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“What are you boys doing so far from Tara? You’ve
run away, I’ll be bound. Don’t you know the patterollers will get you sure?”
They bellowed pleasedly at the badinage.
“Runned away?” answered Big Sam. “No’m, us
ain’ runned away. Dey done sont an’ tuck us, kase
us wuz de fo’ bigges’ an’ stronges’ han’s at Tara.” His
white teeth showed proudly. “Dey specially sont fer
me, kase Ah could sing so good. Yas’m, Mist’ Frank
Kennedy, he come by an’ tuck us.”
“But why, Big Sam?”
“Lawd, Miss Scarlett! Ain’ you heerd? Us is ter dig
de ditches fer de wite gempmums ter hide in w’en de
Yankees comes.”
Captain Randall and the occupants of the carriage
smothered smiles at this naive explanation of rifle
pits.
“Cose, Mis’ Gerald might’ nigh had a fit w’en dey
tuck me, an’ he say he kain run de place widout me.
But Miss Ellen she say: ‘Tek him, Mist’ Kennedy. De
Confedrutsy need Big Sam mo’ dan us do.’ An’ she
gib me a dollar an’ tell me ter do jes’ whut de w’ite
gempmums tell me. So hyah us is.”
“What does it all mean, Captain Randall?”
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“Oh, it’s quite simple. We have to strengthen the
fortifications of Atlanta with more miles of rifle pits,
and the General can’t spare any men from the front to
do it. So we’ve been impressing the strongest bucks
in the countryside for the work.”
“But–”
A cold little fear was beginning to throb in Scarlett’s breast. More miles of rifle pits! Why should
they need more? Within the last year, a series of huge
earth redoubts with battery emplacements had been
built all around Atlanta, one mile from the center of
town. These great earth-works were connected with
rifle pits and they ran, mile after mile, completely encircling the city. More rifle pits!
“But–why should we be fortified any more than we
are already fortified? We won’t need what we’ve got.
Surely, the General won’t let–”
“Our present fortifications are only a mile from
town,” said Captain Randall shortly. “And that’s too
close for comfort–or safety. These new ones are going
to be farther away. You see, another retreat may bring
our men into Atlanta.”
Immediately he regretted his last remark, as her eyes
widened with fear.
“But, of course there won’t be another retreat,” he
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added hastily. “The lines around Kennesaw Mountain are impregnable. The batteries are planted all up
the mountain sides and they command the roads, and
the Yankees can’t possibly get by.”
But Scarlett saw him drop his eyes before the lazy,
penetrating look Rhett gave him, and she was frightened. She remembered Rhett’s remark: “When the
Yankees push him out of the mountains and onto the
flatter land, he’ll be butchered.”
“Oh, Captain, do you think–”
“Why, of course not! Don’t fret your mind one
minute. Old Joe just believes in taking precautions.
That’s the only reason we’re digging more entrenchments. . . . But I must be going now. It’s been pleasant, talking to you. . . . Say good-by to your mistress,
boys, and let’s get going.”
“Good-by, boys. Now, if you get sick or hurt or in
trouble, let me know. I live right down Peachtree
Street, down there in almost the last house at the end
of town. Wait a minute–” She fumbled in her reticule.
“Oh, dear, I haven’t a cent. Rhett, give me a few shinplasters. Here, Big Sam, buy some tobacco for yourself and the boys. And be good and do what Captain
Randall tells you.”
The straggling line re-formed, the dust arose again
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in a red cloud as they moved off and Big Sam started
up the singing again.
“Go do-ow, Mos-es! Waaa-ay, do-own, in Eeejup
laa-an! An’ te-el O-le Faa-ro-o Ter let mah–peee-pul
go!”
“Rhett, Captain Randall was lying to me, just like all
the men do– trying to keep the truth from us women
for fear we’ll faint. Or was he lying? Oh, Rhett, if
there’s no danger, why are they digging these new
breastworks? Is the army so short of men they’ve got
to use darkies?”
Rhett clucked to the mare.
“The army is damned short of men. Why else would
the Home Guard be called out? And as for the entrenchments, well, fortifications are supposed to be of
some value in case of a siege. The General is preparing to make his final stand here.”
“A siege! Oh, turn the horse around. I’m going
home, back home to Tara, right away.”
“What ails you?”
“A siege! Name of God, a siege! I’ve heard about
sieges! Pa was in one or maybe it was his Pa, and Pa
told me–”
“What siege?”
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“The siege at Drogheda when Cromwell had the
Irish, and they didn’t have anything to eat and Pa
said they starved and died in the streets and finally
they ate all the cats and rats and even things like cockroaches. And he said they ate each other too, before
they surrendered, though I never did know whether
to believe that or not. And when Cromwell took the
town all the women were– A siege! Mother of God!”
“You are the most barbarously ignorant young person I ever saw. Drogheda was in sixteen hundred and
something and Mr. O’Hara couldn’t possibly have
been alive then. Besides, Sherman isn’t Cromwell.”
“No, but he’s worse! They say–”
“And as for the exotic viands the Irish ate at the
siege– personally I’d as soon eat a nice juicy rat as
some of the victuals they’ve been serving me recently
at the hotel. I think I shall have to go back to Richmond. They have good food there, if you have the
money to pay for it.” His eyes mocked the fear in her
face.
Annoyed that she had shown her trepidation, she
cried: “I don’t see why you’ve stayed here this long!
All you think about is being comfortable and eating
and–and things like that.”
“I know no more pleasant way to pass the time than
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in eating and er–things like that,” he said. “And as
for why I stay here–well, I’ve read a good deal about
sieges, beleaguered cities and the like, but I’ve never
seen one. So I think I’ll stay here and watch. I won’t
get hurt because I’m a noncombatant and besides I
want the experience. Never pass up new experiences,
Scarlett. They enrich the mind.”
“My mind’s rich enough.”
“Perhaps you know best about that, but I should
say– But that would be ungallant. And perhaps, I’m
staying here to rescue you when the siege does come.
I’ve never rescued a maiden in distress. That would
be a new experience, too.”
She knew he was teasing her but she sensed a seriousness behind his words. She tossed her head.
“I won’t need you to rescue me. I can take care of
myself, thank you.”
“Don’t say that, Scarlett! Think of it, if you like,
but never, never say it to a man. That’s the trouble
with Yankee girls. They’d be most charming if they
weren’t always telling you that they can take care of
themselves, thank you. Generally they are telling the
truth, God help them. And so men let them take care
of themselves.”
“How you do run on,” she said coldly, for there was
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no insult worse than being likened to a Yankee girl.
“I believe you’re lying about a siege. You know the
Yankees will never get to Atlanta.”
“I’ll bet you they will be here within the month. I’ll
bet you a box of bonbons against–” His dark eyes
wandered to her lips. “Against a kiss.”
For a last brief moment, fear of a Yankee invasion
clutched her heart but at the word “kiss,” she forgot
about it. This was familiar ground and far more interesting than military operations. With difficulty she
restrained a smile of glee. Since the day when he gave
her the green bonnet, Rhett had made no advances
which could in any way be construed as those of a
lover. He could never be inveigled into personal conversations, try though she might, but now with no angling on her part, he was talking about kissing.
“I don’t care for such personal conversation,” she
said coolly and managed a frown. “Besides, I’d just
as soon kiss a pig.”
“There’s no accounting for tastes and I’ve always
heard the Irish were partial to pigs–kept them under their beds, in fact. But, Scarlett, you need kissing
badly. That’s what’s wrong with you. All your beaux
have respected you too much, though God knows
why, or they have been too afraid of you to really do
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right by you. The result is that you are unendurably
uppity. You should be kissed and by someone who
knows how.”
The conversation was not going the way she wanted
it. It never did when she was with him. Always, it
was a duel in which she was worsted.
“And I suppose you think you are the proper person?” she asked with sarcasm, holding her temper in
check with difficulty.
“Oh, yes, if I cared to take the trouble,” he said carelessly. “They say I kiss very well.”
“Oh,” she began, indignant at the slight to her
charms. “Why, you . . .” But her eyes fell in sudden
confusion. He was smiling, but in the dark depths of
his eyes a tiny light flickered for a brief moment, like
a small raw flame.
“Of course, you’ve probably wondered why I never
tried to follow up that chaste peck I gave you, the day
I brought you that bonnet–”
“I have never–”
“Then you aren’t a nice girl, Scarlett, and I’m sorry
to hear it. All really nice girls wonder when men don’t
try to kiss them. They know they shouldn’t want
them to and they know they must act insulted if they
do, but just the same, they wish the men would try. .
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. . Well, my dear, take heart. Some day, I will kiss you
and you will like it. But not now, so I beg you not to
be too impatient.”
She knew he was teasing but, as always, his teasing
maddened her. There was always too much truth in
the things he said. Well, this finished him. If ever, ever
he should be so ill bred as to try to take any liberties
with her, she would show him.
“Will you kindly turn the horse around, Captain
Butler? I wish to go back to the hospital.”
“Do you indeed, my ministering angel? Then lice
and slops are preferable to my conversation? Well,
far be it from me to keep a pair of willing hands
from laboring for Our Glorious Cause.” He turned
the horse’s head and they started back toward Five
Points.
“As to why I have made no further advances,” he
pursued blandly, as though she had not signified that
the conversation was at an end, “I’m waiting for you
to grow up a little more. You see, it wouldn’t be much
fun for me to kiss you now and I’m quite selfish about
my pleasures. I never fancied kissing children.”
He smothered a grin, as from the corner of his eye
he saw her bosom heave with silent wrath.
“And then, too,” he continued softly, “I was wait591
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ing for the memory of the estimable Ashley Wilkes to
fade.”
At the mention of Ashley’s name, sudden pain went
through her, sudden hot tears stung her lids. Fade?
The memory of Ashley would never fade, not if he
were dead a thousand years. She thought of Ashley
wounded, dying in a far-off Yankee prison, with no
blankets over him, with no one who loved him to hold
his hand, and she was filled with hate for the well-fed
man who sat beside her, jeers just beneath the surface
of his drawling voice.
She was too angry to speak and they rode along in
silence for some while.
“I understand practically everything about you and
Ashley, now,” Rhett resumed. “I began with your
inelegant scene at Twelve Oaks and, since then, I’ve
picked up many things by keeping my eyes open.
What things? Oh, that you still cherish a romantic
schoolgirl passion for him which he reciprocates as
well as his honorable nature will permit him. And
that Mrs. Wilkes knows nothing and that, between
the two of you, you’ve done her a pretty trick. I understand practically everything, except one thing that
piques my curiosity. Did the honorable Ashley ever
jeopardize his immortal soul by kissing you?”
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A stony silence and an averted head were his answers.
“Ah, well, so he did kiss you. I suppose it was when
he was here on furlough. And now that he’s probably
dead you are cherishing it to your heart. But I’m sure
you’ll get over it and when you’ve forgotten his kiss,
I’ll–”
She turned in fury.
“You go to–Halifax,” she said tensely, her green eyes
slits of rage. “And let me out of this carriage before I
jump over the wheels. And I don’t ever want to speak
to you again.”
He stopped the carriage, but before he could alight
and assist her she sprang down. Her hoop caught
on the wheel and for a moment the crowd at Five
Points had a flashing view of petticoats and pantalets.
Then Rhett leaned over and swiftly released it. She
flounced off without a word, without even a backward look, and he laughed softly and clicked to the
horse.
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�CHAPTER XVIII
time since the war began, Atlanta could
hear the sound of battle. In the early morning hours
before the noises of the town awoke, the cannon at
Kennesaw Mountain could be heard faintly, far away,
a low dim booming that might have passed for summer thunder. Occasionally it was loud enough to be
heard even above the rattle of traffic at noon. People tried not to listen to it, tried to talk, to laugh, to
carry on their business, just as though the Yankees
were not there, twenty-two miles away, but always
ears were strained for the sound. The town wore a
preoccupied look, for no matter what occupied their
hands, all were listening, listening, their hearts leaping suddenly a hundred times a day. Was the booming louder? Or did they only think it was louder?
Would General Johnston hold them this time? Would
he?
Panic lay just beneath the surface. Nerves which
had been stretched tighter and tighter each day of the
retreat began to reach the breaking point. No one
spoke of fears. That subject was taboo, but strained
nerves found expression in loud criticism of the General. Public feeling was at fever heat. Sherman was
at the very doors of Atlanta. Another retreat might
F OR
THE FIRST
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bring the Confederates into the town.
Give us a general who won’t retreat! Give us a man
who will stand and fight!
With the far-off rumbling of cannon in their ears,
the state militia, “Joe Brown’s Pets,” and the Home
Guard marched out of Atlanta, to defend the bridges
and ferries of the Chattahoochee River at Johnston’s
back. It was a gray, overcast day and, as they marched
through Five Points and out the Marietta road, a fine
rain began to fall. The whole town had turned out to
see them off and they stood, close packed, under the
wooden awnings of the stores on Peachtree Street and
tried to cheer.
Scarlett and Maybelle Merriwether Picard had been
given permission to leave the hospital and watch
the men go out, because Uncle Henry Hamilton and
Grandpa Merriwether were in the Home Guard, and
they stood with Mrs. Meade, pressed in the crowd,
tiptoeing to get a better view. Scarlett, though filled
with the universal Southern desire to believe only
the pleasantest and most reassuring things about the
progress of the fighting, felt cold as she watched the
motley ranks go by. Surely, things must be in a desperate pass if this rabble of bombproofers, old men
and little boys were being called out! To be sure
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there were young and able-bodied men in the passing lines, tricked out in the bright uniforms of socially
select militia units, plumes waving, sashes dancing.
But there were so many old men and young boys,
and the sight of them made her heart contract with
pity and with fear. There were graybeards older than
her father trying to step jauntily along in the needlefine rain to the rhythm of the fife and drum corps.
Grandpa Merriwether, with Mrs. Merriwether’s best
plaid shawl laid across his shoulders to keep out the
rain, was in the first rank and he saluted the girls with
a grin. They waved their handkerchiefs and cried
gay good-bys to him; but Maybelle, gripping Scarlett’s arm, whispered: “Oh, the poor old darling! A
real good rainstorm will just about finish him! His
lumbago–”
Uncle Henry Hamilton marched in the rank behind
Grandpa Merriwether, the collar of his long black coat
turned up about his ears, two Mexican War pistols
in his belt and a small carpetbag in his hand. Beside
him marched his black valet who was nearly as old as
Uncle Henry, with an open umbrella held over them
both. Shoulder to shoulder with their elders came
the young boys, none of them looking over sixteen.
Many of them had run away from school to join the
army, and here and there were clumps of them in the
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cadet uniforms of military academies, the black cock
feathers on their tight gray caps wet with rain, the
clean white canvas straps crossing their chests sodden. Phil Meade was among them, proudly wearing his dead brother’s saber and horse pistols, his hat
bravely pinned up on one side. Mrs. Meade managed
to smile and wave until he had passed and then she
leaned her head on the back of Scarlett’s shoulder for
a moment as though her strength had suddenly left
her.
Many of the men were totally unarmed, for the
Confederacy had neither rifles nor ammunition to issue to them. These men hoped to equip themselves
from killed and captured Yankees. Many carried
bowie knives in their boots and bore in their hands
long thick poles with iron-pointed tips known as “Joe
Brown pikes.” The lucky ones had old flintlock muskets slung over their shoulders and powder-horns at
their belts.
Johnston had lost around ten thousand men in his
retreat. He needed ten thousand more fresh troops.
And this, thought Scarlett frightened, is what he is
getting!
As the artillery rumbled by, splashing mud into the
watching crowds, a negro on a mule, riding close to
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a cannon caught her eye. He was a young, saddlecolored negro with a serious face, and when Scarlett
saw him she cried: “It’s Mose! Ashley’s Mose! Whatever is he doing here?” She fought her way through
the crowd to the curb and called: “Mose! Stop!”
The boy seeing her, drew rein, smiled delightedly
and started to dismount. A soaking sergeant, riding
behind him, called: “Stay on that mule, boy, or I’ll
light a fire under you! We got to git to the mountain
some time.”
Uncertainly, Mose looked from the sergeant to Scarlett and she, splashing through the mud, close to the
passing wheels, caught at Moses’ stirrup strap.
“Oh, just a minute, Sergeant! Don’t get down, Mose.
What on earth are you doing here?”
“Ah’s off ter de war, agin, Miss Scarlett. Dis time
wid Ole Mist’ John ‘stead ob Mist’ Ashley.”
“Mr. Wilkes!” Scarlett was stunned. Mr. Wilkes was
nearly seventy. “Where is he?”
“Back wid de las’ cannon, Miss Scarlett. Back dar!”
“Sorry, lady. Move on, boy!”
Scarlett stood for a moment, ankle deep in mud as
the guns lurched by. Oh, no! She thought. It can’t be.
He’s too old. And he doesn’t like war any more than
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Ashley did! She retreated back a few paces toward
the curb and scanned each face that passed. Then, as
the last cannon and limber chest came groaning and
splashing up, she saw him, slender, erect, his long
silver hair wet upon his neck, riding easily upon a
little strawberry mare that picked her way as daintily through the mud holes as a lady in a satin dress.
Why–that mare was Nellie! Mrs. Tarleton’s Nellie!
Beatrice Tarleton’s treasured darling!
When he saw her standing in the mud, Mr. Wilkes
drew rein with a smile of pleasure and, dismounting,
came toward her.
“I had hoped to see you, Scarlett. I was charged
with so many messages from your people. But there
was no time. We just got in this morning and they are
rushing us out immediately, as you see.”
“Oh, Mr. Wilkes,” she cried desperately, holding his
hand. “Don’t go! Why must you go?”
“Ah, so you think I’m too old!” he smiled, and it was
Ashley’s smile in an older face. “Perhaps I am too old
to march but not to ride and shoot. And Mrs. Tarleton so kindly lent me Nellie, so I am well mounted.
I hope nothing happens to Nellie, for if something
should happen to her, I could never go home and face
Mrs. Tarleton. Nellie was the last horse she had left.”
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He was laughing now, turning away her fears. “Your
mother and father and the girls are well and they sent
you their love. Your father nearly came up with us
today!”
“Oh, not Pa!” cried Scarlett in terror. “Not Pa! He
isn’t going to the war, is he?”
“No, but he was. Of course, he can’t walk far with
his stiff knee, but he was all for riding away with us.
Your mother agreed, providing he was able to jump
the pasture fence, for, she said, there would be a lot
of rough riding to be done in the army. Your father
thought that easy, but–would you believe it? When
his horse came to the fence, he stopped dead and over
his head went your father! It’s a wonder it didn’t
break his neck! You know how obstinate he is. He
got right up and tried it again. Well, Scarlett, he came
off three times before Mrs. O’Hara and Pork assisted
him to bed. He was in a taking about it, swearing that
your mother had ‘spoken a wee word in the beast’s
ear.’ He just isn’t up to active service, Scarlett. You
need have no shame about it. After all, someone must
stay home and raise crops for the army.”
Scarlett had no shame at all, only an active feeling of
relief.
“I’ve sent India and Honey to Macon to stay with
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the Burrs and Mr. O’Hara is looking after Twelve
Oaks as well as Tara. . . . I must go, my dear. Let
me kiss your pretty face.”
Scarlett turned up her lips and there was a choking
pain in her throat. She was so fond of Mr. Wilkes.
Once, long ago, she had hoped to be his daughter-inlaw.
“And you must deliver this kiss to Pittypat and this
to Melanie,” he said, kissing her lightly two more
times. “And how is Melanie?”
“She is well.”
“Ah!” His eyes looked at her but through her, past
her as Ashley’s had done, remote gray eyes looking
on another world. “I should have liked to see my first
grandchild. Good-by, my dear.”
He swung onto Nellie and cantered off, his hat in his
hand, his silver hair bare to the rain. Scarlett had rejoined Maybelle and Mrs. Meade before the import of
his last words broke upon her. Then in superstitious
terror she crossed herself and tried to say a prayer.
He had spoken of death, just as Ashley had done, and
now Ashley– No one should ever speak of death! It
was tempting Providence to mention death. As the
three women started silently back to the hospital in
the rain, Scarlett was praying: “Not him, too, God.
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Not him and Ashley, too!”
The retreat from Dalton to Kennesaw Mountain had
taken from early May to mid-June and as the hot rainy
days of June passed and Sherman failed to dislodge
the Confederates from the steep slippery slopes, hope
again raised its head. Everyone grew more cheerful and spoke more kindly of General Johnston. As
wet June days passed into a wetter July and the Confederates, fighting desperately around the entrenched
heights, still held Sherman at bay, a wild gaiety took
hold of Atlanta. Hope went to their heads like champagne. Hurrah! Hurrah! We’re holding them! An
epidemic of parties and dances broke out. Whenever
groups of men from the fighting were in town for the
night, dinners were given for them and afterwards
there was dancing and the girls, outnumbering the
men ten to one, made much of them and fought to
dance with them.
Atlanta was crowded with visitors, refugees, families of wounded men in the hospitals, wives and
mothers of soldiers fighting at the mountain who
wished to be near them in case of wounds. In addition, bevies of belles from the country districts,
where all remaining men were under sixteen or over
sixty, descended upon the town. Aunt Pitty disap602
�PART THREE
proved highly of these last, for she felt they had come
to Atlanta for no reason at all except to catch husbands, and the shamelessness of it made her wonder
what the world was coming to. Scarlett disapproved,
too. She did not care for the eager competition furnished by the sixteen-year-olds whose fresh cheeks
and bright smiles made one forget their twice-turned
frocks and patched shoes. Her own clothes were prettier and newer than most, thanks to the material Rhett
Butler had brought her on the last boat he ran in, but,
after all, she was nineteen and getting along and men
had a way of chasing silly young things.
A widow with a child was at a disadvantage with
these pretty minxes, she thought. But in these exciting
days her widowhood and her motherhood weighed
less heavily upon her than ever before. Between hospital duties in the day time and parties at night, she
hardly ever saw Wade. Sometimes she actually forgot, for long stretches, that she had a child.
In the warm wet summer nights, Atlanta’s homes
stood open to the soldiers, the town’s defenders. The
big houses from Washington Street to Peachtree Street
blazed with lights, as the muddy fighters in from the
rifle pits were entertained, and the sound of banjo and
fiddle and the scrape of dancing feet and light laugh603
�PART THREE
ter carried far on the night air. Groups hung over pianos and voices sang lustily the sad words of “Your
Letter Came but Came Too Late” while ragged gallants looked meaningly at girls who laughed from behind turkey-tail fans, begging them not to wait until it was too late. None of the girls waited, if they
could help it. With the tide of hysterical gaiety and
excitement flooding the city, they rushed into matrimony. There were so many marriages that month
while Johnston was holding the enemy at Kennesaw
Mountain, marriages with the bride turned out in
blushing happiness and the hastily borrowed finery
of a dozen friends and the groom with saber banging
at patched knees. So much excitement, so many parties, so many thrills! Hurrah! Johnston is holding the
Yanks twenty-two miles away!
Yes, the lines around Kennesaw Mountain were impregnable. After twenty-five days of fighting, even
General Sherman was convinced of this, for his losses
were enormous. Instead of continuing the direct assault, he swung his army in a wide circle again and
tried to come between the Confederates and Atlanta.
Again, the strategy worked. Johnston was forced to
abandon the heights he had held so well, in order to
protect his rear. He had lost a third of his men in
that fight and the remainder slogged tiredly through
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the rain across the country toward the Chattahoochee
River. The Confederates could expect no more reinforcements, whereas the railroad, which the Yankees now held from Tennessee south to the battle line,
brought Sherman fresh troops and supplies daily. So
the gray lines went back through the muddy fields,
back toward Atlanta.
With the loss of the supposedly unconquerable position, a fresh wave of terror swept the town. For
twenty-five wild, happy days, everyone had assured
everyone else that this could not possibly happen.
And now it had happened! But surely the General
would hold the Yankees on the opposite bank of the
river. Though God knows the river was close enough,
only seven miles away!
But Sherman flanked them again, crossing the
stream above them, and the weary gray files were
forced to hurry across the yellow water and throw
themselves again between the invaders and Atlanta.
They dug in hastily in shallow pits to the north of the
town in the valley of Peachtree Creek. Atlanta was in
agony and panic.
Fight and fall back! Fight and fall back! And every
retreat was bringing the Yankees closer to the town.
Peachtree Creek was only five miles away! What was
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the General thinking about?
The cries of “Give us a man who will stand and
fight!” penetrated even to Richmond. Richmond
knew that if Atlanta was lost, the war was lost, and
after the army had crossed the Chattahoochee, General Johnston was removed from command. General
Hood, one of his corps commanders, took over the
army, and the town breathed a little easier. Hood
wouldn’t retreat. Not that tall Kentuckian, with his
flowing beard and flashing eye! He had the reputation of a bulldog. He’d drive the Yankees back from
the creek, yes, back across the river and on up the
road every step of the way back to Dalton. But the
army cried: “Give us back Old Joe!” for they had been
with Old Joe all the weary miles from Dalton and they
knew, as the civilians could not know, the odds that
had opposed them.
Sherman did not wait for Hood to get himself in
readiness to attack. On the day after the change
in command, the Yankee general struck swiftly at
the little town of Decatur, six miles beyond Atlanta,
captured it and cut the railroad there. This was
the railroad connecting Atlanta with Augusta, with
Charleston, and Wilmington and with Virginia. Sherman had dealt the Confederacy a crippling blow. The
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time had come for action! Atlanta screamed for action!
Then, on a July afternoon of steaming heat, Atlanta
had its wish. General Hood did more than stand and
fight. He assaulted the Yankees fiercely at Peachtree
Creek, hurling his men from their rifle pits against the
blue lines where Sherman’s men outnumbered him
more than two to one.
Frightened, praying that Hood’s attack would drive
the Yankees back, everyone listened to the sound of
booming cannon and the crackling of thousands of rifles which, though five miles away from the center
of town, were so loud as to seem almost in the next
block. They could hear the rumblings of the batteries,
see the smoke which rolled like low-hanging clouds
above the trees, but for hours no one knew how the
battle was going.
By late afternoon the first news came, but it was
uncertain, contradictory, frightening, brought as it
was by men wounded in the early hours of the battle. These men began straggling in, singly and in
groups, the less seriously wounded supporting those
who limped and staggered. Soon a steady stream
of them was established, making their painful way
into town toward the hospitals, their faces black as
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negroes’ from powder stains, dust and sweat, their
wounds unbandaged, blood drying, flies swarming
about them.
Aunt Pitty’s was one of the first houses which the
wounded reached as they struggled in from the north
of the town, and one after another, they tottered to the
gate, sank down on the green lawn and croaked:
“Water!”
All that burning afternoon, Aunt Pitty and her family, black and white, stood in the sun with buckets of water and bandages, ladling drinks, binding
wounds until the bandages gave out and even the
torn sheets and towels were exhausted. Aunt Pitty
completely forgot that the sight of blood always made
her faint and she worked until her little feet in their
too small shoes swelled and would no longer support her. Even Melanie, now great with child, forgot
her modesty and worked feverishly side by side with
Prissy, Cookie and Scarlett, her face as tense as any
of the wounded. When at last she fainted, there was
no place to lay her except on the kitchen table, as every bed, chair and sofa in the house was filled with
wounded.
Forgotten in the tumult, little Wade crouched behind the banisters on the front porch, peering out
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onto the lawn like a caged, frightened rabbit, his eyes
wide with terror, sucking his thumb and hiccoughing.
Once Scarlett saw him and cried sharply: “Go play in
the back yard, Wade Hampton!” but he was too terrified, too fascinated by the mad scene before him to
obey.
The lawn was covered with prostrate men, too tired
to walk farther, too weak from wounds to move.
These Uncle Peter loaded into the carriage and drove
to the hospital, making trip after trip until the old
horse was lathered. Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Merriwether sent their carriages and they, too, drove off,
springs sagging beneath the weight of the wounded.
Later, in the long, hot summer twilight, the ambulances came rumbling down the road from the battle
field and commissary wagons, covered with muddy
canvas. Then farm wagons, ox carts and even private
carriages commandeered by the medical corps. They
passed Aunt Pitty’s house, jolting over the bumpy
road, packed with wounded and dying men, dripping blood into the red dust. At the sight of the
women with buckets and dippers, the conveyances
halted and the chorus went up in cries, in whispers:
“Water!”
Scarlett held wobbling heads that parched lips
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might drink, poured buckets of water over dusty,
feverish bodies and into open wounds that the men
might enjoy a brief moment’s relief. She tiptoed to
hand dippers to ambulance drivers and of each she
questioned, her heart in her throat: “What news?
What news?”
From all came back the answer: “Don’t know fer
sartin, lady. It’s too soon to tell.”
Night came and it was sultry. No air moved and
the flaring pine knots the negroes held made the air
hotter. Dust clogged Scarlett’s nostrils and dried her
lips. Her lavender calico dress, so freshly clean and
starched that morning, was streaked with blood, dirt
and sweat. This, then, was what Ashley had meant
when he wrote that war was not glory but dirt and
misery.
Fatigue gave an unreal, nightmarish cast to the
whole scene. It couldn’t be real–or it was real, then the
world had gone mad. If not, why should she be standing here in Aunt Pitty’s peaceful front yard, amid wavering lights, pouring water over dying beaux? For
so many of them were her beaux and they tried to
smile when they saw her. There were so many men
jolting down this dark, dusty road whom she knew
so well, so many men dying here before her eyes,
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mosquitoes and gnats swarming their bloody faces,
men with whom she had danced and laughed, for
whom she had played music and sung songs, teased,
comforted and loved–a little.
She found Carey Ashburn on the bottom layer of
wounded in an ox cart, barely alive from a bullet
wound in his head. But she could not extricate him
without disturbing six other wounded men, so she let
him go on to the hospital. Later she heard he had died
before a doctor ever saw him and was buried somewhere, no one knew exactly. So many men had been
buried that month, in shallow, hastily dug graves at
Oakland Cemetery. Melanie felt it keenly that they
had not been able to get a lock of Carey’s hair to send
to his mother in Alabama.
As the hot night wore on and their backs were
aching and their knees buckling from weariness, Scarlett and Pitty cried to man after man: “What news?
What news?”
And as the long hours dragged past, they had their
answer, an answer that made them look whitely into
each other’s eyes.
“We’re falling back.” “We’ve got to fall back.” “They
outnumber us by thousands.” “The Yankees have got
Wheeler’s cavalry cut off near Decatur. We got to
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reenforce them.” “Our boys will all be in town soon.”
Scarlett and Pitty clutched each other’s arms for
support.
“Are–are the Yankees coming?”
“Yes’m, they’re comin’ all right but they ain’t goin’
ter git fer, lady.” “Don’t fret, Miss, they can’t take Atlanta.” “No, Ma’m, we got a million miles of breastworks ‘round this town.” “I heard Old Joe say it myself: ‘I can hold Atlanta forever.”’ “But we ain’t got
Old Joe. We got–” “Shut up, you fool! Do you want
to scare the ladies?” “The Yankees will never take this
place, Ma’m.” “Whyn’t you ladies go ter Macon or
somewheres that’s safer? Ain’t you got no kinfolks
there?” “The Yankees ain’t goin’ ter take Atlanta but
still it ain’t goin’ ter be so healthy for ladies whilst
they’re tryin’ it.” “There’s goin’ ter be a powerful lot
of shellin’.”
In a warm steaming rain the next day, the defeated army poured though Atlanta by thousands,
exhausted by hunger and weariness, depleted by
seventy-six days of battle and retreat, their horses
starved scarecrows, their cannon and caissons harnessed with odds and ends of rope and strips of
rawhide. But they did not come in as disorderly rabble, in full rout. They marched in good order, jaunty
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for all their rags, their torn red battle flags flying in
the rain. They had learned retreating under Old Joe,
who had made it as great a feat of strategy as advancing. The bearded, shabby files swung down Peachtree
Street to the tune of “Maryland! My Maryland!” and
all the town turned out to cheer them. In victory or
defeat, they were their boys.
The state militia who had gone out so short a time
before, resplendent in new uniforms, could hardly be
distinguished from the seasoned troops, so dirty and
unkempt were they. There was a new look in their
eyes. Three years of apologizing, of explaining why
they were not at the front was behind them now. They
had traded security behind the lines for the hardships
of battle. Many of their number had traded easy living for hard death. They were veterans now, veterans
of brief service, but veterans just the same, and they
had acquitted themselves well. They searched out
the faces of friends in the crowd and stared at them
proudly, defiantly. They could hold up their heads
now.
The old men and boys of the Home Guard marched
by, the graybeards almost too weary to lift their feet,
the boys wearing the faces of tired children, confronted too early with adult problems. Scarlett caught
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sight of Phil Meade and hardly recognized him, so
black was his face with powder and grime, so taut
with strain and weariness. Uncle Henry went limping by, hatless in the rain, his head stuck through a
hole in a piece of old oilcloth. Grandpa Merriwether
rode in on a gun carriage, his bare feet tied in quilt
scraps. But search though she might, she saw no sign
of John Wilkes.
Johnston’s veterans, however, went by with the tireless, careless step which had carried them for three
years, and they still had the energy to grin and wave
at pretty girls and to call rude gibes to men not in
uniform. They were on their way to the entrenchments that ringed the town–no shallow, hastily dug
trenches, these, but earthworks, breast high, reinforced with sandbags and tipped with sharpened
staves of wood. For mile after mile the trenches
encircled the town, red gashes surmounted by red
mounds, waiting for the men who would fill them.
The crowd cheered the troops as they would have
cheered them in victory. There was fear in every heart
but, now that they knew the truth, now that the worst
had happened, now that the war was in their front
yard, a change came over the town. There was no
panic now, no hysteria. Whatever lay in hearts did
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not show on faces. Everyone looked cheerful even if
the cheer was strained. Everyone tried to show brave,
confident faces to the troops. Everyone repeated what
Old Joe had said, just before he was relieved of command: “I can hold Atlanta forever.”
Now that Hood had had to retreat, quite a number
wished, with the soldiers, that they had Old Joe back,
but they forebore saying it and took courage from Old
Joe’s remark:
“I can hold Atlanta forever!”
Not for Hood the cautious tactics of General Johnston. He assaulted the Yankees on the east, he assaulted them on the west. Sherman was circling the
town like a wrestler seeking a fresh hold on an opponent’s body, and Hood did not remain behind his
rifle pits waiting for the Yankees to attack. He went
out boldly to meet them and savagely fell upon them.
Within the space of a few days the battles of Atlanta and of Ezra Church were fought, and both of
them were major engagements which made Peachtree
Creek seem like a skirmish.
But the Yankees kept coming back for more. They
had suffered heavy losses but they could afford to
lose. And all the while their batteries poured shells
into Atlanta, killing people in their homes, ripping
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roofs off buildings, tearing huge craters in the streets.
The townsfolk sheltered as best they could in cellars,
in holes in the ground and in shallow tunnels dug in
railroad cuts. Atlanta was under siege.
Within eleven days after he had taken command,
General Hood had lost almost as many men as Johnston had lost in seventy-four days of battle and retreat, and Atlanta was hemmed in on three sides.
The railroad from Atlanta to Tennessee was now in
Sherman’s hands for its full length. His army was
across the railroad to the east and he had cut the
railroad running southwest to Alabama. Only the
one railroad to the south, to Macon and Savannah,
was still open. The town was crowded with soldiers,
swamped with wounded, jammed with refugees, and
this one line was inadequate for the crying needs of
the stricken city. But as long as this railroad could be
held, Atlanta could still stand.
Scarlett was terrified when she realized how important this line had become, how fiercely Sherman
would fight to take it, how desperately Hood would
fight to defend it. For this was the railroad which
ran through the County, through Jonesboro. And Tara
was only five miles from Jonesboro! Tara seemed like
a haven of refuge by comparison with the scream616
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ing hell of Atlanta, but Tara was only five miles from
Jonesboro!
Scarlett and many other ladies sat on the flat roofs of
stores, shaded by their tiny parasols, and watched the
fighting on the day of the battle of Atlanta. But when
shells began falling in the streets for the first time,
they fled to the cellars, and that night the exodus of
women, children and old people from the city began.
Macon was their destination and many of those who
took the train that night had already refugeed five and
six times before, as Johnston fell back from Dalton.
They were traveling lighter now than when they arrived in Atlanta. Most of them carried only a carpetbag and a scanty lunch done up in a bandana handkerchief. Here and there, frightened servants carried
silver pitchers, knives and forks and a family portrait
or two which had been salvaged in the first fight.
Mrs. Merriwether and Mrs. Elsing refused to leave.
They were needed at the hospital and furthermore,
they said proudly, they weren’t afraid and no Yankees
were going to run them out of their homes. But Maybelle and her baby and Fanny Elsing went to Macon.
Mrs. Meade was disobedient for the first time in her
married life and flatly refused to yield to the doctor’s
command that she take the train to safety. The doctor
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needed her, she said. Moreover, Phil was somewhere
in the trenches and she wanted to be near by in case .
..
But Mrs. Whiting went and many other ladies of
Scarlett’s circle. Aunt Pitty, who had been the first to
denounce Old Joe for his policy of retreat, was among
the first to pack her trunks. Her nerves, she said,
were delicate and she could not endure noises. She
feared she might faint at an explosion and not be able
to reach the cellar. No, she was not afraid. Her baby
mouth tried to set in martial lines but failed. She’d go
to Macon and stay with her cousin, old Mrs. Burr, and
the girls should come with her.
Scarlett did not want to go to Macon. Frightened
as she was of the shells, she’d rather stay in Atlanta
than go to Macon, for she hated old Mrs. Burr cordially. Years ago, Mrs. Burr had said she was “fast”
after catching her kissing her son Willie at one of the
Wilkes’ house parties. No, she told Aunt Pitty, I’ll go
home to Tara and Melly can go to Macon with you.
At this Melanie began to cry in a frightened, heartbroken way. When Aunt Pitty fled to get Dr. Meade,
Melanie caught Scarlett’s hand in hers, pleading:
“Dear, don’t go to Tara and leave me! I’ll be so lonely
without you. Oh, Scarlett, I’d just die if you weren’t
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with me when the baby came! Yes–Yes, I know I’ve
got Aunt Pitty and she is sweet. But after all, she’s
never had a baby, and sometimes she makes me so
nervous I could scream. Don’t desert me, darling.
You’ve been just like a sister to me, and besides,” she
smiled wanly, “you promised Ashley you’d take care
of me. He told me he was going to ask you.”
Scarlett stared down at her in wonderment. With
her own dislike of this woman so strong she could
barely conceal it, how could Melly love her so? How
could Melly be so stupid as not to guess the secret of
her love of Ashley? She had given herself away a hundred times during these months of torment, waiting
for news of him. But Melanie saw nothing, Melanie
who could see nothing but good in anyone she loved.
. . . Yes, she had promised Ashley she would look out
for Melanie. Oh, Ashley! Ashley! you must be dead,
dead these many months! And now your promise
reaches out and clutches me!
“Well,” she said shortly, “I did promise him that and
I don’t go back on my promises. But I won’t go to
Macon and stay with that old Burr cat. I’d claw her
eyes out in five minutes. I’m going home to Tara and
you can come with me. Mother would love to have
you.”
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“Oh, I’d like that! Your mother is so sweet. But
you know Auntie would just die if she wasn’t with
me when the baby came, and I know she won’t go to
Tara. It’s too close to the fighting, and Auntie wants
to be safe.”
Dr. Meade, who had arrived out of breath, expecting
to find Melanie in premature labor at least, judging by
Aunt Pitty’s alarmed summoning, was indignant and
said as much. And upon learning the cause of the
upset, he settled the matter with words that left no
room for argument.
“It’s out of the question for you to go to Macon, Miss
Melly. I won’t answer for you if you move. The trains
are crowded and uncertain and the passengers are liable to be put off in the woods at any time, if the trains
are needed for the wounded or troops and supplies.
In your condition–”
“But if I went to Tara with Scarlett–”
“I tell you I won’t have you moved. The train to Tara
is the train to Macon and the same conditions prevail.
Moreover, no one knows just where the Yankees are
now, but they are all over everywhere. Your train
might even be captured. And even if you reached
Jonesboro safely, there’d be a five-mile ride over a
rough road before you ever reached Tara. It’s no trip
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for a woman in a delicate condition. Besides, there’s
not a doctor in the County since old Dr. Fontaine
joined the army.”
“But there are midwives–”
“I said a doctor,” he answered brusquely and his
eyes unconsciously went over her tiny frame. “I
won’t have you moved. It might be dangerous. You
don’t want to have the baby on the train or in a buggy,
do you?”
This medical frankness reduced the ladies to embarrassed blushes and silence.
“You’ve got to stay right here where I can watch
you, and you must stay in bed. No running up and
down stairs to cellars. No, not even if shells come
right in the window. After all, there’s not so much
danger here. We’ll have the Yankees beaten back in
no time. . . . Now, Miss Pitty, you go right on to
Macon and leave the young ladies here.”
“Unchaperoned?” she cried, aghast.
“They are matrons,” said the doctor testily. “And
Mrs. Meade is just two houses away. They won’t be
receiving any male company anyway with Miss Melly
in her condition. Good Heavens, Miss Pitty! This is
war time. We can’t think of the proprieties now. We
must think of Miss Melly.”
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He stamped out of the room and waited on the front
porch until Scarlett joined him.
“I shall talk frankly to you, Miss Scarlett,” he began,
jerking at his gray beard. “You seem to be a young
woman of common sense, so spare me your blushes. I
do not want to hear any further talk about Miss Melly
being moved. I doubt if she could stand the trip. She
is going to have a difficult time, even in the best of
circumstances–very narrow in the hips, as you know,
and probably will need forceps for her delivery, so
I don’t want any ignorant darky midwife meddling
with her. Women like her should never have children,
but– Anyway, you pack Miss Pitty’s trunk and send
her to Macon. She’s so scared she’ll upset Miss Melly
and that won’t do any good. And now, Miss,” he fixed
her with a piercing glance, “I don’t want to hear about
you going home, either. You stay with Miss Melly till
the baby comes. Not afraid, are you?”
“Oh, no!” lied Scarlett, stoutly.
“That’s a brave girl. Mrs. Meade will give you
whatever chaperonage you need and I’ll send over
old Betsy to cook for you, if Miss Pitty wants to take
her servants with her. It won’t be for long. The baby
ought to be here in another five weeks, but you never
can tell with first babies and all this shelling going on.
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It may come any day.”
So Aunt Pittypat went to Macon, in floods of tears,
taking Uncle Peter and Cookie with her. The carriage
and horse she donated to the hospital in a burst of
patriotism which she immediately regretted and that
brought on more tears. And Scarlett and Melanie
were left alone with Wade and Prissy in a house that
was much quieter, even though the cannonading continued.
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days of the siege, when the Yankees
crashed here and there against the defenses of the
city, Scarlett was so frightened by the bursting shells
she could only cower helplessly, her hands over her
ears, expecting every moment to be blown into eternity. When she heard the whistling screams that heralded their approach, she rushed to Melanie’s room
and flung herself on the bed beside her, and the two
clutched each other, screaming “Oh! Oh!” as they
buried their heads in the pillows. Prissy and Wade
scurried for the cellar and crouched in the cobwebbed
darkness, Prissy squalling at the top of her voice and
Wade sobbing and hiccoughing.
Suffocating under feather pillows while death
screamed overhead, Scarlett silently cursed Melanie
for keeping her from the safer regions below stairs.
But the doctor had forbidden Melanie to walk and
Scarlett had to stay with her. Added to her terror of being blown to pieces was her equally active terror that Melanie’s baby might arrive at any
moment. Sweat broke out on Scarlett with clammy
dampness, whenever this thought entered her mind.
What would she do if the baby started coming? She
knew she’d rather let Melanie die than go out on the
IN
THOSE FIRST
�PART THREE
streets to hunt for the doctor when the shells were
falling like April rain. And she knew Prissy could be
beaten to death before she would venture forth. What
would she do if the baby came?
These matters she discussed with Prissy in whispers
one evening, as they prepared Melanie’s supper tray,
and Prissy, surprisingly enough, calmed her fears.
“Miss Scarlett, effen we kain git de doctah w’en Miss
Melly’s time come, doan you bodder. Ah kin manage.
Ah knows all ‘bout birthin’. Ain’ mah ma a midwife?
Ain’ she raise me ter be a midwife, too? Jes’ you leave
it ter me.”
Scarlett breathed more easily knowing that experienced hands were near, but she nevertheless yearned
to have the ordeal over and done with. Mad to be
away from exploding shells, desperate to get home
to the quiet of Tara, she prayed every night that the
baby would arrive the next day, so she would be
released from her promise and could leave Atlanta.
Tara seemed so safe, so far away from all this misery.
Scarlett longed for home and her mother as she had
never longed for anything in all her life. If she were
just near Ellen she wouldn’t be afraid, no matter what
happened. Every night after a day of screeching earsplitting shells, she went to bed determined to tell
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Melanie the next morning that she could not stand
Atlanta another day, that she would have to go home
and Melanie would have to go to Mrs. Meade’s. But,
as she lay on her pillow, there always rose the memory of Ashley’s face as it had looked when she last
saw him, drawn as with an inner pain but with a little
smile on his lips: “You’ll take care of Melanie, won’t
you? You’re so strong. . . . Promise me.” And she
had promised. Somewhere, Ashley lay dead. Wherever he was, he was watching her, holding her to that
promise. Living or dead, she could not fail him, no
matter what the cost. So she remained day after day.
In response to Ellen’s letters, pleading with her to
come home, she wrote minimizing the dangers of the
siege, explaining Melanie’s predicament and promising to come as soon as the baby was born. Ellen, sensitive to the bonds of kin, be they blood or marriage,
wrote back reluctantly agreeing that she must stay
but demanding Wade and Prissy be sent home immediately. This suggestion met with the complete approval of Prissy, who was now reduced to teeth- chattering idiocy at every unexpected sound. She spent
so much time crouching in the cellar that the girls
would have fared badly but for Mrs. Meade’s stolid
old Betsy.
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Scarlett was as anxious as her mother to have Wade
out of Atlanta, not only for the child’s safety, but because his constant fear irritated her. Wade was terrified to speechlessness by the shelling, and even when
lulls came he clung to Scarlett’s skirts, too terrified to
cry. He was afraid to go to bed at night, afraid of the
dark, afraid to sleep lest the Yankees should come and
get him, and the sound of his soft nervous whimpering in the night grated unendurably on her nerves.
Secretly she was just as frightened as he was, but it
angered her to be reminded of it every minute by his
tense, drawn face. Yes, Tara was the place for Wade.
Prissy should take him there and return immediately
to be present when the baby came.
But before Scarlett could start the two on their
homeward journey, news came that the Yankees had
swung to the south and were skirmishing along the
railroad between Atlanta and Jonesboro. Suppose the
Yankees should capture the train on which Wade and
Prissy were riding–Scarlett and Melanie turned pale
at the thought, for everyone knew that Yankee atrocities on helpless children were even more dreadful
than on women. So she feared to send him home
and he remained in Atlanta, a frightened, silent little
ghost, pattering about desperately after his mother,
fearing to have her skirt out of his hand for even a
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minute.
The siege went on through the hot days of July,
thundering days following nights of sullen, ominous
stillness, and the town began to adjust itself. It was as
though, the worst having happened, they had nothing more to fear. They had feared a siege and now
they had a siege and, after all, it wasn’t so bad. Life
could and did go on almost as usual. They knew
they were sitting on a volcano, but until that volcano
erupted there was nothing they could do. So why
worry now? And probably it wouldn’t erupt anyway.
Just look how General Hood is holding the Yankees
out of the city! And see how the cavalry is holding
the railroad to Macon! Sherman will never take it!
But for all their apparent insouciance in the face of
falling shells and shorter rations, for all their ignoring
the Yankees, barely half a mile away, and for all their
boundless confidence in the ragged line of gray men
in the rifle pits, there pulsed, just below the skin of
Atlanta, a wild uncertainty over what the next day
would bring. Suspense, worry, sorrow, hunger and
the torment of rising, falling, rising hope was wearing
that skin thin.
Gradually, Scarlett drew courage from the brave
faces of her friends and from the merciful adjustment
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which nature makes when what cannot be cured must
be endured. To be sure, she still jumped at the sound
of explosions but she did not run screaming to burrow her head under Melanie’s pillow. She could now
gulp and say weakly: “That was close, wasn’t it?”
She was less frightened also because life had taken
on the quality of a dream, a dream too terrible to
be real. It wasn’t possible that she, Scarlett O’Hara,
should be in such a predicament, with the danger
of death about her every hour, every minute. It
wasn’t possible that the quiet tenor of life could have
changed so completely in so short a time.
It was unreal, grotesquely unreal, that morning
skies which dawned so tenderly blue could be profaned with cannon smoke that hung over the town
like low thunder clouds, that warm noontides filled
with the piercing sweetness of massed honeysuckle
and climbing roses could be so fearful, as shells
screamed into the streets, bursting like the crack of
doom, throwing iron splinters hundreds of yards,
blowing people and animals to bits.
Quiet, drowsy afternoon siestas had ceased to be,
for though the clamor of battle might lull from
time to time, Peachtree Street was alive and noisy
at all hours, cannon and ambulances rumbling by,
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wounded stumbling in from the rifle pits, regiments
hurrying past at double-quick, ordered from the
ditches on one side of town to the defense of some
hard-pressed earthworks on the other, and couriers
dashing headlong down the street toward headquarters as though the fate of the Confederacy hung on
them.
The hot nights brought a measure of quiet but it
was a sinister quiet. When the night was still, it was
too still–as though the tree frogs, katydids and sleepy
mockingbirds were too frightened to raise their voices
in the usual summer-night chorus. Now and again,
the quiet was broken sharply by the crack-cracking of
musket fire in the last line of defenses.
Often in the late night hours, when the lamps were
out and Melanie asleep and deathly silence pressed
over the town, Scarlett, lying awake, heard the latch
of the front gate click and soft urgent tappings on the
front door.
Always, faceless soldiers stood on the dark porch
and from the darkness many different voices spoke
to her. Sometimes a cultured voice came from the
shadows: “Madam, my abject apologies for disturbing you, but could I have water for myself and my
horse?” Sometimes it was the hard burring of a
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mountain voice, sometimes the odd nasals of the flat
Wiregrass country to the far south, occasionally the
lulling drawl of the Coast that caught at her heart, reminding her of Ellen’s voice.
“Missy, I got a pardner here who I wuz aimin’ ter git
ter the horsepittle but looks like he ain’t goin’ ter last
that fer. Kin you take him in?”
“Lady, I shore could do with some vittles. I’d shore
relish a corn pone if it didn’t deprive you none.”
“Madam, forgive my intrusion but–could I spend
the night on your porch? I saw the roses and smelled
the honeysuckle and it was so much like home that I
was emboldened–”
No, these nights were not real! They were a nightmare and the men were part of that nightmare, men
without bodies or faces, only tired voices speaking
to her from the warm dark. Draw water, serve food,
lay pillows on the front porch, bind wounds, hold the
dirty heads of the dying. No, this could not be happening to her!
Once, late in July, it was Uncle Henry Hamilton who
came tapping in the night. Uncle Henry was minus
his umbrella and carpetbag now, and his fat stomach
as well. The skin of his pink fat face hung down in
loose folds like the dewlaps of a bulldog and his long
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white hair was indescribably dirty. He was almost
barefoot, crawling with lice, and he was hungry, but
his irascible spirit was unimpaired.
Despite his remark: “It’s a foolish war when old
fools like me are out toting guns,” the girls received
the impression that Uncle Henry was enjoying himself. He was needed, like the young men, and
he was doing a young man’s work. Moreover, he
could keep up with the young men, which was more
than Grandpa Merriwether could do, he told them
gleefully. Grandpa’s lumbago was troubling him
greatly and the Captain wanted to discharge him. But
Grandpa wouldn’t go home. He said frankly that
he preferred the Captain’s swearing and bullying to
his daughter-in-law’s coddling, and her incessant demands that he give up chewing tobacco and launder
his beard every day.
Uncle Henry’s visit was brief, for he had only a fourhour furlough and he needed half of it for the long
walk in from the breastworks and back.
“Girls, I’m not going to see you all for a while,” he
announced as he sat in Melanie’s bedroom, luxuriously wriggling his blistered feet in the tub of cold
water Scarlett had set before him. “Our company is
going out in the morning.”
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“Where?” questioned Melanie frightened, clutching
his arm.
“Don’t put your hand on me,” said Uncle Henry
irritably. “I’m crawling with lice. War would be a
picnic if it wasn’t for lice and dysentery. Where’m I
going? Well, I haven’t been told but I’ve got a good
idea. We’re marching south, toward Jonesboro, in the
morning, unless I’m greatly in error.”
“Oh, why toward Jonesboro?”
“Because there’s going to be big fighting there,
Missy. The Yankees are going to take the railroad if
they possibly can. And if they do take it, it’s good-by
Atlanta!”
“Oh, Uncle Henry, do you think they will?”
“Shucks, girls! No! How can they when I’m there?”
Uncle Henry grinned at their frightened faces and
then, becoming serious again: “It’s going to be a hard
fight, girls. We’ve got to win it. You know, of course,
that the Yankees have got all the railroads except the
one to Macon, but that isn’t all they’ve got. Maybe
you girls didn’t know it, but they’ve got every road,
too, every wagon lane and bridle path, except the McDonough road. Atlanta’s in a bag and the strings of
the bag are at Jonesboro. And if the Yankees can take
the railroad there, they can pull up the strings and
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have us, just like a possum in a poke. So, we don’t
aim to let them get that railroad. . . . I may be gone a
while, girls. I just came in to tell you all good-by and
to make sure Scarlett was still with you, Melly.”
“Of course, she’s with me,” said Melanie fondly.
“Don’t you worry about us, Uncle Henry, and do take
care of yourself.”
Uncle Henry wiped his wet feet on the rag rug and
groaned as he drew on his tattered shoes.
“I got to be going,” he said. “I’ve got five miles to
walk. Scarlett, you fix me up some kind of lunch to
take. Anything you’ve got.”
After he had kissed Melanie good-by, he went down
to the kitchen where Scarlett was wrapping a corn
pone and some apples in a napkin.
“Uncle Henry–is it–is it really so serious?”
“Serious? God’lmighty, yes! Don’t be a goose. We’re
in the last ditch.”
“Do you think they’ll get to Tara?”
“Why–” began Uncle Henry, irritated at the feminine mind which thought only of personal things
when broad issues were involved. Then, seeing her
frightened, woebegone face, he softened.
“Of course they won’t. Tara’s five miles from
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the railroad and it’s the railroad the Yankees want.
You’ve got no more sense than a June bug, Missy.”
He broke off abruptly. “I didn’t walk all this way here
tonight just to tell you all good-by. I came to bring
Melly some bad news, but when I got up to it I just
couldn’t tell her. So I’m going to leave it to you to
do.”
“Ashley isn’t–you haven’t heard anything–that
he’s–dead?”
“Now, how would I be hearing about Ashley when
I’ve been standing in rifle pits up to the seat of my
pants in mud?” the old gentleman asked testily. “No.
It’s about his father. John Wilkes is dead.”
Scarlett sat down suddenly, the half-wrapped lunch
in her hand.
“I came to tell Melly–but I couldn’t. You must do it.
And give her these.”
He hauled from his pockets a heavy gold watch with
dangling seals, a small miniature of the long dead
Mrs. Wilkes and a pair of massive cuff buttons. At the
sight of the watch which she had seen in John Wilkes’
hands a thousand times, the full realization came over
Scarlett that Ashley’s father was really dead. And she
was too stunned to cry or to speak. Uncle Henry fidgeted, coughed and did not look at her, lest he catch
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sight of a tear that would upset him.
“He was a brave man, Scarlett. Tell Melly that. Tell
her to write it to his girls. And a good soldier for all
his years. A shell got him. Came right down on him
and his horse. Tore the horse’s– I shot the horse myself, poor creature. A fine little mare she was. You’d
better write Mrs. Tarleton about that, too. She set a
store on that mare. Wrap up my lunch, child. I must
be going. There, dear, don’t take it so hard. What better way can an old man die than doing a young man’s
work?”
“Oh, he shouldn’t have died! He shouldn’t have
ever gone to the war. He should have lived and seen
his grandchild grow up and died peacefully in bed.
Oh, why did he go? He didn’t believe in secession
and he hated the war and–”
“Plenty of us think that way, but what of it?” Uncle
Henry blew his nose grumpily. “Do you think I enjoy
letting Yankee riflemen use me for a target at my age?
But there’s no other choice for a gentleman these days.
Kiss me good-by, child, and don’t worry about me. I’ll
come through this war safely.”
Scarlett kissed him and heard him go down the steps
into the dark, heard the latch click on the front gate.
She stood for a minute looking at the keepsakes in her
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hand. And then she went up the stairs to tell Melanie.
At the end of July came the unwelcome news, predicted by Uncle Henry, that the Yankees had swung
around again toward Jonesboro. They had cut the
railroad four miles below the town, but they had been
beaten off by the Confederate cavalry; and the engineering corps, sweating in the broiling sun, had repaired the line.
Scarlett was frantic with anxiety. For three days she
waited, fear growing in her heart. Then a reassuring
letter came from Gerald. The enemy had not reached
Tara. They had heard the sound of the fight but they
had seen no Yankees.
Gerald’s letter was so full of brag and bluster as to
how the Yankees had been driven from the railroad
that one would have thought he personally had accomplished the feat, single handed. He wrote for
three pages about the gallantry of the troops and then,
at the end of his letter, mentioned briefly that Carreen
was ill. The typhoid, Mrs. O’Hara said it was. She
was not very ill and Scarlett was not to worry about
her, but on no condition must she come home now,
even if the railroad should become safe. Mrs. O’Hara
was very glad now that Scarlett and Wade had not
come home when the siege began. Mrs. O’Hara said
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Scarlett must go to church and say some Rosaries for
Carreen’s recovery.
Scarlett’s conscience smote her at this last, for it had
been months since she had been to church. Once she
would have thought this omission a mortal sin but,
somehow, staying away from church did not seem so
sinful now as it formerly had. But she obeyed her
mother and going to her room gabbled a hasty Rosary.
When she rose from her knees she did not feel as comforted as she had formerly felt after prayer. For some
time she had felt that God was not watching out for
her, the Confederates or the South, in spite of the millions of prayers ascending to Him daily.
That night she sat on the front porch with Gerald’s
letter in her bosom where she could touch it occasionally and bring Tara and Ellen closer to her. The
lamp in the parlor window threw odd golden shadows onto the dark vine-shrouded porch, and the matted tangle of yellow climbing roses and honeysuckle
made a wall of mingled fragrance about her. The
night was utterly still. Not even the crack of a rifle had
sounded since sunset and the world seemed far away.
Scarlett rocked back and forth, lonely, miserable since
reading the news from Tara, wishing that someone,
anyone, even Mrs. Merriwether, were with her. But
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Mrs. Merriwether was on night duty at the hospital,
Mrs. Meade was at home making a feast for Phil, who
was in from the front lines, and Melanie was asleep.
There was not even the hope of a chance caller. Visitors had fallen off to nothing this last week, for every
man who could walk was in the rifle pits or chasing
the Yankees about the countryside near Jonesboro.
It was not often that she was alone like this and she
did not like it. When she was alone she had to think
and, these days, thoughts were not so pleasant. Like
everyone else, she had fallen into the habit of thinking
of the past, the dead.
Tonight when Atlanta was so quiet, she could close
her eyes and imagine she was back in the rural stillness of Tara and that life was unchanged, unchanging. But she knew that life in the County would never
be the same again. She thought of the four Tarletons,
the red-haired twins and Tom and Boyd, and a passionate sadness caught at her throat. Why, either Stu
or Brent might have been her husband. But now,
when the war was over and she went back to Tara
to live, she would never again hear their wild halloos
as they dashed up the avenue of cedars. And Raiford
Calvert, who danced so divinely, would never again
choose her to be his partner. And the Munroe boys
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and little Joe Fontaine and–
“Oh, Ashley!” she sobbed, dropping her head into
her hands. “I’ll never get used to you being gone!”
She heard the front gate click and she hastily raised
her head and dashed her hand across her wet eyes.
She rose and saw it was Rhett Butler coming up the
walk, carrying his wide Panama hat in his hand. She
had not seen him since the day when she had alighted
from his carriage so precipitously at Five Points. On
that occasion, she had expressed the desire never to
lay eyes on him again. But she was so glad now
to have someone to talk to, someone to divert her
thoughts from Ashley, that she hastily put the memory from her mind. Evidently he had forgotten the
contretemps, or pretended to have forgotten it, for
he settled himself on the top step at her feet without
mention of their late difference.
“So you didn’t refugee to Macon! I heard that Miss
Pitty had retreated and, of course, I thought you had
gone too. So, when I saw your light I came here to
investigate. Why did you stay?”
“To keep Melanie company. You see, she–well, she
can’t refugee just now.”
“Thunderation,” he said, and in the lamplight she
saw that he was frowning. “You don’t mean to tell
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me Mrs. Wilkes is still here? I never heard of such
idiocy. It’s quite dangerous for her in her condition.”
Scarlett was silent, embarrassed, for Melanie’s condition was not a subject she could discuss with a man.
She was embarrassed, too, that Rhett should know it
was dangerous for Melanie. Such knowledge sat ill
upon a bachelor.
“It’s quite ungallant of you not to think that I might
get hurt too,” she said tartly.
His eyes flickered with amusement.
“I’d back you against the Yankees any day.”
“I’m not sure that that’s a compliment,” she said uncertainly.
“It isn’t,” he answered. “When will you stop looking for compliments in men’s lightest utterances?”
“When I’m on my deathbed,” she replied and
smiled, thinking that there would always be men to
compliment her, even if Rhett never did.
“Vanity, vanity,” he said. “At least, you are frank
about it.”
He opened his cigar case, extracted a black cigar and
held it to his nose for a moment. A match flared, he
leaned back against a post and, clasping his hands
about his knees, smoked a while in silence. Scarlett re641
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sumed her rocking and the still darkness of the warm
night closed about them. The mockingbird, which
nested in the tangle of roses and honeysuckle, roused
from slumber and gave one timid, liquid note. Then,
as if thinking better of the matter, it was silent again.
From the shadow of the porch, Rhett suddenly
laughed, a low, soft laugh.
“So you stayed with Mrs. Wilkes! This is the
strangest situation I ever encountered!”
“I see nothing strange about it,” she answered uncomfortably, immediately on the alert.
“No? But then you lack the impersonal viewpoint.
My impression has been for some time past that you
could hardly endure Mrs. Wilkes. You think her silly
and stupid and her patriotic notions bore you. You
seldom pass by the opportunity to slip in some belittling remark about her, so naturally it seems strange
to me that you should elect to do the unselfish thing
and stay here with her during this shelling. Now, just
why did you do it?”
“Because she’s Charlie’s sister–and like a sister to
me,” answered Scarlett with as much dignity as possible though her cheeks were growing hot.
“You mean because she’s Ashley’s Wilkes’ widow.”
Scarlett rose quickly, struggling with her anger.
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“I was almost on the point of forgiving you for your
former boorish conduct but now I shan’t do it. I
wouldn’t have ever let you come upon this porch at
all, if I hadn’t been feeling so blue and–”
“Sit down and smooth your ruffled fur,” he said,
and his voice changed. He reached up and taking her
hand pulled her back into her chair. “Why are you
blue?”
“Oh, I had a letter from Tara today. The Yankees are
close to home and my little sister is ill with typhoid
and–and–so now, even if I could go home, like I want
to, Mother wouldn’t let me for fear I’d catch it too.
Oh, dear, and I do so want to go home!”
“Well, don’t cry about it,” he said, but his voice was
kinder. “You are much safer here in Atlanta even if
the Yankees do come than you’d be at Tara. The Yankees won’t hurt you and typhoid would.”
“The Yankees wouldn’t hurt me! How can you say
such a lie?”
“My dear girl, the Yankees aren’t fiends. They
haven’t horns and hoofs, as you seem to think. They
are pretty much like Southerners–except with worse
manners, of course, and terrible accents.”
“Why, the Yankees would–”
“Rape you? I think not. Though, of course, they’d
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want to.”
“If you are going to talk vilely I shall go into the
house,” she cried, grateful that the shadows hid her
crimson face.
“Be frank. Wasn’t that what you were thinking?”
“Oh, certainly not!”
“Oh, but it was! No use getting mad at me for reading your thoughts. That’s what all our delicately nurtured and pure-minded Southern ladies think. They
have it on their minds constantly. I’ll wager even
dowagers like Mrs. Merriwether . . .”
Scarlett gulped in silence, remembering that wherever two or more matrons were gathered together, in
these trying days, they whispered of such happenings, always in Virginia or Tennessee or Lousiana,
never close to home. The Yankees raped women
and ran bayonets through children’s stomachs and
burned houses over the heads of old people. Everyone knew these things were true even if they didn’t
shout them on the street corners. And if Rhett had
any decency he would realize they were true. And
not talk about them. And it wasn’t any laughing matter either.
She could hear him chuckling softly. Sometimes he
was odious. In fact, most of the time he was odious.
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It was awful for a man to know what women really
thought about and talked about. It made a girl feel
positively undressed. And no man ever learned such
things from good women either. She was indignant
that he had read her mind. She liked to believe herself a thing of mystery to men, but she knew Rhett
thought her as transparent as glass.
“Speaking of such matters,” he continued, “have
you a protector or chaperon in the house? The admirable Mrs. Merriwether or Mrs. Meade? They always look at me as if they knew I was here for no
good purpose.”
“Mrs. Meade usually comes over at night,” answered Scarlett, glad to change the subject. “But she
couldn’t tonight. Phil, her boy, is home.”
“What luck,” he said softly, “to find you alone.”
Something in his voice made her heart beat pleasantly faster and she felt her face flush. She had heard
that note in men’s voices often enough to know that
it presaged a declaration of love. Oh, what fun! If
he would just say he loved her, how she would torment him and get even with him for all the sarcastic
remarks he had flung at her these past three years.
She would lead him a chase that would make up for
even that awful humiliation of the day he witnessed
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her slapping Ashley. And then she’d tell him sweetly
she could only be a sister to him and retire with the
full honors of war. She laughed nervously in pleasant
anticipation.
“Don’t giggle,” he said, and taking her hand, he
turned it over and pressed his lips into the palm.
Something vital, electric, leaped from him to her at
the touch of his warm mouth, something that caressed her whole body thrillingly. His lips traveled
to her wrist and she knew he must feel the leap of her
pulse as her heart quickened and she tried to draw
back her hand. She had not bargained on this–this
treacherous warm tide of feeling that made her want
to run her hands through his hair, to feel his lips upon
her mouth.
She wasn’t in love with him, she told herself confusedly. She was in love with Ashley. But how to explain
this feeling that made her hands shake and the pit of
her stomach grow cold?
He laughed softly.
“Don’t pull away! I won’t hurt you!”
“Hurt me? I’m not afraid of you, Rhett Butler, or of
any man in shoe leather!” she cried, furious that her
voice shook as well as her hands.
“An admirable sentiment, but do lower your voice.
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Mrs. Wilkes might hear you. And pray compose
yourself.” He sounded as though delighted at her
flurry.
“Scarlett, you do like me, don’t you?”
That was more like what she was expecting.
“Well, sometimes,” she answered cautiously.
“When you aren’t acting like a varmint.”
He laughed again and held the palm of her hand
against his hard cheek.
“I think you like me because I am a varmint. You’ve
known so few dyed-in-the-wool varmints in your
sheltered life that my very difference holds a quaint
charm for you.”
This was not the turn she had anticipated and she
tried again without success to pull her hand free.
“That’s not true! I like nice men–men you can depend on to always be gentlemanly.”
“You mean men you can always bully. It’s merely a
matter of definition. But no matter.”
He kissed her palm again, and again the skin on the
back of her neck crawled excitingly.
“But you do like me. Could you ever love me, Scarlett?”
“Ah!” she thought, triumphantly. “Now I’ve got
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him!” And she answered with studied coolness: “Indeed, no. That is–not unless you mended your manners considerably.”
“And I have no intention of mending them. So you
could not love me? That is as I hoped. For while I
like you immensely, I do not love you and it would be
tragic indeed for you to suffer twice from unrequited
love, wouldn’t it, dear? May I call you ‘dear,’ Mrs.
Hamilton? I shall call you ‘dear’ whether you like it
or not, so no matter, but the proprieties must be observed.”
“You don’t love me?”
“No, indeed. Did you hope that I did?”
“Don’t be so presumptuous!”
“You hoped! Alas, to blight your hopes! I should
love you, for you are charming and talented at many
useless accomplishments. But many ladies have
charm and accomplishments and are just as useless
as you are. No, I don’t love you. But I do like you
tremendously– for the elasticity of your conscience,
for the selfishness which you seldom trouble to hide,
and for the shrewd practicality in you which, I fear,
you get from some not too remote Irish-peasant ancestor.”
Peasant! Why, he was insulting her! She began to
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splutter wordlessly.
“Don’t interrupt,” he begged, squeezing her hand.
“I like you because I have those same qualities in
me and like begets liking. I realize you still cherish
the memory of the godlike and wooden- headed Mr.
Wilkes, who’s probably been in his grave these six
months. But there must be room in your heart for me
too. Scarlett, do stop wriggling! I am making you a
declaration. I have wanted you since the first time I
laid eyes on you, in the hall of Twelve Oaks, when
you were bewitching poor Charlie Hamilton. I want
you more than I have ever wanted any woman–and
I’ve waited longer for you than I’ve ever waited for
any woman.”
She was breathless with surprise at his last words.
In spite of all his insults, he did love her and he was
just so contrary he didn’t want to come out frankly
and put it into words, for fear she’d laugh. Well, she’d
show him and right quickly.
“Are you asking me to marry you?”
He dropped her hand and laughed so loudly she
shrank back in her chair.
“Good Lord, no! Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t a marrying man?”
“But–but–what–”
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He rose to his feet and, hand on heart, made her a
burlesque bow.
“Dear,” he said quietly, “I am complimenting your
intelligence by asking you to be my mistress without
having first seduced you.”
Mistress!
Her mind shouted the word, shouted that she had
been vilely insulted. But in that first startled moment
she did not feel insulted. She only felt a furious surge
of indignation that he should think her such a fool.
He must think her a fool if he offered her a proposition like that, instead of the proposal of matrimony
she had been expecting. Rage, punctured vanity and
disappointment threw her mind into a turmoil and,
before she even thought of the high moral grounds
on which she should upbraid him, she blurted out the
first words which came to her lips–
“Mistress! What would I get out of that except a
passel of brats?”
And then her jaw dropped in horror as she realized
what she had said. He laughed until he choked, peering at her in the shadows as she sat, stricken dumb,
pressing her handkerchief to her mouth.
“That’s why I like you! You are the only frank
woman I know, the only woman who looks on the
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practical side of matters without beclouding the issue
with mouthings about sin and morality. Any other
woman would have swooned first and then shown
me the door.”
Scarlett leaped to her feet, her face red with shame.
How could she have said such a thing! How could
she, Ellen’s daughter, with her upbringing, have sat
there and listened to such debasing words and then
made such a shameless reply? She should have
screamed. She should have fainted. She should have
turned coldly away in silence and swept from the
porch. Too late now!
“I will show you the door,” she shouted, not caring
if Melanie or the Meades, down the street, did hear
her. “Get out! How dare you say such things to me!
What have I ever done to encourage you–to make you
suppose. . . . Get out and don’t ever come back here.
I mean it this time. Don’t you ever come back here
with any of your piddling papers of pins and ribbons,
thinking I’ll forgive you. I’ll–I’ll tell my father and
he’ll kill you!”
He picked up his hat and bowed and she saw in
the light of the lamp that his teeth were showing in a
smile beneath his mustache. He was not ashamed, he
was amused at what she had said, and he was watch651
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ing her with alert interest.
Oh, he was detestable! She swung round on her heel
and marched into the house. She grabbed hold of the
door to shut it with a bang, but the hook which held
it open was too heavy for her. She struggled with it,
panting.
“May I help you?” he asked.
Feeling that she would burst a blood vessel if she
stayed another minute, she stormed up the stairs.
And as she reached the upper floor, she heard him
obligingly slam the door for her.
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noisy days of August were drawing to a
close the bombardment abruptly ceased. The quiet
that fell on the town was startling. Neighbors met
on the streets and stared at one another, uncertain,
uneasy, as to what might be impending. The stillness, after the screaming days, brought no surcease to
strained nerves but, if possible, made the strain even
worse. No one knew why the Yankee batteries were
silent; there was no news of the troops except that
they had been withdrawn in large numbers from the
breastworks about the town and had marched off toward the south to defend the railroad. No one knew
where the fighting was, if indeed there was any fighting, or how the battle was going if there was a battle.
Nowadays the only news was that which passed
from mouth to mouth. Short of paper, short of ink,
short of men, the newspapers had suspended publication after the siege began, and the wildest rumors appeared from nowhere and swept through the
town. Now, in the anxious quiet, crowds stormed
General Hood’s headquarters demanding information, crowds massed about the telegraph office and
the depot hoping for tidings, good tidings, for everyone hoped that the silence of Sherman’s cannon
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meant that the Yankees were in full retreat and the
Confederates chasing them back up the road to Dalton. But no news came. The telegraph wires were still,
no trains came in on the one remaining railroad from
the south and the mail service was broken.
Autumn with its dusty, breathless heat was slipping in to choke the suddenly quiet town, adding its
dry, panting weight to tired, anxious hearts. To Scarlett, mad to hear from Tara, yet trying to keep up a
brave face, it seemed an eternity since the siege began, seemed as though she had always lived with the
sound of cannon in her ears until this sinister quiet
had fallen. And yet, it was only thirty days since the
siege began. Thirty days of siege! The city ringed
with red-clay rifle pits, the monotonous booming of
cannon that never rested, the long lines of ambulances
and ox carts dripping blood down the dusty streets
toward the hospitals, the overworked burial squads
dragging out men when they were hardly cold and
dumping them like so many logs in endless rows of
shallow ditches. Only thirty days!
And it was only four months since the Yankees
moved south from Dalton! Only four months! Scarlett thought, looking back on that far day, that it had
occurred in another life. Oh, no! Surely not just four
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months. It had been a lifetime.
Four months ago! Why, four months ago Dalton,
Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain had been to her only
names of places on the railroad. Now they were battles, battles desperately, vainly fought as Johnston fell
back toward Atlanta. And now, Peachtree Creek, Decatur, Ezra Church and Utoy Creek were no longer
pleasant names of pleasant places. Never again could
she think of them as quiet villages full of welcoming friends, as green places where she picnicked with
handsome officers on the soft banks of slow-moving
streams. These names meant battles too, and the
soft green grasses where she had sat were cut to bits
by heavy cannon wheels, trampled by desperate feet
when bayonet met bayonet and flattened where bodies threshed in agonies. . . . And the lazy streams
were redder now than ever Georgia clay could make
them. Peachtree Creek was crimson, so they said, after the Yankees crossed it. Peachtree Creek, Decatur,
Ezra Church, Utoy Creek. Never names of places
any more. Names of graves where friends lay buried,
names of tangled underbrush and thick woods where
bodies rotted unburied, names of the four sides of Atlanta where Sherman had tried to force his army in
and Hood’s men had doggedly beaten him back.
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At last, news came from the south to the strained
town and it was alarming news, especially to Scarlett. General Sherman was trying the fourth side
of the town again, striking again at the railroad at
Jonesboro. Yankees in large numbers were on that
fourth side of the town now, no skirmishing units or
cavalry detachments but the massed Yankee forces.
And thousands of Confederate troops had been withdrawn from the lines close about the city to hurl themselves against them. And that explained the sudden
silence.
“Why Jonesboro?” thought Scarlett, terror striking
at her heart at the thought of Tara’s nearness. “Why
must they always hit Jonesboro? Why can’t they find
some other place to attack the railroad?”
For a week she had not heard from Tara and the last
brief note from Gerald had added to her fears. Carreen had taken a turn for the worse and was very,
very sick. Now it might be days before the mails came
through, days before she heard whether Carreen was
alive or dead. Oh, if she had only gone home at the
beginning of the siege, Melanie or no Melanie!
There was fighting at Jonesboro–that much Atlanta
knew, but how the battle went no one could tell and
the most insane rumors tortured the town. Finally
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a courier came up from Jonesboro with the reassuring news that the Yankees had been beaten back.
But they had made a sortie into Jonesboro, burned
the depot, cut the telegraph wires and torn up three
miles of track before they retreated. The engineering corps was working like mad, repairing the line,
but it would take some time because the Yankees had
torn up the crossties, made bonfires of them, laid the
wrenched-up rails across them until they were red hot
and then twisted them around telegraph poles until
they looked like giant corkscrews. These days it was
so hard to replace iron rails, to replace anything made
of iron.
No, the Yankees hadn’t gotten to Tara. The same
courier who brought the dispatches to General Hood
assured Scarlett of that. He had met Gerald in Jonesboro after the battle, just as he was starting to Atlanta,
and Gerald had begged him to bring a letter to her.
But what was Pa doing in Jonesboro? The young
courier looked ill at ease as he made answer. Gerald
was hunting for an army doctor to go to Tara with
him.
As she stood in the sunshine on the front porch,
thanking the young man for his trouble, Scarlett felt
her knees go weak. Carreen must be dying if she was
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so far beyond Ellen’s medical skill that Gerald was
hunting a doctor! As the courier went off in a small
whirlwind of red dust, Scarlett tore open Gerald’s letter with fingers that trembled. So great was the shortage of paper in the Confederacy now that Gerald’s
note was written between the lines of her last letter
to him and reading it was difficult.
“Dear Daughter, Your Mother and both girls have
the typhoid. They are very ill but we must hope for
the best. When your mother took to her bed she bade
me write you that under no condition were you to
come home and expose yourself and Wade to the disease. She sends her love and bids you pray for her.”
“Pray for her!” Scarlett flew up the stairs to her
room and, dropping on her knees by the bed, prayed
as she had never prayed before. No formal Rosaries
now but the same words over and over: “Mother of
God, don’t let her die! I’ll be so good if you don’t let
her die! Please, don’t let her die!”
For the next week Scarlett crept about the house like
a stricken animal, waiting for news, starting at every
sound of horses’ hooves, rushing down the dark stair
at night when soldiers came tapping at the door, but
no news came from Tara. The width of the continent
might have spread between her and home instead of
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twenty- five miles of dusty road.
The mails were still disrupted, no one knew where
the Confederates were or what the Yankees were up
to. No one knew anything except that thousands of
soldiers, gray and blue, were somewhere between Atlanta and Jonesboro. Not a word from Tara in a week.
Scarlett had seen enough typhoid in the Atlanta hospital to know what a week meant in that dread disease. Ellen was ill, perhaps dying, and here was Scarlett helpless in Atlanta with a pregnant woman on her
hands and two armies between her and home. Ellen
was ill–perhaps dying. But Ellen couldn’t be ill! She
had never been ill. The very thought was incredible
and it struck at the very foundations of the security
of Scarlett’s life. Everyone else got sick, but never
Ellen. Ellen looked after sick people and made them
well again. She couldn’t be sick. Scarlett wanted to be
home. She wanted Tara with the desperate desire of a
frightened child frantic for the only haven it had ever
known.
Home! The sprawling white house with fluttering
white curtains at the windows, the thick clover on the
lawn with the bees busy in it, the little black boy on
the front steps shooing the ducks and turkeys from
the flower beds, the serene red fields and the miles
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and miles of cotton turning white in the sun! Home!
If she had only gone home at the beginning of the
siege, when everyone else was refugeeing! She could
have taken Melanie with her in safety with weeks to
spare.
“Oh, damn Melanie!” she thought a thousand times.
“Why couldn’t she have gone to Macon with Aunt
Pitty? That’s where she belongs, with her own kinfolks, not with me. I’m none of her blood. Why does
she hang onto me so hard? If she’d only gone to Macon, then I could have gone home to Mother. Even
now–even now, I’d take a chance on getting home in
spite of the Yankees, if it wasn’t for this baby. Maybe
General Hood would give me an escort. He’s a nice
man, General Hood, and I know I could make him
give me an escort and a flag of truce to get me through
the lines. But I have to wait for this baby! . . . Oh,
Mother! Mother! Don’t die! . . . Why don’t this baby
ever come? I’ll see Dr. Meade today and ask him if
there’s any way to hurry babies up so I can go home–
if I can get an escort. Dr. Meade said she’d have a bad
time. Dear God! Suppose she should die! Melanie
dead. Melanie dead. And Ashley– No, I mustn’t think
about that, it isn’t nice. But Ashley– No, I mustn’t
think about that because he’s probably dead, anyway.
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But he made me promise I’d take care of her. But– if
I didn’t take care of her and she died and Ashley is
still alive– No, I mustn’t think about that. It’s sinful.
And I promised God I’d be good if He would just not
let Mother die. Oh, if the baby would only come. If
I could only get away from here– get home–get anywhere but here.”
Scarlett hated the sight of the ominously still town
now and once she had loved it. Atlanta was no longer
the gay, the desperately gay place she had loved. It
was a hideous place like a plague- stricken city so
quiet, so dreadfully quiet after the din of the siege.
There had been stimulation in the noise and the danger of the shelling. There was only horror in the quiet
that followed. The town seemed haunted, haunted
with fear and uncertainty and memories. People’s
faces looked pinched and the few soldiers Scarlett
saw wore the exhausted look of racers forcing themselves on through the last lap of a race already lost.
The last day of August came and with it convincing
rumors that the fiercest fighting since the battle of Atlanta was taking place. Somewhere to the south. Atlanta, waiting for news of the turn of battle, stopped
even trying to laugh and joke. Everyone knew now
what the soldiers had known two weeks before–that
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Atlanta was in the last ditch, that if the Macon railroad fell, Atlanta would fall too.
On the morning of the first of September, Scarlett
awoke with a suffocating sense of dread upon her, a
dread she had taken to her pillow the night before.
She thought, dulled with sleep: “What was it I was
worrying about when I went to bed last night? Oh,
yes, the fighting. There was a battle, somewhere, yesterday! Oh, who won?” She sat up hastily, rubbing
her eyes, and her worried heart took up yesterday’s
load again.
The air was oppressive even in the early morning
hour, hot with the scorching promise of a noon of
glaring blue sky and pitiless bronze sun. The road
outside lay silent. No wagons creaked by. No troops
raised the red dust with their tramping feet. There
were no sounds of negroes’ lazy voices in neighboring
kitchens, no pleasant sounds of breakfasts being prepared, for all the near neighbors except Mrs. Meade
and Mrs. Merriwether had refugeed to Macon. And
she could hear nothing from their houses either. Farther down the street the business section was quiet
and many of the stores and offices were locked and
boarded up, while their occupants were somewhere
about the countryside with rifles in their hands.
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The stillness that greeted her seemed even more sinister this morning than on any of the mornings of the
queer quiet week preceding it. She rose hastily, without her usual preliminary burrowings and stretchings, and went to the window, hoping to see some
neighbor’s face, some heartening sight. But the road
was empty. She noted how the leaves on the trees
were still dark green but dry and heavily coated with
red dust, and how withered and sad the untended
flowers in the front yard looked.
As she stood, looking out of the window, there came
to her ears a far-off sound, faint and sullen as the first
distant thunder of an approaching storm.
“Rain,” she thought in the first moment, and her
country-bred mind added, “we certainly need it.”
But, in a split instant: “Rain? No! Not rain! Cannon!”
Her heart racing, she leaned from the window, her
ear cocked to the far-off roaring, trying to discover
from which direction it came. But the dim thundering was so distant that, for a moment, she could not
tell. “Make it from Marietta, Lord!” she prayed.
“Or Decatur. Or Peachtree Creek. But not from the
south! Not from the south!” She gripped the window
still tighter and strained her ears and the far-away
booming seemed louder. And it was coming from the
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south.
Cannon to the south! And to the south lay Jonesboro
and Tara–and Ellen.
Yankees perhaps at Tara, now, this minute! She listened again but the blood thudding in her ears all
but blurred out the sound of far-off firing. No, they
couldn’t be at Jonesboro yet. If they were that far
away, the sound would be fainter, more indistinct.
But they must be at least ten miles down the road toward Jonesboro, probably near the little settlement of
Rough and Ready. But Jonesboro was scarcely more
than ten miles below Rough and Ready.
Cannon to the south, and they might be tolling
the knell of Atlanta’s fall. But to Scarlett, sick for
her mother’s safety, fighting to the south only meant
fighting near Tara. She walked the floor and wrung
her hands and for the first time the thought in all its
implications came to her that the gray army might
be defeated. It was the thought of Sherman’s thousands so close to Tara that brought it all home to her,
brought the full horror of the war to her as no sound
of siege guns shattering windowpanes, no privations
of food and clothing and no endless rows of dying
men had done. Sherman’s army within a few miles
of Tara! And even if the Yankees should be defeated,
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they might fall back down the road to Tara. And Gerald couldn’t possibly refugee out of their way with
three sick women.
Oh, if she were only there now, Yankees or not. She
paced the floor in her bare feet, her nightgown clinging to her legs and the more she walked the stronger
became her foreboding. She wanted to be at home.
She wanted to be near Ellen.
From the kitchen below, she heard the rattle of china
as Prissy prepared breakfast, but no sound of Mrs.
Meade’s Betsy. The shrill, melancholy minor of Prissy
was raised, “Jes’ a few mo’ days, ter tote de wee-ry
load . . .” The song grated on Scarlett, its sad implications frightening her, and slipping on a wrapper she
pattered out into the hall and to the back stairs and
shouted: “Shut up that singing, Prissy!”
A sullen “Yas’m” drifted up to her and she drew a
deep breath, feeling suddenly ashamed of herself.
“Where’s Betsy?”
“Ah doan know. She ain’ came.”
Scarlett walked to Melanie’s door and opened it a
crack, peering into the sunny room. Melanie lay in
bed in her nightgown, her eyes closed and circled
with black, her heart-shaped face bloated, her slender
body hideous and distorted. Scarlett wished viciously
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that Ashley could see her now. She looked worse
than any pregnant woman she had ever seen. As she
looked, Melanie’s eyes opened and a soft warm smile
lit her face.
“Come in,” she invited, turning awkwardly on her
side. “I’ve been awake since sun-up thinking, and,
Scarlett, there’s something I want to ask you.”
She entered the room and sat down on the bed that
was glaring with harsh sunshine.
Melanie reached out and took Scarlett’s hand in a
gentle confiding clasp.
“Dear,” she said, “I’m sorry about the cannon. It’s
toward Jonesboro, isn’t it?”
Scarlett said “Um,” her heart beginning to beat
faster as the thought recurred.
“I know how worried you are. I know you’d have
gone home last week when you heard about your
mother, if it hadn’t been for me. Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Scarlett ungraciously.
“Scarlett, darling. You’ve been so good to me. No
sister could have been sweeter or braver. And I love
you for it. I’m so sorry I’m in the way.”
Scarlett stared. Loved her, did she? The fool!
“And Scarlett, I’ve been lying here thinking and I
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want to ask a very great favor of you.” Her clasp
tightened. “If I should die, will you take my baby?”
Melanie’s eyes were wide and bright with soft urgency.
“Will you?”
Scarlett jerked away her hand as fear swamped her.
Fear roughened her voice as she spoke.
“Oh, don’t be a goose, Melly. You aren’t going to
die. Every woman thinks she’s going to die with her
first baby. I know I did.”
“No, you didn’t. You’ve never been afraid of anything. You are just saying that to try to cheer me
up. I’m not afraid to die but I’m so afraid to leave
the baby, if Ashley is– Scarlett, promise me that you’ll
take my baby if I should die. Then I won’t be afraid.
Aunt Pittypat is too old to raise a child and Honey
and India are sweet but–I want you to have my baby.
Promise me, Scarlett. And if it’s a boy, bring him up
like Ashley, and if it’s a girl–dear, I’d like her to be like
you.”
“God’s nightgown!” cried Scarlett, leaping from the
bed. “Aren’t things bad enough without you talking
about dying?”
“I’m sorry, dear. But promise me. I think it’ll be
today. I’m sure it’ll be today. Please promise me.”
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“Oh, all right, I promise,” said Scarlett, looking
down at her in bewilderment.
Was Melanie such a fool she really didn’t know how
she cared for Ashley? Or did she know everything
and feel that because of that love, Scarlett would take
good care of Ashley’s child? Scarlett had a wild impulse to cry out questions, but they died on her lips
as Melanie took her hand and held it for an instant
against her cheek. Tranquillity had come back into
her eyes.
“Why do you think it will be today, Melly?”
“I’ve been having pains since dawn–but not very
bad ones.”
“You have? Well, why didn’t you call me? I’ll send
Prissy for Dr. Meade.”
“No, don’t do that yet, Scarlett. You know how busy
he is, how busy they all are. Just send word to him
that we’ll need him some time today. Send over to
Mrs. Meade’s and tell her and ask her to come over
and sit with me. She’ll know when to really send for
him.”
“Oh, stop being so unselfish. You know you need a
doctor as much as anybody in the hospital. I’ll send
for him right away.”
“No, please don’t. Sometimes it takes all day having
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a baby and I just couldn’t let the doctor sit here for
hours when all those poor boys need him so much.
Just send for Mrs. Meade. She’ll know.”
“Oh, all right,” said Scarlett.
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Melanie’s breakfast tray, Scarlett dispatched Prissy for Mrs. Meade and sat down with
Wade to eat her own breakfast. But for once she had
no appetite. Between her nervous apprehension over
the thought that Melanie’s time was approaching and
her unconscious straining to hear the sound of the
cannon, she could hardly eat. Her heart acted very
queerly, beating regularly for several minutes and
then thumping so loudly and swiftly it almost made
her sick at her stomach. The heavy hominy stuck in
her throat like glue and never before had the mixture of parched corn and ground-up yams that passed
for coffee been so repulsive. Without sugar or cream
it was bitter as gall, for the sorghum used for “long
sweetening” did little to improve the taste. After one
swallow she pushed her cup away. If for no other reason she hated the Yankees because they kept her from
having real coffee with sugar and thick cream in it.
Wade was quieter than usual and did not set up his
every morning complaint against the hominy that he
so disliked. He ate silently the spoonfuls she pushed
into his mouth and washed them down with noisily
gulped water. His soft brown eyes followed her every movement, large, round as dollars, a childish beA FTER SENDING UP
�PART THREE
wilderment in them as though her own scarce-hidden
fears had been communicated to him. When he had
finished she sent him off to the back yard to play and
watched him toddle across the straggling grass to his
playhouse with great relief.
She arose and stood irresolutely at the foot of the
stairs. She should go up and sit with Melanie and
distract her mind from her coming ordeal but she did
not feel equal to it. Of all days in the world, Melanie
had to pick this day to have the baby! And of all days
to talk about dying!
She sat down on the bottom step of the stairs and
tried to compose herself, wondering again how yesterday’s battle had gone, wondering how today’s
fighting was going. How strange to have a big battle going on just a few miles away and to know nothing of it! How strange the quiet of this deserted end
of town in contrast with the day of the fighting at
Peachtree Creek! Aunt Pitty’s house was one of the
last on the north side of Atlanta and with the fighting
somewhere to the far south, there were no reinforcements going by at double-quick, no ambulances and
staggering lines of walking wounded coming back.
She wondered if such scenes were being enacted on
the south side of town and thanked God she was not
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there. If only everyone except the Meades and the
Merriwethers had not refugeed from this north end
of Peachtree! It made her feel forsaken and alone. She
wished fervently that Uncle Peter were with her so he
could go down to headquarters and learn the news.
If it wasn’t for Melanie she’d go to town this very
minute and learn for herself, but she couldn’t leave
until Mrs. Meade arrived. Mrs. Meade. Why didn’t
she come on? And where was Prissy?
She rose and went out onto the front porch and
looked for them impatiently, but the Meade house
was around a shady bend in the street and she could
see no one. After a long while Prissy came into view,
alone, switching her skirts from side to side and looking over her shoulder to observe the effect.
“You’re as slow as molasses in January,” snapped
Scarlett as Prissy opened the gate. “What did Mrs.
Meade say? How soon will she be over here?”
“She warn’t dar,” said Prissy.
“Where is she? When will she be home?”
“Well’m,” answered Prissy, dragging out her words
pleasurably to give more weight to her message.
“Dey Cookie say Miss Meade done got wud early
dis mawnin’ dat young Mist’ Phil done been shot an’
Miss Meade she tuck de cah’ige an’ Ole Talbot an’
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Betsy an’ dey done gone ter fotch him home. Cookie
say he bad hurt an’ Miss Meade ain’ gwine ter be
studyin’ ‘bout comin’ up hyah.”
Scarlett stared at her and had an impulse to shake
her. Negroes were always so proud of being the bearers of evil tidings.
“Well, don’t stand there like a ninny. Go down to
Mrs. Merriwether’s and ask her to come up or send
her mammy. Now, hurry.”
“Dey ain’ dar, Miss Scarlett. Ah drapped in ter pass
time of de day wid Mammy on mah way home. Dey’s
done gone. House all locked up. Spec dey’s at de
horsepittle.”
“So that’s where you were so long! Whenever I send
you somewhere you go where I tell you and don’t
stop to ‘pass any time’ with anybody. Go–”
She stopped and racked her brain. Who was left
in town among their friends who would be helpful?
There was Mrs. Elsing. Of course, Mrs. Elsing didn’t
like her at all these days but she had always been fond
of Melanie.
“Go to Mrs. Elsing’s, and explain everything very
carefully and tell her to please come up here. And,
Prissy, listen to me. Miss Melly’s baby is due and she
may need you any minute now. Now you hurry right
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straight back.”
“Yas’m,” said Prissy and, turning, sauntered down
the walk at snail’s gait.
“Hurry, you slow poke!”
“Yas’m.”
Prissy quickened her gait infinitesimally and Scarlett went back into the house. She hesitated again before going upstairs to Melanie. She would have to explain to her just why Mrs. Meade couldn’t come and
the knowledge that Phil Meade was badly wounded
might upset her. Well, she’d tell a lie about it.
She entered Melanie’s room and saw that the breakfast tray was untouched. Melanie lay on her side, her
face white.
“Mrs. Meade’s over at the hospital,” said Scarlett.
“But Mrs. Elsing is coming. Do you feel bad?”
“Not very,” lied Melanie. “Scarlett, how long did it
take Wade to get born?”
“Less than no time,” answered Scarlett with a cheerfulness she was far from feeling. “I was out in the
yard and I didn’t hardly have time to get into the
house. Mammy said it was scandalous–just like one
of the darkies.”
“I hope I’ll be like one of the darkies too,” said
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Melanie, mustering a smile which suddenly disappeared as pain contorted her face.
Scarlett looked down at Melanie’s tiny hips with
none too sanguine hopes but said reassuringly: “Oh,
it’s not really so bad.”
“Oh, I know it isn’t. I’m afraid I’m a little coward.
Is–is Mrs. Elsing coming right away?”
“Yes, right away,” said Scarlett. “I’ll go down and
get some fresh water and sponge you off. It’s so hot
today.”
She took as long a time as possible in getting the water, running to the front door every two minutes to see
if Prissy were coming. There was no sign of Prissy so
she went back upstairs, sponged Melanie’s perspiring
body and combed out her long dark hair.
When an hour had passed she heard scuffing negro
feet coming down the street, and looking out of the
window, saw Prissy returning slowly, switching herself as before and tossing her head with as many airy
affectations as if she had a large and interested audience.
“Some day, I’m going to take a strap to that little wench,” thought Scarlett savagely, hurrying down
the stairs to meet her.
“Miss Elsing ober at de horsepittle. Dey Cookie
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‘lows a whole lot of wounded sojers come in on de
early train. Cookie fixin’ soup ter tek over dar. She
say–”
“Never mind what she said,” interrupted Scarlett,
her heart sinking. “Put on a clean apron because I
want you to go over to the hospital. I’m going to give
you a note to Dr. Meade, and if he isn’t there, give it
to Dr. Jones or any of the other doctors. And if you
don’t hurry back this time, I’ll skin you alive.”
“Yas’m.”
“And ask any of the gentlemen for news of the fighting. If they don’t know, go by the depot and ask the
engineers who brought the wounded in. Ask if they
are fighting at Jonesboro or near there.”
“Gawdlmighty, Miss Scarlett!” and sudden fright
was in Prissy’s black face. “De Yankees ain’ at Tara, is
dey?”
“I don’t know. I’m telling you to ask for news.”
“Gawdlmighty, Miss Scarlett! Whut’ll dey do ter
Maw?”
Prissy began to bawl suddenly, loudly, the sound
adding to Scarlett’s own uneasiness.
“Stop bawling! Miss Melanie will hear you. Now go
change your apron, quick.”
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Spurred to speed, Prissy hurried toward the back of
the house while Scarlett scratched a hasty note on the
margin of Gerald’s last letter to her–the only bit of paper in the house. As she folded it, so that her note
was uppermost, she caught Gerald’s words, “Your
mother–typhoid–under no condition–to come home–
” She almost sobbed. If it wasn’t for Melanie, she’d
start home, right this minute, if she had to walk every
step of the way.
Prissy went off at a trot, the letter gripped in her
hand, and Scarlett went back upstairs, trying to think
of some plausible lie to explain Mrs. Elsing’s failure
to appear. But Melanie asked no questions. She lay
upon her back, her face tranquil and sweet, and the
sight of her quieted Scarlett for a while.
She sat down and tried to talk of inconsequential
things, but the thoughts of Tara and a possible defeat
by the Yankees prodded cruelly. She thought of Ellen
dying and of the Yankees coming into Atlanta, burning everything, killing everybody. Through it all, the
dull far-off thundering persisted, rolling into her ears
in waves of fear. Finally, she could not talk at all and
only stared out of the window at the hot still street
and the dusty leaves hanging motionless on the trees.
Melanie was silent too, but at intervals her quiet face
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was wrenched with pain.
She said, after each pain: “It wasn’t very bad, really,” and Scarlett knew she was lying. She would
have preferred a loud scream to silent endurance. She
knew she should feel sorry for Melanie, but somehow
she could not muster a spark of sympathy. Her mind
was too torn with her own anguish. Once she looked
sharply at the pain-twisted face and wondered why it
should be that she, of all people in the world, should
be here with Melanie at this particular time–she who
had nothing in common with her, who hated her, who
would gladly have seen her dead. Well, maybe she’d
have her wish, and before the day was over too. A
cold superstitious fear swept her at this thought. It
was bad luck to wish that someone were dead, almost as bad luck as to curse someone. Curses came
home to roost, Mammy said. She hastily prayed that
Melanie wouldn’t die and broke into feverish small
talk, hardly aware of what she said. At last, Melanie
put a hot hand on her wrist.
“Don’t bother about talking, dear. I know how worried you are. I’m so sorry I’m so much trouble.”
Scarlett relapsed into silence but she could not sit
still. What would she do if neither the doctor nor
Prissy got there in time? She walked to the window
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and looked down the street and came back and sat
down again. Then she rose and looked out of the window on the other side of the room.
An hour went by and then another. Noon came
and the sun was high and hot and not a breath of air
stirred the dusty leaves. Melanie’s pains were harder
now. Her long hair was drenched in sweat and her
gown stuck in wet spots to her body. Scarlett sponged
her face in silence but fear was gnawing at her. God in
Heaven, suppose the baby came before the doctor arrived! What would she do? She knew less than nothing of midwifery. This was exactly the emergency she
had been dreading for weeks. She had been counting
on Prissy to handle the situation if no doctor should
be available. Prissy knew all about midwifery. She’d
said so time and again. But where was Prissy? Why
didn’t she come? Why didn’t the doctor come? She
went to the window and looked again. She listened
hard and suddenly she wondered if it were only her
imagination or if the sound of cannon in the distance
had died away. If it were farther away it would mean
that the fighting was nearer Jonesboro and that would
mean–
At last she saw Prissy coming down the street at a
quick trot and she leaned out of the window. Prissy,
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looking up, saw her and her mouth opened to yell.
Seeing the panic written on the little black face and
fearing she might alarm Melanie by crying out evil
tidings, Scarlett hastily put her finger to her lips and
left the window.
“I’ll get some cooler water,” she said, looking down
into Melanie’s dark, deep-circled eyes and trying to
smile. Then she hastily left the room, closing the door
carefully behind her.
Prissy was sitting on the bottom step in the hall,
panting.
“Dey’s fightin’ at Jonesboro, Miss Scarlett! Dey say
our gempmums is gittin’ beat. Oh, Gawd, Miss Scarlett! Whut’ll happen ter Maw an’ Poke? Oh, Gawd,
Miss Scarlett! Whut’ll happen ter us effen de Yankees
gits hyah? Oh, Gawd–”
Scarlett clapped a hand over the blubbery mouth.
“For God’s sake, hush!”
Yes, what would happen to them if the Yankees
came–what would happen to Tara? She pushed the
thought firmly back into her mind and grappled with
the more pressing emergency. If she thought of these
things, she’d begin to scream and bawl like Prissy.
“Where’s Dr. Meade? When’s he coming?”
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“Ah ain’ nebber seed him, Miss Scarlett.”
“What!”
“No’m, he ain’ at de horsepittle. Miss Merriwether
an’ Miss Elsing ain’ dar needer. A man he tole me
de doctah down by de car shed wid the wounded sojers jes’ come in frum Jonesboro, but Miss Scarlett, Ah
wuz sceered ter go down dar ter de shed–dey’s folkses dyin’ down dar. Ah’s sceered of daid folkses–”
“What about the other doctors?”
“Miss Scarlett, fo’ Gawd, Ah couldn’ sceercely git
one of dem ter read yo’ note. Dey wukin’ in de
horsepittle lak dey all done gone crazy. One doctah
he say ter me, ‘Damn yo’ hide! Doan you come roun’
hyah bodderin’ me ‘bout babies w’en we got a mess
of men dyin’ hyah. Git some woman ter he’p you.’
An’ den Ah went aroun’ an’ about an’ ask fer news
lak you done tole me an’ dey all say ‘fightin’ at Jonesboro’ an’ Ah–”
“You say Dr. Meade’s at the depot?”
“Yas’m. He–”
“Now, listen sharp to me. I’m going to get Dr.
Meade and I want you to sit by Miss Melanie and do
anything she says. And if you so much as breathe to
her where the fighting is, I’ll sell you South as sure
as gun’s iron. And don’t you tell her that the other
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doctors wouldn’t come either. Do you hear?”
“Yas’m.”
“Wipe your eyes and get a fresh pitcher of water and
go on up. Sponge her off. Tell her I’ve gone for Dr.
Meade.”
“Is her time nigh, Miss Scarlett?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid it is but I don’t know. You
should know. Go on up.”
Scarlett caught up her wide straw bonnet from the
console table and jammed it on her head. She looked
in the mirror and automatically pushed up loose
strands of hair but she did not see her own reflection.
Cold little ripples of fear that started in the pit of her
stomach were radiating outward until the fingers that
touched her cheeks were cold, though the rest of her
body streamed perspiration. She hurried out of the
house and into the heat of the sun. It was blindingly,
glaring hot and as she hurried down Peachtree Street
her temples began to throb from the heat. From far
down the street she could hear the rise and fall and
roar of many voices. By the time she caught sight of
the Leyden house, she was beginning to pant, for her
stays were tightly laced, but she did not slow her gait.
The roar of noise grew louder.
From the Leyden house down to Five Points, the
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street seethed with activity, the activity of an anthill
just destroyed. Negroes were running up and down
the street, panic in their faces; and on porches,
white children sat crying untended. The street was
crowded with army wagons and ambulances filled
with wounded and carriages piled high with valises
and pieces of furniture. Men on horseback dashed
out of side streets pell-mell down Peachtree toward
Hood’s headquarters. In front of the Bonnell house,
old Amos stood holding the head of the carriage horse
and he greeted Scarlett with rolling eyes.
“Ain’t you gone yit, Miss Scarlett? We is goin’ now.
Ole Miss packin’ her bag.”
“Going? Where?”
“Gawd knows, Miss. Somewheres. De Yankees is
comin’!”
She hurried on, not even saying good-by. The Yankees were coming! At Wesley Chapel, she paused to
catch her breath and wait for her hammering heart to
subside. If she did not quiet herself she would certainly faint. As she stood clutching a lamp post for
support, she saw an officer on horseback come charging up the street from Five Points and, on an impulse,
she ran out into the street and waved at him.
“Oh, stop! Please, stop!”
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He reined in so suddenly the horse went back on its
haunches, pawing the air. There were harsh lines of
fatigue and urgency in his face but his tattered gray
hat was off with a sweep.
“Madam?”
“Tell me, is it true? Are the Yankees coming?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Do you know so?”
“Yes, Ma’m. I know so. A dispatch came in to headquarters half an hour ago from the fighting at Jonesboro.”
“At Jonesboro? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. There’s no use telling pretty lies, Madam.
The message was from General Hardee and it said: ‘I
have lost the battle and am in full retreat.”’
“Oh, my God!”
The dark face of the tired man looked down without
emotion. He gathered the reins again and put on his
hat.
“Oh, sir, please, just a minute. What shall we do?”
“Madam, I can’t say. The army is evacuating Atlanta
soon.”
“Going off and leaving us to the Yankees?”
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“I’m afraid so.”
The spurred horse went off as though on springs
and Scarlett was left standing in the middle of the
street with the red dust thick upon her ankles.
The Yankees were coming. The army was leaving. The Yankees were coming. What should she do?
Where should she run? No, she couldn’t run. There
was Melanie back there in the bed expecting that
baby. Oh, why did women have babies? If it wasn’t
for Melanie she could take Wade and Prissy and hide
in the woods where the Yankees could never find
them. But she couldn’t take Melanie to the woods.
No, not now. Oh, if she’d only had the baby sooner,
yesterday even, perhaps they could get an ambulance
and take her away and hide her somewhere. But
now–she must find Dr. Meade and make him come
home with her. Perhaps he could hurry the baby.
She gathered up her skirts and ran down the street,
and the rhythm of her feet was “The Yankees are
coming! The Yankees are coming!” Five Points was
crowded with people who rushed here and there with
unseeing eyes, jammed with wagons, ambulances,
ox carts, carriages loaded with wounded. A roaring
sound like the breaking of surf rose from the crowd.
Then a strangely incongruous sight struck her eyes.
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Throngs of women were coming up from the direction of the railroad tracks carrying hams across their
shoulders. Little children hurried by their sides, staggering under buckets of steaming molasses. Young
boys dragged sacks of corn and potatoes. One old
man struggled along with a small barrel of flour on a
wheelbarrow. Men, women and children, black and
white, hurried, hurried with straining faces, lugging
packages and sacks and boxes of food–more food
than she had seen in a year. The crowd suddenly gave
a lane for a careening carriage and through the lane
came the frail and elegant Mrs. Elsing, standing up
in the front of her victoria, reins in one hand, whip in
the other. She was hatless and white faced and her
long gray hair streamed down her back as she lashed
the horse like a Fury. Jouncing on the back seat of
the carriage was her black mammy, Melissy, clutching a greasy side of bacon to her with one hand, while
with the other and both feet she attempted to hold the
boxes and bags piled all about her. One bag of dried
peas had burst and the peas strewed themselves into
the street. Scarlett screamed to her, but the tumult of
the crowd drowned her voice and the carriage rocked
madly by.
For a moment she could not understand what it all
meant and then, remembering that the commissary
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warehouses were down by the railroad tracks, she realized that the army had thrown them open to the
people to salvage what they could before the Yankees
came.
She pushed her way swiftly through the crowds,
past the packed, hysterical mob surging in the open
space of Five Points, and hurried as fast as she could
down the short block toward the depot. Through
the tangle of ambulances and the clouds of dust, she
could see doctors and stretcher bearers bending, lifting, hurrying. Thank God, she’d find Dr. Meade
soon. As she rounded the corner of the Atlanta Hotel and came in full view of the depot and the tracks,
she halted appalled.
Lying in the pitiless sun, shoulder to shoulder, head
to feet, were hundreds of wounded men, lining the
tracks, the sidewalks, stretched out in endless rows
under the car shed. Some lay stiff and still but
many writhed under the hot sun, moaning. Everywhere, swarms of flies hovered over the men, crawling and buzzing in their faces, everywhere was blood,
dirty bandages, groans, screamed curses of pain as
stretcher bearers lifted men. The smell of sweat, of
blood, of unwashed bodies, of excrement rose up
in waves of blistering heat until the fetid stench al687
�PART THREE
most nauseated her. The ambulance men hurrying
here and there among the prostrate forms frequently
stepped on wounded men, so thickly packed were
the rows, and those trodden upon stared stolidly up,
waiting their turn.
She shrank back, clapping her hand to her mouth
feeling that she was going to vomit. She couldn’t
go on. She had seen wounded men in the hospitals,
wounded men on Aunt Pitty’s lawn after the fighting
at the creek, but never anything like this. Never anything like these stinking, bleeding bodies broiling under the glaring sun. This was an inferno of pain and
smell and noise and hurry–hurry–hurry! The Yankees
are coming! The Yankees are coming!
She braced her shoulders and went down among
them, straining her eyes among the upright figures
to distinguish Dr. Meade. But she discovered she
could not look for him, for if she did not step carefully
she would tread on some poor soldier. She raised her
skirts and tried to pick her way among them toward a
knot of men who were directing the stretcher bearers.
As she walked, feverish hands plucked at her skirt
and voices croaked: “Lady–water! Please, lady, water! For Christ’s sake, water!”
Perspiration came down her face in streams as she
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pulled her skirts from clutching hands. If she stepped
on one of these men, she’d scream and faint. She
stepped over dead men, over men who lay dull eyed
with hands clutched to bellies where dried blood had
glued torn uniforms to wounds, over men whose
beards were stiff with blood and from whose broken
jaws came sounds which must mean:
“Water! Water!”
If she did not find Dr. Meade soon, she would begin screaming with hysteria. She looked toward the
group of men under the car shed and cried as loudly
as she could:
“Dr. Meade! Is Dr. Meade there?”
From the group one man detached himself and
looked toward her. It was the doctor. He was coatless and his sleeves were rolled up to his shoulders.
His shirt and trousers were as red as a butcher’s and
even the end of his iron-gray beard was matted with
blood. His face was the face of a man drunk with
fatigue and impotent rage and burning pity. It was
gray and dusty, and sweat had streaked long rivulets
across his cheeks. But his voice was calm and decisive
as he called to her.
“Thank God, you are here. I can use every pair of
hands.”
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For a moment she stared at him bewildered, dropping her skirts in dismay. They fell over the dirty face
of a wounded man who feebly tried to turn his head
to escape from their smothering folds. What did the
doctor mean? The dust from the ambulances came
into her face with choking dryness, and the rotten
smells were like a foul liquid in her nostrils.
“Hurry, child! Come here.”
She picked up her skirts and went to him as fast as
she could go across the rows of bodies. She put her
hand on his arm and felt that it was trembling with
weariness but there was no weakness in his face.
“Oh, Doctor!” she cried. “You must come. Melanie
is having her baby.”
He looked at her as if her words did not register on
his mind. A man who lay upon the ground at her feet,
his head pillowed on his canteen, grinned up companionably at her words.
“They will do it,” he said cheerfully.
She did not even look down but shook the doctor’s
arm.
“It’s Melanie. The baby. Doctor, you must come.
She–the–” This was no time for delicacy but it was
hard to bring out the words with the ears of hundreds
of strange men listening.
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“The pains are getting hard. Please, Doctor!”
“A baby? Great God!” thundered the doctor and
his face was suddenly contorted with hate and rage,
a rage not directed at her or at anyone except a world
wherein such things could happen. “Are you crazy?
I can’t leave these men. They are dying, hundreds of
them. I can’t leave them for a damned baby. Get some
woman to help you. Get my wife.”
She opened her mouth to tell him why Mrs. Meade
could not come and then shut it abruptly. He did not
know his own son was wounded! She wondered if
he would still be here if he did know, and something
told her that even if Phil were dying he would still be
standing on this spot, giving aid to the many instead
of the one.
“No, you must come, Doctor. You know you said
she’d have a hard time–” Was it really she, Scarlett,
standing here saying these dreadful indelicate things
at the top of her voice in this hell of heat and groans?
“She’ll die if you don’t come!”
He shook off her hand roughly and spoke as though
he hardly heard her, hardly knew what she said.
“Die? Yes, they’ll all die–all these men. No bandages, no salves, no quinine, no chloroform. Oh, God,
for some morphia! Just a little morphia for the worst
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ones. Just a little chloroform. God damn the Yankees!
God damn the Yankees!”
“Give um hell, Doctor!” said the man on the ground,
his teeth showing in his beard.
Scarlett began to shake and her eyes burned with
tears of fright. The doctor wasn’t coming with her.
Melanie would die and she had wished that she
would die. The doctor wasn’t coming.
“Name of God, Doctor! Please!”
Dr. Meade bit his lip and his jaw hardened as his
face went cool again.
“Child, I’ll try. I can’t promise you. But I’ll try.
When we get these men tended to. The Yankees are
coming and the troops are moving out of town. I
don’t know what they’ll do with the wounded. There
aren’t any trains. The Macon line has been captured.
. . . But I’ll try. Run along now. Don’t bother me.
There’s nothing much to bringing a baby. Just tie up
the cord. . . .”
He turned as an orderly touched his arm and began firing directions and pointing to this and that
wounded man. The man at her feet looked up at Scarlett compassionately. She turned away, for the doctor
had forgotten her.
She picked her way rapidly through the wounded
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and back to Peachtree Street. The doctor wasn’t coming. She would have to see it through herself. Thank
God, Prissy knew all about midwifery. Her head
ached from the heat and she could feel her basque,
soaking wet from perspiration, sticking to her. Her
mind felt numb and so did her legs, numb as in a
nightmare when she tried to run and could not move
them. She thought of the long walk back to the house
and it seemed interminable.
Then, “The Yankees are coming!” began to beat its
refrain in her mind again. Her heart began to pound
and new life came into her limbs. She hurried into the
crowd at Five Points, now so thick there was no room
on the narrow sidewalks and she was forced to walk
in the street. Long lines of soldiers were passing, dust
covered, sodden with weariness. There seemed thousands of them, bearded, dirty, their guns slung over
their shoulders, swiftly passing at route step. Cannon
rolled past, the drivers flaying the thin mules with
lengths of rawhide. Commissary wagons with torn
canvas covers rocked through the ruts. Cavalry raising clouds of choking dust went past endlessly. She
had never seen so many soldiers together before. Retreat! Retreat! The army was moving out.
The hurrying lines pushed her back onto the packed
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sidewalk and she smelled the reek of cheap corn
whisky. There were women in the mob near Decatur
Street, garishly dressed women whose bright finery
and painted faces gave a discordant note of holiday.
Most of them were drunk and the soldiers on whose
arms they hung were drunker. She caught a fleeting glimpse of a head of red curls and saw that creature, Belle Watling, heard her shrill drunken laughter
as she clung for support to a one-armed soldier who
reeled and staggered.
When she had shoved and pushed her way through
the mob for a block beyond Five Points the crowd
thinned a little and, gathering up her skirts, she began to run again. When she reached Wesley Chapel,
she was breathless and dizzy and sick at her stomach. Her stays were cutting her ribs in two. She sank
down on the steps of the church and buried her head
in her hands until she could breathe more easily. If
she could only get one deep breath, way down in her
abdomen. If her heart would only stop bumping and
drumming and cavorting. If there were only someone
in this mad place to whom she could turn.
Why, she had never had to do a thing for herself in
all her life. There had always been someone to do
things for her, to look after her, shelter and protect
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her and spoil her. It was incredible that she could be
in such a fix. Not a friend, not a neighbor to help her.
There had always been friends, neighbors, the competent hands of willing slaves. And now in this hour
of greatest need, there was no one. It was incredible
that she could be so completely alone, and frightened,
and far from home.
Home! If she were only home, Yankees or no Yankees. Home, even if Ellen was sick. She longed for the
sight of Ellen’s sweet face, for Mammy’s strong arms
around her.
She rose dizzily to her feet and started walking
again. When she came in sight of the house, she saw
Wade swinging on the front gate. When he saw her,
his face puckered and he began to cry, holding up a
grubby bruised finger.
“Hurt!” he sobbed. “Hurt!”
“Hush! Hush! Hush! Or I’ll spank you. Go out
in the back yard and make mud pies and don’t move
from there.”
“Wade hungwy,” he sobbed and put the hurt finger
in his mouth.
“I don’t care. Go in the back yard and–”
She looked up and saw Prissy leaning out of the upstairs window, fright and worry written on her face;
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but in an instant they were wiped away in relief as she
saw her mistress. Scarlett beckoned to her to come
down and went into the house. How cool it was in
the hall. She untied her bonnet and flung it on the
table, drawing her forearms across her wet forehead.
She heard the upstairs door open and a low wailing
moan, wrenched from the depths of agony, came to
her ears. Prissy came down the stairs three at a time.
“Is de doctah come?”
“No. He can’t come.”
“Gawd, Miss Scarlett! Miss Melly bad off!”
“The doctor can’t come. Nobody can come. You’ve
got to bring the baby and I’ll help you.”
Prissy’s mouth fell open and her tongue wagged
wordlessly. She looked at Scarlett sideways and
scuffed her feet and twisted her thin body.
“Don’t look so simple minded!” cried Scarlett, infuriated at her silly expression. “What’s the matter?”
Prissy edged back up the stairs.
“Fo’ Gawd, Miss Scarlett–” Fright and shame were
in her rolling eyes.
“Well?”
“Fo’ Gawd, Miss Scarlett! We’s got ter have a doctah. Ah–Ah– Miss Scarlett, Ah doan know nuthin’
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‘bout bringin’ babies. Maw wouldn’ nebber lemme
be ‘round folkses whut wuz havin’ dem.”
All the breath went out of Scarlett’s lungs in one
gasp of horror before rage swept her. Prissy made a
lunge past her, bent on flight, but Scarlett grabbed her.
“You black liar–what do you mean? You’ve been
saying you knew everything about birthing babies.
What is the truth? Tell me!” She shook her until the
kinky head rocked drunkenly.
“Ah’s lyin’, Miss Scarlett! Ah doan know huccome
Ah tell sech a lie. Ah jes’ see one baby birthed, an’
Maw she lak ter wo’ me out fer watchin’.”
Scarlett glared at her and Prissy shrank back, trying to pull loose. For a moment her mind refused
to accept the truth, but when realization finally came
to her that Prissy knew no more about midwifery
than she did, anger went over her like a flame. She
had never struck a slave in all her life, but now she
slapped the black cheek with all the force in her tired
arm. Prissy screamed at the top of her voice, more
from fright than pain, and began to dance up and
down, writhing to break Scarlett’s grip.
As she screamed, the moaning from the second floor
ceased and a moment later Melanie’s voice, weak and
trembling, called: “Scarlett? Is it you? Please come!
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Please!”
Scarlett dropped Prissy’s arm and the wench sank
whimpering to the steps. For a moment Scarlett stood
still, looking up, listening to the low moaning which
had begun again. As she stood there, it seemed as
though a yoke descended heavily upon her neck, felt
as though a heavy load were harnessed to it, a load
she would feel as soon as she took a step.
She tried to think of all the things Mammy and Ellen
had done for her when Wade was born but the merciful blurring of the childbirth pains obscured almost
everything in mist. She did recall a few things and
she spoke to Prissy rapidly, authority in her voice.
“Build a fire in the stove and keep hot water boiling
in the kettle. And bring up all the towels you can find
and that ball of twine. And get me the scissors. Don’t
come telling me you can’t find them. Get them and
get them quick. Now hurry.”
She jerked Prissy to her feet and sent her kitchenwards with a shove. Then she squared her shoulders
and started up the stairs. It was going to be difficult,
telling Melanie that she and Prissy were to deliver her
baby.
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�CHAPTER XXII
again be an afternoon as long as
this one. Or as hot. Or as full of lazy insolent flies.
They swarmed on Melanie despite the fan Scarlett
kept in constant motion. Her arms ached from swinging the wide palmetto leaf. All her efforts seemed futile, for while she brushed them from Melanie’s moist
face, they crawled on her clammy feet and legs and
made her jerk them weakly and cry: “Please! On my
feet!”
The room was in semigloom, for Scarlett had pulled
down the shades to shut out the heat and brightness.
Pin points of sunlight came in through minute holes
in the shades and about the edges. The room was
an oven and Scarlett’s sweat-drenched clothes never
dried but became wetter and stickier as the hours
went by. Prissy was crouched in a corner, sweating
too, and smelled so abominably Scarlett would have
sent her from the room had she not feared the girl
would take to her heels if once out of sight. Melanie
lay on the bed on a sheet dark with perspiration and
splotched with dampness where Scarlett had spilled
water. She twisted endlessly, to one side, to the other,
to left, to right and back again.
Sometimes she tried to sit up and fell back and beT HERE
WOULD NEVER
�PART THREE
gan twisting again. At first, she had tried to keep from
crying out, biting her lips until they were raw, and
Scarlett, whose nerves were as raw as the lips, said
huskily: “Melly, for God’s sake, don’t try to be brave.
Yell if you want to. There’s nobody to hear you but
us.”
As the afternoon wore on, Melanie moaned whether
she wanted to be brave or not, and sometimes she
screamed. When she did, Scarlett dropped her head
into her hands and covered her ears and twisted her
body and wished that she herself were dead. Anything was preferable to being a helpless witness to
such pain. Anything was better than being tied here
waiting for a baby that took such a long time coming.
Waiting, when for all she knew the Yankees were actually at Five Points.
She fervently wished she had paid more attention to
the whispered conversations of matrons on the subject of childbirth. If only she had! If only she had been
more interested in such matters she’d know whether
Melanie was taking a long time or not. She had a
vague memory of one of Aunt Pitty’s stories of a
friend who was in labor for two days and died without ever having the baby. Suppose Melanie should go
on like this for two days! But Melanie was so deli700
�PART THREE
cate. She couldn’t stand two days of this pain. She’d
die soon if the baby didn’t hurry. And how could she
ever face Ashley, if he were still alive, and tell him
that Melanie had died–after she had promised to take
care of her?
At first, Melanie wanted to hold Scarlett’s hand
when the pain was bad but she clamped down on it
so hard she nearly broke the bones. After an hour of
this, Scarlett’s hands were so swollen and bruised she
could hardly flex them. She knotted two long towels
together and tied them to the foot of the bed and put
the knotted end in Melanie’s hands. Melanie hung
onto it as though it were a life line, straining, pulling
it taut, slackening it, tearing it. Throughout the afternoon, her voice went on like an animal dying in a
trap. Occasionally she dropped the towel and rubbed
her hands feebly and looked up at Scarlett with eyes
enormous with pain.
“Talk to me. Please talk to me,” she whispered and
Scarlett would gabble something until Melanie again
gripped the knot and again began writhing.
The dim room swam with heat and pain and droning flies, and time went by on such dragging feet Scarlett could scarcely remember the morning. She felt as
if she had been in this steaming, dark, sweating place
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all her life. She wanted very much to scream every
time Melanie did, and only by biting her lips so hard
it infuriated her could she restrain herself and drive
off hysteria.
Once Wade came tiptoeing up the stairs and stood
outside the door, wailing.
“Wade hungwy!” Scarlett started to go to him, but
Melanie whispered: “Don’t leave me. Please. I can
stand it when you’re here.”
So Scarlett sent Prissy down to warm up the breakfast hominy and feed him. For herself, she felt that
she could never eat again after this afternoon.
The clock on the mantel had stopped and she had no
way of telling the time but as the heat in the room lessened and the bright pin points of light grew duller,
she pulled the shade aside. She saw to her surprise
that it was late afternoon and the sun, a ball of crimson, was far down the sky. Somehow, she had imagined it would remain broiling hot noon forever.
She wondered passionately what was going on
downtown. Had all the troops moved out yet? Had
the Yankees come? Would the Confederates march
away without even a fight? Then she remembered
with a sick dropping in her stomach how few Confederates there were and how many men Sherman had
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and how well fed they were. Sherman! The name of
Satan himself did not frighten her half so much. But
there was no time for thinking now, as Melanie called
for water, for a cold towel on her head, to be fanned,
to have the flies brushed away from her face.
When twilight came on and Prissy, scurrying like a
black wraith, lit a lamp, Melanie became weaker. She
began calling for Ashley, over and over, as if in a delirium until the hideous monotony gave Scarlett a fierce
desire to smother her voice with a pillow. Perhaps the
doctor would come after all. If he would only come
quickly! Hope raising its head, she turned to Prissy,
and ordered her to run quickly to the Meades’ house
and see if he were there or Mrs. Meade.
“And if he’s not there, ask Mrs. Meade or Cookie
what to do. Beg them to come!”
Prissy was off with a clatter and Scarlett watched
her hurrying down the street, going faster than she
had ever dreamed the worthless child could move.
After a prolonged time she was back, alone.
“De doctah ain’ been home all day. Sont wud he
mout go off wid de sojers. Miss Scarlett, Mist’ Phil’s
‘ceased.”
“Dead?”
“Yas’m,” said Prissy, expanding with importance.
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“Talbot, dey coachman, tole me. He wuz shot–”
“Never mind that.”
“Ah din’ see Miss Meade. Cookie say Miss Meade
she washin’ him an’ fixin ter buhy him fo’ de Yankees
gits hyah. Cookie say effen de pain get too bad, jes’
you put a knife unner Miss Melly’s bed an’ it cut de
pain in two.”
Scarlett wanted to slap her again for this helpful information but Melanie opened wide, dilated eyes and
whispered: “Dear–are the Yankees coming?”
“No,” said Scarlett stoutly. “Prissy’s a liar.”
“Yas’m, Ah sho is,” Prissy agreed fervently.
“They’re coming,” whispered Melanie undeceived
and buried her face in the pillow. Her voice came out
muffled.
“My poor baby. My poor baby.” And, after a long
interval: “Oh, Scarlett, you mustn’t stay here. You
must go and take Wade.”
What Melanie said was no more than Scarlett had
been thinking but hearing it put into words infuriated
her, shamed her as if her secret cowardice was written
plainly in her face.
“Don’t be a goose. I’m not afraid. You know I won’t
leave you.”
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“You might as well. I’m going to die.” And she began moaning again.
Scarlett came down the dark stairs slowly, like an
old woman, feeling her way, clinging to the banisters
lest she fall. Her legs were leaden, trembling with
fatigue and strain, and she shivered with cold from
the clammy sweat that soaked her body. Feebly she
made her way onto the front porch and sank down
on the top step. She sprawled back against a pillar
of the porch and with a shaking hand unbuttoned
her basque halfway down her bosom. The night was
drenched in warm soft darkness and she lay staring
into it, dull as an ox.
It was all over. Melanie was not dead and the small
baby boy who made noises like a young kitten was
receiving his first bath at Prissy’s hands. Melanie was
asleep. How could she sleep after that nightmare
of screaming pain and ignorant midwifery that hurt
more than it helped? Why wasn’t she dead? Scarlett
knew that she herself would have died under such
handling. But when it was over, Melanie had even
whispered, so weakly she had to bend over her to
hear: “Thank you.” And then she had gone to sleep.
How could she go to sleep? Scarlett forgot that she too
had gone to sleep after Wade was born. She forgot ev705
�PART THREE
erything. Her mind was a vacuum; the world was a
vacuum; there had been no life before this endless day
and there would be none hereafter–only a heavily hot
night, only the sound of her hoarse tired breathing,
only the sweat trickling coldly from armpit to waist,
from hip to knee, clammy, sticky, chilling.
She heard her own breath pass from loud evenness to spasmodic sobbing but her eyes were dry and
burning as though there would never be tears in them
again. Slowly, laboriously, she heaved herself over
and pulled her heavy skirts up to her thighs. She was
warm and cold and sticky all at the same time and
the feel of the night air on her limbs was refreshing.
She thought dully what Aunt Pitty would say, if she
could see her sprawled here on the front porch with
her skirts up and her drawers showing, but she did
not care. She did not care about anything. Time had
stood still. It might be just after twilight and it might
be midnight. She didn’t know or care.
She heard sounds of moving feet upstairs and
thought “May the Lord damn Prissy,” before her eyes
closed and something like sleep descended upon her.
Then after an indeterminate dark interval, Prissy was
beside her, chattering on in a pleased way.
“We done right good, Miss Scarlett. Ah specs Maw
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couldn’ a did no better.”
From the shadows, Scarlett glared at her, too tired
to rail, too tired to upbraid, too tired to enumerate
Prissy’s offenses–her boastful assumption of experience she didn’t possess, her fright, her blundering
awkwardness, her utter inefficiency when the emergency was hot, the misplacing of the scissors, the
spilling of the basin of water on the bed, the dropping
of the new born baby. And now she bragged about
how good she had been.
And the Yankees wanted to free the negroes! Well,
the Yankees were welcome to them.
She lay back against the pillar in silence and Prissy,
aware of her mood, tiptoed away into the darkness of
the porch. After a long interval in which her breathing
finally quieted and her mind steadied, Scarlett heard
the sound of faint voices from up the road, the tramping of many feet coming from the north. Soldiers!
She sat up slowly, pulling down her skirts, although
she knew no one could see her in the darkness. As
they came abreast the house, an indeterminate number, passing like shadows, she called to them.
“Oh, please!”
A shadow disengaged itself from the mass and came
to the gate.
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“Are you going? Are you leaving us?”
The shadow seemed to take off a hat and a quiet
voice came from the darkness.
“Yes, Ma’m. That’s what we’re doing. We’re the last
of the men from the breastworks, ‘bout a mile north
from here.”
“Are you–is the army really retreating?”
“Yes, Ma’m. You see, the Yankees are coming.”
The Yankees are coming! She had forgotten that.
Her throat suddenly contracted and she could say
nothing more. The shadow moved away, merged itself with the other shadows and the feet tramped off
into the darkness. “The Yankees are coming! The Yankees are coming!” That was what the rhythm of their
feet said, that was what her suddenly bumping heart
thudded out with each beat. The Yankees are coming!
“De Yankees is comin’!” bawled Prissy, shrinking
close to her. “Oh, Miss Scarlett, dey’ll kill us all!
Dey’ll run dey baynits in our stummicks! Dey’ll–”
“Oh, hush!” It was terrifying enough to think
these things without hearing them put into trembling
words. Renewed fear swept her. What could she do?
How could she escape? Where could she turn for
help? Every friend had failed her.
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Suddenly she thought of Rhett Butler and calm dispelled her fears. Why hadn’t she thought of him
this morning when she had been tearing about like a
chicken with its head off? She hated him, but he was
strong and smart and he wasn’t afraid of the Yankees.
And he was still in town. Of course, she was mad at
him. But she could overlook such things at a time like
this. And he had a horse and carriage, too. Oh, why
hadn’t she thought of him before! He could take them
all away from this doomed place, away from the Yankees, somewhere, anywhere.
She turned to Prissy and spoke with feverish urgency.
“You know where Captain Butler lives–at the Atlanta Hotel?”
“Yas’m, but–”
“Well, go there, now, as quick as you can run and
tell him I want him. I want him to come quickly and
bring his horse and carriage or an ambulance if he can
get one. Tell him about the baby. Tell him I want him
to take us out of here. Go, now. Hurry!”
She sat upright and gave Prissy a push to speed her
feet.
“Gawdlmighty, Miss Scarlett! Ah’s sceered ter go
runnin’ roun’ in de dahk by mahseff! Spose de Yan709
�PART THREE
kees gits me?”
“If you run fast you can catch up with those soldiers
and they won’t let the Yankees get you. Hurry!”
“Ah’s sceered! Sposin’ Cap’n Butler ain’ at de hotel?”
“Then ask where he is. Haven’t you any gumption?
If he isn’t at the hotel, go to the barrooms on Decatur
Street and ask for him. Go to Belle Watling’s house.
Hunt for him. You fool, don’t you see that if you don’t
hurry and find him the Yankees will surely get us all?”
“Miss Scarlett, Maw would weah me out wid a cotton stalk, did Ah go in a bahroom or a ho’ house.”
Scarlett pulled herself to her feet.
“Well, I’ll wear you out if you don’t. You can stand
outside in the street and yell for him, can’t you? Or
ask somebody if he’s inside. Get going.”
When Prissy still lingered, shuffling her feet and
mouthing, Scarlett gave her another push which
nearly sent her headlong down the front steps.
“You’ll go or I’ll sell you down the river. You’ll
never see your mother again or anybody you know
and I’ll sell you for a field hand too. Hurry!”
“Gawdlmighty, Miss Scarlett–”
But under the determined pressure of her mistress’
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hand she started down the steps. The front gate
clicked and Scarlett cried: “Run, you goose!”
She heard the patter of Prissy’s feet as she broke into
a trot, and then the sound died away on the soft earth.
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gone, Scarlett went wearily into the
downstairs hall and lit a lamp. The house felt steamingly hot, as though it held in its walls all the heat of
the noontide. Some of her dullness was passing now
and her stomach was clamoring for food. She remembered she had had nothing to eat since the night before except a spoonful of hominy, and picking up the
lamp she went into the kitchen. The fire in the oven
had died but the room was stifling hot. She found half
a pone of hard corn bread in the skillet and gnawed
hungrily on it while she looked about for other food.
There was some hominy left in the pot and she ate it
with a big cooking spoon, not waiting to put it on a
plate. It needed salt badly but she was too hungry to
hunt for it. After four spoonfuls of it, the heat of the
room was too much and, taking the lamp in one hand
and a fragment of pone in the other, she went out into
the hall.
She knew she should go upstairs and sit beside
Melanie. If anything went wrong, Melanie would be
too weak to call. But the idea of returning to that
room where she had spent so many nightmare hours
was repulsive to her. Even if Melanie were dying, she
couldn’t go back up there. She never wanted to see
A FTER P RISSY
HAD
�PART THREE
that room again. She set the lamp on the candle stand
by the window and returned to the front porch. It was
so much cooler here, and even the night was drowned
in soft warmth. She sat down on the steps in the circle of faint light thrown by the lamp and continued
gnawing on the corn bread.
When she had finished it, a measure of strength
came back to her and with the strength came again
the pricking of fear. She could hear a humming of
noise far down the street, but what it portended she
did not know. She could distinguish nothing but a
volume of sound that rose and fell. She strained forward trying to hear and soon she found her muscles
aching from the tension. More than anything in the
world she yearned to hear the sound of hooves and
to see Rhett’s careless, self-confident eyes laughing at
her fears. Rhett would take them away, somewhere.
She didn’t know where. She didn’t care.
As she sat straining her ears toward town, a faint
glow appeared above the trees. It puzzled her. She
watched it and saw it grow brighter. The dark sky became pink and then dull red, and suddenly above the
trees, she saw a huge tongue of flame leap high to the
heavens. She jumped to her feet, her heart beginning
again its sickening thudding and bumping.
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The Yankees had come! She knew they had come
and they were burning the town. The flames seemed
to be off to the east of the center of town. They shot
higher and higher and widened rapidly into a broad
expanse of red before her terrified eyes. A whole
block must be burning. A faint hot breeze that had
sprung up bore the smell of smoke to her.
She fled up the stairs to her own room and hung
out the window for a better view. The sky was a
hideous lurid color and great swirls of black smoke
went twisting up to hand in billowy clouds above
the flames. The smell of smoke was stronger now.
Her mind rushed incoherently here and there, thinking how soon the flames would spread up Peachtree
Street and burn this house, how soon the Yankees
would be rushing in upon her, where she would run,
what she would do. All the fiends of hell seemed
screaming in her ears and her brain swirled with confusion and panic so overpowering she clung to the
window sill for support.
“I must think,” she told herself over and over. “I
must think.”
But thoughts eluded her, darting in and out of her
mind like frightened humming birds. As she stood
hanging to the sill, a deafening explosion burst on
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her ears, louder than any cannon she had ever heard.
The sky was rent with gigantic flame. Then other explosions. The earth shook and the glass in the panes
above her head shivered and came down around her.
The world became an inferno of noise and flame and
trembling earth as one explosion followed another
in earsplitting succession. Torrents of sparks shot to
the sky and descended slowly, lazily, through bloodcolored clouds of smoke. She thought she heard a feeble call from the next room but she paid it no heed.
She had no time for Melanie now. No time for anything except a fear that licked through her veins as
swiftly as the flames she saw. She was a child and
mad with fright and she wanted to bury her head in
her mother’s lap and shut out this sight. If she were
only home! Home with Mother.
Through the nerve-shivering sounds, she heard another sound, that of fear-sped feet coming up the
stairs three at a time, heard a voice yelping like a lost
hound. Prissy broke into the room and, flying to Scarlett, clutched her arm in a grip that seemed to pinch
out pieces of flesh.
“The Yankees–” cried Scarlett.
“No’m, its our gempmums!” yelled Prissy between
breaths, digging her nails deeper into Scarlett’s arm.
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“Dey’s buhnin’ de foun’ry an’ de ahmy supply depots
an’ de wa’houses an’, fo’ Gawd, Miss Scarlett, dey
done set off dem sebenty freight cahs of cannon balls
an’ gunpowder an’, Jesus, we’s all gwine ter buhn
up!”
She began yelping again shrilly and pinched Scarlett
so hard she cried out in pain and fury and shook off
her hand.
The Yankees hadn’t come yet! There was still time to
get away! She rallied her frightened forces together.
“If I don’t get a hold on myself,” she thought, “I’ll be
squalling like a scalded cat!” and the sight of Prissy’s
abject terror helped steady her. She took her by the
shoulders and shook her.
“Shut up that racket and talk sense. The Yankees
haven’t come, you fool! Did you see Captain Butler?
What did he say? Is he coming?”
Prissy ceased her yelling but her teeth chattered.
“Yas’m, ah finely foun’ him. In a bahroom, lak you
told me. He–”
“Never mind where you found him. Is he coming?
Did you tell him to bring his horse?”
“Lawd, Miss Scarlett, he say our gempmums done
tuck his hawse an’ cah’ige fer a amberlance.”
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“Dear God in Heaven!”
“But he comin’–”
“What did he say?”
Prissy had recovered her breath and a small measure of control but her eyes still rolled.
“Well’m, lak you tole me, Ah foun’ him in a bahroom. Ah stood outside an’ yell fer him an’ he come
out. An’ terreckly he see me an’ Ah starts tell him, de
sojers tech off a sto’ house down Decatur Street an’ it
flame up an’ he say Come on an’ he grab me an’ we
runs ter Fibe Points an’ he say den: What now? Talk
fas’. An’ Ah say you say, Cap’n Butler, come quick
an’ bring yo’ hawse an’ cah’ige. Miss Melly done had
a chile an’ you is bustin’ ter get outer town. An’ he
say: Where all she studyin’ ‘bout goin’? An’ Ah say:
Ah doan know, suh, but you is boun’ ter go fo’ de
Yankees gits hyah an’ wants him ter go wid you. An’
he laugh an’ say dey done tuck his hawse.”
Scarlett’s heart went leaden as the last hope left her.
Fool that she was, why hadn’t she thought that the
retreating army would naturally take every vehicle
and animal left in the city? For a moment she was
too stunned to hear what Prissy was saying but she
pulled herself together to hear the rest of the story.
“An’ den he say, Tell Miss Scarlett ter res’ easy. Ah’ll
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steal her a hawse outer de ahmy crall effen dey’s ary
one lef. An’ he say, Ah done stole hawses befo’ dis
night. Tell her Ah git her a hawse effen Ah gits shot
fer it. Den he laugh agin an’ say, Cut an’ run home.
An’ befo’ Ah gits started Ker-bboom! Off goes a noise
an’ Ah lak ter drap in mah tracks an’ he tell me twain’t
nuthin’ but de ammernition our gempmums blown’
up so’s de Yankees don’t git it an’–”
“He is coming? He’s going to bring a horse?”
“So he say.”
She drew a long breath of relief. If there was any
way of getting a horse, Rhett Butler would get one. A
smart man, Rhett. She would forgive him anything if
he got them out of this mess. Escape! And with Rhett
she would have no fear. Rhett would protect them.
Thank God for Rhett! With safety in view she turned
practical.
“Wake Wade up and dress him and pack some
clothes for all of us. Put them in the small trunk. And
don’t tell Miss Mellie we’re going. Not yet. But wrap
the baby in a couple of thick towels and be sure and
pack his clothes.”
Prissy still clung to her skirts and hardly anything
showed in her eyes except the whites. Scarlett gave
her a shove and loosened her grip.
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�PART THREE
“Hurry,” she cried, and Prissy went off like a rabbit.
Scarlett knew she should go in and quiet Melanie’s
fear, knew Melanie must be frightened out of her
senses by the thunderous noises that continued unabated and the glare that lighted the sky. It looked
and sounded like the end of the world.
But she could not bring herself to go back into that
room just yet. She ran down the stairs with some idea
of packing up Miss Pittypat’s china and the little silver she had left when she refugeed to Macon. But
when she reached the dining room, her hands were
shaking so badly she dropped three plates and shattered them. She ran out onto the porch to listen and
back again to the dining room and dropped the silver clattering to the floor. Everything she touched she
dropped. In her hurry she slipped on the rag rug and
fell to the floor with a jolt but leaped up so quickly she
was not even aware of the pain. Upstairs she could
hear Prissy galloping about like a wild animal and
the sound maddened her, for she was galloping just
as aimlessly.
For the dozenth time, she ran out onto the porch but
this time she did not go back to her futile packing. She
sat down. It was just impossible to pack anything.
Impossible to do anything but sit with hammering
719
�PART THREE
heart and wait for Rhett. It seemed hours before he
came. At last, far up the road, she heard the protesting
screech of unoiled axles and the slow uncertain plodding of hooves. Why didn’t he hurry? Why didn’t he
make the horse trot?
The sounds came nearer and she leaped to her feet
and called Rhett’s name. Then, she saw him dimly
as he climbed down from the seat of a small wagon,
heard the clicking of the gate as he came toward her.
He came into view and the light of the lamp showed
him plainly. His dress was as debonaire as if he
were going to a ball, well-tailored white linen coat
and trousers, embroidered gray watered-silk waistcoat and a hint of ruffle on his shirt bosom. His wide
Panama hat was set dashingly on one side of his head
and in the belt of his trousers were thrust two ivoryhandled, long- barreled dueling pistols. The pockets
of his coat sagged heavily with ammunition.
He came up the walk with the springy stride of a
savage and his fine head was carried like a pagan
prince. The dangers of the night which had driven
Scarlett into panic had affected him like an intoxicant.
There was a carefully restrained ferocity in his dark
face, a ruthlessness which would have frightened her
had she the wits to see it.
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�PART THREE
His black eyes danced as though amused by the
whole affair, as though the earth-splitting sounds and
the horrid glare were merely things to frighten children. She swayed toward him as he came up the
steps, her face white, her green eyes burning.
“Good evening,” he said, in his drawling voice, as
he removed his hat with a sweeping gesture. “Fine
weather we’re having. I hear you’re going to take a
trip.”
“If you make any jokes, I shall never speak to you
again,” she said with quivering voice.
“Don’t tell me you are frightened!” He pretended to
be surprised and smiled in a way that made her long
to push him backwards down the steep steps.
“Yes, I am! I’m frightened to death and if you had
the sense God gave a goat, you’d be frightened too.
But we haven’t got time to talk. We must get out of
here.”
“At your service, Madam. But just where were you
figuring on going? I made the trip out here for curiosity, just to see where you were intending to go.
You can’t go north or east or south or west. The Yankees are all around. There’s just one road out of town
which the Yankees haven’t got yet and the army is retreating by that road. And that road won’t be open
721
�PART THREE
long. General Steve Lee’s cavalry is fighting a rearguard action at Rough and Ready to hold it open
long enough for the army to get away. If you follow
the army down the McDonough road, they’ll take the
horse away from you and, while it’s not much of a
horse, I did go to a lot of trouble stealing it. Just where
are you going?”
She stood shaking, listening to his words, hardly
hearing them. But, at his question she suddenly knew
where she was going, knew that all this miserable day
she had known where she was going. The only place.
“I’m going home,” she said.
“Home? You mean to Tara?”
“Yes, yes! To Tara! Oh, Rhett, we must hurry!”
He looked at her as if she had lost her mind.
“Tara? God Almighty, Scarlett! Don’t you know
they fought all day at Jonesboro? Fought for ten miles
up and down the road from Rough and Ready even
into the streets of Jonesboro? The Yankees may be all
over Tara by now, all over the County. Nobody knows
where they are but they’re in that neighborhood. You
can’t go home! You can’t go right through the Yankee
army!”
“I will go home!” she cried. “I will! I will!”
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�PART THREE
“You little fool,” and his voice was swift and rough.
“You can’t go that way. Even if you didn’t run into
the Yankees, the woods are full of stragglers and deserters from both armies. And lots of our troops are
still retreating from Jonesboro. They’d take the horse
away from you as quickly as the Yankees would. Your
only chance is to follow the troops down the McDonough road and pray that they won’t see you in
the dark. You can’t go to Tara. Even if you got there,
you’d probably find it burned down. I won’t let you
go home. It’s insanity.”
“I will go home!” she cried and her voice broke and
rose to a scream. “I will go home! You can’t stop me!
I will go home! I want my mother! I’ll kill you if you
try to stop me! I will go home!”
Tears of fright and hysteria streamed down her face
as she finally gave way under the long strain. She beat
on his chest with her fists and screamed again: “I will!
I will! If I have to walk every step of the way!”
Suddenly she was in his arms, her wet cheek against
the starched ruffle of his shirt, her beating hands
stilled against him. His hands caressed her tumbled
hair gently, soothingly, and his voice was gentle too.
So gentle, so quiet, so devoid of mockery, it did not
seem Rhett Butler’s voice at all but the voice of some
723
�PART THREE
kind strong stranger who smelled of brandy and tobacco and horses, comforting smells because they reminded her of Gerald.
“There, there, darling,” he said softly. “Don’t cry.
You shall go home, my brave little girl. You shall go
home. Don’t cry.”
She felt something brush her hair and wondered
vaguely through her tumult if it were his lips. He was
so tender, so infinitely soothing, she longed to stay in
his arms forever. With such strong arms about her,
surely nothing could harm her.
He fumbled in his pocket and produced a handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
“Now, blow your nose like a good child,” he ordered, a glint of a smile in his eyes, “and tell me what
to do. We must work fast.”
She blew her nose obediently, still trembling, but she
could not think what to tell him to do. Seeing how her
lip quivered and her eyes looked up at him helplessly,
he took command.
“Mrs. Wilkes has had her child? It will be dangerous to move her– dangerous to drive her twenty-five
miles in that rickety wagon. We’d better leave her
with Mrs. Meade.”
“The Meades aren’t home. I can’t leave her.”
724
�PART THREE
“Very well. Into the wagon she goes. Where is that
simple-minded little wench?”
“Upstairs packing the trunk.”
“Trunk? You can’t take any trunk in that wagon. It’s
almost too small to hold all of you and the wheels are
ready to come off with no encouragement. Call her
and tell her to get the smallest feather bed in the house
and put it in the wagon.”
Still Scarlett could not move. He took her arm in a
strong grasp and some of the vitality which animated
him seemed to flow into her body. If only she could
be as cool and casual as he was! He propelled her
into the hall but she still stood helplessly looking at
him. His lip went down mockingly: “Can this be the
heroic young woman who assured me she feared neither God nor man?”
He suddenly burst into laughter and dropped her
arm. Stung, she glared at him, hating him.
“I’m not afraid,” she said.
“Yes, you are. In another moment you’ll be in a
swoon and I have no smelling salts about me.”
She stamped her foot impotently because she could
not think of anything else to do–and without a word
picked up the lamp and started up the stairs. He
was close behind her and she could hear him laugh725
�PART THREE
ing softly to himself. That sound stiffened her spine.
She went into Wade’s nursery and found him sitting
clutched in Prissy’s arms, half dressed, hiccoughing
quietly. Prissy was whimpering. The feather tick on
Wade’s bed was small and she ordered Prissy to drag
it down the stairs and into the wagon. Prissy put
down the child and obeyed. Wade followed her down
the stairs, his hiccoughs stilled by his interest in the
proceedings.
“Come,” said Scarlett, turning to Melanie’s door and
Rhett followed her, hat in hand.
Melanie lay quietly with the sheet up to her chin.
Her face was deathly white but her eyes, sunken and
black circled, were serene. She showed no surprise
at the sight of Rhett in her bedroom but seemed to
take it as a matter of course. She tried to smile weakly
but the smile died before it reached the corners of her
mouth.
“We are going home, to Tara,” Scarlett explained
rapidly. “The Yankees are coming. Rhett is going to
take us. It’s the only way, Melly.”
Melanie tried to nod her head feebly and gestured
toward the baby. Scarlett picked up the small baby
and wrapped him hastily in a thick towel. Rhett
stepped to the bed.
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�PART THREE
“I’ll try not to hurt you,” he said quietly, tucking the
sheet about her. “See if you can put your arms around
my neck.”
Melanie tried but they fell back weakly. He bent,
slipped an arm under her shoulders and another
across her knees and lifted her gently. She did not
cry out but Scarlett saw her bite her lip and go even
whiter. Scarlett held the lamp high for Rhett to see
and started toward the door when Melanie made a
feeble gesture toward the wall.
“What is it?” Rhett asked softly.
“Please,” Melanie whispered, trying to point.
“Charles.”
Rhett looked down at her as if he thought her delirious but Scarlett understood and was irritated. She
knew Melanie wanted the daguerreotype of Charles
which hung on the wall below his sword and pistol.
“Please,” Melanie whispered again, “the sword.”
“Oh, all right,” said Scarlett and, after she had
lighted Rhett’s careful way down the steps, she went
back and unhooked the sword and pistol belts. It
would be awkward, carrying them as well as the baby
and the lamp. That was just like Melanie, not to be at
all bothered over nearly dying and having the Yankees at her heels but to worry about Charles’ things.
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�PART THREE
As she took down the daguerreotype, she caught a
glimpse of Charles’ face. His large brown eyes met
hers and she stopped for a moment to look at the picture curiously. This man had been her husband, had
lain beside her for a few nights, had given her a child
with eyes as soft and brown as his. And she could
hardly remember him.
The child in her arms waved small fists and mewed
softly and she looked down at him. For the first time,
she realized that this was Ashley’s baby and suddenly
wished with all the strength left in her that he were
her baby, hers and Ashley’s.
Prissy came bounding up the stairs and Scarlett
handed the child to her. They went hastily down, the
lamp throwing uncertain shadows on the wall. In the
hall, Scarlett saw a bonnet and put it on hurriedly, tying the ribbons under her chin. It was Melanie’s black
mourning bonnet and it did not fit Scarlett’s head but
she could not recall where she had put her own bonnet.
She went out of the house and down the front steps,
carrying the lamp and trying to keep the saber from
banging against her legs. Melanie lay full length in
the back of the wagon, and, beside her, were Wade
and the towel-swathed baby. Prissy climbed in and
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�PART THREE
took the baby in her arms.
The wagon was very small and the boards about
the sides very low. The wheels leaned inward as if
their first revolution would make them come off. She
took one look at the horse and her heart sank. He
was a small emaciated animal and he stood with his
head dispiritedly low, almost between his forelegs.
His back was raw with sores and harness galls and
he breathed as no sound horse should.
“Not much of an animal, is it?” grinned Rhett.
“Looks like he’ll die in the shafts. But he’s the best I
could do. Some day I’ll tell you with embellishments
just where and how I stole him and how narrowly I
missed getting shot. Nothing but my devotion to you
would make me, at this stage of my career, turn horse
thief–and thief of such a horse. Let me help you in.”
He took the lamp from her and set it on the ground.
The front seat was only a narrow plank across the
sides of the wagon. Rhett picked Scarlett up bodily
and swung her to it. How wonderful to be a man
and as strong as Rhett, she thought, tucking her wide
skirts about her. With Rhett beside her, she did not
fear anything, neither the fire nor the noise nor the
Yankees.
He climbed onto the seat beside her and picked up
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�PART THREE
the reins.
“Oh, wait!” she cried. “I forgot to lock the front
door.”
He burst into a roar of laughter and slapped the
reins upon the horse’s back.
“What are you laughing at?”
“At you–locking the Yankees out,” he said and the
horse started off, slowly, reluctantly. The lamp on the
sidewalk burned on, making a tiny yellow circle of
light which grew smaller and smaller as they moved
away.
Rhett turned the horse’s slow feet westward from
Peachtree and the wobbling wagon jounced into the
rutty lane with a violence that wrenched an abruptly
stifled moan from Melanie. Dark trees interlaced
above their heads, dark silent houses loomed up on
either side and the white palings of fences gleamed
faintly like a row of tombstones. The narrow street
was a dim tunnel, but faintly through the thick leafy
ceiling the hideous red glow of the sky penetrated
and shadows chased one another down the dark way
like mad ghosts. The smell of smoke came stronger
and stronger, and on the wings of the hot breeze came
a pandemonium of sound from the center of town,
yells, the dull rumbling of heavy army wagons and
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�PART THREE
the steady tramp of marching feet. As Rhett jerked
the horse’s head and turned him into another street,
another deafening explosion tore the air and a monstrous skyrocket of flame and smoke shot up in the
west.
“That must be the last of the ammunition trains,”
Rhett said calmly. “Why didn’t they get them out this
morning, the fools! There was plenty of time. Well,
too bad for us. I thought by circling around the center of town, we might avoid the fire and that drunken
mob on Decatur Street and get through to the southwest part of town without any danger. But we’ve got
to cross Marietta Street somewhere and that explosion
was near Marietta Street or I miss my guess.”
“Must–must we go through the fire?” Scarlett quavered.
“Not if we hurry,” said Rhett and, springing from
the wagon, he disappeared into the darkness of a
yard. When he returned he had a small limb of a
tree in his hand and he laid it mercilessly across the
horse’s galled back. The animal broke into a shambling trot, his breath panting and labored, and the
wagon swayed forward with a jolt that threw them
about like popcorn in a popper. The baby wailed, and
Prissy and Wade cried out as they bruised themselves
731
�PART THREE
against the sides of the wagon. But from Melanie
there was no sound.
As they neared Marietta Street, the trees thinned out
and the tall flames roaring up above the buildings
threw street and houses into a glare of light brighter
than day, casting monstrous shadows that twisted as
wildly as torn sails flapping in a gale on a sinking
ship.
Scarlett’s teeth chattered but so great was her terror she was not even aware of it. She was cold and
she shivered, even though the heat of the flames was
already hot against their faces. This was hell and
she was in it and, if she could only have conquered
her shaking knees, she would have leaped from the
wagon and run screaming back the dark road they
had come, back to the refuge of Miss Pittypat’s house.
She shrank closer to Rhett, took his arm in fingers that
trembled and looked up at him for words, for comfort, for something reassuring. In the unholy crimson
glow that bathed them, his dark profile stood out as
clearly as the head on an ancient coin, beautiful, cruel
and decadent. At her touch he turned to her, his eyes
gleaming with a light as frightening as the fire. To
Scarlett, he seemed as exhilarated and contemptuous
as if he got strong pleasure from the situation, as if he
732
�PART THREE
welcomed the inferno they were approaching.
“Here,” he said, laying a hand on one of the longbarreled pistols in his belt. “If anyone, black or white,
comes up on your side of the wagon and tries to lay
hand on the horse, shoot him and we’ll ask questions
later. But for God’s sake, don’t shoot the nag in your
excitement.”
“I–I have a pistol,” she whispered, clutching the
weapon in her lap, perfectly certain that if death
stared her in the face, she would be too frightened to
pull the trigger.
“You have? Where did you get it?”
“It’s Charles’.”
“Charles?”
“Yes, Charles–my husband.”
“Did you ever really have a husband, my dear?” he
whispered and laughed softly.
If he would only be serious! If he would only hurry!
“How do you suppose I got my boy?” she cried
fiercely.
“Oh, there are other ways than husbands–”
“Will you hush and hurry?”
But he drew rein abruptly, almost at Marietta Street,
733
�PART THREE
in the shadow of a warehouse not yet touched by the
flames.
“Hurry!” It was the only word in her mind. Hurry!
Hurry!
“Soldiers,” he said.
The detachment came down Marietta Street, between the burning buildings, walking at route step,
tiredly, rifles held any way, heads down, too weary to
hurry, too weary to care if timbers were crashing to
right and left and smoke billowing about them. They
were all ragged, so ragged that between officers and
men there were no distinguishing insignia except here
and there a torn hat brim pinned up with a wreathed
“C.S.A.” Many were barefooted and here and there
a dirty bandage wrapped a head or arm. They went
past, looking neither to left nor right, so silent that
had it not been for the steady tramp of feet they might
all have been ghosts.
“Take a good look at them,” came Rhett’s gibing
voice, “so you can tell your grandchildren you saw
the rear guard of the Glorious Cause in retreat.”
Suddenly she hated him, hated him with a strength
that momentarily overpowered her fear, made it seem
petty and small. She knew her safety and that of the
others in the back of the wagon depended on him
734
�PART THREE
and him alone, but she hated him for his sneering at
those ragged ranks. She thought of Charles who was
dead and Ashley who might be dead and all the gay
and gallant young men who were rotting in shallow
graves and she forgot that she, too, had once thought
them fools. She could not speak, but hatred and disgust burned in her eyes as she stared at him fiercely.
As the last of the soldiers were passing, a small figure in the rear rank, his rifle butt dragging the ground,
wavered, stopped and stared after the others with a
dirty face so dulled by fatigue he looked like a sleepwalker. He was as small as Scarlett, so small his rifle
was almost as tall as he was, and his grime-smeared
face was unbearded. Sixteen at the most, thought
Scarlett irrelevantly, must be one of the Home Guard
or a runaway schoolboy.
As she watched, the boy’s knees buckled slowly and
he went down in the dust. Without a word, two men
fell out of the last rank and walked back to him. One,
a tall spare man with a black beard that hung to his
belt, silently handed his own rifle and that of the boy
to the other. Then, stooping, he jerked the boy to
his shoulders with an ease that looked like sleight of
hand. He started off slowly after the retreating column, his shoulders bowed under the weight, while
735
�PART THREE
the boy, weak, infuriated like a child teased by its elders, screamed out: “Put me down, damn you! Put
me down! I can walk!”
The bearded man said nothing and plodded on out
of sight around the bend of the road.
Rhett sat still, the reins lax in his hands, looking after them, a curious moody look on his swarthy face.
Then, there was a crash of falling timbers near by and
Scarlett saw a thin tongue of flame lick up over the
roof of the warehouse in whose sheltering shadow
they sat. Then pennons and battle flags of flame flared
triumphantly to the sky above them. Smoke burnt her
nostrils and Wade and Prissy began coughing. The
baby made soft sneezing sounds.
“Oh, name of God, Rhett! Are you crazy? Hurry!
Hurry!”
Rhett made no reply but brought the tree limb down
on the horse’s back with a cruel force that made the
animal leap forward. With all the speed the horse
could summon, they jolted and bounced across Marietta Street. Ahead of them was a tunnel of fire where
buildings were blazing on either side of the short, narrow street that led down to the railroad tracks. They
plunged into it. A glare brighter than a dozen suns
dazzled their eyes, scorching heat seared their skins
736
�PART THREE
and the roaring, cracking and crashing beat upon
their ears in painful waves. For an eternity, it seemed,
they were in the midst of flaming torment and then
abruptly they were in semidarkness again.
As they dashed down the street and bumped over
the railroad tracks, Rhett applied the whip automatically. His face looked set and absent, as though he had
forgotten where he was. His broad shoulders were
hunched forward and his chin jutted out as though
the thoughts in his mind were not pleasant. The heat
of the fire made sweat stream down his forehead and
cheeks but he did not wipe it off.
They pulled into a side street, then another, then
turned and twisted from one narrow street to another
until Scarlett completely lost her bearings and the
roaring of the flames died behind them. Still Rhett did
not speak. He only laid on the whip with regularity.
The red glow in the sky was fading now and the road
became so dark, so frightening, Scarlett would have
welcomed words, any words from him, even jeering,
insulting words, words that cut. But he did not speak.
Silent or not, she thanked Heaven for the comfort of
his presence. It was so good to have a man beside her,
to lean close to him and feel the hard swell of his arm
and know that he stood between her and unnamable
737
�PART THREE
terrors, even though he merely sat there and stared.
“Oh, Rhett,” she whispered clasping his arm, “What
would we ever have done without you? I’m so glad
you aren’t in the army!”
He turned his head and gave her one look, a look
that made her drop his arm and shrink back. There
was no mockery in his eyes now. They were naked
and there was anger and something like bewilderment in them. His lip curled down and he turned
his head away. For a long time they jounced along
in a silence unbroken except for the faint wails of the
baby and sniffles from Prissy. When she was able
to bear the sniffling noise no longer, Scarlett turned
and pinched her viciously, causing Prissy to scream
in good earnest before she relapsed into frightened silence.
Finally Rhett turned the horse at right angles and
after a while they were on a wider, smoother road.
The dim shapes of houses grew farther and farther
apart and unbroken woods loomed wall-like on either
side.
“We’re out of town now,” said Rhett briefly, drawing
rein, “and on the main road to Rough and Ready.”
“Hurry. Don’t stop!”
“Let the animal breathe a bit.” Then turning to her,
738
�PART THREE
he asked slowly: “Scarlett, are you still determined to
do this crazy thing?”
“Do what?”
“Do you still want to try to get through to Tara? It’s
suicidal. Steve Lee’s cavalry and the Yankee Army are
between you and Tara.”
Oh, Dear God! Was he going to refuse to take her
home, after all she’d gone through this terrible day?
“Oh, yes! Yes! Please, Rhett, let’s hurry. The horse
isn’t tired.”
“Just a minute. You can’t go down to Jonesboro on
this road. You can’t follow the train tracks. They’ve
been fighting up and down there all day from Rough
and Ready on south. Do you know any other roads,
small wagon roads or lanes that don’t go through
Rough and Ready or Jonesboro?”
“Oh, yes,” cried Scarlett in relief. “If we can just get
near to Rough and Ready, I know a wagon trace that
winds off from the main Jonesboro road and wanders
around for miles. Pa and I used to ride it. It comes out
right near the MacIntosh place and that’s only a mile
from Tara.”
“Good. Maybe you can get past Rough and Ready
all right. General Steve Lee was there during the afternoon covering the retreat. Maybe the Yankees aren’t
739
�PART THREE
there yet. Maybe you can get through there, if Steve
Lee’s men don’t pick up your horse.”
”I can get through?”
“Yes, YOU.” His voice was rough.
“But Rhett– You– Aren’t going to take us?”
“No. I’m leaving you here.”
She looked around wildly, at the livid sky behind
them, at the dark trees on either hand hemming them
in like a prison wall, at the frightened figures in the
back of the wagon–and finally at him. Had she gone
crazy? Was she not hearing right?
He was grinning now. She could just see his white
teeth in the faint light and the old mockery was back
in his eyes.
“Leaving us? Where–where are you going?”
“I am going, dear girl, with the army.”
She sighed with relief and irritation. Why did he
joke at this time of all times? Rhett in the army! After all he’d said about stupid fools who were enticed
into losing their lives by a roll of drums and brave
words from orators–fools who killed themselves that
wise men might make money!
“Oh, I could choke you for scaring me so! Let’s get
on.”
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�PART THREE
“I’m not joking, my dear. And I am hurt, Scarlett,
that you do not take my gallant sacrifice with better
spirit. Where is your patriotism, your love for Our
Glorious Cause? Now is your chance to tell me to
return with my shield or on it. But, talk fast, for I
want time to make a brave speech before departing
for the wars.”
His drawling voice gibed in her ears. He was jeering at her and, somehow, she knew he was jeering
at himself too. What was he talking about? Patriotism, shields, brave speeches? It wasn’t possible that
he meant what he was saying. It just wasn’t believable that he could talk so blithely of leaving her here
on this dark road with a woman who might be dying,
a new-born infant, a foolish black wench and a frightened child, leaving her to pilot them through miles of
battle fields and stragglers and Yankees and fire and
God knows what.
Once, when she was six years old, she had fallen
from a tree, flat on her stomach. She could still recall
that sickening interval before breath came back into
her body. Now, as she looked at Rhett, she felt the
same way she had felt then, breathless, stunned, nauseated.
“Rhett, you are joking!”
741
�PART THREE
She grabbed his arm and felt her tears of fright
splash down her wrist. He raised her hand and kissed
it arily.
“Selfish to the end, aren’t you, my dear? Thinking
only of your own precious hide and not of the gallant
Confederacy. Think how our troops will be heartened
by my eleventh-hour appearance.” There was a malicious tenderness in his voice.
“Oh, Rhett,” she wailed, “how can you do this to
me? Why are you leaving me?”
“Why?” he laughed jauntily. “Because, perhaps,
of the betraying sentimentality that lurks in all of
us Southerners. Perhaps– perhaps because I am
ashamed. Who knows?”
“Ashamed? You should die of shame. To desert us
here, alone, helpless–”
“Dear Scarlett! You aren’t helpless. Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless. God
help the Yankees if they should get you.”
He stepped abruptly down from the wagon and,
as she watched him, stunned with bewilderment, he
came around to her side of the wagon.
“Get out,” he ordered.
She stared at him. He reached up roughly, caught
742
�PART THREE
her under the arms and swung her to the ground beside him. With a tight grip on her he dragged her
several paces away from the wagon. She felt the dust
and gravel in her slippers hurting her feet. The still
hot darkness wrapped her like a dream.
“I’m not asking you to understand or forgive. I
don’t give a damn whether you do either, for I shall
never understand or forgive myself for this idiocy. I
am annoyed at myself to find that so much quixoticism still lingers in me. But our fair Southland needs
every man. Didn’t our brave Governor Brown say just
that? Not matter. I’m off to the wars.” He laughed
suddenly, a ringing, free laugh that startled the echoes
in the dark woods.
“‘I could not love thee, Dear, so much, loved I not
Honour more.’ That’s a pat speech, isn’t it? Certainly
better than anything I can think up myself, at the
present moment. For I do love you, Scarlett, in spite
of what I said that night on the porch last month.”
His drawl was caressing and his hands slid up her
bare arms, warm strong hands. “I love you, Scarlett,
because we are so much alike, renegades, both of us,
dear, and selfish rascals. Neither of us cares a rap if
the whole world goes to pot, so long as we are safe
and comfortable.”
743
�PART THREE
His voice went on in the darkness and she heard
words, but they made no sense to her. Her mind was
tiredly trying to take in the harsh truth that he was
leaving her here to face the Yankees alone. Her mind
said: “He’s leaving me. He’s leaving me.” But no
emotion stirred.
Then his arms went around her waist and shoulders
and she felt the hard muscles of his thighs against
her body and the buttons of his coat pressing into her
breast. A warm tide of feeling, bewildering, frightening, swept over her, carrying out of her mind the time
and place and circumstances. She felt as limp as a rag
doll, warm, weak and helpless, and his supporting
arms were so pleasant.
“You don’t want to change your mind about what
I said last month? There’s nothing like danger and
death to give an added fillip. Be patriotic, Scarlett.
Think how you would be sending a soldier to his
death with beautiful memories.”
He was kissing her now and his mustache tickled
her mouth, kissing her with slow, hot lips that were
so leisurely as though he had the whole night before
him. Charles had never kissed her like this. Never
had the kisses of the Tarleton and Calvert boys made
her go hot and cold and shaky like this. He bent her
744
�PART THREE
body backward and his lips traveled down her throat
to where the cameo fastened her basque.
“Sweet,” he whispered. “Sweet.”
She saw the wagon dimly in the dark and heard the
treble piping of Wade’s voice.
“Muvver! Wade fwightened!”
Into her swaying, darkened mind, cold sanity came
back with a rush and she remembered what she
had forgotten for the moment–that she was frightened too, and Rhett was leaving her, leaving her, the
damned cad. And on top of it all, he had the consummate gall to stand here in the road and insult her with
his infamous proposals. Rage and hate flowed into
her and stiffened her spine and with one wrench she
tore herself loose from his arms.
“Oh, you cad!” she cried and her mind leaped
about, trying to think of worse things to call him,
things she had heard Gerald call Mr. Lincoln, the
MacIntoshes and balky mules, but the words would
not come. “You low-down, cowardly, nasty, stinking
thing!” And because she could not think of anything
crushing enough, she drew back her arm and slapped
him across the mouth with all the force she had left.
He took a step backward, his hand going to his face.
“Ah,” he said quietly and for a moment they stood
745
�PART THREE
facing each other in the darkness. Scarlett could hear
his heavy breathing, and her own breath came in
gasps as if she had been running hard.
“They were right! Everybody was right! You aren’t
a gentleman!”
“My dear girl,” he said, “how inadequate.”
She knew he was laughing and the thought goaded
her.
“Go on! Go on now! I want you to hurry. I don’t
want to ever see you again. I hope a cannon ball lands
right on you. I hope it blows you to a million pieces.
I–”
“Never mind the rest. I follow your general idea.
When I’m dead on the altar of my country, I hope
your conscience hurts you.”
She heard him laugh as he turned away and walked
back toward the wagon. She saw him stand beside it,
heard him speak and his voice was changed, courteous and respectful as it always was when he spoke to
Melanie.
“Mrs. Wilkes?”
Prissy’s frightened voice made answer from the
wagon.
“Gawdlmighty, Cap’n Butler! Miss Melly done
746
�PART THREE
fainted away back yonder.”
“She’s not dead? Is she breathing?”
“Yassuh, she breathin’.”
“Then she’s probably better off as she is. If she were
conscious, I doubt if she could live through all the
pain. Take good care of her, Prissy. Here’s a shinplaster for you. Try not to be a bigger fool than you
are.”
“Yassuh. Thankee suh.”
“Good-by, Scarlett.”
She knew he had turned and was facing her but she
did not speak. Hate choked all utterance. His feet
ground on the pebbles of the road and for a moment
she saw his big shoulders looming up in the dark.
Then he was gone. She could hear the sound of his
feet for a while and then they died away. She came
slowly back to the wagon, her knees shaking.
Why had he gone, stepping off into the dark, into
the war, into a Cause that was lost, into a world that
was mad? Why had he gone, Rhett who loved the
pleasures of women and liquor, the comfort of good
food and soft beds, the feel of fine linen and good
leather, who hated the South and jeered at the fools
who fought for it? Now he had set his varnished
boots upon a bitter road where hunger tramped with
747
�PART THREE
tireless stride and wounds and weariness and heartbreak ran like yelping wolves. And the end of the
road was death. He need not have gone. He was safe,
rich, comfortable. But he had gone, leaving her alone
in a night as black as blindness, with the Yankee Army
between her and home.
Now she remembered all the bad names she had
wanted to call him but it was too late. She leaned her
head against the bowed neck of the horse and cried.
748
�CHAPTER XXIV
of morning sunlight streaming
through the trees overhead awakened Scarlett. For a
moment, stiffened by the cramped position in which
she had slept, she could not remember where she was.
The sun blinded her, the hard boards of the wagon
under her were harsh against her body, and a heavy
weight lay across her legs. She tried to sit up and discovered that the weight was Wade who lay sleeping
with his head pillowed on her knees. Melanie’s bare
feet were almost in her face and, under the wagon
seat, Prissy was curled up like a black cat with the
small baby wedged in between her and Wade.
Then she remembered everything. She popped up
to a sitting position and looked hastily all around.
Thank God, no Yankees in sight! Their hiding place
had not been discovered in the night. It all came back
to her now, the nightmare journey after Rhett’s footsteps died away, the endless night, the black road
full of ruts and boulders along which they jolted,
the deep gullies on either side into which the wagon
slipped, the fear-crazed strength with which she and
Prissy had pushed the wheels out of the gullies. She
recalled with a shudder how often she had driven
the unwilling horse into fields and woods when she
T HE
BRIGHT GLARE
�PART THREE
heard soldiers approaching, not knowing if they were
friends or foes–recalled, too, her anguish lest a cough,
a sneeze or Wade’s hiccoughing might betray them to
the marching men.
Oh, that dark road where men went by like ghosts,
voices stilled, only the muffled tramping of feet on
soft dirt, the faint clicking of bridles and the straining creak of leather! And, oh, that dreadful moment
when the sick horse balked and cavalry and light cannon rumbled past in the darkness, past where they sat
breathless, so close she could almost reach out and
touch them, so close she could smell the stale sweat
on the soldiers’ bodies!
When, at last, they had neared Rough and Ready, a
few camp fires were gleaming where the last of Steve
Lee’s rear guard was awaiting orders to fall back. She
had circled through a plowed field for a mile until the
light of the fires died out behind her. And then she
had lost her way in the darkness and sobbed when
she could not find the little wagon path she knew so
well. Then finally having found it, the horse sank in
the traces and refused to move, refused to rise even
when she and Prissy tugged at the bridle.
So she had unharnessed him and crawled, sodden
with fatigue, into the back of the wagon and stretched
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�PART THREE
her aching legs. She had a faint memory of Melanie’s
voice before sleep clamped down her eyelids, a weak
voice that apologized even as it begged: “Scarlett, can
I have some water, please?”
She had said: “There isn’t any,” and gone to sleep
before the words were out of her mouth.
Now it was morning and the world was still and
serene and green and gold with dappled sunshine.
And no soldiers in sight anywhere. She was hungry
and dry with thirst, aching and cramped and filled
with wonder that she, Scarlett O’Hara, who could
never rest well except between linen sheets and on
the softest of feather beds, had slept like a field hand
on hard planks.
Blinking in the sunlight, her eyes fell on Melanie and
she gasped, horrified. Melanie lay so still and white
Scarlett thought she must be dead. She looked dead.
She looked like a dead, old woman with her ravaged
face and her dark hair snarled and tangled across it.
Then Scarlett saw with relief the faint rise and fall
of her shallow breathing and knew that Melanie had
survived the night.
Scarlett shaded her eyes with her hand and looked
about her. They had evidently spent the night under the trees in someone’s front yard, for a sand and
751
�PART THREE
gravel driveway stretched out before her, winding
away under an avenue of cedars.
“Why, it’s the Mallory place!” she thought, her heart
leaping with gladness at the thought of friends and
help.
But a stillness as of death hung over the plantation.
The shrubs and grass of the lawn were cut to pieces
where hooves and wheels and feet had torn frantically back and forth until the soil was churned up.
She looked toward the house and instead of the old
white clapboard place she knew so well, she saw there
only a long rectangle of blackened granite foundation
stones and two tall chimneys rearing smoke-stained
bricks into the charred leaves of still trees.
She drew a deep shuddering breath. Would she
find Tara like this, level with the ground, silent as the
dead?
“I mustn’t think about that now,” she told herself
hurriedly. “I mustn’t let myself think about it. I’ll
get scared again if I think about it.” But, in spite of
herself, her heart quickened and each beat seemed to
thunder: “Home! Hurry! Home! Hurry!”
They must be starting on toward home again. But
first they must find some food and water, especially
water. She prodded Prissy awake. Prissy rolled her
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�PART THREE
eyes as she looked about her.
“Fo’ Gawd, Miss Scarlett, Ah din’ spec ter wake up
agin ‘cept in de Promise Lan’.”
“You’re a long way from there,” said Scarlett, trying
to smooth back her untidy hair. Her face was damp
and her body was already wet with sweat. She felt
dirty and messy and sticky, almost as if she smelled
bad. Her clothes were crushed and wrinkled from
sleeping in them and she had never felt more acutely
tired and sore in all her life. Muscles she did not know
she possessed ached from her unaccustomed exertions of the night before and every movement brought
sharp pain.
She looked down at Melanie and saw that her
dark eyes were opened. They were sick eyes, fever
bright, and dark baggy circles were beneath them.
She opened cracking lips and whispered appealingly:
“Water.”
“Get up, Prissy,” ordered Scarlett. “We’ll go to the
well and get some water.”
“But, Miss Scarlett! Dey mout be hants up dar.
Sposin’ somebody daid up dar?”
“I’ll make a hant out of you if you don’t get out of
this wagon,” said Scarlett, who was in no mood for
argument, as she climbed lamely down to the ground.
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�PART THREE
And then she thought of the horse. Name of God!
Suppose the horse had died in the night! He had
seemed ready to die when she unharnessed him. She
ran around the wagon and saw him lying on his
side. If he were dead, she would curse God and die
too. Somebody in the Bible had done just that thing.
Cursed God and died. She knew just how that person
felt. But the horse was alive–breathing heavily, sick
eyes half closed, but alive. Well, some water would
help him too.
Prissy climbed reluctantly from the wagon with
many groans and timorously followed Scarlett up the
avenue. Behind the ruins the row of whitewashed
slave quarters stood silent and deserted under the
overhanging trees. Between the quarters and the
smoked stone foundations, they found the well, and
the roof of it still stood with the bucket far down the
well. Between them, they wound up the rope, and
when the bucket of cool sparkling water appeared out
of the dark depths, Scarlett tilted it to her lips and
drank with loud sucking noises, spilling the water all
over herself.
She drank until Prissy’s petulant: “Well, Ah’s thusty,
too, Miss Scarlett,” made her recall the needs of the
others.
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�PART THREE
“Untie the knot and take the bucket to the wagon
and give them some. And give the rest to the horse.
Don’t you think Miss Melanie ought to nurse the
baby? He’ll starve.”
“Law, Miss Scarlett, Miss Melly ain’ got no milk–ain’
gwine have none.”
“How do you know?”
“Ah’s seed too many lak her.”
“Don’t go putting on any airs with me. A precious
little you knew about babies yesterday. Hurry now.
I’m going to try to find something to eat.”
Scarlett’s search was futile until in the orchard she
found a few apples. Soldiers had been there before
her and there was none on the trees. Those she found
on the ground were mostly rotten. She filled her skirt
with the best of them and came back across the soft
earth, collecting small pebbles in her slippers. Why
hadn’t she thought of putting on stouter shoes last
night? Why hadn’t she brought her sun hat? Why
hadn’t she brought something to eat? She’d acted like
a fool. But, of course, she’d thought Rhett would take
care of them.
Rhett! She spat on the ground, for the very name
tasted bad. How she hated him! How contemptible
he had been! And she had stood there in the road and
755
�PART THREE
let him kiss her–and almost liked it. She had been
crazy last night. How despicable he was!
When she came back, she divided up the apples and
threw the rest into the back of the wagon. The horse
was on his feet now but the water did not seem to
have refreshed him much. He looked far worse in
the daylight than he had the night before. His hip
bones stood out like an old cow’s, his ribs showed
like a washboard and his back was a mass of sores.
She shrank from touching him as she harnessed him.
When she slipped the bit into his mouth, she saw
that he was practically toothless. As old as the hills!
While Rhett was stealing a horse, why couldn’t he
have stolen a good one?
She mounted the seat and brought down the hickory limb on his back. He wheezed and started, but
he walked so slowly as she turned him into the road
she knew she could walk faster herself with no effort
whatever. Oh, if only she didn’t have Melanie and
Wade and the baby and Prissy to bother with! How
swiftly she could walk home! Why, she would run
home, run every step of the way that would bring her
closer to Tara and to Mother.
They couldn’t be more than fifteen miles from home,
but at the rate this old nag traveled it would take all
756
�PART THREE
day, for she would have to stop frequently to rest him.
All day! She looked down the glaring red road, cut in
deep ruts where cannon wheels and ambulances had
gone over it. It would be hours before she knew if
Tara still stood and if Ellen were there. It would be
hours before she finished her journey under the broiling September sun.
She looked back at Melanie who lay with sick eyes
closed against the sun and jerked loose the strings of
her bonnet and tossed it to Prissy.
“Put that over her face. It’ll keep the sun out of
her eyes.” Then as the heat beat down upon her unprotected head, she thought: “I’ll be as freckled as a
guinea egg before this day is over.”
She had never in her life been out in the sunshine
without a hat or veils, never handled reins without gloves to protect the white skin of her dimpled
hands. Yet here she was exposed to the sun in
a broken-down wagon with a broken-down horse,
dirty, sweaty, hungry, helpless to do anything but
plod along at a snail’s pace through a deserted land.
What a few short weeks it had been since she was safe
and secure! What a little while since she and everyone else had thought that Atlanta could never fall,
that Georgia could never be invaded. But the small
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cloud which appeared in the northwest four months
ago had blown up into a mighty storm and then
into a screaming tornado, sweeping away her world,
whirling her out of her sheltered life, and dropping
her down in the midst of this still, haunted desolation.
Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with
the wind which had swept through Georgia?
She laid the whip on the tired horse’s back and tried
to urge him on while the waggling wheels rocked
them drunkenly from side to side.
There was death in the air. In the rays of the late afternoon sun, every well-remembered field and forest
grove was green and still, with an unearthly quiet that
struck terror to Scarlett’s heart. Every empty, shellpitted house they had passed that day, every gaunt
chimney standing sentinel over smoke-blackened ruins, had frightened her more. They had not seen a
living human being or animal since the night before.
Dead men and dead horses, yes, and dead mules, lying by the road, swollen, covered with flies, but nothing alive. No far-off cattle lowed, no birds sang, no
wind waved the trees. Only the tired plop-plop of the
horse’s feet and the weak wailing of Melanie’s baby
broke the stillness.
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The countryside lay as under some dread enchantment. Or worse still, thought Scarlett with a chill,
like the familiar and dear face of a mother, beautiful and quiet at last, after death agonies. She felt that
the once-familiar woods were full of ghosts. Thousands had died in the fighting near Jonesboro. They
were here in these haunted woods where the slanting afternoon sun gleamed eerily through unmoving
leaves, friends and foes, peering at her in her rickety wagon, through eyes blinded with blood and red
dust– glazed, horrible eyes.
“Mother! Mother!” she whispered. If she could only
win to Ellen! If only, by a miracle of God, Tara were
still standing and she could drive up the long avenue
of trees and go into the house and see her mother’s
kind, tender face, could feel once more the soft capable hands that drove out fear, could clutch Ellen’s
skirts and bury her face in them. Mother would know
what to do. She wouldn’t let Melanie and her baby
die. She would drive away all ghosts and fears with
her quiet “Hush, hush.” But Mother was ill, perhaps
dying.
Scarlett laid the whip across the weary rump of the
horse. They must go faster! They had crept along this
never-ending road all the long hot day. Soon it would
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be night and they would be alone in this desolation
that was death. She gripped the reins tighter with
hands that were blistered and slapped them fiercely
on the horse’s back, her aching arms burning at the
movement.
If she could only reach the kind arms of Tara and
Ellen and lay down her burdens, far too heavy for her
young shoulders–the dying woman, the fading baby,
her own hungry little boy, the frightened negro, all
looking to her for strength, for guidance, all reading
in her straight back courage she did not possess and
strength which had long since failed.
The exhausted horse did not respond to the whip
or reins but shambled on, dragging his feet, stumbling on small rocks and swaying as if ready to fall
to his knees. But, as twilight came, they at last entered the final lap of the long journey. They rounded
the bend of the wagon path and turned into the main
road. Tara was only a mile away!
Here loomed up the dark bulk of the mock-orange
hedge that marked the beginning of the MacIntosh
property. A little farther on, Scarlett drew rein in front
of the avenue of oaks that led from the road to old
Angus MacIntosh’s house. She peered through the
gathering dusk down the two lines of ancient trees.
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All was dark. Not a single light showed in the house
or in the quarters. Straining her eyes in the darkness
she dimly discerned a sight which had grown familiar
through that terrible day–two tall chimneys, like gigantic tombstones towering above the ruined second
floor, and broken unlit windows blotching the walls
like still, blind eyes.
“Hello!” she shouted, summoning all her strength.
“Hello!”
Prissy clawed at her in a frenzy of fright and Scarlett,
turning, saw that her eyes were rolling in her head.
“Doan holler, Miss Scarlett! Please, doan holler
agin!” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Dey ain’
no tellin’ WHUT mout answer!”
“Dear God!” thought Scarlett, a shiver running
through her. “Dear God! She’s right. Anything might
come out of there!”
She flapped the reins and urged the horse forward.
The sight of the MacIntosh house had pricked the last
bubble of hope remaining to her. It was burned, in
ruins, deserted, as were all the plantations she had
passed that day. Tara lay only half a mile away, on the
same road, right in the path of the army. Tara was leveled, too! She would find only the blackened bricks,
starlight shining through the roofless walls, Ellen and
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Gerald gone, the girls gone, Mammy gone, the negroes gone, God knows where, and this hideous stillness over everything.
Why had she come on this fool’s errand, against all
common sense, dragging Melanie and her child? Better that they had died in Atlanta than, tortured by this
day of burning sun and jolting wagon, to die in the
silent ruins of Tara.
But Ashley had left Melanie in her care. “Take care
of her.” Oh, that beautiful, heartbreaking day when
he had kissed her good-by before he went away forever! “You’ll take care of her, won’t you? Promise!”
And she had promised. Why had she ever bound herself with such a promise, doubly binding now that
Ashley was gone? Even in her exhaustion she hated
Melanie, hated the tiny mewing voice of her child
which, fainter and fainter, pierced the stillness. But
she had promised and now they belonged to her,
even as Wade and Prissy belonged to her, and she
must struggle and fight for them as long as she had
strength or breath. She could have left them in Atlanta, dumped Melanie into the hospital and deserted
her. But had she done that, she could never face Ashley, either on this earth or in the hereafter and tell him
she had left his wife and child to die among strangers.
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Oh, Ashley! Where was he tonight while she toiled
down this haunted road with his wife and baby? Was
he alive and did he think of her as he lay behind the
bars at Rock Island? Or was he dead of smallpox
months ago, rotting in some long ditch with hundreds
of other Confederates?
Scarlett’s taut nerves almost cracked as a sudden
noise sounded in the underbrush near them. Prissy
screamed loudly, throwing herself to the floor of the
wagon, the baby beneath her. Melanie stirred feebly, her hands seeking the baby, and Wade covered
his eyes and cowered, too frightened to cry. Then
the bushes beside them crashed apart under heavy
hooves and a low moaning bawl assaulted their ears.
“It’s only a cow,” said Scarlett, her voice rough with
fright. “Don’t be a fool, Prissy. You’ve mashed the
baby and frightened Miss Melly and Wade.”
“It’s a ghos’,” moaned Prissy, writhing face down on
the wagon boards.
Turning deliberately, Scarlett raised the tree limb she
had been using as a whip and brought it down across
Prissy’s back. She was too exhausted and weak from
fright to tolerate weakness in anyone else.
“Sit up, you fool,” she said, “before I wear this out
on you.”
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Yelping, Prissy raised her head and peering over the
side of the wagon saw it was, indeed, a cow, a red and
white animal which stood looking at them appealingly with large frightened eyes. Opening its mouth,
it lowed again as if in pain.
“Is it hurt? That doesn’t sound like an ordinary
moo.”
“Soun’ ter me lak her bag full an’ she need milkin’
bad,” said Prissy, regaining some measure of control.
“Spec it one of Mist’ MacIntosh’s dat de niggers driv
in de woods an’ de Yankees din’ git.”
“We’ll take it with us,” Scarlett decided swiftly.
“Then we can have some milk for the baby.”
“How all we gwine tek a cow wid us, Miss Scarlett?
We kain tek no cow wid us. Cow ain’ no good nohow
effen she ain’ been milked lately. Dey bags swells up
and busts. Dat’s why she hollerin’.”
“Since you know so much about it, take off your
petticoat and tear it up and tie her to the back of the
wagon.”
“Miss Scarlett, you knows Ah ain’ had no petticoat
fer a month an’ did Ah have one, Ah wouldn’ put it
on her fer nuthin’. Ah nebber had no truck wid cows.
Ah’s sceered of cows.”
Scarlett laid down the reins and pulled up her skirt.
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The lace- trimmed petticoat beneath was the last garment she possessed that was pretty–and whole. She
untied the waist tape and slipped it down over her
feet, crushing the soft linen folds between her hands.
Rhett had brought her that linen and lace from Nassau on the last boat he slipped through the blockade
and she had worked a week to make the garment.
Resolutely she took it by the hem and jerked, put it
in her mouth and gnawed, until finally the material
gave with a rip and tore the length. She gnawed furiously, tore with both hands and the petticoat lay in
strips in her hands. She knotted the ends with fingers
that bled from blisters and shook from fatigue.
“Slip this over her horns,” she directed. But Prissy
balked.
“Ah’s sceered of cows, Miss Scarlett. Ah ain’ nebber
had nuthin’ ter do wid cows. Ah ain’ no yard nigger.
Ah’s a house nigger.”
“You’re a fool nigger, and the worst day’s work Pa
ever did was to buy you,” said Scarlett slowly, too
tired for anger. “And if I ever get the use of my arm
again, I’ll wear this whip out on you.”
There, she thought, I’ve said “nigger” and Mother
wouldn’t like that at all.
Prissy rolled her eyes wildly, peeping first at the set
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face of her mistress and then at the cow which bawled
plaintively. Scarlett seemed the less dangerous of the
two, so Prissy clutched at the sides of the wagon and
remained where she was.
Stiffly, Scarlett climbed down from the seat, each
movement of agony of aching muscles. Prissy was
not the only one who was “sceered” of cows. Scarlett had always feared them, even the mildest cow
seemed sinister to her, but this was no time to truckle
to small fears when great ones crowded so thick upon
her. Fortunately the cow was gentle. In its pain it had
sought human companionship and help and it made
no threatening gesture as she looped one end of the
torn petticoat about its horns. She tied the other end
to the back of the wagon, as securely as her awkward
fingers would permit. Then, as she started back toward the driver’s seat, a vast weariness assailed her
and she swayed dizzily. She clutched the side of the
wagon to keep from falling.
Melanie opened her eyes and, seeing Scarlett standing beside her, whispered: “Dear–are we home?”
Home! Hot tears came to Scarlett’s eyes at the word.
Home. Melanie did not know there was no home and
that they were alone in a mad and desolate world.
“Not yet,” she said, as gently as the constriction of
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her throat would permit, “but we will be, soon. I’ve
just found a cow and soon we’ll have some milk for
you and the baby.”
“Poor baby,” whispered Melanie, her hand creeping
feebly toward the child and falling short.
Climbing back into the wagon required all the
strength Scarlett could muster, but at last it was done
and she picked up the lines. The horse stood with
head drooping dejectedly and refused to start. Scarlett laid on the whip mercilessly. She hoped God
would forgive her for hurting a tired animal. If He
didn’t she was sorry. After all, Tara lay just ahead,
and after the next quarter of a mile, the horse could
drop in the shafts if he liked.
Finally he started slowly, the wagon creaking and
the cow lowing mournfully at every step. The pained
animal’s voice rasped on Scarlett’s nerves until she
was tempted to stop and untie the beast. What good
would the cow do them anyway if there should be no
one at Tara? She couldn’t milk her and, even if she
could, the animal would probably kick anyone who
touched her sore udder. But she had the cow and she
might as well keep her. There was little else she had
in this world now.
Scarlett’s eyes grew misty when, at last, they
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reached the bottom of a gentle incline, for just over the
rise lay Tara! Then her heart sank. The decrepit animal would never pull the hill. The slope had always
seemed so slight, so gradual, in days when she galloped up it on her fleet-footed mare. It did not seem
possible it could have grown so steep since she saw it
last. The horse would never make it with the heavy
load.
Wearily she dismounted and took the animal by the
bridle.
“Get out, Prissy,” she commanded, “and take Wade.
Either carry him or make him walk. Lay the baby by
Miss Melanie.”
Wade broke into sobs and whimperings from which
Scarlett could only distinguish: “Dark–dark–Wade
fwightened!”
“Miss Scarlett, Ah kain walk. Mah feets done blistered an’ dey’s thoo mah shoes, an’ Wade an’ me doan
weigh so much an’–”
“Get out! Get out before I pull you out! And if I
do, I’m going to leave you right here, in the dark by
yourself. Quick, now!”
Prissy moaned, peering at the dark trees that closed
about them on both sides of the road–trees which
might reach out and clutch her if she left the shelter
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�PART THREE
of the wagon. But she laid the baby beside Melanie,
scrambled to the ground and, reaching up, lifted
Wade out. The little boy sobbed, shrinking close to
his nurse.
“Make him hush. I can’t stand it,” said Scarlett, taking the horse by the bridle and pulling him to a reluctant start. “Be a little man, Wade, and stop crying or I
will come over there and slap you.”
Why had God invented children, she thought savagely as she turned her ankle cruelly on the dark
road–useless, crying nuisances they were, always demanding care, always in the way. In her exhaustion,
there was no room for compassion for the frightened
child, trotting by Prissy’s side, dragging at her hand
and sniffling–only a weariness that she had borne
him, only a tired wonder that she had ever married
Charles Hamilton.
“Miss Scarlett,” whispered Prissy, clutching her mistress’ arm, “doan le’s go ter Tara. Dey’s not dar. Dey’s
all done gone. Maybe dey daid–Maw an’ all’m.”
The echo of her own thoughts infuriated her and
Scarlett shook off the pinching fingers.
“Then give me Wade’s hand. You can sit right down
here and stay.”
“No’m! No’m!”
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“Then HUSH!”
How slowly the horse moved! The moisture from
his slobbering mouth dripped down upon her hand.
Through her mind ran a few words of the song she
had once sung with Rhett–she could not recall the
rest:
“Just a few more days for to tote the weary load–”
“Just a few more steps,” hummed her brain, over
and over, “just a few more steps for to tote the weary
load.”
Then they topped the rise and before them lay the
oaks of Tara, a towering dark mass against the darkening sky. Scarlett looked hastily to see if there was a
light anywhere. There was none.
“They are gone!” said her heart, like cold lead in her
breast. “Gone!”
She turned the horse’s head into the driveway, and
the cedars, meeting over their heads cast them into
midnight blackness. Peering up the long tunnel of
darkness, straining her eyes she saw ahead–or did she
see? Were her tired eyes playing her tricks?– the white
bricks of Tara blurred and indistinct. Home! Home!
The dear white walls, the windows with the fluttering
curtains, the wide verandas–were they all there ahead
of her, in the gloom? Or did the darkness mercifully
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conceal such a horror as the MacIntosh house?
The avenue seemed miles long and the horse,
pulling stubbornly at her hand, plopped slower and
slower. Eagerly her eyes searched the darkness. The
roof seemed to be intact. Could it be–could it be–?
No, it wasn’t possible. War stopped for nothing, not
even Tara, built to last five hundred years. It could
not have passed over Tara.
Then the shadowy outline did take form. She pulled
the horse forward faster. The white walls did show
there through the darkness. And untarnished by
smoke. Tara had escaped! Home! She dropped the
bridle and ran the last few steps, leaped forward with
an urge to clutch the walls themselves in her arms.
Then she saw a form, shadowy in the dimness, emerging from the blackness of the front veranda and standing at the top of the steps. Tara was not deserted.
Someone was home!
A cry of joy rose to her throat and died there. The
house was so dark and still and the figure did not
move or call to her. What was wrong? What was
wrong? Tara stood intact, yet shrouded with the same
eerie quiet that hung over the whole stricken countryside. Then the figure moved. Stiffly and slowly, it
came down the steps.
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“Pa?” she whispered huskily, doubting almost that
it was he. “It’s me–Katie Scarlett. I’ve come home.”
Gerald moved toward her, silent as a sleepwalker,
his stiff leg dragging. He came close to her, looking
at her in a dazed way as if he believed she was part
of a dream. Putting out his hand, he laid it on her
shoulder. Scarlett felt it tremble, tremble as if he had
been awakened from a nightmare into a half-sense of
reality.
“Daughter,” he said with an effort. “Daughter.”
Then he was silent.
Why–he’s an old man! thought Scarlett.
Gerald’s shoulders sagged. In the face which she
could only see dimly, there was none of the virility,
the restless vitality of Gerald, and the eyes that looked
into hers had almost the same fear-stunned look that
lay in little Wade’s eyes. He was only a little old man
and broken.
And now, fear of unknown things seized her, leaped
swiftly out of the darkness at her and she could only
stand and stare at him, all the flood of questioning
dammed up at her lips.
From the wagon the faint wailing sounded again
and Gerald seemed to rouse himself with an effort.
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“It’s Melanie and her baby,” whispered Scarlett
rapidly. “She’s very ill–I brought her home.”
Gerald dropped his hand from her arm and straightened his shoulders. As he moved slowly to the side
of the wagon, there was a ghostly semblance of the
old host of Tara welcoming guests, as if Gerald spoke
words from out of shadowy memory.
“Cousin Melanie!”
Melanie’s voice murmured indistinctly.
“Cousin Melanie, this is your home. Twelve Oaks is
burned. You must stay with us.”
Thoughts of Melanie’s prolonged suffering spurred
Scarlett to action. The present was with her again,
the necessity of laying Melanie and her child on a soft
bed and doing those small things for her that could
be done.
“She must be carried. She can’t walk.”
There was a scuffle of feet and a dark figure emerged
from the cave of the front hall. Pork ran down the
steps.
“Miss Scarlett! Miss Scarlett!” he cried.
Scarlett caught him by the arms. Pork, part and parcel of Tara, as dear as the bricks and the cool corridors!
She felt his tears stream down on her hands as he pat773
�PART THREE
ted her clumsily, crying: “Sho is glad you back! Sho
is–”
Prissy burst into tears and incoherent mumblings:
“Poke! Poke, honey!” And little Wade, encouraged
by the weakness of his elders, began sniffling: “Wade
thirsty!”
Scarlett caught them all in hand.
“Miss Melanie is in the wagon and her baby too.
Pork, you must carry her upstairs very carefully and
put her in the back company room. Prissy, take the
baby and Wade inside and give Wade a drink of water. Is Mammy here, Pork? Tell her I want her.”
Galvanized by the authority in her voice, Pork approached the wagon and fumbled at the backboard.
A moan was wrenched from Melanie as he half-lifted,
half-dragged her from the feather tick on which she
had lain so many hours. And then she was in Pork’s
strong arms, her head drooping like a child’s across
his shoulder. Prissy, holding the baby and dragging
Wade by the hand, followed them up the wide steps
and disappeared into the blackness of the hall.
Scarlett’s bleeding fingers sought her father’s hand
urgently.
“Did they get well, Pa?”
“The girls are recovering.”
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�PART THREE
Silence fell and in the silence an idea too monstrous
for words took form. She could not, could not force
it to her lips. She swallowed and swallowed but a
sudden dryness seemed to have stuck the sides of her
throat together. Was this the answer to the frightening
riddle of Tara’s silence? As if answering the question
in her mind Gerald spoke.
“Your mother–” he said and stopped.
“And–Mother?”
“Your mother died yesterday.”
Her father’s arm held tightly in her own, Scarlett
felt her way down the wide dark hall which, even in
its blackness, was as familiar as her own mind. She
avoided the high-backed chairs, the empty gun rack,
the old sideboard with its protruding claw feet, and
she felt herself drawn by instinct to the tiny office at
the back of the house where Ellen always sat, keeping her endless accounts. Surely, when she entered
that room, Mother would again be sitting there before
the secretary and would look up, quill poised, and
rise with sweet fragrance and rustling hoops to meet
her tired daughter. Ellen could not be dead, not even
though Pa had said it, said it over and over like a parrot that knows only one phrase: “She died yesterday–
she died yesterday–she died yesterday.”
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Queer that she should feel nothing now, nothing except a weariness that shackled her limbs with heavy
iron chains and a hunger that made her knees tremble. She would think of Mother later. She must put
her mother out of her mind now, else she would stumble stupidly like Gerald or sob monotonously like
Wade.
Pork came down the wide dark steps toward them,
hurrying to press close to Scarlett like a cold animal
toward a fire.
“Lights?” she questioned. “Why is the house so
dark, Pork? Bring candles.”
“Dey tuck all de candles, Miss Scarlett, all ‘cept one
we been usin’ ter fine things in de dahk wid, an’ it’s
‘bout gone. Mammy been usin’ a rag in a dish of
hawg fat fer a light fer nussin’ Miss Careen an’ Miss
Suellen.”
“Bring what’s left of the candle,” she ordered.
“Bring it into Mother’s–into the office.”
Pork pattered into the dining room and Scarlett
groped her way into the inky small room and sank
down on the sofa. Her father’s arm still lay in the
crook of hers, helpless, appealing, trusting, as only
the hands of the very young and the very old can be.
“He’s an old man, an old tired man,” she thought
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�PART THREE
again and vaguely wondered why she could not care.
Light wavered into the room as Pork entered carrying high a half- burned candle stuck in a saucer. The
dark cave came to life, the sagging old sofa on which
they sat, the tall secretary reaching toward the ceiling
with Mother’s fragile carved chair before it, the racks
of pigeonholes, still stuffed with papers written in her
fine hand, the worn carpet–all, all were the same, except that Ellen was not there, Ellen with the faint scent
of lemon verbena sachet and the sweet look in her uptilted eyes. Scarlett felt a small pain in her heart as of
nerves numbed by a deep wound, struggling to make
themselves felt again. She must not let them come to
life now; there was all the rest of her life ahead of her
in which they could ache. But, not now! Please, God,
not now!
She looked into Gerald’s putty-colored face and, for
the first time in her life, she saw him unshaven, his
once florid face covered with silvery bristles. Pork
placed the candle on the candle stand and came to her
side. Scarlett felt that if he had been a dog he would
have laid his muzzle in her lap and whined for a kind
hand upon his head.
“Pork, how many darkies are here?”
“Miss Scarlett, dem trashy niggers done runned
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away an’ some of dem went off wid de Yankees an’–”
“How many are left?”
“Dey’s me, Miss Scarlett, an’ Mammy. She been
nussin’ de young Misses all day. An’ Dilcey, she settin’ up wid de young Misses now. Us three, Miss Scarlett.”
“Us three” where there had been a hundred. Scarlett
with an effort lifted her head on her aching neck. She
knew she must keep her voice steady. To her surprise,
words came out as coolly and naturally as if there had
never been a war and she could, by waving her hand,
call ten house servants to her.
“Pork, I’m starving. Is there anything to eat?”
“No’m. Dey tuck it all.”
“But the garden?”
“Dey tuhned dey hawses loose in it.”
“Even the sweet potato hills?”
Something almost like a pleased smile broke his
thick lips.
“Miss Scarlett, Ah done fergit de yams. Ah specs
dey’s right dar. Dem Yankee folks ain’ never seed no
yams an’ dey thinks dey’s jes’ roots an’–”
“The moon will be up soon. You go out and dig us
some and roast them. There’s no corn meal? No dried
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�PART THREE
peas? No chickens?”
“No’m. No’m. Whut chickens dey din’ eat right
hyah dey cah’ied off ‘cross dey saddles.”
They– They– They– Was there no end to what
‘They” had done? Was it not enough to burn and
kill? Must they also leave women and children and
helpless negroes to starve in a country which they had
desolated?
“Miss Scarlett, Ah got some apples Mammy buhied
unner de house. We been eatin’ on dem today.”
“Bring them before you dig the potatoes. And,
Pork–I–I feel so faint. Is there any wine in the cellar,
even blackberry?”
“Oh, Miss Scarlett, de cellar wuz de fust place dey
went.”
A swimming nausea compounded of hunger, sleeplessness, exhaustion and stunning blows came on
suddenly and she gripped the carved roses under her
hand.
“No wine,” she said dully, remembering the endless
rows of bottles in the cellar. A memory stirred.
“Pork, what of the corn whisky Pa buried in the oak
barrel under the scuppernong arbor?”
Another ghost of a smile lit the black face, a smile of
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pleasure and respect.
“Miss Scarlett, you sho is de beatenes’ chile! Ah
done plum fergit dat bah’l. But, Miss Scarlett, dat
whisky ain’ no good. Ain’ been dar but ‘bout a year
an’ whisky ain’ no good fer ladies nohow.”
How stupid negroes were! They never thought of
anything unless they were told. And the Yankees
wanted to free them.
“It’ll be good enough for this lady and for Pa. Hurry,
Pork, and dig it up and bring us two glasses and some
mint and sugar and I’ll mix a julep.”
“Miss Scarlett, you knows dey ain’ been no sugar at
Tara fer de longes’. An’ dey hawses done et up all de
mint an’ dey done broke all de glasses.”
If he says “They” once more, I’ll scream. I can’t help
it, she thought, and then, aloud: “Well, hurry and get
the whisky, quickly. We’ll take it neat.” And, as he
turned: “Wait, Pork. There’s so many things to do
that I can’t seem to think. . . . Oh, yes. I brought
home a horse and a cow and the cow needs milking,
badly, and unharness the horse and water him. Go
tell Mammy to look after the cow. Tell her she’s got
to fix the cow up somehow. Miss Melanie’s baby will
die if he doesn’t get something to eat and–”
“Miss Melly ain’–kain–?” Pork paused delicately.
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“Miss Melanie has no milk.” Dear God, but Mother
would faint at that!
“Well, Miss Scarlett, mah Dilcey ten’ ter Miss
Melly’s chile. Mah Dilcey got a new chile herseff an’
she got mo’n nuff fer both.”
“You’ve got a new baby, Pork?”
Babies, babies, babies. Why did God make so many
babies? But no, God didn’t make them. Stupid people
made them.
“Yas’m, big fat black boy. He–”
“Go tell Dilcey to leave the girls. I’ll look after them.
Tell her to nurse Miss Melanie’s baby and do what
she can for Miss Melanie. Tell Mammy to look after
the cow and put that poor horse in the stable.”
“Dey ain’ no stable, Miss Scarlett. Dey use it fer fiah
wood.”
“Don’t tell me any more what ‘They’ did. Tell Dilcey
to look after them. And you, Pork, go dig up that
whisky and then some potatoes.”
“But, Miss Scarlett, Ah ain’ got no light ter dig by.”
“You can use a stick of firewood, can’t you?”
“Dey ain’ no fiah wood–Dey–”
“Do something. . . . I don’t care what. But dig those
things and dig them fast. Now, hurry.”
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Pork scurried from the room as her voice roughened
and Scarlett was left alone with Gerald. She patted his
leg gently. She noted how shrunken were the thighs
that once bulged with saddle muscles. She must do
something to drag him from his apathy–but she could
not ask about Mother. That must come later, when she
could stand it.
“Why didn’t they burn Tara?”
Gerald stared at her for a moment as if not hearing
her and she repeated her question.
“Why–” he fumbled, “they used the house as a
headquarters.”
“Yankees–in this house?”
A feeling that the beloved walls had been defiled
rose in her. This house, sacred because Ellen had lived
in it, and those–those– in it.
“So they were, Daughter. We saw the smoke from
Twelve Oaks, across the river, before they came. But
Miss Honey and Miss India and some of their darkies
had refugeed to Macon, so we did not worry about
them. But we couldn’t be going to Macon. The
girls were so sick–your mother–we couldn’t be going. Our darkies ran–I’m not knowing where. They
stole the wagons and the mules. Mammy and Dilcey
and Pork–they didn’t run. The girls–your mother–we
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couldn’t be moving them.”
“Yes, yes.” He mustn’t talk about Mother. Anything
else. Even that General Sherman himself had used
this room, Mother’s office, for his headquarters. Anything else.
“The Yankees were moving on Jonesboro, to cut the
railroad. And they came up the road from the river–
thousands and thousands–and cannon and horses–
thousands. I met them on the front porch.”
“Oh, gallant little Gerald!” thought Scarlett, her
heart swelling, Gerald meeting the enemy on the
stairs of Tara as if an army stood behind him instead
of in front of him.
“They said for me to leave, that they would be burning the place. And I said that they would be burning
it over my head. We could not leave–the girls–your
mother were–”
“And then?” Must he revert to Ellen always?
“I told them there was sickness in the house, the
typhoid, and it was death to move them. They
could burn the roof over us. I did not want to leave
anyway–leave Tara–”
His voice trailed off into silence as he looked absently about the walls and Scarlett understood. There
were too many Irish ancestors crowding behind Ger783
�PART THREE
ald’s shoulders, men who had died on scant acres,
fighting to the end rather than leave the homes where
they had lived, plowed, loved, begotten sons.
“I said that they would be burning the house over
the heads of three dying women. But we would not
leave. The young officer was– was a gentleman.”
“A Yankee a gentleman? Why, Pa!”
“A gentleman. He galloped away and soon he was
back with a captain, a surgeon, and he looked at the
girls–and your mother.”
“You let a damned Yankee into their room?”
“He had opium. We had none. He saved your sisters. Suellen was hemorrhaging. He was as kind
as he knew how. And when he reported that they
were–ill–they did not burn the house. They moved
in, some general, his staff, crowding in. They filled all
the rooms except the sick room. And the soldiers–”
He paused again, as if too tired to go on. His stubbly
chin sank heavily in loose folds of flesh on his chest.
With an effort he spoke again.
“They camped all round the house, everywhere,
in the cotton, in the corn. The pasture was blue
with them. That night there were a thousand campfires. They tore down the fences and burned them
to cook with and the barns and the stables and the
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smokehouse. They killed the cows and the hogs and
the chickens–even my turkeys.” Gerald’s precious
turkeys. So they were gone. “They took things, even
the pictures–some of the furniture, the china–”
“The silver?”
“Pork and Mammy did something with the silver–
put it in the well– but I’m not remembering now,”
Gerald’s voice was fretful. “Then they fought the
battle from here–from Tara–there was so much noise,
people galloping up and stamping about. And later
the cannon at Jonesboro–it sounded like thunder–
even the girls could hear it, sick as they were, and
they kept saying over and over: ‘Papa, make it stop
thundering.”’
“And–and Mother? Did she know Yankees were in
the house?”
“She–never knew anything.”
“Thank God,” said Scarlett. Mother was spared
that. Mother never knew, never heard the enemy in
the rooms below, never heard the guns at Jonesboro,
never learned that the land which was part of her
heart was under Yankee feet.
“I saw few of them for I stayed upstairs with the
girls and your mother. I saw the young surgeon
mostly. He was kind, so kind, Scarlett. After he’d
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worked all day with the wounded, he came and sat
with them. He even left some medicine. He told me
when they moved on that the girls would recover but
your mother– She was so frail, he said–too frail to
stand it all. He said she had undermined her strength.
. . .”
In the silence that fell, Scarlett saw her mother as
she must have been in those last days, a thin power
of strength in Tara, nursing, working, doing without
sleep and food that the others might rest and eat.
“And then, they moved on. Then, they moved on.”
He was silent for a long time and then fumbled at
her hand.
“It’s glad I am you are home,” he said simply.
There was a scraping noise on the back porch. Poor
Pork, trained for forty years to clean his shoes before entering the house, did not forget, even in a time
like this. He came in, carefully carrying two gourds,
and the strong smell of dripping spirits entered before
him.
“Ah spilt a plen’y, Miss Scarlett. It’s pow’ful hard
ter po’ outer a bung hole inter a go’de.”
“That’s quite all right, Pork, and thank you.” She
took the wet gourd dipper from him, her nostrils
wrinkling in distaste at the reek.
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“Drink this, Father,” she said, pushing the whisky
in its strange receptacle into his hand and taking the
second gourd of water from Pork. Gerald raised it,
obedient as a child, and gulped noisily. She handed
the water to him but he shook his head.
As she took the whisky from him and held it to her
mouth, she saw his eyes follow her, a vague stirring
of disapproval in them.
“I know no lady drinks spirits,” she said briefly.
“But today I’m no lady, Pa, and there is work to do
tonight.”
She tilted the dipper, drew a deep breath and drank
swiftly. The hot liquid burned down her throat to her
stomach, choking her and bringing tears to her eyes.
She drew another breath and raised it again.
“Katie Scarlett,” said Gerald, the first note of authority she had heard in his voice since her return, “that is
enough. You’re not knowing spirits and they will be
making you tipsy.”
“Tipsy?” She laughed an ugly laugh. “Tipsy? I hope
it makes me drunk. I would like to be drunk and forget all of this.”
She drank again, a slow train of warmth lighting in
her veins and stealing through her body until even
her finger tips tingled. What a blessed feeling, this
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kindly fire. It seemed to penetrate even her ice-locked
heart and strength came coursing back into her body.
Seeing Gerald’s puzzled hurt face, she patted his knee
again and managed an imitation of the pert smile he
used to love.
“How could it make me tipsy, Pa? I’m your daughter. Haven’t I inherited the steadiest head in Clayton
County?”
He almost smiled into her tired face. The whisky
was bracing him too. She handed it back to him.
“Now you’re going to take another drink and then I
am going to take you upstairs and put you to bed.”
She caught herself. Why, this was the way she talked
to Wade–she should not address her father like this. It
was disrespectful. But he hung on her words.
“Yes, put you to bed,” she added lightly, “and give
you another drink–maybe all the dipper and make
you go to sleep. You need sleep and Katie Scarlett is
here, so you need not worry about anything. Drink.”
He drank again obediently and, slipping her arm
through his, she pulled him to his feet.
“Pork. . . .”
Pork took the gourd in one hand and Gerald’s arm
in the other. Scarlett picked up the flaring candle and
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�PART THREE
the three walked slowly into the dark hall and up the
winding steps toward Gerald’s room.
The room where Suellen and Carreen lay mumbling
and tossing on the same bed stank vilely with the
smell of the twisted rag burning in a saucer of bacon
fat, which provided the only light. When Scarlett first
opened the door the thick atmosphere of the room,
with all windows closed and the air reeking with sickroom odors, medicine smells and stinking grease, almost made her faint. Doctors might say that fresh air
was fatal in a sick room but if she were to sit here, she
must have air or die. She opened the three windows,
bringing in the smell of oak leaves and earth, but the
fresh air could do little toward dispelling the sickening odors which had accumulated for weeks in this
close room.
Carreen and Suellen, emaciated and white, slept
brokenly and awoke to mumble with wide, staring
eyes in the tall four-poster bed where they had whispered together in better, happier days. In the corner
of the room was an empty bed, a narrow French Empire bed with curling head and foot, a bed which Ellen
had brought from Savannah. This was where Ellen
had lain.
Scarlett sat beside the two girls, staring at them
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stupidly. The whisky taken on a stomach long empty
was playing tricks on her. Sometimes her sisters
seemed far away and tiny and their incoherent voices
came to her like the buzz of insects. And again, they
loomed large, rushing at her with lightning speed.
She was tired, tired to the bone. She could lie down
and sleep for days.
If she could only lie down and sleep and wake to
feel Ellen gently shaking her arm and saying: “It is
late, Scarlett. You must not be so lazy.” But she could
not ever do that again. If there were only Ellen, someone older than she, wiser and unweary, to whom she
could go! Someone in whose lap she could lay her
head, someone on whose shoulders she could rest her
burdens!
The door opened softly and Dilcey entered,
Melanie’s baby held to her breast, the gourd of
whisky in her hand. In the smoky, uncertain light,
she seemed thinner than when Scarlett last saw her
and the Indian blood was more evident in her face.
The high cheek bones were more prominent, the
hawk-bridged nose was sharper and her copper skin
gleamed with a brighter hue. Her faded calico dress
was open to the waist and her large bronze breast exposed. Held close against her, Melanie’s baby pressed
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his pale rosebud mouth greedily to the dark nipple,
sucking, gripping tiny fists against the soft flesh like
a kitten in the warm fur of its mother’s belly.
Scarlett rose unsteadily and put a hand on Dilcey’s
arm.
“It was good of you to stay, Dilcey.”
“How could I go off wid them trashy niggers, Miss
Scarlett, after yo’ pa been so good to buy me and my
little Prissy and yo’ ma been so kine?”
“Sit down, Dilcey. The baby can eat all right, then?
And how is Miss Melanie?”
“Nuthin’ wrong wid this chile ‘cept he hongry, and
whut it take to feed a hongry chile I got. No’m, Miss
Melanie is all right. She ain’ gwine die, Miss Scarlett. Doan you fret yo’seff. I seen too many, white and
black, lak her. She mighty tired and nervous like and
scared fo’ this baby. But I hesh her and give her some
of whut was lef’ in that go’de and she sleepin’.”
So the corn whisky had been used by the whole family! Scarlett thought hysterically that perhaps she had
better give a drink to little Wade and see if it would
stop his hiccoughs– And Melanie would not die. And
when Ashley came home–if he did come home . . .
No, she would think of that later too. So much to
think of– later! So many things to unravel–to decide.
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If only she could put off the hour of reckoning forever! She started suddenly as a creaking noise and
a rhythmic “Ker-bunk–ker-bunk–” broke the stillness
of the air outside.
“That’s Mammy gettin’ the water to sponge off the
young Misses. They takes a heap of bathin’,” explained Dilcey, propping the gourd on the table between medicine bottles and a glass.
Scarlett laughed suddenly. Her nerves must be
shredded if the noise of the well windlass, bound up
in her earliest memories, could frighten her. Dilcey
looked at her steadily as she laughed, her face immobile in its dignity, but Scarlett felt that Dilcey understood. She sank back in her chair. If she could only be
rid of her tight stays, the collar that choked her and
the slippers still full of sand and gravel that blistered
her feet.
The windlass creaked slowly as the rope wound
up, each creak bringing the bucket nearer the top.
Soon Mammy would be with her– Ellen’s Mammy,
her Mammy. She sat silent, intent on nothing, while
the baby, already glutted with milk, whimpered because he had lost the friendly nipple. Dilcey, silent
too, guided the child’s mouth back, quieting him in
her arms as Scarlett listened to the slow scuffing of
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�PART THREE
Mammy’s feet across the back yard. How still the
night air was! The slightest sounds roared in her ears.
The upstairs hall seemed to shake as Mammy’s ponderous weight came toward the door. Then Mammy
was in the room, Mammy with shoulders dragged
down by two heavy wooden buckets, her kind black
face sad with the uncomprehending sadness of a
monkey’s face.
Her eyes lighted up at the sight of Scarlett, her white
teeth gleamed as she set down the buckets, and Scarlett ran to her, laying her head on the broad, sagging
breasts which had held so many heads, black and
white. Here was something of stability, thought Scarlett, something of the old life that was unchanging.
But Mammy’s first words dispelled this illusion.
“Mammy’s chile is home! Oh, Miss Scarlett, now
dat Miss Ellen’s in de grabe, whut is we gwine ter
do? Oh, Miss Scarlett, effen Ah wuz jes’ daid longside
Miss Ellen! Ah kain make out widout Miss Ellen. Ain’
nuthin’ lef’ now but mizry an’ trouble. Jes’ weery
loads, honey, jes’ weery loads.”
As Scarlett lay with her head hugged close to
Mammy’s breast, two words caught her attention,
“weery loads.” Those were the words which had
hummed in her brain that afternoon so monotonously
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�PART THREE
they had sickened her. Now, she remembered the rest
of the song, remembered with a sinking heart:
“Just a few more days for to tote the weary load! No
matter, ‘twill never be light! Just a few more days till
we totter in the road–”
“No matter, ‘twill never be light”–she took the
words to her tired mind. Would her load never be
light? Was coming home to Tara to mean, not blessed
surcease, but only more loads to carry? She slipped
from Mammy’s arms and, reaching up, patted the
wrinkled black face.
“Honey, yo’ han’s!” Mammy took the small hands
with their blisters and blood clots in hers and looked
at them with horrified disapproval. “Miss Scarlett, Ah
done tole you an’ tole you dat you kin allus tell a lady
by her han’s an’–yo’ face sunbuhnt too!”
Poor Mammy, still the martinet about such unimportant things even though war and death had just
passed over her head! In another moment she would
be saying that young Misses with blistered hands and
freckles most generally didn’t never catch husbands
and Scarlett forestalled the remark.
“Mammy, I want you to tell me about Mother. I
couldn’t bear to hear Pa talk about her.”
Tears started from Mammy’s eyes as she leaned
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down to pick up the buckets. In silence she carried
them to the bedside and, turning down the sheet, began pulling up the night clothes of Suellen and Carreen. Scarlett, peering at her sisters in the dim flaring
light, saw that Carreen wore a nightgown, clean but
in tatters, and Suellen lay wrapped in an old negligee,
a brown linen garment heavy with tagging ends of
Irish lace. Mammy cried silently as she sponged the
gaunt bodies, using the remnant of an old apron as a
cloth.
“Miss Scarlett, it wuz dem Slatterys, dem trashy,
no-good, low-down po’-w’ite Slatterys dat kilt Miss
Ellen. Ah done tole her an’ tole her it doan do no
good doin’ things fer trashy folks, but Miss Ellen wuz
so sot in her ways an’ her heart so sof’ she couldn’
never say no ter nobody whut needed her.”
“Slatterys?” questioned Scarlett, bewildered. “How
do they come in?”
“Dey wuz sick wid disyere thing,” Mammy gestured with her rag to the two naked girls, dripping
with water on their damp sheet. “Ole Miss Slattery’s
gal, Emmie, come down wid it an’ Miss Slattery come
hotfootin’ it up hyah affer Miss Ellen, lak she allus
done w’en anything wrong. Why din’ she nuss her
own? Miss Ellen had mo’n she could tote anyways.
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But Miss Ellen she went down dar an’ she nuss Emmie. An’ Miss Ellen wuzn’ well a-tall herseff, Miss
Scarlett. Yo’ ma hadn’ been well fer de longes’. Dey
ain’ been too much ter eat roun’ hyah, wid de commissary stealin’ eve’y thing us growed. An’ Miss
Ellen eat lak a bird anyways. An’ Ah tole her an’ tole
her ter let dem w’ite trash alone, but she din’ pay me
no mine. Well’m, ‘bout de time Emmie look lak she
gittin’ better, Miss Carreen come down wid it. Yas’m,
de typhoy fly right up de road an’ ketch Miss Carreen,
an’ den down come Miss Suellen. So Miss Ellen, she
tuck an’ nuss dem too.
“Wid all de fightin’ up de road an’ de Yankees ‘cross
de river an’ us not knowin’ whut wuz gwine ter happen ter us an’ de fe’el han’s runnin’ off eve’y night,
Ah’s ‘bout crazy. But Miss Ellen jes’ as cool as a cucumber. ‘Cept she wuz worried ter a ghos’ ‘bout de
young Misses kase we couldn’ git no medicines nor
nuthin’. An’ one night she say ter me affer we done
sponge off de young Misses ‘bout ten times, she say,
‘Mammy, effen Ah could sell mah soul, Ah’d sell it fer
some ice ter put on mah gals’ haids.’
“She wouldn’t let Mist’ Gerald come in hyah, nor
Rosa nor Teena, nobody but me, kase Ah done had de
typhoy. An’ den it tuck her, Miss Scarlett, an’ Ah seed
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right off dat ‘twarnt no use.”
Mammy straightened up and, raising her apron,
dried her streaming eyes.
“She went fas’, Miss Scarlett, an’ even dat nice Yankee doctah couldn’ do nuthin’ fer her. She din’ know
nuthin’ a-tall. Ah call ter her an’ talk ter her but she
din’ even know her own Mammy.”
“Did she–did she ever mention me–call for me?”
“No, honey. She think she is lil gal back in Savannah. She din’ call nobody by name.”
Dilcey stirred and laid the sleeping baby across her
knees.
“Yes’m, she did. She did call somebody.”
“You hesh yo’ mouf, you Injun-nigger!” Mammy
turned with threatening violence on Dilcey.
“Hush, Mammy! Who did she call, Dilcey? Pa?”
“No’m. Not yo’ pa. It wuz the night the cotton
buhnt–”
“Has the cotton gone–tell me quickly!”
“Yes’m, it buhnt up. The sojers rolls it out of the
shed into the back yard and hollers, ‘Here the bigges’
bonfiah in Georgia,’ and tech it off.”
Three years of stored cotton–one hundred and fifty
thousand dollars, all in one blaze!
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�PART THREE
“And the fiah light up the place lak it wuz day–we
wuz scared the house would buhn, too, and it wuz
so bright in this hyah room that you could mos’ pick
a needle offen the flo’. And w’en the light shine in
the winder, it look lak it wake Miss Ellen up and she
set right up in bed and cry out loud, time and again:
‘Feeleep! Feeleep!’ I ain’ never heerd no sech name
but it wuz a name and she wuz callin’ him.”
Mammy stood as though turned to stone glaring
at Dilcey but Scarlett dropped her head into her
hands. Philippe–who was he and what had he been
to Mother that she died calling him?
The long road from Atlanta to Tara had ended,
ended in a blank wall, the road that was to end in
Ellen’s arms. Never again could Scarlett lie down, as
a child, secure beneath her father’s roof with the protection of her mother’s love wrapped about her like
an eiderdown quilt. There was no security or haven
to which she could turn now. No turning or twisting
would avoid this dead end to which she had come.
There was no one on whose shoulders she could rest
her burdens. Her father was old and stunned, her sisters ill, Melanie frail and weak, the children helpless,
and the negroes looking up to her with childlike faith,
clinging to her skirts, knowing that Ellen’s daughter
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would be the refuge Ellen had always been.
Through the window, in the faint light of the rising moon, Tara stretched before her, negroes gone,
acres desolate, barns ruined, like a body bleeding under her eyes, like her own body, slowly bleeding.
This was the end of the road, quivering old age, sickness, hungry mouths, helpless hands plucking at her
skirts. And at the end of this road, there was nothing–
nothing but Scarlett O’Hara Hamilton, nineteen years
old, a widow with a little child.
What would she do with all of this? Aunt Pitty and
the Burrs in Macon could take Melanie and her baby.
If the girls recovered, Ellen’s family would have to
take them, whether they liked it or not. And she and
Gerald could turn to Uncle James and Andrew.
She looked at the thin forms, tossing before her, the
sheets about them moist and dark from dripping water. She did not like Suellen. She saw it now with
a sudden clarity. She had never liked her. She did
not especially love Carreen–she could not love anyone who was weak. But they were of her blood, part
of Tara. No, she could not let them live out their lives
in their aunts’ homes as poor relations. An O’Hara a
poor relation, living on charity bread and sufferance!
Oh, never that!
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Was there no escape from this dead end? Her tired
brain moved so slowly. She raised her hands to her
head as wearily as if the air were water against which
her arms struggled. She took the gourd from between
the glass and bottle and looked in it. There was some
whisky left in the bottom, how much she could not
tell in the uncertain light. Strange that the sharp smell
did not offend her nostrils now. She drank slowly but
this time the liquid did not burn, only a dull warmth
followed.
She set down the empty gourd and looked about
her. This was all a dream, this smoke-filled dim
room, the scrawny girls, Mammy shapeless and huge
crouching beside the bed, Dilcey a still bronze image with the sleeping pink morsel against her dark
breast–all a dream from which she would awake, to
smell bacon frying in the kitchen, hear the throaty
laughter of the negroes and the creaking of wagons
fieldward bound, and Ellen’s gentle insistent hand
upon her.
Then she discovered she was in her own room, on
her own bed, faint moonlight pricking the darkness,
and Mammy and Dilcey were undressing her. The
torturing stays no longer pinched her waist and she
could breathe deeply and quietly to the bottom of
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�PART THREE
her lungs and her abdomen. She felt her stockings
being stripped gently from her and heard Mammy
murmuring indistinguishable comforting sounds as
she bathed her blistered feet. How cool the water
was, how good to lie here in softness, like a child.
She sighed and relaxed and after a time which might
have been a year or a second, she was alone and the
room was brighter as the rays of the moon streamed
in across the bed.
She did not know she was drunk, drunk with fatigue and whisky. She only knew she had left her tired
body and floated somewhere above it where there
was no pain and weariness and her brain saw things
with an inhuman clarity.
She was seeing things with new eyes for, somewhere
along the long road to Tara, she had left her girlhood
behind her. She was no longer plastic clay, yielding
imprint to each new experience. The clay had hardened, some time in this indeterminate day which had
lasted a thousand years. Tonight was the last time
she would ever be ministered to as a child. She was a
woman now and youth was gone.
No, she could not, would not, turn to Gerald’s or
Ellen’s families. The O’Haras did not take charity.
The O’Haras looked after their own. Her burdens
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were her own and burdens were for shoulders strong
enough to bear them. She thought without surprise,
looking down from her height, that her shoulders
were strong enough to bear anything now, having
borne the worst that could ever happen to her. She
could not desert Tara; she belonged to the red acres
far more than they could ever belong to her. Her roots
went deep into the blood-colored soil and sucked up
life, as did the cotton. She would stay at Tara and keep
it, somehow, keep her father and her sisters, Melanie
and Ashley’s child, the negroes. Tomorrow–oh, tomorrow! Tomorrow she would fit the yoke about her
neck. Tomorrow there would be so many things to
do. Go to Twelve Oaks and the MacIntosh place and
see if anything was left in the deserted gardens, go to
the river swamps and beat them for straying hogs and
chickens, go to Jonesboro and Lovejoy with Ellen’s
jewelry–there must be someone left there who would
sell something to eat. Tomorrow–tomorrow–her brain
ticked slowly and more slowly, like a clock running
down, but the clarity of vision persisted.
Of a sudden, the oft-told family tales to which she
had listened since babyhood, listened half-bored, impatient and but partly comprehending, were crystal
clear. Gerald, penniless, had raised Tara; Ellen had
risen above some mysterious sorrow; Grandfather
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Robillard, surviving the wreck of Napoleon’s throne,
had founded his fortunes anew on the fertile Georgia
coast; Great-grandfather Prudhomme had carved a
small kingdom out of the dark jungles of Haiti, lost it,
and lived to see his name honored in Savannah. There
were the Scarletts who had fought with the Irish Volunteers for a free Ireland and been hanged for their
pains and the O’Haras who died at the Boyne, battling to the end for what was theirs.
All had suffered crushing misfortunes and had not
been crushed. They had not been broken by the crash
of empires, the machetes of revolting slaves, war, rebellion, proscription, confiscation. Malign fate had
broken their necks, perhaps, but never their hearts.
They had not whined, they had fought. And when
they died, they died spent but unquenched. All of
those shadowy folks whose blood flowed in her veins
seemed to move quietly in the moonlit room. And
Scarlett was not surprised to see them, these kinsmen
who had taken the worst that fate could send and
hammered it into the best. Tara was her fate, her fight,
and she must conquer it.
She turned drowsily on her side, a slow creeping
blackness enveloping her mind. Were they really
there, whispering wordless encouragement to her, or
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was this part of her dream?
“Whether you are there or not,” she murmured
sleepily, “good night– and thank you.”
804
�CHAPTER XXV
Scarlett’s body was so stiff and sore
from the long miles of walking and jolting in the
wagon that every movement was agony. Her face was
crimson with sunburn and her blistered palms raw.
Her tongue was furred and her throat parched as if
flames had scorched it and no amount of water could
assuage her thirst. Her head felt swollen and she
winced even when she turned her eyes. A queasiness
of the stomach reminiscent of the early days of her
pregnancy made the smoking yams on the breakfast
table unendurable, even to the smell. Gerald could
have told her she was suffering the normal aftermath
of her first experience with hard drinking but Gerald
noticed nothing. He sat at the head of the table, a gray
old man with absent, faded eyes fastened on the door
and head cocked slightly to hear the rustle of Ellen’s
petticoats, to smell the lemon verbena sachet.
As Scarlett sat down, he mumbled: “We will wait
for Mrs. O’Hara. She is late.” She raised an aching
head, looked at him with startled incredulity and met
the pleading eyes of Mammy, who stood behind Gerald’s chair. She rose unsteadily, her hand at her throat
and looked down at her father in the morning sunlight. He peered up at her vaguely and she saw that
T HE NEXT MORNING
�PART THREE
his hands were shaking, that his head trembled a little.
Until this moment she had not realized how much
she had counted on Gerald to take command, to tell
her what she must do, and now– Why, last night he
had seemed almost himself. There had been none of
his usual bluster and vitality, but at least he had told
a connected story and now–now, he did not even remember Ellen was dead. The combined shock of the
coming of the Yankees and her death had stunned
him. She started to speak, but Mammy shook her
head vehemently and raising her apron dabbed at her
red eyes.
“Oh, can Pa have lost his mind?” thought Scarlett
and her throbbing head felt as if it would crack with
this added strain. “No, no. He’s just dazed by it all.
It’s like he was sick. He’ll get over it. He must get
over it. What will I do if he doesn’t?–I won’t think
about it now. I won’t think of him or Mother or any
of these awful things now. No, not till I can stand it.
There are too many other things to think about–things
that can be helped without my thinking of those I
can’t help.”
She left the dining room without eating, and went
out onto the back porch where she found Pork, bare806
�PART THREE
footed and in the ragged remains of his best livery,
sitting on the steps cracking peanuts. Her head was
hammering and throbbing and the bright, sunlight
stabbed into her eyes. Merely holding herself erect required an effort of will power and she talked as briefly
as possible, dispensing with the usual forms of courtesy her mother had always taught her to use with
negroes.
She began asking questions so brusquely and giving orders so decisively Pork’s eyebrows went up in
mystification. Miss Ellen didn’t never talk so short
to nobody, not even when she caught them stealing
pullets and watermelons. She asked again about the
fields, the gardens, the stock, and her green eyes had a
hard bright glaze which Pork had never seen in them
before.
“Yas’m, dat hawse daid, lyin’ dar whar Ah tie him
wid his nose in de water bucket he tuhned over.
No’m, de cow ain’ daid. Din’ you know? She done
have a calf las’ night. Dat why she beller so.”
“A fine midwife your Prissy will make,” Scarlett remarked caustically. “She said she was bellowing because she needed milking.”
“Well’m, Prissy ain’ fixin’ ter be no cow midwife,
Miss Scarlett,” Pork said tactfully. “An’ ain’ no use
807
�PART THREE
quarrelin’ wid blessin’s, ‘cause dat calf gwine ter
mean a full cow an’ plen’y buttermilk fer de young
Misses, lak dat Yankee doctah say dey’ need.”
“All right, go on. Any stock left?”
“No’m. Nuthin’ ‘cept one ole sow an’ her litter. Ah
driv dem inter de swamp de day de Yankees come,
but de Lawd knows how we gwine git dem. She
mean, dat sow.”
“We’ll get them all right. You and Prissy can start
right now hunting for her.”
Pork was amazed and indignant.
“Miss Scarlett, dat a fe’el han’s bizness. Ah’s allus
been a house nigger.”
A small fiend with a pair of hot tweezers plucked
behind Scarlett’s eyeballs.
“You two will catch the sow–or get out of here, like
the field hands did.”
Tears trembled in Pork’s hurt eyes. Oh, if only Miss
Ellen was here! She understood such niceties and realized the wide gap between the duties of a field hand
and those of a house nigger.
“Git out, Miss Scarlett? Whar’d Ah git out to, Miss
Scarlett?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. But anyone at Tara
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�PART THREE
who won’t work can go hunt up the Yankees. You can
tell the others that too.”
“Now, what about the corn and the cotton, Pork?”
“De cawn? Lawd, Miss Scarlett, dey pasture dey
hawses in de cawn an’ cah’ied off whut de hawses
din’ eat or spile. An’ dey driv dey cannons an’ waggins ‘cross de cotton till it plum ruint, ‘cept a few
acres over on de creek bottom dat dey din’ notice. But
dat cotton ain’ wuth foolin’ wid, ‘cause ain’ but ‘bout
three bales over dar.”
Three bales. Scarlett thought of the scores of bales
Tara usually yielded and her head hurt worse. Three
bales. That was little more than the shiftless Slatterys raised. To make matters worse, there was the
question of taxes. The Confederate government took
cotton for taxes in lieu of money, but three bales
wouldn’t even cover the taxes. Little did it matter
though, to her or the Confederacy, now that all the
field hands had run away and there was no one to
pick the cotton.
“Well, I won’t think of that either,” she told herself.
“Taxes aren’t a woman’s job anyway. Pa ought to look
after such things, but Pa– I won’t think of Pa now. The
Confederacy can whistle for its taxes. What we need
now is something to eat.”
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�PART THREE
“Pork, have any of you been to Twelve Oaks or the
MacIntosh place to see if there’s anything left in the
gardens there?”
“No, Ma’m! Us ain’ lef’ Tara. De Yankees mout git
us.”
“I’ll send Dilcey over to MacIntosh. Perhaps she’ll
find something there. And I’ll go to Twelve Oaks.”
“Who wid, chile?”
“By myself. Mammy must stay with the girls and
Mr. Gerald can’t–”
Pork set up an outcry which she found infuriating.
There might be Yankees or mean niggers at Twelve
Oaks. She mustn’t go alone.
“That will be enough, Pork. Tell Dilcey to start immediately. And you and Prissy go bring in the sow
and her litter,” she said briefly, turning on her heel.
Mammy’s old sunbonnet, faded but clean, hung on
its peg on the back porch and Scarlett put it on her
head, remembering, as from another world, the bonnet with the curling green plume which Rhett had
brought her from Paris. She picked up a large splitoak basket and started down the back stairs, each step
jouncing her head until her spine seemed to be trying
to crash through the top of her skull.
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�PART THREE
The road down to the river lay red and scorching between the ruined cotton fields. There were no
trees to cast a shade and the sun beat down through
Mammy’s sunbonnet as if it were made of tarlatan instead of heavy quilted calico, while the dust floating
upward sifted into her nose and throat until she felt
the membranes would crack dryly if she spoke. Deep
ruts and furrows were cut into the road where horses
had dragged heavy guns along it and the red gullies on either side were deeply gashed by the wheels.
The cotton was mangled and trampled where cavalry
and infantry, forced off the narrow road by the artillery, had marched through the green bushes, grinding them into the earth. Here and there in the road
and fields lay buckles and bits of harness leather, canteens flattened by hooves and caisson wheels, buttons, blue caps, worn socks, bits of bloody rags, all
the litter left by the marching army.
She passed the clump of cedars and the low brick
wall which marked the family burying ground, trying
not to think of the new grave lying by the three short
mounds of her little brothers. Oh, Ellen– She trudged
on down the dusty hill, passing the heap of ashes and
the stumpy chimney where the Slattery house had
stood, and she wished savagely that the whole tribe
of them had been part of the ashes. If it hadn’t been
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�PART THREE
for the Slatterys–if it hadn’t been for that nasty Emmie who’d had a bastard brat by their overseer–Ellen
wouldn’t have died.
She moaned as a sharp pebble cut into her blistered
foot. What was she doing here? Why was Scarlett
O’Hara, the belle of the County, the sheltered pride
of Tara, tramping down this rough road almost barefoot? Her little feet were made to dance, not to limp,
her tiny slippers to peep daringly from under bright
silks, not to collect sharp pebbles and dust. She was
born to be pampered and waited upon, and here she
was, sick and ragged, driven by hunger to hunt for
food in the gardens of her neighbors.
At the bottom of the long hill was the river and how
cool and still were the tangled trees overhanging the
water! She sank down on the low bank, and stripping off the remnants of her slippers and stockings,
dabbled her burning feet in the cool water. It would
be so good to sit here all day, away from the helpless eyes of Tara, here where only the rustle of leaves
and the gurgle of slow water broke the stillness. But
reluctantly she replaced her shoes and stockings and
trudged down the bank, spongy with moss, under the
shady trees. The Yankees had burned the bridge but
she knew of a footlog bridge across a narrow point
812
�PART THREE
of the stream a hundred yards below. She crossed
it cautiously and trudged uphill the hot half- mile to
Twelve Oaks.
There towered the twelve oaks, as they had stood
since Indian days, but with their leaves brown from
fire and the branches burned and scorched. Within
their circle lay the ruins of John Wilkes’ house, the
charred remains of that once stately home which had
crowned the hill in white-columned dignity. The deep
pit which had been the cellar, the blackened fieldstone foundations and two mighty chimneys marked
the site. One long column, half-burned, had fallen
across the lawn, crushing the cape jessamine bushes.
Scarlett sat down on the column, too sick at the sight
to go on. This desolation went to her heart as nothing she had ever experienced. Here was the Wilkes
pride in the dust at her feet. Here was the end of the
kindly, courteous house which had always welcomed
her, the house where in futile dreams she had aspired
to be mistress. Here she had danced and dined and
flirted and here she had watched with a jealous, hurting heart how Melanie smiled up at Ashley. Here,
too, in the cool shadows of the trees, Charles Hamilton had rapturously pressed her hand when she said
she would marry him.
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�PART THREE
“Oh, Ashley,” she thought, “I hope you are dead! I
could never bear for you to see this.”
Ashley had married his bride here but his son and
his son’s son would never bring brides to this house.
There would be no more matings and births beneath
this roof which she had so loved and longed to rule.
The house was dead and to Scarlett, it was as if all the
Wilkeses, too, were dead in its ashes.
“I won’t think of it now. I can’t stand it now. I’ll
think of it later,” she said aloud, turning her eyes
away.
Seeking the garden, she limped around the ruins, by
the trampled rose beds the Wilkes girls had tended so
zealously, across the back yard and through the ashes
to the smokehouse, barns and chicken houses. The
split-rail fence around the kitchen garden had been
demolished and the once orderly rows of green plants
had suffered the same treatment as those at Tara. The
soft earth was scarred with hoof prints and heavy
wheels and the vegetables were mashed into the soil.
There was nothing for her here.
She walked back across the yard and took the path
down toward the silent row of whitewashed cabins
in the quarters, calling “Hello!” as she went. But
no voice answered her. Not even a dog barked. Ev814
�PART THREE
idently the Wilkes negroes had taken flight or followed the Yankees. She knew every slave had his
own garden patch and as she reached the quarters,
she hoped these little patches had been spared.
Her search was rewarded but she was too tired even
to feel pleasure at the sight of turnips and cabbages,
wilted for want of water but still standing, and straggling butter beans and snap beans, yellow but edible. She sat down in the furrows and dug into the
earth with hands that shook, filling her basket slowly.
There would be a good meal at Tara tonight, in spite
of the lack of side meat to boil with the vegetables.
Perhaps some of the bacon grease Dilcey was using
for illumination could be used for seasoning. She
must remember to tell Dilcey to use pine knots and
save the grease for cooking.
Close to the back step of one cabin, she found a short
row of radishes and hunger assaulted her suddenly.
A spicy, sharp-tasting radish was exactly what her
stomach craved. Hardly waiting to rub the dirt off on
her skirt, she bit off half and swallowed it hastily. It
was old and coarse and so peppery that tears started
in her eyes. No sooner had the lump gone down than
her empty outraged stomach revolted and she lay in
the soft dirt and vomited tiredly.
815
�PART THREE
The faint niggery smell which crept from the cabin
increased her nausea and, without strength to combat it, she kept on retching miserably while the cabins
and trees revolved swiftly around her.
After a long time, she lay weakly on her face, the
earth as soft and comfortable as a feather pillow, and
her mind wandered feebly here and there. She, Scarlett O’Hara was lying behind a negro cabin, in the
midst of ruins, too sick and too weak to move, and no
one in the world knew or cared. No one would care if
they did know, for everyone had too many troubles of
his own to worry about her. And all this was happening to her, Scarlett O’Hara, who had never raised her
hand even to pick up her discarded stockings from
the floor or to tie the laces of her slippers–Scarlett,
whose little headaches and tempers had been coddled
and catered to all her life.
As she lay prostrate, too weak to fight off memories and worries, they rushed at her like buzzards
waiting for death. No longer had she the strength to
say: “I’ll think of Mother and Pa and Ashley and all
this ruin later– Yes, later when I can stand it.” She
could not stand it now, but she was thinking of them
whether she willed it or not. The thoughts circled and
swooped above her, dived down and drove tearing
816
�PART THREE
claws and sharp beaks into her mind. For a timeless
time, she lay still, her face in the dirt, the sun beating hotly upon her, remembering things and people
who were dead, remembering a way of living that
was gone forever–and looking upon the harsh vista
of the dark future.
When she arose at last and saw again the black ruins
of Twelve Oaks, her head was raised high and something that was youth and beauty and potential tenderness had gone out of her face forever. What was
past was past. Those who were dead were dead. The
lazy luxury of the old days was gone, never to return.
And, as Scarlett settled the heavy basket across her
arm, she had settled her own mind and her own life.
There was no going back and she was going forward.
Throughout the South for fifty years there would
be bitter-eyed women who looked backward, to dead
times, to dead men, evoking memories that hurt and
were futile, bearing poverty with bitter pride because
they had those memories. But Scarlett was never to
look back.
She gazed at the blackened stones and, for the last
time, she saw Twelve Oaks rise before her eyes as it
had once stood, rich and proud, symbol of a race and
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�PART THREE
a way of living. Then she started down the road toward Tara, the heavy basket cutting into her flesh.
Hunger gnawed at her empty stomach again and
she said aloud: “As God is my witness, as God is my
witness, the Yankees aren’t going to lick me. I’m going to live through this, and when it’s over, I’m never
going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If
I have to steal or kill–as God is my witness, I’m never
going to be hungry again.”
In the days that followed, Tara might have been Crusoe’s desert island, so still it was, so isolated from
the rest of the world. The world lay only a few
miles away, but a thousand miles of tumbling waves
might have stretched between Tara and Jonesboro
and Fayetteville and Lovejoy, even between Tara and
the neighbors’ plantations. With the old horse dead,
their one mode of conveyance was gone, and there
was neither time nor strength for walking the weary
red miles.
Sometimes, in the days of backbreaking work, in
the desperate struggle for food and the never-ceasing
care of the three sick girls, Scarlett found herself
straining her ears for familiar sounds–the shrill laughter of the pickaninnies in the quarters, the creaking
of wagons home from the fields, the thunder of Ger818
�PART THREE
ald’s stallion tearing across the pasture, the crunching of carriage wheels on the drive and the gay voices
of neighbors dropping in for an afternoon of gossip.
But she listened in vain. The road lay still and deserted and never a cloud of red dust proclaimed the
approach of visitors. Tara was an island in a sea of
rolling green hills and red fields.
Somewhere was the world and families who ate and
slept safely under their own roofs. Somewhere girls in
thrice-turned dresses were flirting gaily and singing
“When This Cruel War Is Over,” as she had done only
a few weeks before. Somewhere there was a war
and cannon booming and burning towns and men
who rotted in hospitals amid sickening-sweet stinks.
Somewhere a barefoot army in dirty homespun was
marching, fighting, sleeping, hungry and weary with
the weariness that comes when hope is gone. And
somewhere the hills of Georgia were blue with Yankees, well-fed Yankees on sleek corn-stuffed horses.
Beyond Tara was the war and the world. But on the
plantation the war and the world did not exist except as memories which must be fought back when
they rushed to mind in moments of exhaustion. The
world outside receded before the demands of empty
and half-empty stomachs and life resolved itself into
819
�PART THREE
two related thoughts, food and how to get it.
Food! Food! Why did the stomach have a longer
memory than the mind? Scarlett could banish heartbreak but not hunger and each morning as she lay half
asleep, before memory brought back to her mind war
and hunger, she curled drowsily expecting the sweet
smells of bacon frying and rolls baking. And each
morning she sniffed so hard to really smell the food
she woke herself up.
There were apples, yams, peanuts and milk on the
table at Tara but never enough of even this primitive
fare. At the sight of them, three times a day, her memory would rush back to the old days, the meals of the
old days, the candle-lit table and the food perfuming
the air.
How careless they had been of food then, what
prodigal waste! Rolls, corn muffins, biscuits and waffles, dripping butter, all at one meal. Ham at one
end of the table and fried chicken at the other, collards swimming richly in pot liquor iridescent with
grease, snap beans in mountains on brightly flowered porcelain, fried squash, stewed okra, carrots in
cream sauce thick enough to cut. And three desserts,
so everyone might have his choice, chocolate layer
cake, vanilla blanc mange and pound cake topped
820
�PART THREE
with sweet whipped cream. The memory of those savory meals had the power to bring tears to her eyes as
death and war had failed to do, and the power to turn
her ever-gnawing stomach from rumbling emptiness
to nausea. For the appetite Mammy had always deplored, the healthy appetite of a nineteen-year-old
girl, now was increased fourfold by the hard and unremitting labor she had never known before.
Hers was not the only troublesome appetite at Tara,
for wherever she turned hungry faces, black and
white, met her eyes. Soon Carreen and Suellen would
have the insatiable hunger of typhoid convalescents.
Already little Wade whined monotonously: “Wade
doan like yams. Wade hungwy.”
The others grumbled, too:
“Miss Scarlett, ‘ness I gits mo’ to eat, I kain nuss neither of these chillun.”
“Miss Scarlett, ef Ah doan have mo’ in mah stummick, Ah kain split no wood.”
“Lamb, Ah’s perishin’ fer real vittles.”
“Daughter, must we always have yams?”
Only Melanie did not complain, Melanie whose face
grew thinner and whiter and twitched with pain even
in her sleep.
821
�PART THREE
“I’m not hungry, Scarlett. Give my share of the milk
to Dilcey. She needs it to nurse the babies. Sick people
are never hungry.”
It was her gentle hardihood which irritated Scarlett more than the nagging whining voices of the others. She could–and did–shout them down with bitter
sarcasm but before Melanie’s unselfishness she was
helpless, helpless and resentful. Gerald, the negroes
and Wade clung to Melanie now, because even in her
weakness she was kind and sympathetic, and these
days Scarlett was neither.
Wade especially haunted Melanie’s room. There
was something wrong with Wade, but just what it was
Scarlett had no time to discover. She took Mammy’s
word that the little boy had worms and dosed him
with the mixture of dried herbs and bark which Ellen
always used to worm the pickaninnies. But the vermifuge only made the child look paler. These days
Scarlett hardly thought of Wade as a person. He was
only another worry, another mouth to feed. Some
day when the present emergency was over, she would
play with him, tell him stories and teach him his A B
C’s but now she did not have the time or the soul or
the inclination. And, because he always seemed underfoot when she was most weary and worried, she
822
�PART THREE
often spoke sharply to him.
It annoyed her that her quick reprimands brought
such acute fright to his round eyes, for he looked
so simple minded when he was frightened. She did
not realize that the little boy lived shoulder to shoulder with terror too great for an adult to comprehend.
Fear lived with Wade, fear that shook his soul and
made him wake screaming in the night. Any unexpected noise or sharp word set him to trembling, for
in his mind noises and harsh words were inextricably
mixed with Yankees and he was more afraid of Yankees than of Prissy’s hants.
Until the thunders of the siege began, he had never
known anything but a happy, placid, quiet life. Even
though his mother paid him little attention, he had
known nothing but petting and kind words until the
night when he was jerked from slumber to find the
sky aflame and the air deafening with explosions. In
that night and the day which followed, he had been
slapped by his mother for the first time and had heard
her voice raised at him in harsh words. Life in the
pleasant brick house on Peachtree Street, the only life
he knew, had vanished that night and he would never
recover from its loss. In the flight from Atlanta, he
had understood nothing except that the Yankees were
823
�PART THREE
after him and now he still lived in fear that the Yankees would catch him and cut him to pieces. Whenever Scarlett raised her voice in reproof, he went weak
with fright as his vague childish memory brought up
the horrors of the first time she had ever done it. Now,
Yankees and a cross voice were linked forever in his
mind and he was afraid of his mother.
Scarlett could not help noticing that the child was
beginning to avoid her and, in the rare moments
when her unending duties gave her time to think
about it, it bothered her a great deal. It was even
worse than having him at her skirts all the time and
she was offended that his refuge was Melanie’s bed
where he played quietly at games Melanie suggested
or listened to stories she told. Wade adored “Auntee”
who had a gentle voice, who always smiled and who
never said: “Hush, Wade! You give me a headache”
or “Stop fidgeting, Wade, for Heaven’s sake!”
Scarlett had neither the time nor the impulse to pet
him but it made her jealous to see Melanie do it.
When she found him one day standing on his head
in Melanie’s bed and saw him collapse on her, she
slapped him.
“Don’t you know better than to jiggle Auntee like
that when she’s sick? Now, trot right out in the yard
824
�PART THREE
and play, and don’t come in here again.”
But Melanie reached out a weak arm and drew the
wailing child to her.
“There, there, Wade. You didn’t mean to jiggle me,
did you? He doesn’t bother me, Scarlett. Do let him
stay with me. Let me take care of him. It’s the only
thing I can do till I get well, and you’ve got your
hands full enough without having to watch him.”
“Don’t be a goose, Melly,” said Scarlett shortly. “You
aren’t getting well like you should and having Wade
fall on your stomach won’t help you. Now, Wade, if
I ever catch you on Auntee’s bed again, I’ll wear you
out. And stop sniffling. You are always sniffling. Try
to be a little man.”
Wade flew sobbing to hide himself under the house.
Melanie bit her lip and tears came to her eyes, and
Mammy standing in the hall, a witness to the scene,
scowled and breathed hard. But no one talked back to
Scarlett these days. They were all afraid of her sharp
tongue, all afraid of the new person who walked in
her body.
Scarlett reigned supreme at Tara now and, like others suddenly elevated to authority, all the bullying instincts in her nature rose to the surface. It was not
that she was basically unkind. It was because she was
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�PART THREE
so frightened and unsure of herself she was harsh lest
others learn her inadequacies and refuse her authority. Besides, there was some pleasure in shouting at
people and knowing they were afraid. Scarlett found
that it relieved her overwrought nerves. She was
not blind to the fact that her personality was changing. Sometimes when her curt orders made Pork stick
out his under lip and Mammy mutter: “Some folks
rides mighty high dese days,” she wondered where
her good manners had gone. All the courtesy, all the
gentleness Ellen had striven to instill in her had fallen
away from her as quickly as leaves fall from trees in
the first chill wind of autumn.
Time and again, Ellen had said: “Be firm but be
gentle with inferiors, especially darkies.” But if she
was gentle the darkies would sit in the kitchen all
day, talking endlessly about the good old days when
a house nigger wasn’t supposed to do a field hand’s
work.
“Love and cherish your sisters. Be kind to the afflicted,” said Ellen. “Show tenderness to those in sorrow and in trouble.”
She couldn’t love her sisters now. They were simply a dead weight on her shoulders. And as for cherishing them, wasn’t she bathing them, combing their
826
�PART THREE
hair and feeding them, even at the expense of walking
miles every day to find vegetables? Wasn’t she learning to milk the cow, even though her heart was always in her throat when that fearsome animal shook
its horns at her? And as for being kind, that was a
waste of time. If she was overly kind to them, they’d
probably prolong their stay in bed, and she wanted
them on their feet again as soon as possible, so there
would be four more hands to help her.
They were convalescing slowly and lay scrawny and
weak in their bed. While they had been unconscious,
the world had changed. The Yankees had come, the
darkies had gone and Mother had died. Here were
three unbelievable happenings and their minds could
not take them in. Sometimes they believed they must
still be delirious and these things had not happened
at all. Certainly Scarlett was so changed she couldn’t
be real. When she hung over the foot of their bed and
outlined the work she expected them to do when they
recovered, they looked at her as if she were a hobgoblin. It was beyond their comprehension that they
no longer had a hundred slaves to do the work. It
was beyond their comprehension that an O’Hara lady
should do manual labor.
“But, Sister,” said Carreen, her sweet childish face
827
�PART THREE
blank with consternation. “I couldn’t split kindling!
It would ruin my hands!”
“Look at mine,” answered Scarlett with a frightening smile as she pushed blistered and calloused palms
toward her.
“I think you are hateful to talk to Baby and me like
this!” cried Suellen. “I think you are lying and trying
to frighten us. If Mother were only here, she wouldn’t
let you talk to us like this! Split kindling, indeed!”
Suellen looked with weak loathing at her older sister, feeling sure Scarlett said these things just to be
mean. Suellen had nearly died and she had lost
her mother and she was lonely and scared and she
wanted to be petted and made much of. Instead,
Scarlett looked over the foot of the bed each day, appraising their improvement with a hateful new gleam
in her slanting green eyes and talked about making beds, preparing food, carrying water buckets and
splitting kindling. And she looked as if she took a
pleasure in saying such awful things.
Scarlett did take pleasure in it. She bullied the negroes and harrowed the feelings of her sisters not only
because she was too worried and strained and tired to
do otherwise but because it helped her to forget her
own bitterness that everything her mother had told
828
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her about life was wrong.
Nothing her mother had taught her was of any value
whatsoever now and Scarlett’s heart was sore and
puzzled. It did not occur to her that Ellen could not
have foreseen the collapse of the civilization in which
she raised her daughters, could not have anticipated
the disappearings of the places in society for which
she trained them so well. It did not occur to her that
Ellen had looked down a vista of placid future years,
all like the uneventful years of her own life, when she
had taught her to be gentle and gracious, honorable
and kind, modest and truthful. Life treated women
well when they had learned those lessons, said Ellen.
Scarlett thought in despair: “Nothing, no, nothing,
she taught me is of any help to me! What good will
kindness do me now? What value is gentleness? Better that I’d learned to plow or chop cotton like a darky.
Oh, Mother, you were wrong!”
She did not stop to think that Ellen’s ordered world
was gone and a brutal world had taken its place,
a world wherein every standard, every value had
changed. She only saw, or thought she saw, that her
mother had been wrong, and she changed swiftly to
meet this new world for which she was not prepared.
Only her feeling for Tara had not changed. She
829
�PART THREE
never came wearily home across the fields and saw
the sprawling white house that her heart did not swell
with love and the joy of homecoming. She never
looked out of her window at green pastures and red
fields and tall tangled swamp forest that a sense of
beauty did not fill her. Her love for this land with
its softly rolling hills of bright-red soil, this beautiful red earth that was blood colored, garnet, brick
dust, vermilion, which so miraculously grew green
bushes starred with white puffs, was one part of Scarlett which did not change when all else was changing.
Nowhere else in the world was there land like this.
When she looked at Tara she could understand, in
part, why wars were fought. Rhett was wrong when
he said men fought wars for money. No, they fought
for swelling acres, softly furrowed by the plow, for
pastures green with stubby cropped grass, for lazy
yellow rivers and white houses that were cool amid
magnolias. These were the only things worth fighting
for, the red earth which was theirs and would be their
sons’, the red earth which would bear cotton for their
sons and their sons’ sons.
The trampled acres of Tara were all that was left to
her, now that Mother and Ashley were gone, now that
Gerald was senile from shock, and money and darkies
830
�PART THREE
and security and position had vanished overnight. As
from another world she remembered a conversation
with her father about the land and wondered how she
could have been so young, so ignorant, as not to understand what he meant when he said that the land
was the one thing in the world worth fighting for.
“For ‘tis the only thing in the world that lasts . . .
and to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them the
land they live on is like their mother. . . . ‘Tis the only
thing worth working for, fighting for, dying for.”
Yes, Tara was worth fighting for, and she accepted
simply and without question the fight. No one was
going to get Tara away from her. No one was going
to set her and her people adrift on the charity of relatives. She would hold Tara, if she had to break the
back of every person on it.
831
�CHAPTER XXVI
at Tara two weeks since her return
from Atlanta when the largest blister on her foot began to fester, swelling until it was impossible for her
to put on her shoe or do more than hobble about on
her heel. Desperation plucked at her when she looked
at the angry sore on her toe. Suppose it should gangrene like the soldiers’ wounds and she should die,
far away from a doctor? Bitter as life was now, she
had no desire to leave it. And who would look after
Tara if she should die?
She had hoped when she first came home that Gerald’s old spirit would revive and he would take command, but in these two weeks that hope had vanished. She knew now that, whether she liked it or
not, she had the plantation and all its people on her
two inexperienced hands, for Gerald still sat quietly,
like a man in a dream, so frighteningly absent from
Tara, so gentle. To her pleas for advice he gave as his
only answer: “Do what you think best, Daughter.” Or
worse still, “Consult with your mother, Puss.”
He never would be any different and now Scarlett
realized the truth and accepted it without emotion–
that until he died Gerald would always be waiting for
Ellen, always listening for her. He was in some dim
S CARLETT
HAD BEEN
�PART THREE
borderline country where time was standing still and
Ellen was always in the next room. The mainspring
of his existence was taken away when she died and
with it had gone his bounding assurance, his impudence and his restless vitality. Ellen was the audience
before which the blustering drama of Gerald O’Hara
had been played. Now the curtain had been rung
down forever, the footlights dimmed and the audience suddenly vanished, while the stunned old actor
remained on his empty stage, waiting for his cues.
That morning the house was still, for everyone except Scarlett, Wade and the three sick girls was in the
swamp hunting the sow. Even Gerald had aroused a
little and stumped off across the furrowed fields, one
hand on Pork’s arm and a coil of rope in the other.
Suellen and Careen had cried themselves to sleep,
as they did at least twice a day when they thought
of Ellen, tears of grief and weakness oozing down
their sunken cheeks. Melanie, who had been propped
up on pillows for the first time that day, lay covered
with a mended sheet between two babies, the downy
flaxen head of one cuddled in her arm, the kinky
black head of Dilcey’s child held as gently in the other.
Wade sat at the bottom of the bed, listening to a fairy
story.
833
�PART THREE
To Scarlett, the stillness at Tara was unbearable, for
it reminded her too sharply of the deathlike stillness of the desolate country through which she had
passed that long day on her way home from Atlanta.
The cow and the calf had made no sound for hours.
There were no birds twittering outside her window
and even the noisy family of mockers who had lived
among the harshly rustling leaves of the magnolia for
generations had no song that day. She had drawn
a low chair close to the open window of her bedroom, looking out on the front drive, the lawn and the
empty green pasture across the road, and she sat with
her skirts well above her knees and her chin resting
on her arms on the window sill. There was a bucket
of well water on the floor beside her and every now
and then she lowered her blistered foot into it, screwing up her face at the stinging sensation.
Fretting, she dug her chin into her arm. Just when
she needed her strength most, this toe had to fester.
Those fools would never catch the sow. It had taken
them a week to capture the pigs, one by one, and now
after two weeks the sow was still at liberty. Scarlett
knew that if she were just there in the swamp with
them, she could tuck up her dress to her knees and
take the rope and lasso the sow before you could say
Jack Robinson.
834
�PART THREE
But even after the sow was caught–if she were
caught? What then, after she and her litter were
eaten? Life would go on and so would appetites.
Winter was coming and there would be no food, not
even the poor remnants of the vegetables from the
neighbors’ gardens. They must have dried peas and
sorghum and meal and rice and–and– oh, so many
things. Corn and cotton seed for next spring’s planting, and new clothes too. Where was it all to come
from and how would she pay for it?
She had privately gone through Gerald’s pockets
and his cash box and all she could find was stacks
of Confederate bonds and three thousand dollars in
Confederate bills. That was about enough to buy one
square meal for them all, she thought ironically, now
that Confederate money was worth almost less than
nothing at all. But if she did have money and could
find food, how would she haul it home to Tara? Why
had God let the old horse die? Even that sorry animal
Rhett had stolen would make all the difference in the
world to them. Oh, those fine sleek mules which used
to kick up their heels in the pasture across the road,
and the handsome carriage horses, her little mare, the
girls’ ponies and Gerald’s big stallion racing about
and tearing up the turf– Oh, for one of them, even
the balkiest mule!
835
�PART THREE
But, no matter–when her foot healed she would
walk to Jonesboro. It would be the longest walk she
had ever taken in her life, but walk it she would. Even
if the Yankees had burned the town completely, she
would certainly find someone in the neighborhood
who could tell her where to get food. Wade’s pinched
face rose up before her eyes. He didn’t like yams,
he repeated; wanted a drumstick and some rice and
gravy.
The bright sunlight in the front yard suddenly
clouded and the trees blurred through tears. Scarlett dropped her head on her arms and struggled
not to cry. Crying was so useless now. The only
time crying ever did any good was when there was
a man around from whom you wished favors. As
she crouched there, squeezing her eyes tightly to keep
back the tears, she was startled by the sound of trotting hooves. But she did not raise her head. She
had imagined that sound too often in the nights and
days of these last two weeks, just as she had imagined
she heard the rustle of Ellen’s skirts. Her heart hammered, as it always did at such moments, before she
told herself sternly: “Don’t be a fool.”
But the hooves slowed down in a startlingly natural
way to the rhythm of a walk and there was the mea836
�PART THREE
sured scrunch-scrunch on the gravel. It was a horse–
the Tarletons, the Fontaines! She looked up quickly. It
was a Yankee cavalryman.
Automatically, she dodged behind the curtain and
peered fascinated at him through the dim folds of the
cloth, so startled that the breath went out of her lungs
with a gasp.
He sat slouched in the saddle, a thick, rough-looking
man with an unkempt black beard straggling over his
unbuttoned blue jacket. Little close-set eyes, squinting in the sun glare, calmly surveyed the house from
beneath the visor of his tight blue cap. As he slowly
dismounted and tossed the bridle reins over the hitching post, Scarlett’s breath came back to her as suddenly and painfully as after a blow in the stomach. A
Yankee, a Yankee with a long pistol on his hip! And
she was alone in the house with three sick girls and
the babies!
As he lounged up the walk, hand on holster, beady
little eyes glancing to right and left, a kaleidoscope of
jumbled pictures spun in her mind, stories Aunt Pittypat had whispered of attacks on unprotected women,
throat cuttings, houses burned over the heads of dying women, children bayoneted because they cried,
all of the unspeakable horrors that lay bound up in
837
�PART THREE
the name of “Yankee.”
Her first terrified impulse was to hide in the closet,
crawl under the bed, fly down the back stairs and
run screaming to the swamp, anything to escape him.
Then she heard his cautious feet on the front steps
and his stealthy tread as he entered the hall and she
knew that escape was cut off. Too cold with fear
to move, she heard his progress from room to room
downstairs, his steps growing louder and bolder as
he discovered no one. Now he was in the dining room
and in a moment he would walk out into the kitchen.
At the thought of the kitchen, rage suddenly leaped
up in Scarlett’s breast, so sharply that it jabbed at
her heart like a knife thrust, and fear fell away before her overpowering fury. The kitchen! There, over
the open kitchen fire were two pots, one filled with
apples stewing and the other with a hodgepodge of
vegetables brought painfully from Twelve Oaks and
the MacIntosh garden–dinner that must serve for nine
hungry people and hardly enough for two. Scarlett
had been restraining her appetite for hours, waiting
for the return of the others and the thought of the
Yankee eating their meager meal made her shake with
anger.
God damn them all! They descended like locusts
838
�PART THREE
and left Tara to starve slowly and now they were back
again to steal the poor leavings. Her empty stomach
writhed within her. By God, this was one Yankee who
would do no more stealing!
She slipped off her worn shoe and, barefooted, she
pattered swiftly to the bureau, not even feeling her
festered toe. She opened the top drawer soundlessly
and caught up the heavy pistol she had brought from
Atlanta, the weapon Charles had worn but never
fired. She fumbled in the leather box that hung on
the wall below his saber and brought out a cap. She
slipped it into place with a hand that did not shake.
Quickly and noiselessly, she ran into the upper hall
and down the stairs, steadying herself on the banisters with one hand and holding the pistol close to her
thigh in the folds of her skirt.
“Who’s there?” cried a nasal voice and she stopped
on the middle of the stairs, the blood thudding in her
ears so loudly she could hardly hear him. “Halt or I’ll
shoot!” came the voice.
He stood in the door of the dining room, crouched
tensely, his pistol in one hand and, in the other, the
small rosewood sewing box fitted with gold thimble,
gold-handled scissors and tiny gold- topped acorn of
emery. Scarlett’s legs felt cold to the knees but rage
839
�PART THREE
scorched her face. Ellen’s sewing box in his hands.
She wanted to cry: “Put it down! Put it down, you
dirty–” but words would not come. She could only
stare over the banisters at him and watch his face
change from harsh tenseness to a half-contemptuous,
half-ingratiating smile.
“So there is somebody ter home,” he said, slipping
his pistol back into its holster and moving into the
hall until he stood directly below her. “All alone, little
lady?”
Like lightning, she shoved her weapon over the banisters and into the startled bearded face. Before he
could even fumble at his belt, she pulled the trigger.
The back kick of the pistol made her reel, as the roar
of the explosion filled her ears and the acrid smoke
stung her nostrils. The man crashed backwards to the
floor, sprawling into the dining room with a violence
that shook the furniture. The box clattered from his
hand, the contents spilling about him. Hardly aware
that she was moving, Scarlett ran down the stairs and
stood over him, gazing down into what was left of
the face above the beard, a bloody pit where the nose
had been, glazing eyes burned with powder. As she
looked, two streams of blood crept across the shining
floor, one from his face and one from the back of his
840
�PART THREE
head.
Yes, he was dead. Undoubtedly. She had killed a
man.
The smoke curled slowly to the ceiling and the red
streams widened about her feet. For a timeless moment she stood there and in the still hot hush of the
summer morning every irrelevant sound and scent
seemed magnified, the quick thudding of her heart,
like a drumbeat, the slight rough rustling of the magnolia leaves, the far-off plaintive sound of a swamp
bird and the sweet smell of the flowers outside the
window.
She had killed a man, she who took care never to
be in at the kill on a hunt, she who could not bear
the squealing of a hog at slaughter or the squeak of
a rabbit in a snare. Murder! she thought dully. I’ve
done murder. Oh, this can’t be happening to me! Her
eyes went to the stubby hairy hand on the floor so
close to the sewing box and suddenly she was vitally
alive again, vitally glad with a cool tigerish joy. She
could have ground her heel into the gaping wound
which had been his nose and taken sweet pleasure in
the feel of his warm blood on her bare feet. She had
struck a blow of revenge for Tara–and for Ellen.
There were hurried stumbling steps in the upper
841
�PART THREE
hall, a pause and then more steps, weak dragging
steps now, punctuated by metallic clankings. A sense
of time and reality coming back to her, Scarlett looked
up and saw Melanie at the top of the stairs, clad only
in the ragged chemise which served her as a nightgown, her weak arm weighed down with Charles’
saber. Melanie’s eyes took in the scene below in its
entirety, the sprawling blue-clad body in the red pool,
the sewing box beside him, Scarlett, barefooted and
gray-faced, clutching the long pistol.
In silence her eyes met Scarlett’s. There was a glow
of grim pride in her usually gentle face, approbation
and a fierce joy in her smile that equaled the fiery tumult in Scarlett’s own bosom.
“Why–why–she’s like me! She understands how I
feel!” thought Scarlett in that long moment. “She’d
have done the same thing!”
With a thrill she looked up at the frail swaying girl
for whom she had never had any feelings but of dislike and contempt. Now, struggling against hatred
for Ashley’s wife, there surged a feeling of admiration and comradeship. She saw in a flash of clarity untouched by any petty emotion that beneath the
gentle voice and the dovelike eyes of Melanie there
was a thin flashing blade of unbreakable steel, felt
842
�PART THREE
too that there were banners and bugles of courage in
Melanie’s quiet blood.
“Scarlett! Scarlett!” shrilled the weak frightened
voices of Suellen and Carreen, muffled by their closed
door, and Wade’s voice screamed “Auntee! Auntee!”
Swiftly Melanie put her finger to her lips and, laying the sword on the top step, she painfully made her
way down the upstairs hall and opened the door of
the sick room.
“Don’t be scared, chickens!” came her voice with
teasing gaiety. “Your big sister was trying to clean
the rust off Charles’ pistol and it went off and nearly
scared her to death!” . . . “Now, Wade Hampton,
Mama just shot off your dear Papa’s pistol! When you
are bigger, she will let you shoot it.”
“What a cool liar!” thought Scarlett with admiration. “I couldn’t have thought that quickly. But why
lie? They’ve got to know I’ve done it.”
She looked down at the body again and now revulsion came over her as her rage and fright melted
away, and her knees began to quiver with the reaction. Melanie dragged herself to the top step again
and started down, holding onto the banisters, her pale
lower lip caught between her teeth.
“Go back to bed, silly, you’ll kill yourself!” Scarlett
843
�PART THREE
cried, but the half-naked Melanie made her painful
way down into the lower hall.
“Scarlett,” she whispered, “we must get him out of
here and bury him. He may not be alone and if they
find him here–” She steadied herself on Scarlett’s arm.
“He must be alone,” said Scarlett. “I didn’t see anyone else from the upstairs window. He must be a deserter.”
“Even if he is alone, no one must know about it.
The negroes might talk and then they’d come and get
you. Scarlett, we must get him hidden before the folks
come back from the swamp.”
Her mind prodded to action by the feverish urgency
of Melanie’s voice, Scarlett thought hard.
“I could bury him in the corner of the garden under
the arbor–the ground is soft there where Pork dug up
the whisky barrel. But how will I get him there?”
“We’ll both take a leg and drag him,” said Melanie
firmly.
Reluctantly, Scarlett’s admiration went still higher.
“You couldn’t drag a cat. I’ll drag him,” she said
roughly. “You go back to bed. You’ll kill yourself.
Don’t dare try to help me either or I’ll carry you upstairs myself.”
844
�PART THREE
Melanie’s white face broke into a sweet understanding smile. “You are very dear, Scarlett,” she said and
softly brushed her lips against Scarlett’s cheek. Before Scarlett could recover from her surprise, Melanie
went on: “If you can drag him out, I’ll mop up the–the
mess before the folks get home, and Scarlett–”
“Yes?”
“Do you suppose it would be dishonest to go
through his knapsack? He might have something to
eat.”
“I do not,” said Scarlett, annoyed that she had not
thought of this herself. “You take the knapsack and
I’ll go through his pockets.”
Stooping over the dead man with distaste, she unbuttoned the remaining buttons of his jacket and systematically began rifling his pockets.
“Dear God,” she whispered, pulling out a bulging
wallet, wrapped about with a rag. “Melanie–Melly, I
think it’s full of money!”
Melanie said nothing but abruptly sat down on the
floor and leaned back against the wall.
“You look,” she said shakily. “I’m feeling a little
weak.”
Scarlett tore off the rag and with trembling hands
845
�PART THREE
opened the leather folds.
“Look, Melly–just look!”
Melanie looked and her eyes dilated. Jumbled together was a mass of bills, United States greenbacks
mingling with Confederate money and, glinting from
between them, were one ten-dollar gold piece and
two five-dollar gold pieces.
“Don’t stop to count it now,” said Melanie as Scarlett
began fingering the bills. “We haven’t time–”
“Do you realize, Melanie, that this money means
that we’ll eat?”
“Yes, yes, dear. I know but we haven’t time now.
You look in his other pockets and I’ll take the knapsack.”
Scarlett was loath to put down the wallet. Bright vistas opened before her–real money, the Yankee’s horse,
food! There was a God after all, and He did provide,
even if He did take very odd ways of providing. She
sat on her haunches and stared at the wallet smiling.
Food! Melanie plucked it from her hands–
“Hurry!” she said.
The trouser pockets yielded nothing except a candle
end, a jackknife, a plug of tobacco and a bit of twine.
Melanie removed from the knapsack a small package
846
�PART THREE
of coffee which she sniffed as if it were the sweetest of
perfumes, hardtack and, her face changing, a miniature of a little girl in a gold frame set with seed pearls,
a garnet brooch, two broad gold bracelets with tiny
dangling gold chains, a gold thimble, a small silver
baby’s cup, gold embroidery scissors, a diamond solitaire ring and a pair of earrings with pendant pearshaped diamonds, which even their unpracticed eyes
could tell were well over a carat each.
“A thief!” whispered Melanie, recoiling from the
still body. “Scarlett, he must have stolen all of this!”
“Of course,” said Scarlett. “And he came here hoping to steal more from us.”
“I’m glad you killed him,” said Melanie her gentle
eyes hard. “Now hurry, darling, and get him out of
here.”
Scarlett bent over, caught the dead man by his boots
and tugged. How heavy he was and how weak she
suddenly felt. Suppose she shouldn’t be able to move
him? Turning so that she backed the corpse, she
caught a heavy boot under each arm and threw her
weight forward. He moved and she jerked again.
Her sore foot, forgotten in the excitement, now gave
a tremendous throb that made her grit her teeth and
shift her weight to the heel. Tugging and straining,
847
�PART THREE
perspiration dripping from her forehead, she dragged
him down the hall, a red stain following her path.
“If he bleeds across the yard, we can’t hide it,” she
gasped. “Give me your shimmy, Melanie, and I’ll
wad it around his head.”
Melanie’s white face went crimson.
“Don’t be silly, I won’t look at you,” said Scarlett. “If
I had on a petticoat or pantalets I’d use them.”
Crouching back against the wall, Melanie pulled
the ragged linen garment over her head and silently
tossed it to Scarlett, shielding herself as best she could
with her arms.
“Thank God, I’m not that modest,” thought Scarlett,
feeling rather than seeing Melanie’s agony of embarrassment, as she wrapped the ragged cloth about the
shattered face.
By a series of limping jerks, she pulled the body
down the hall toward the back porch and, pausing to
wipe her forehead with the back of her hand, glanced
back toward Melanie, sitting against the wall hugging her thin knees to her bare breasts. How silly
of Melanie to be bothering about modesty at a time
like this, Scarlett thought irritably. It was just part of
her nicey-nice way of acting which had always made
Scarlett despise her. Then shame rose in her. After
848
�PART THREE
all–after all, Melanie had dragged herself from bed
so soon after having a baby and had come to her aid
with a weapon too heavy even for her to lift. That had
taken courage, the kind of courage Scarlett honestly
knew she herself did not possess, the thin-steel, spunsilk courage which had characterized Melanie on the
terrible night Atlanta fell and on the long trip home. It
was the same intangible, unspectacular courage that
all the Wilkeses possessed, a quality which Scarlett
did not understand but to which she gave grudging
tribute.
“Go back to bed,” she threw over her shoulder.
“You’ll be dead if you don’t. I’ll clean up the mess
after I’ve buried him.”
“I’ll do it with one of the rag rugs,” whispered
Melanie, looking at the pool of blood with a sick face.
“Well, kill yourself then and see if I care! And if any
of the folks come back before I’m finished, keep them
in the house and tell them the horse just walked in
from nowhere.”
Melanie sat shivering in the morning sunlight and
covered her ears against the sickening series of thuds
as the dead man’s head bumped down the porch
steps.
No one questioned whence the horse had come. It
849
�PART THREE
was so obvious he was a stray from the recent battle
and they were well pleased to have him. The Yankee
lay in the shallow pit Scarlett had scraped out under
the scuppernong arbor. The uprights which held the
thick vines were rotten and that night Scarlett hacked
at them with the kitchen knife until they fell and the
tangled mass ran wild over the grave. The replacing
of these posts was one bit of repair work Scarlett did
not suggest and, if the negroes knew why, they kept
their silence.
No ghost rose from that shallow grave to haunt her
in the long nights when she lay awake, too tired to
sleep. No feeling of horror or remorse assailed her
at the memory. She wondered why, knowing that
even a month before she could never have done the
deed. Pretty young Mrs. Hamilton, with her dimple
and her jingling earbobs and her helpless little ways,
blowing a man’s face to a pulp and then burying him
in a hastily scratched-out hole! Scarlett grinned a little grimly thinking of the consternation such an idea
would bring to those who knew her.
“I won’t think about it any more,” she decided. “It’s
over and done with and I’d have been a ninny not
to kill him. I reckon–I reckon I must have changed a
little since coming home or else I couldn’t have done
850
�PART THREE
it.”
She did not think of it consciously but in the back
of her mind, whenever she was confronted by an unpleasant and difficult task, the idea lurked giving her
strength: “I’ve done murder and so I can surely do
this.”
She had changed more than she knew and the shell
of hardness which had begun to form about her heart
when she lay in the slave garden at Twelve Oaks was
slowly thickening.
Now that she had a horse, Scarlett could find out
for herself what had happened to their neighbors.
Since she came home she had wondered despairingly
a thousand times: “Are we the only folks left in the
County? Has everybody else been burned out? Have
they all refugeed to Macon?” With the memory of the
ruins of Twelve Oaks, the MacIntosh place and the
Slattery shack fresh in her mind, she almost dreaded
to discover the truth. But it was better to know the
worst than to wonder. She decided to ride to the
Fontaines’ first, not because they were the nearest
neighbors but because old Dr. Fontaine might be
there. Melanie needed a doctor. She was not recovering as she should and Scarlett was frightened by her
white weakness.
851
�PART THREE
So on the first day when her foot had healed enough
to stand a slipper, she mounted the Yankee’s horse.
One foot in the shortened stirrup and the other leg
crooked about the pommel in an approximation of a
side saddle, she set out across the fields toward Mimosa, steeling herself to find it burned.
To her surprise and pleasure, she saw the faded
yellow-stucco house standing amid the mimosa trees,
looking as it had always looked. Warm happiness,
happiness that almost brought tears, flooded her
when the three Fontaine women came out of the
house to welcome her with kisses and cries of joy.
But when the first exclamations of affectionate greeting were over and they all had trooped into the dining room to sit down, Scarlett felt a chill. The Yankees had not reached Mimosa because it was far off
the main road. And so the Fontaines still had their
stock and their provisions, but Mimosa was held by
the same strange silence that hung over Tara, over
the whole countryside. All the slaves except four
women house servants had run away, frightened by
the approach of the Yankees. There was not a man
on the place unless Sally’s little boy, Joe, hardly out
of diapers, could be counted as a man. Alone in the
big house were Grandma Fontaine, in her seventies,
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�PART THREE
her daughter-in-law who would always be known
as Young Miss, though she was in her fifties, and
Sally, who had barely turned twenty. They were far
away from neighbors and unprotected, but if they
were afraid it did not show on their faces. Probably,
thought Scarlett, because Sally and Young Miss were
too afraid of the porcelain-frail but indomitable old
Grandma to dare voice any qualms. Scarlett herself
was afraid of the old lady, for she had sharp eyes and
a sharper tongue and Scarlett had felt them both in
the past.
Though unrelated by blood and far apart in age,
there was a kinship of spirit and experience binding
these women together. All three wore home-dyed
mourning, all were worn, sad, worried, all bitter with
a bitterness that did not sulk or complain but, nevertheless, peered out from behind their smiles and their
words of welcome. For their slaves were gone, their
money was worthless, Sally’s husband, Joe, had died
at Gettysburg and Young Miss was also a widow, for
young Dr. Fontaine had died of dysentery at Vicksburg. The other two boys, Alex and Tony, were somewhere in Virginia and nobody knew whether they
were alive or dead; and old Dr. Fontaine was off
somewhere with Wheeler’s cavalry.
853
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“And the old fool is seventy-three years old though
he tries to act younger and he’s as full of rheumatism
as a hog is of fleas,” said Grandma, proud of her husband, the light in her eyes belying her sharp words.
“Have you all had any news of what’s been happening in Atlanta?” asked Scarlett when they were comfortably settled. “We’re completely buried at Tara.”
“Law, child,” said Old Miss, taking charge of the
conversation, as was her habit, “we’re in the same fix
as you are. We don’t know a thing except that Sherman finally got the town.”
“So he did get it. What’s he doing now? Where’s the
fighting now?”
“And how would three lone women out here in the
country know about the war when we haven’t seen
a letter or a newspaper m weeks?” said the old lady
tartly. “One of our darkies talked to a darky who’d
seen a darky who’d been to Jonesboro, and except for
that we haven’t heard anything. What they said was
that the Yankees were just squatting in Atlanta resting
up their men and their horses, but whether it’s true
or not you’re as good a judge as I am. Not that they
wouldn’t need a rest, after the fight we gave them.”
“To think you’ve been at Tara all this time and we
didn’t know!” Young Miss broke in. “Oh, how I
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�PART THREE
blame myself for not riding over to see! But there’s
been so much to do here with most all the darkies
gone that I just couldn’t get away. But I should have
made time to go. It wasn’t neighborly of me. But, of
course, we thought the Yankees had burned Tara like
they did Twelve Oaks and the MacIntosh house and
that your folks had gone to Macon. And we never
dreamed you were home, Scarlett.”
“Well, how were we to know different when Mr.
O’Hara’s darkies came through here so scared they
were popeyed and told us the Yankees were going to
burn Tara?” Grandma interrupted.
“And we could see–” Sally began.
“I’m telling this, please,” said Old Miss shortly.
“And they said the Yankees were camped all over
Tara and your folks were fixing to go to Macon. And
then that night we saw the glare of fire over toward
Tara and it lasted for hours and it scared our fool
darkies so bad they all ran off. What burned?”
“All our cotton–a hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth,” said Scarlett bitterly.
“Be thankful it wasn’t your house,” said Grandma,
leaning her chin on her cane. “You can always grow
more cotton and you can’t grow a house. By the bye,
had you all started picking your cotton?”
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“No,” said Scarlett, “and now most of it is ruined. I
don’t imagine there’s more than three bales left standing, in the far field in the creek bottom, and what
earthly good will it do? All our field hands are gone
and there’s nobody to pick it.”
“Mercy me, all our field hands are gone and there’s
nobody to pick it!” mimicked Grandma and bent a
satiric glance on Scarlett. “What’s wrong with your
own pretty paws, Miss, and those of your sisters?”
“Me? Pick cotton?” cried Scarlett aghast, as if
Grandma had been suggesting some repulsive crime.
“Like a field hand? Like white trash? Like the Slattery
women?”
“White trash, indeed! Well, isn’t this generation soft
and ladylike! Let me tell you, Miss, when I was a girl
my father lost all his money and I wasn’t above doing honest work with my hands and in the fields too,
till Pa got enough money to buy some more darkies.
I’ve hoed my row and I’ve picked my cotton and I can
do it again if I have to. And it looks like I’ll have to.
White trash, indeed!”
“Oh, but Mama Fontaine,” cried her daughter-inlaw, casting imploring glances at the two girls, urging them to help her smooth the old lady’s feathers.
“That was so long ago, a different day entirely, and
856
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times have changed.”
“Times never change when there’s a need for honest work to be done,” stated the sharp-eyed old lady,
refusing to be soothed. “And I’m ashamed for your
mother, Scarlett, to hear you stand there and talk as
though honest work made white trash out of nice people. ‘When Adam delved and Eve span’–”
To change the subject, Scarlett hastily questioned:
“What about the Tarletons and the Calverts? Were
they burned out? Have they refugeed to Macon?”
“The Yankees never got to the Tarletons. They’re off
the main road, like we are, but they did get to the
Calverts and they stole all their stock and poultry and
got all the darkies to run off with them–” Sally began.
Grandma interrupted.
“Hah! They promised all the black wenches silk
dresses and gold earbobs–that’s what they did. And
Cathleen Calvert said some of the troopers went off
with the black fools behind them on their saddles.
Well, all they’ll get will be yellow babies and I can’t
say that Yankee blood will improve the stock.”
“Oh, Mama Fontaine!”
“Don’t pull such a shocked face, Jane. We’re all married, aren’t we? And, God knows, we’ve seen mulatto
babies before this.”
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�PART THREE
“Why didn’t they burn the Calverts’ house?”
“The house was saved by the combined accents of
the second Mrs. Calvert and that Yankee overseer of
hers, Hilton,” said Old Miss, who always referred to
the ex-governess as the “second Mrs. Calvert,” although the first Mrs. Calvert had been dead twenty
years.
“‘We are staunch Union sympathizers,”’ mimicked
the old lady, twanging the words through her long
thin nose. “Cathleen said the two of them swore up
hill and down dale that the whole passel of Calverts
were Yankees. And Mr. Calvert dead in the Wilderness! And Raiford at Gettysburg and Cade in Virginia with the army! Cathleen was so mortified she
said she’d rather the house had been burned. She
said Cade would bust when he came home and heard
about it. But then, that’s what a man gets for marrying a Yankee woman– no pride, no decency, always
thinking about their own skins. . . . How come they
didn’t burn Tara, Scarlett?”
For a moment Scarlett paused before answering.
She knew the very next question would be: “And
how are all your folks? And how is your dear
mother?” She knew she could not tell them Ellen was
dead. She knew that if she spoke those words or even
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let herself think of them in the presence of these sympathetic women, she would burst into a storm of tears
and cry until she was sick. And she could not let herself cry. She had not really cried since she came home
and she knew that if she once let down the floodgates, her closely husbanded courage would all be
gone. But she knew, too, looking with confusion at the
friendly faces about her, that if she withheld the news
of Ellen’s death, the Fontaines would never forgive
her. Grandma in particular was devoted to Ellen and
there were very few people in the County for whom
the old lady gave a snap of her skinny fingers.
“Well, speak up,” said Grandma, looking sharply at
her. “Don’t you know, Miss?”
“Well, you see, I didn’t get home till the day after the
battle,” she answered hastily. “The Yankees were all
gone then. Pa–Pa told me that–that he got them not
to burn the house because Suellen and Carreen were
so ill with typhoid they couldn’t be moved.”
“That’s the first time I ever heard of a Yankee doing a decent thing,” said Grandma, as if she regretted
hearing anything good about the invaders. “And how
are the girls now?”
“Oh, they are better, much better, almost well but
quite weak,” answered Scarlett. Then, seeing the
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question she feared hovering on the old lady’s lips,
she cast hastily about for some other topic of conversation.
“I–I wonder if you could lend us something to eat?
The Yankees cleaned us out like a swarm of locusts.
But, if you are on short rations, just tell me so plainly
and–”
“Send over Pork with a wagon and you shall have
half of what we’ve got, rice, meal, ham, some chickens,” said Old Miss, giving Scarlett a sudden keen
look.
“Oh, that’s too much! Really, I–”
“Not a word! I won’t hear it. What are neighbors
for?”
“You are so kind that I can’t– But I have to be going
now. The folks at home will be worrying about me.”
Grandma rose abruptly and took Scarlett by the
arm.
“You two stay here,” she commanded, pushing Scarlett toward the back porch. “I have a private word for
this child. Help me down the steps, Scarlett.”
Young Miss and Sally said good-by and promised
to come calling soon. They were devoured by curiosity as to what Grandma had to say to Scarlett but un860
�PART THREE
less she chose to tell them, they would never know.
Old ladies were so difficult, Young Miss whispered to
Sally as they went back to their sewing.
Scarlett stood with her hand on the horse’s bridle, a
dull feeling at her heart.
“Now,” said Grandma, peering into her face,
“what’s wrong at Tara? What are you keeping back?”
Scarlett looked up into the keen old eyes and knew
she could tell the truth, without tears. No one could
cry in the presence of Grandma Fontaine without her
express permission.
“Mother is dead,” she said flatly.
The hand on her arm tightened until it pinched and
the wrinkled lids over the yellow eyes blinked.
“Did the Yankees kill her?”
“She died of typhoid. Died–the day before I came
home.”
“Don’t think about it,” said Grandma sternly and
Scarlett saw her swallow. “And your Pa?”
“Pa is–Pa is not himself.”
“What do you mean? Speak up. Is he ill?”
“The shock–he is so strange–he is not–”
“Don’t tell me he’s not himself. Do you mean his
mind is unhinged?”
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It was a relief to hear the truth put so baldly. How
good the old lady was to offer no sympathy that
would make her cry.
“Yes,” she said dully, “he’s lost his mind. He acts
dazed and sometimes he can’t seem to remember that
Mother is dead. Oh, Old Miss, it’s more than I can
stand to see him sit by the hour, waiting for her and
so patiently too, and he used to have no more patience
than a child. But it’s worse when he does remember
that she’s gone. Every now and then, after he’s sat still
with his ear cocked listening for her, he jumps up suddenly and stumps out of the house and down to the
burying ground. And then he comes dragging back
with the tears all over his face and he says over and
over till I could scream: ‘Katie Scarlett, Mrs. O’Hara
is dead. Your mother is dead,’ and it’s just like I was
hearing it again for the first time. And sometimes, late
at night, I hear him calling her and I get out of bed
and go to him and tell him she’s down at the quarters
with a sick darky. And he fusses because she’s always
tiring herself out nursing people. And it’s so hard to
get him back to bed. He’s like a child. Oh, I wish Dr.
Fontaine was here! I know he could do something for
Pa! And Melanie needs a doctor too. She isn’t getting
over her baby like she should–”
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�PART THREE
“Melly–a baby? And she’s with you?”
“Yes.”
“What’s Melly doing with you? Why isn’t she
in Macon with her aunt and her kinfolks? I never
thought you liked her any too well, Miss, for all she
was Charles’ sister. Now, tell me all about it.”
“It’s a long story, Old Miss. Don’t you want to go
back in the house and sit down?”
“I can stand,” said Grandma shortly. “And if you
told your story in front of the others, they’d be bawling and making you feel sorry for yourself. Now, let’s
have it.”
Scarlett began haltingly with the siege and
Melanie’s condition, but as her story progressed
beneath the sharp old eyes which never faltered in
their gaze, she found words, words of power and
horror. It all came back to her, the sickeningly hot
day of the baby’s birth, the agony of fear, the flight
and Rhett’s desertion. She spoke of the wild darkness
of the night, the blazing camp fires which might be
friends or foes, the gaunt chimneys which met her
gaze in the morning sun, the dead men and horses
along the road, the hunger, the desolation, the fear
that Tara had been burned.
“I thought if I could just get home to Mother, she
863
�PART THREE
could manage everything and I could lay down the
weary load. On the way home I thought the worst
had already happened to me, but when I knew she
was dead I knew what the worst really was.”
She dropped her eyes to the ground and waited for
Grandma to speak. The silence was so prolonged she
wondered if Grandma could have failed to comprehend her desperate plight. Finally the old voice spoke
and her tones were kind, kinder than Scarlett had ever
heard her use in addressing anyone.
“Child, it’s a very bad thing for a woman to face
the worst that can happen to her, because after she’s
faced the worst she can’t ever really fear anything
again. And it’s very bad for a woman not to be afraid
of something. You think I don’t understand what
you’ve told me–what you’ve been through? Well, I
understand very well. When I was about your age I
was in the Creek uprising, right after the Fort Mims
massacre–yes,” she said in a far-away voice, “just
about your age for that was fifty-odd years ago. And
I managed to get into the bushes and hide and I lay
there and saw our house burn and I saw the Indians
scalp my brothers and sisters. And I could only lie
there and pray that the light of the flames wouldn’t
show up my hiding place. And they dragged Mother
864
�PART THREE
out and killed her about twenty feet from where I was
lying. And scalped her too. And ever so often one Indian would go back to her and sink his tommyhawk
into her skull again. I–I was my mother’s pet and I lay
there and saw it all. And in the morning I set out for
the nearest settlement and it was thirty miles away. It
took me three days to get there, through the swamps
and the Indians, and afterward they thought I’d lose
my mind. . . . That’s where I met Dr. Fontaine. He
looked after me. . . . Ah, well, that’s been fifty years
ago, as I said, and since that time I’ve never been
afraid of anything or anybody because I’d known the
worst that could happen to me. And that lack of fear
has gotten me into a lot of trouble and cost me a lot of
happiness. God intended women to be timid frightened creatures and there’s something unnatural about
a woman who isn’t afraid. . . . Scarlett, always
save something to fear–even as you save something
to love. . . .”
Her voice trailed off and she stood silent with eyes
looking back over half a century to the day when she
had been afraid. Scarlett moved impatiently. She had
thought Grandma was going to understand and perhaps show her some way to solve her problems. But
like all old people she’d gotten to talking about things
that happened before anyone was born, things no one
865
�PART THREE
was interested in. Scarlett wished she had not confided in her.
“Well, go home, child, or they’ll be worrying about
you,” she said suddenly. “Send Pork with the wagon
this afternoon. . . . And don’t think you can lay down
the load, ever. Because you can’t. I know.”
Indian summer lingered into November that year
and the warm days were bright days for those at
Tara. The worst was over. They had a horse now
and they could ride instead of walk. They had fried
eggs for breakfast and fried ham for supper to vary
the monotony of the yams, peanuts and dried apples, and on one festal occasion they even had roast
chicken. The old sow had finally been captured and
she and her brood rooted and grunted happily under the house where they were penned. Sometimes
they squealed so loudly no one in the house could talk
but it was a pleasant sound. It meant fresh pork for
the white folks and chitterlings for the negroes when
cold weather and hog-killing time should arrive, and
it meant food for the winter for all.
Scarlett’s visit to the Fontaines had heartened her
more than she realized. Just the knowledge that she
had neighbors, that some of the family friends and
old homes had survived, drove out the terrible loss
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�PART THREE
and alone feeling which had oppressed her in her
first weeks at Tara. And the Fontaines and Tarletons,
whose plantations had not been in the path of the
army, were most generous in sharing what little they
had. It was the tradition of the County that neighbor
helped neighbor and they refused to accept a penny
from Scarlett, telling her that she would do the same
for them and she could pay them back, in kind, next
year when Tara was again producing.
Scarlett now had food for her household, she had
a horse, she had the money and jewelry taken from
the Yankee straggler, and the greatest need was new
clothing. She knew it would be risky business sending Pork south to buy clothes, when the horse might
be captured by either Yankees or Confederates. But,
at least, she had the money with which to buy the
clothes, a horse and wagon for the trip, and perhaps
Pork could make the trip without getting caught. Yes,
the worst was over.
Every morning when Scarlett arose she thanked
God for the pale-blue sky and the warm sun, for each
day of good weather put off the inevitable time when
warm clothing would be needed. And each warm
day saw more and more cotton piling up in the empty
slave quarters, the only storage place left on the plan867
�PART THREE
tation. There was more cotton in the fields than she
or Pork had estimated, probably four bales, and soon
the cabins would be full.
Scarlett had not intended to do any cotton picking
herself, even after Grandma Fontaine’s tart remark. It
was unthinkable that she, an O’Hara lady, now the
mistress of Tara, should work in the fields. It put her
on the same level with the snarly haired Mrs. Slattery and Emmie. She had intended that the negroes
should do the field work, while she and the convalescent girls attended to the house, but here she was
confronted with a caste feeling even stronger than her
own. Pork, Mammy and Prissy set up outcries at the
idea of working in the fields. They reiterated that they
were house niggers, not field hands. Mammy, in particular, declared vehemently that she had never even
been a yard nigger. She had been born in the Robillard great house, not in the quarters, and had been
raised in Ole Miss’ bedroom, sleeping on a pallet at
the foot of the bed. Dilcey alone said nothing and she
fixed her Prissy with an unwinking eye that made her
squirm.
Scarlett refused to listen to the protests and drove
them all into the cotton rows. But Mammy and Pork
worked so slowly and with so many lamentations
868
�PART THREE
that Scarlett sent Mammy back to the kitchen to cook
and Pork to the woods and the river with snares for
rabbits and possums and lines for fish. Cotton picking was beneath Pork’s dignity but hunting and fishing were not.
Scarlett next had tried her sisters and Melanie in the
fields, but that had worked no better. Melanie had
picked neatly, quickly and willingly for an hour in the
hot sun and then fainted quietly and had to stay in
bed for a week. Suellen, sullen and tearful, pretended
to faint too, but came back to consciousness spitting
like an angry cat when Scarlett poured a gourdful of
water in her face. Finally she refused point-blank.
“I won’t work in the fields like a darky! You can’t
make me. What if any of our friends ever heard of it?
What if–if Mr. Kennedy ever knew? Oh, if Mother
knew about this–”
“You just mention Mother’s name once more,
Suellen O’Hara, and I’ll slap you flat,” cried Scarlett.
“Mother worked harder than any darky on this place
and you know it, Miss Fine Airs!”
“She did not! At least, not in the fields. And you
can’t make me. I’ll tell Papa on you and he won’t
make me work!”
“Don’t you dare go bothering Pa with any of our
869
�PART THREE
troubles!” cried Scarlett, distracted between indignation at her sister and fear for Gerald.
“I’ll help you, Sissy,” interposed Carreen docilely.
“I’ll work for Sue and me too. She isn’t well yet and
she shouldn’t be out in the sun.”
Scarlett said gratefully: “Thank you, Sugarbaby,”
but looked worriedly at her younger sister. Carreen,
who had always been as delicately pink and white as
the orchard blossoms that are scattered by the spring
wind, was no longer pink but still conveyed in her
sweet thoughtful face a blossomlike quality. She had
been silent, a little dazed since she came back to consciousness and found Ellen gone, Scarlett a termagant, the world changed and unceasing labor the order of the new day. It was not in Carreen’s delicate nature to adjust herself to change. She simply could not
comprehend what had happened and she went about
Tara like a sleepwalker, doing exactly what she was
told. She looked, and was, frail but she was willing,
obedient and obliging. When she was not doing Scarlett’s bidding, her rosary beads were always in her
hands and her lips moving in prayers for her mother
and for Brent Tarleton. It did not occur to Scarlett that
Carreen had taken Brent’s death so seriously and that
her grief was unhealed. To Scarlet, Carreen was still
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�PART THREE
“baby sister,” far too young to have had a really serious love affair.
Scarlett, standing in the sun in the cotton rows,
her back breaking from the eternal bending and her
hands roughened by the dry bolls, wished she had
a sister who combined Suellen’s energy and strength
with Carreen’s sweet disposition. For Carreen picked
diligently and earnestly. But, after she had labored for
an hour it was obvious that she, and not Suellen, was
the one not yet well enough for such work. So Scarlett
sent Carreen back to the house too.
There remained with her now in the long rows only
Dilcey and Prissy. Prissy picked lazily, spasmodically, complaining of her feet, her back, her internal
miseries, her complete weariness, until her mother
took a cotton stalk to her and whipped her until she
screamed. After that she worked a little better, taking
care to stay far from her mother’s reach.
Dilcey worked tirelessly, silently, like a machine,
and Scarlett, with her back aching and her shoulder
raw from the tugging weight of the cotton bag she
carried, thought that Dilcey was worth her weight in
gold.
“Dilcey,” she said, “when good times come back,
I’m not going to forget how you’ve acted. You’ve been
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�PART THREE
mighty good.”
The bronze giantess did not grin pleasedly or
squirm under praise like the other negroes. She
turned an immobile face to Scarlett and said with dignity: “Thankee, Ma’m. But Mist’ Gerald and Miss
Ellen been good to me. Mist’ Gerald buy my Prissy so
I wouldn’ grieve and I doan forgit it. I is part Indian
and Indians doan forgit them as is good to them. I
sorry ‘bout my Prissy. She mighty wuthless. Look lak
she all nigger lak her pa. Her pa was mighty flighty.”
In spite of Scarlett’s problem of getting help from
the others in the picking and in spite of the weariness
of doing the labor herself, her spirits lifted as the cotton slowly made its way from the fields to the cabins. There was something about cotton that was reassuring, steadying. Tara had risen to riches on cotton,
even as the whole South had risen, and Scarlett was
Southerner enough to believe that both Tara and the
South would rise again out of the red fields.
Of course, this little cotton she had gathered was not
much but it was something. It would bring a little
in Confederate money and that little would help her
to save the hoarded greenbacks and gold in the Yankee’s wallet until they had to be spent. Next spring
she would try to make the Confederate government
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�PART THREE
send back Big Sam and the other field hands they had
commandeered, and if the government wouldn’t release them, she’d use the Yankee’s money to hire field
hands from the neighbors. Next spring, she would
plant and plant. . . . She straightened her tired back
and, looking over the browning autumn fields, she
saw next year’s crop standing sturdy and green, acre
upon acre.
Next spring! Perhaps by next spring the war would
be over and good times would be back. And whether
the Confederacy won or lost, times would be better.
Anything was better than the constant danger of raids
from both armies. When the war was over, a plantation could earn an honest living. Oh, if the war were
only over! Then people could plant crops with some
certainty of reaping them!
There was hope now. The war couldn’t last forever. She had her little cotton, she had food, she
had a horse, she had her small but treasured hoard
of money. Yes, the worst was over!
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�CHAPTER XXVII
in mid-November, they all sat grouped
about the dinner table, eating the last of the dessert
concocted by Mammy from corn meal and dried
huckleberries, sweetened with sorghum. There was
a chill in the air, the first chill of the year, and Pork,
standing behind Scarlett’s chair, rubbed his hands together in glee and questioned: “Ain’ it ‘bout time fer
de hawg killin’, Miss Scarlett?”
“You can taste those chitlins already, can’t you?”
said Scarlett with a grin. “Well, I can taste fresh pork
myself and if the weather holds for a few days more,
we’ll–”
Melanie interrupted, her spoon at her lips,
“Listen, dear! Somebody’s coming!”
“Somebody hollerin’,” said Pork uneasily.
On the crisp autumn air came clear the sound of
horse’s hooves, thudding as swiftly as a frightened
heart, and a woman’s voice, high pitched, screaming:
“Scarlett! Scarlett!”
Eye met eye for a dreadful second around the table before chairs were pushed back and everyone
leaped up. Despite the fear that made it shrill, they
recognized the voice of Sally Fontaine who, only an
ON
A NOONDAY
�PART THREE
hour before, had stopped at Tara for a brief chat on
her way to Jonesboro. Now, as they all rushed pellmell to crowd the front door, they saw her coming
up the drive like the wind on a lathered horse, her
hair streaming behind her, her bonnet dangling by its
ribbons. She did not draw rein but as she galloped
madly toward them, she waved her arm back in the
direction from which she had come.
“The Yankees are coming! I saw them! Down the
road! The Yankees–”
She sawed savagely at the horse’s mouth just in time
to swerve him from leaping up the front steps. He
swung around sharply, covered the side lawn in three
leaps and she put him across the four-foot hedge as if
she were on the hunting field. They heard the heavy
pounding of his hooves as he went through the back
yard and down the narrow lane between the cabins
of the quarters and knew she was cutting across the
fields to Mimosa.
For a moment they stood paralyzed and then
Suellen and Carreen began to sob and clutch each
other’s fingers. Little Wade stood rooted, trembling,
unable to cry. What he had feared since the night he
left Atlanta had happened. The Yankees were coming
to get him.
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�PART THREE
“Yankees?” said Gerald vaguely. “But the Yankees
have already been here.”
“Mother of God!” cried Scarlett, her eyes meeting
Melanie’s frightened eyes. For a swift instant there
went through her memory again the horrors of her
last night in Atlanta, the ruined homes that dotted
the countryside, all the stories of rape and torture and
murder. She saw again the Yankee soldier standing
in the hall with Ellen’s sewing box in his hand. She
thought: “I shall die. I shall die right here. I thought
we were through with all that. I shall die. I can’t stand
any more.”
Then her eyes fell on the horse saddled and hitched
and waiting for Pork to ride him to the Tarleton place
on an errand. Her horse! Her only horse! The Yankees would take him and the cow and the calf. And
the sow and her litter– Oh, how many tiring hours it
had taken to catch that sow and her agile young! And
they’d take the rooster and the setting hens and the
ducks the Fontaines had given her. And the apples
and the yams in the pantry bins. And the flour and
rice and dried peas. And the money in the Yankee soldier’s wallet. They’d take everything and leave them
to starve.
“They shan’t have them!” she cried aloud and they
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all turned startled faces to her, fearful her mind had
cracked under the tidings. “I won’t go hungry! They
shan’t have them!”
“What is it, Scarlett? What is it?”
“The horse! The cow! The pigs! They shan’t have
them! I won’t let them have them!”
She turned swiftly to the four negroes who huddled
in the doorway, their black faces a peculiarly ashen
shade.
“The swamp,” she said rapidly.
“Whut swamp?”
“The river swamp, you fools! Take the pigs to the
swamp. All of you. Quickly. Pork, you and Prissy
crawl under the house and get the pigs out. Suellen,
you and Carreen fill the baskets with as much food as
you can carry and get to the woods. Mammy, put the
silver in the well again. And Pork! Pork, listen to me,
don’t stand there like that! Take Pa with you. Don’t
ask me where! Anywhere! Go with Pork, Pa. That’s a
sweet pa.”
Even in her frenzy she thought what the sight of
bluecoats might do to Gerald’s wavering mind. She
stopped and wrung her hands and the frightened sobbing of little Wade who was clutching Melanie’s skirt
added to her panic.
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“What shall I do, Scarlett?” Melanie’s voice was
calm amid the wailing and tears and scurrying feet.
Though her face was paper white and her whole body
trembled, the very quietness of her voice steadied
Scarlett, revealing to her that they all looked to her
for commands, for guidance.
“The cow and the calf,” she said quickly. “They’re
in the old pasture. Take the horse and drive them into
the swamp and–”
Before she could finish her sentence, Melanie shook
off Wade’s clutches and was down the front steps and
running toward the horse, pulling up her wide skirts
as she ran. Scarlett caught a flashing glimpse of thin
legs, a flurry of skirts and underclothing and Melanie
was in the saddle, her feet dangling far above the stirrups. She gathered up the reins and clapped her heels
against the animal’s sides and then abruptly pulled
him in, her face twisting with horror.
“My baby!” she cried. “Oh, my baby! The Yankees
will kill him! Give him to me!”
Her hand was on the pommel and she was preparing to slide off but Scarlett screamed at her.
“Go on! Go on! Get the cow! I’ll look after the baby!
Go on, I tell you! Do you think I’d let them get Ashley’s baby? Go on!”
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Melly looked despairingly backward but hammered
her heels into the horse and, with a scattering of
gravel, was off down the drive toward the pasture.
Scarlett thought: “I never expected to see Melly
Hamilton straddling a horse!” and then she ran into
the house. Wade was at her heels, sobbing, trying
to catch her flying skirts. As she went up the steps,
three at a bound, she saw Suellen and Carreen with
split-oak baskets on their arms, running toward the
pantry, and Pork tugging none too gently at Gerald’s
arm, dragging him toward the back porch. Gerald
was mumbling querulously and pulling away like a
child.
From the back yard she heard Mammy’s strident
voice: “You, Priss! You git unner dat house an’ han’
me dem shoats! You knows mighty well Ah’s too big
ter crawl thoo dem lattices. Dilcey, comyere an’ mek
dis wuthless chile–”
“And I thought it was such a good idea to keep the
pigs under the house, so nobody could steal them,”
thought Scarlett, running into her room. “Why, oh,
why didn’t I build a pen for them down in the
swamp?”
She tore open her top bureau drawer and scratched
about in the clothing until the Yankee’s wallet was
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in her hand. Hastily she picked up the solitaire ring
and the diamond earbobs from where she had hidden
them in her sewing basket and shoved them into the
wallet. But where to hide it? In the mattress? Up
the chimney? Throw it in the well? Put it in her
bosom? No, never there! The outlines of the wallet
might show through her basque and if the Yankees
saw it they would strip her naked and search her.
“I shall die if they do!” she thought wildly.
Downstairs there was a pandemonium of racing
feet and sobbing voices. Even in her frenzy, Scarlett wished she had Melanie with her, Melly with her
quiet voice, Melly who was so brave the day she shot
the Yankee. Melly was worth three of the others.
Melly–what had Melly said? Oh, yes, the baby!
Clutching the wallet to her, Scarlett ran across the
hall to the room where little Beau was sleeping in the
low cradle. She snatched him up into her arms and he
awoke, waving small fists and slobbering sleepily.
She heard Suellen crying: “Come on, Carreen!
Come on! We’ve got enough. Oh, Sister, hurry!”
There were wild squealings, indignant gruntings in
the back yard and, running to the widow, Scarlett saw
Mammy waddling hurriedly across the cotton field
with a struggling young pig under each arm. Behind
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her was Pork also carrying two pigs and pushing Gerald before him. Gerald was stumping across the furrows, waving his cane.
Leaning out of the window Scarlett yelled: “Get the
sow, Dilcey! Make Prissy drive her out. You can chase
her across the fields!”
Dilcey looked up, her bronzed face harassed. In her
apron was a pile of silver tableware. She pointed under the house.
“The sow done bit Prissy and got her penned up unner the house.”
“Good for the sow,” thought Scarlett. She hurried
back into her room and hastily gathered from their
hiding place the bracelets, brooch, miniature and cup
she had found on the dead Yankee. But where to hide
them? It was awkward, carrying little Beau in one
arm and the wallet and the trinkets in the other. She
started to lay him on the bed.
He set up a wail at leaving her arms and a welcome
thought came to her. What better hiding place could
there be than a baby’s diaper? She quickly turned him
over, pulled up his dress and thrust the wallet down
the diaper next to his backside. He yelled louder at
this treatment and she hastily tightened the triangular
garment about his threshing legs.
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“Now,” she thought, drawing a deep breath, “now
for the swamp!”
Tucking him screaming under one arm and clutching the jewelry to her with the other, she raced into
the upstairs hall. Suddenly her rapid steps paused,
fright weakening her knees. How silent the house
was! How dreadfully still! Had they all gone off and
left her? Hadn’t anyone waited for her? She hadn’t
meant for them to leave her here alone. These days
anything could happen to a lone woman and with the
Yankees coming–
She jumped as a slight noise sounded and, turning
quickly, saw crouched by the banisters her forgotten
son, his eyes enormous with terror. He tried to speak
but his throat only worked silently.
“Get up, Wade Hampton,” she commanded swiftly.
“Get up and walk. Mother can’t carry you now.”
He ran to her, like a small frightened animal, and
clutching her wide skirt, buried his face in it. She
could feel his small hands groping through the folds
for her legs. She started down the stairs, each step
hampered by Wade’s dragging hands and she said
fiercely: “Turn me loose, Wade! Turn me loose and
walk!” But the child only clung the closer.
As she reached the landing, the whole lower floor
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�PART THREE
leaped up at her. All the homely, well-loved articles of
furniture seemed to whisper: “Good-by! Good-by!”
A sob rose in her throat. There was the open door of
the office where Ellen had labored so diligently and
she could glimpse a corner of the old secretary. There
was the dining room, with chairs pushed awry and
food still on the plates. There on the floor were the rag
rugs Ellen had dyed and woven herself. And there
was the old portrait of Grandma Robillard, with bosoms half bared, hair piled high and nostrils cut so
deeply as to give her face a perpetual well-bred sneer.
Everything which had been part of her earliest memories, everything bound up with the deepest roots in
her: “Good-by! Good-by, Scarlett O’Hara!”
The Yankees would burn it all–all!
This was her last view of home, her last view except
what she might see from the cover of the woods or the
swamp, the tall chimneys wrapped in smoke, the roof
crashing in flame.
“I can’t leave you,” she thought and her teeth chattered with fear. “I can’t leave you. Pa wouldn’t leave
you. He told them they’d have to burn you over his
head. Then, they’ll burn you over my head for I can’t
leave you either. You’re all I’ve got left.”
With the decision, some of her fear fell away and
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there remained only a congealed feeling in her breast,
as if all hope and fear had frozen. As she stood there,
she heard from the avenue the sound of many horses’
feet, the jingle of bridle bits and sabers rattling in
scabbards and a harsh voice crying a command: “Dismount!” Swiftly she bent to the child beside her and
her voice was urgent but oddly gentle.
“Turn me loose, Wade, honey! You run down the
stairs quick and through the back yard toward the
swamp. Mammy will be there and Aunt Melly. Run
quickly, darling, and don’t be afraid.”
At the change in her tone, the boy looked up and
Scarlett was appalled at the look in his eyes, like a
baby rabbit in a trap.
“Oh, Mother of God!” she prayed. “Don’t let him
have a convulsion! Not–not before the Yankees. They
mustn’t know we are afraid.” And, as the child only
gripped her skirt the tighter, she said clearly: “Be a
little man, Wade. They’re only a passel of damn Yankees!”
And she went down the steps to meet them.
Sherman was marching through Georgia, from Atlanta to the sea. Behind him lay the smoking ruins of
Atlanta to which the torch had been set as the blue
army tramped out. Before him lay three hundred
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miles of territory virtually undefended save by a few
state militia and the old men and young boys of the
Home Guard.
Here lay the fertile state, dotted with plantations,
sheltering the women and children, the very old and
the negroes. In a swath eighty miles wide the Yankees were looting and burning. There were hundreds
of homes in flames, hundreds of homes resounding
with their footsteps. But, to Scarlett, watching the
bluecoats pour into the front hall, it was not a countrywide affair. It was entirely personal, a malicious
action aimed directly at her and hers.
She stood at the foot of the stairs, the baby in her
arms, Wade pressed tightly against her, his head hidden in her skirts as the Yankees swarmed through the
house, pushing roughly past her up the stairs, dragging furniture onto the front porch, running bayonets and knives into upholstery and digging inside
for concealed valuables. Upstairs they were ripping
open mattresses and feather beds until the air in the
hall was thick with feathers that floated softly down
on her head. Impotent rage quelled what little fear
was left in her heart as she stood helpless while they
plundered and stole and ruined.
The sergeant in charge was a bow-legged, grizzled
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little man with a large wad of tobacco in his cheek. He
reached Scarlett before any of his men and, spitting
freely on the floor and her skirts, said briefly:
“Lemme have what you got in yore hand, lady.”
She had forgotten the trinkets she had intended to
hide and, with a sneer which she hoped was as eloquent as that pictured on Grandma Robillard’s face,
she flung the articles to the floor and almost enjoyed
the rapacious scramble that ensued.
“I’ll trouble you for thet ring and them earbobs.”
Scarlett tucked the baby more securely under her
arm so that he hung face downward, crimson and
screaming, and removed the garnet earrings which
had been Gerald’s wedding present to Ellen. Then she
stripped off the large sapphire solitaire which Charles
had given her as an engagement ring.
“Don’t throw um. Hand um to me,” said the
sergeant, putting out his hands. “Them bastards got
enough already. What else have you got?” His eyes
went over her basque sharply.
For a moment Scarlett went faint, already feeling
rough hands thrusting themselves into her bosom,
fumbling at her garters.
“That is all, but I suppose it is customary to strip
your victims?”
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�PART THREE
“Oh, I’ll take your word,” said the sergeant goodnaturedly, spitting again as he turned away. Scarlett
righted the baby and tried to soothe him, holding her
hand over the place on the diaper where the wallet
was hidden, thanking God that Melanie had a baby
and that baby had a diaper.
Upstairs she could hear heavy boots trampling, the
protesting screech of furniture pulled across the floor,
the crashing of china and mirrors, the curses when
nothing of value appeared. From the yard came
loud cries: “Head um off! Don’t let um get away!”
and the despairing squawks of the hens and quacking and honking of the ducks and geese. A pang
went through her as she heard an agonized squealing which was suddenly stilled by a pistol shot and
she knew that the sow was dead. Damn Prissy! She
had run off and left her. If only the shoats were safe!
If only the family had gotten safely to the swamp! But
there was no way of knowing.
She stood quietly in the hall while the soldiers
boiled about her, shouting and cursing. Wade’s fingers were in her skirt in a terrified grip. She could
feel his body shaking as he pressed against her but
she could not bring herself to speak reassuringly to
him. She could not bring herself to utter any word
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to the Yankees, either of pleading, protest or anger.
She could only thank God that her knees still had the
strength to support her, that her neck was still strong
enough to hold her head high. But when a squad of
bearded men came lumbering down the steps, laden
with an assortment of stolen articles and she saw
Charles’ sword in the hands of one, she did cry out.
That sword was Wade’s. It had been his father’s
and his grandfather’s sword and Scarlett had given
it to the little boy on his last birthday. They had made
quite a ceremony of it and Melanie had cried, cried
with tears of pride and sorrowful memory, and kissed
him and said he must grow up to be a brave soldier
like his father and his grandfather. Wade was very
proud of it and often climbed upon the table beneath
where it hung to pat it. Scarlett could endure seeing her own possessions going out of the house in
hateful alien hands but not this–not her little boy’s
pride. Wade, peering from the protection of her skirts
at the sound of her cry, found speech and courage in
a mighty sob. Stretching out one hand he cried:
“Mine!”
“You can’t take that!” said Scarlett swiftly, holding
out her hand too.
“I can’t, hey?” said the little soldier who held it,
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�PART THREE
grinning impudently at her. “Well, I can! It’s a Rebel
sword!”
“It’s–it’s not. It’s a Mexican War sword. You can’t
take it. It’s my little boy’s. It was his grandfather’s!
Oh, Captain,” she cried, turning to the sergeant,
“please make him give it to me!”
The sergeant, pleased at his promotion, stepped forward.
“Lemme see thet sword, Bub,” he said.
Reluctantly, the little trooper handed it to him. “It’s
got a solid-gold hilt,” he said.
The sergeant turned it in his hand, held the hilt up
to the sunlight to read the engraved inscription.
“‘To Colonel William R. Hamilton,”’ he deciphered.
“‘From His Staff. For Gallantry. Buena Vista. 1847.”’
“Ho, lady,” he said, “I was at Buena Vista myself.”
“Indeed,” said Scarlett icily.
“Was I? Thet was hot fightin’, lemme tell you. I
ain’t seen such hot fightin’ in this war as we seen
in thet one. So this sword was this little tyke’s
grandaddy’s?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he can have it,” said the sergeant, who was
satisfied enough with the jewelry and trinkets tied up
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�PART THREE
in his handkerchief.
“But it’s got a solid-gold hilt,” insisted the little
trooper.
“We’ll leave her thet to remember us by,” grinned
the sergeant.
Scarlett took the sword, not even saying “Thank
you.” Why should she thank these thieves for returning her own property to her? She held the sword
against her while the little cavalryman argued and
wrangled with the sergeant.
“By God, I’ll give these damn Rebels something to
remember me by,” shouted the private finally when
the sergeant, losing his good nature, told him to go to
hell and not talk back. The little man went charging
toward the back of the house and Scarlett breathed
more easily. They had said nothing about burning the
house. They hadn’t told her to leave so they could fire
it. Perhaps–perhaps– The men came rambling into
the hall from the upstairs and the out of doors.
“Anything?” questioned the sergeant.
“One hog and a few chickens and ducks.”
“Some corn and a few yams and beans. That wildcat
we saw on the horse must have given the alarm, all
right.”
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�PART THREE
“Regular Paul Revere, eh?”
“Well, there ain’t much here, Sarge. You got the
pickin’s. Let’s move on before the whole country gets
the news we’re comin’.”
“Didja dig under the smokehouse? They generally
buries things there.”
“Ain’t no smokehouse.”
“Didja dig in the nigger cabins?”
“Nothin’ but cotton in the cabins. We set fire to it.”
For a brief instant Scarlett saw the long hot days in
the cotton field, felt again the terrible ache in her back,
the raw bruised flesh of her shoulders. All for nothing. The cotton was gone.
“You ain’t got much, for a fac’, have you, lady?”
“Your army has been here before,” she said coolly.
“That’s a fac’. We were in this neighborhood in
September,” said one of the men, turning something
in his hand. “I’d forgot.”
Scarlett saw it was Ellen’s gold thimble that he held.
How often she had seen it gleaming in and out of
Ellen’s fancy work. The sight of it brought back too
many hurting memories of the slender hand which
had worn it. There it lay in this stranger’s calloused
dirty palm and soon it would find its way North and
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�PART THREE
onto the finger of some Yankee woman who would be
proud to wear stolen things. Ellen’s thimble!
Scarlett dropped her head so the enemy could not
see her cry and the tears fell slowly down on the
baby’s head. Through the blur, she saw the men moving toward the doorway, heard the sergeant calling
commands in a loud rough voice. They were going
and Tara was safe, but with the pain of Ellen’s memory on her, she was hardly glad. The sound of the
banging sabers and horses’ hooves brought little relief and she stood, suddenly weak and nerveless, as
they moved off down the avenue, every man laden
with stolen goods, clothing, blankets, pictures, hens
and ducks, the sow.
Then to her nostrils was borne the smell of smoke
and she turned, too weak with lessening strain, to
care about the cotton. Through the open windows of
the dining room, she saw smoke drifting lazily out of
the negro cabins. There went the cotton. There went
the tax money and part of the money which was to
see them through this bitter winter. There was nothing she could do about it either, except watch. She had
seen fires in cotton before and she knew how difficult
they were to put out, even with many men laboring
at it. Thank God, the quarters were so far from the
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�PART THREE
house! Thank God, there was no wind today to carry
sparks to the roof of Tara!
Suddenly she swung about, rigid as a pointer, and
stared with horror-struck eyes down the hall, down
the covered passageway toward the kitchen. There
was smoke coming from the kitchen!
Somewhere between the hall and the kitchen, she
laid the baby down. Somewhere she flung off Wade’s
grip, slinging him against the wall. She burst into
the smoke-filled kitchen and reeled back, coughing,
her eyes streaming tears from the smoke. Again she
plunged in, her skirt held over her nose.
The room was dark, lit as it was by one small window, and so thick with smoke that she was blinded,
but she could hear the hiss and crackle of flames.
Dashing a hand across her eyes, she peered squinting and saw thin lines of flame creeping across the
kitchen floor, toward the walls. Someone had scattered the blazing logs in the open fireplace across the
whole room and the tinder-dry pine floor was sucking in the flames and spewing them up like water.
Back she rushed to the dining room and snatched a
rag rug from the floor, spilling two chairs with a crash.
“I’ll never beat it out–never, never! Oh, God, if only
there was someone to help! Tara is gone–gone! Oh,
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�PART THREE
God! This was what that little wretch meant when
he said he’d give me something to remember him by!
Oh, if I’d only let him have the sword!”
In the hallway she passed her son lying in the corner
with his sword. His eyes were closed and his face had
a look of slack, unearthly peace.
“My God! He’s dead! They’ve frightened him to
death!” she thought in agony but she raced by him to
the bucket of drinking water which always stood in
the passageway by the kitchen door.
She soused the end of the rug into the bucket and
drawing a deep breath plunged again into the smokefilled room slamming the door behind her. For an
eternity she reeled and coughed, beating the rug
against the lines of fire that shot swiftly beyond her.
Twice her long skirt took fire and she slapped it out
with her hands. She could smell the sickening smell
of her hair scorching, as it came loose from its pins
and swept about her shoulders. The flames raced ever
beyond her, toward the walls of the covered runway,
fiery snakes that writhed and leaped and, exhaustion
sweeping her, she knew that it was hopeless.
Then the door swung open and the sucking draft
flung the flames higher. It closed with a bang and, in
the swirling smoke, Scarlett, half blind, saw Melanie,
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�PART THREE
stamping her feet on the flames, beating at them with
something dark and heavy. She saw her staggering,
heard her coughing, caught a lightning-flash glimpse
of her set white face and eyes narrow to slits against
the smoke, saw her small body curving back and forth
as she swung her rug up and down. For another
eternity they fought and swayed, side by side, and
Scarlett could see that the lines of fire were shortening. Then suddenly Melanie turned toward her and,
with a cry, hit her across the shoulders with all her
might. Scarlett went down in a whirlwind of smoke
and darkness.
When she opened her eyes she was lying on the back
porch, her head pillowed comfortably on Melanie’s
lap, and the afternoon sunlight was shining on her
face. Her hands, face and shoulders smarted intolerably from burns. Smoke was still rolling from the
quarters, enveloping the cabins in thick clouds, and
the smell of burning cotton was strong. Scarlett saw
wisps of smoke drifting from the kitchen and she
stirred frantically to rise.
But she was pushed back as Melanie’s calm voice
said: “Lie still, dear. The fire’s out.”
She lay quiet for a moment, eyes closed, sighing
with relief, and heard the slobbery gurgle of the baby
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�PART THREE
near by and the reassuring sound of Wade’s hiccoughing. So he wasn’t dead, thank God! She opened
her eyes and looked up into Melanie’s face. Her curls
were singed, her face black with smut but her eyes
were sparkling with excitement and she was smiling.
“You look like a nigger,” murmured Scarlett, burrowing her head wearily into its soft pillow.
“And you look like the end man in a minstrel show,”
replied Melanie equably.
“Why did you have to hit me?”
“Because, my darling, your back was on fire. I didn’t
dream you’d faint, though the Lord knows you’ve
had enough today to kill you. . . . I came back as
soon as I got the stock safe in the woods. I nearly
died, thinking about you and the baby alone. Did–
the Yankees harm you?”
“If you mean did they rape me, no,” said Scarlett,
groaning as she tried to sit up. Though Melanie’s lap
was soft, the porch on which she was lying was far
from comfortable. “But they’ve stolen everything, everything. We’ve lost everything– Well, what is there
to look so happy about?”
“We haven’t lost each other and our babies are
all right and we have a roof over our heads,” said
Melanie and there was a lilt in her voice. “And that’s
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�PART THREE
all anyone can hope for now. . . . Goodness but Beau
is wet! I suppose the Yankees even stole his extra diapers. He– Scarlett, what on earth is in his diaper?”
She thrust a suddenly frightened hand down the
baby’s back and brought up the wallet. For a moment
she looked at it as if she had never seen it before and
then she began to laugh, peal on peal of mirth that
had in it no hint of hysteria.
“Nobody but you would ever have thought of it,”
she cried and flinging her arms around Scarlett’s neck
she kissed her. “You are the beatenest sister I ever
had!”
Scarlett permitted the embrace because she was too
tired to struggle, because the words of praise brought
balm to her spirit and because, in the dark smokefilled kitchen, there had been born a greater respect
for her sister-in-law, a closer feeling of comradeship.
“I’ll say this for her,” she thought grudgingly, “she’s
always there when you need her.”
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�CHAPTER XXVIII
in abruptly with a killing frost.
Chilling winds swept beneath the doorsills and rattled the loose windowpanes with a monotonous tinkling sound. The last of the leaves fell from the bare
trees and only the pines stood clothed, black and cold
against pale skies. The rutted red roads were frozen
to flintiness and hunger rode the winds through Georgia.
Scarlett recalled bitterly her conversation with
Grandma Fontaine. On that afternoon two months
ago, which now seemed years in the past, she had
told the old lady she had already known the worst
which could possibly happen to her, and she had spoken from the bottom of her heart. Now that remark
sounded like schoolgirl hyperbole. Before Sherman’s
men came through Tara the second time, she had her
small riches of food and money, she had neighbors
more fortunate than she and she had the cotton which
would tide her over until spring. Now the cotton was
gone, the food was gone, the money was of no use
to her, for there was no food to buy with it, and the
neighbors were in worse plight than she. At least,
she had the cow and the calf, a few shoats and the
horse, and the neighbors had nothing but the little
C OLD
WEATHER SET
�PART THREE
they had been able to hide in the woods and bury in
the ground.
Fairhill, the Tarleton home, was burned to the foundations, and Mrs. Tarleton and the four girls were
existing in the overseer’s house. The Munroe house
near Lovejoy was leveled too. The wooden wing
of Mimosa had burned and only the thick resistant
stucco of the main house and the frenzied work of
the Fontaine women and their slaves with wet blankets and quilts had saved it. The Calverts’ house had
again been spared, due to the intercession of Hilton,
the Yankee overseer, but there was not a head of livestock, not a fowl, not an ear of corn left on the place.
At Tara and throughout the County, the problem
was food. Most of the families had nothing at all but
the remains of their yam crops and their peanuts and
such game as they could catch in the woods. What
they had, each shared with less fortunate friends, as
they had done in more prosperous days. But the time
soon came when there was nothing to share.
At Tara, they ate rabbit and possum and catfish, if
Pork was lucky. On other days a small amount of
milk, hickory nuts, roasted acorns and yams. They
were always hungry. To Scarlett it seemed that at every turn she met outstretched hands, pleading eyes.
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�PART THREE
The sight of them drove her almost to madness, for
she was as hungry as they.
She ordered the calf killed, because he drank so
much of the precious milk, and that night everyone
ate so much fresh veal all of them were ill. She knew
that she should kill one of the shoats but she put it
off from day to day, hoping to raise them to maturity. They were so small. There would be so little
of them to eat if they were killed now and so much
more if they could be saved a little longer. Nightly
she debated with Melanie the advisability of sending Pork abroad on the horse with some greenbacks
to try to buy food. But the fear that the horse might
be captured and the money taken from Pork deterred
them. They did not know where the Yankees were.
They might be a thousand miles away or only across
the river. Once, Scarlett, in desperation, started to
ride out herself to search for food, but the hysterical
outbursts of the whole family fearful of the Yankees
made her abandon the plan.
Pork foraged far, at times not coming home all night,
and Scarlett did not ask him where he went. Sometimes he returned with game, sometimes with a few
ears of corn, a bag of dried peas. Once he brought
home a rooster which he said he found in the woods.
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The family ate it with relish but a sense of guilt, knowing very well Pork had stolen it, as he had stolen the
peas and corn. One night soon after this, he tapped
on Scarlett’s door long after the house was asleep and
sheepishly exhibited a leg peppered with small shot.
As she bandaged it for him, he explained awkwardly
that when attempting to get into a hen coop at Fayetteville, he had been discovered. Scarlett did not ask
whose hen coop but patted Pork’s shoulder gently,
tears in her eyes. Negroes were provoking sometimes
and stupid and lazy, but there was loyalty in them
that money couldn’t buy, a feeling of oneness with
their white folks which made them risk their lives to
keep food on the table.
In other days Pork’s pilferings would have been a
serious matter, probably calling for a whipping. In
other days she would have been forced at least to
reprimand him severely. “Always remember, dear,”
Ellen had said, “you are responsible for the moral as
well as the physical welfare of the darkies God has
intrusted to your care. You must realize that they are
like children and must be guarded from themselves
like children, and you must always set them a good
example.”
But now, Scarlett pushed that admonition into the
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back of her mind. That she was encouraging theft,
and perhaps theft from people worse off than she, was
no longer a matter for conscience. In fact the morals
of the affair weighed lightly upon her. Instead of punishment or reproof, she only regretted he had been
shot.
“You must be more careful, Pork. We don’t want
to lose you. What would we do without you? You’ve
been mighty good and faithful and when we get some
money again, I’m going to buy you a big gold watch
and engrave on it something out of the Bible. ‘Well
done, good and faithful servant.”’
Pork beamed under the praise and gingerly rubbed
his bandaged leg.
“Dat soun’ mighty fine, Miss Scarlett. W’en you
speckin’ ter git dat money?”
“I don’t know, Pork, but I’m going to get it some
time, somehow.” She bent on him an unseeing glance
that was so passionately bitter he stirred uneasily,
“Some day, when this war is over, I’m going to have
lots of money, and when I do I’ll never be hungry or
cold again. None of us will ever be hungry or cold.
We’ll all wear fine clothes and have fried chicken every day and–”
Then she stopped. The strictest rule at Tara, one
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which she herself had made and which she rigidly
enforced, was that no one should ever talk of the fine
meals they had eaten in the past or what they would
eat now, if they had the opportunity.
Pork slipped from the room as she remained staring moodily into the distance. In the old days, now
dead and gone, life had been so complex, so full of
intricate and complicated problems. There had been
the problem of trying to win Ashley’s love and trying
to keep a dozen other beaux dangling and unhappy.
There had been small breaches of conduct to be concealed from her elders, jealous girls to be flouted or
placated, styles of dresses and materials to be chosen, different coiffures to be tried and, oh, so many,
many other matters to be decided! Now life was so
amazingly simple. Now all that mattered was food
enough to keep off starvation, clothing enough to prevent freezing and a roof overhead which did not leak
too much.
It was during these days that Scarlett dreamed and
dreamed again the nightmare which was to haunt her
for years. It was always the same dream, the details
never varied, but the terror of it mounted each time it
came to her and the fear of experiencing it again troubled even her waking hours. She remembered so well
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the incidents of the day when she had first dreamed
it.
Cold rain had fallen for days and the house was chill
with drafts and dampness. The logs in the fireplace
were wet and smoky and gave little heat. There had
been nothing to eat except milk since breakfast, for
the yams were exhausted and Pork’s snares and fishlines had yielded nothing. One of the shoats would
have to be killed the next day if they were to eat at
all. Strained and hungry faces, black and white, were
staring at her, mutely asking her to provide food. She
would have to risk losing the horse and send Pork out
to buy something. And to make matters worse, Wade
was ill with a sore throat and a raging fever and there
was neither doctor nor medicine for him.
Hungry, weary with watching her child, Scarlett left
him to Melanie’s care for a while and lay down on
her bed to nap. Her feet icy, she twisted and turned,
unable to sleep, weighed down with fear and despair. Again and again, she thought: “What shall I
do? Where shall I turn? Isn’t there anybody in the
world who can help me?” Where had all the security
of the world gone? Why wasn’t there someone, some
strong wise person to take the burdens from her? She
wasn’t made to carry them. She did not know how to
904
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carry them. And then she fell into an uneasy doze.
She was in a wild strange country so thick with
swirling mist she could not see her hand before her
face. The earth beneath her feet was uneasy. It was
a haunted land, still with a terrible stillness, and she
was lost in it, lost and terrified as a child in the night.
She was bitterly cold and hungry and so fearful of
what lurked in the mists about her that she tried to
scream and could not. There were things in the fog
reaching out fingers to pluck at her skirt, to drag her
down into the uneasy quaking earth on which she
stood, silent, relentless, spectral hands. Then, she
knew that somewhere in the opaque gloom about her
there was shelter, help, a haven of refuge and warmth.
But where was it? Could she reach it before the hands
clutched her and dragged her down into the quicksands?
Suddenly she was running, running through the
mist like a mad thing, crying and screaming, throwing out her arms to clutch only empty air and wet
mist. Where was the haven? It eluded her but it was
there, hidden, somewhere. If she could only reach
it! If she could only reach it she would be safe! But
terror was weakening her legs, hunger making her
faint. She gave one despairing cry and awoke to find
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Melanie’s worried face above her and Melanie’s hand
shaking her to wakefulness.
The dream returned again and again, whenever she
went to sleep with an empty stomach. And that
was frequently enough. It so frightened her that she
feared to sleep, although she feverishly told herself
there was nothing in such a dream to be afraid of.
There was nothing in a dream about fog to scare her
so. Nothing at all–yet the thought of dropping off
into that mist-filled country so terrified her she began sleeping with Melanie, who would wake her up
when her moaning and twitching revealed that she
was again in the clutch of the dream.
Under the strain she grew white and thin. The
pretty roundness left her face, throwing her cheek
bones into prominence, emphasizing her slanting
green eyes and giving her the look of a prowling, hungry cat.
“Daytime is enough like a nightmare without my
dreaming things,” she thought desperately and began
hoarding her daily ration to eat it just before she went
to sleep.
At Christmas time Frank Kennedy and a small troop
from the commissary department jogged up to Tara
on a futile hunt for grain and animals for the army.
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They were a ragged and ruffianly appearing crew,
mounted on lame and heaving horses which obviously were in too bad condition to be used for more
active service. Like their animals the men had been
invalided out of the front-line forces and, except for
Frank, all of them had an arm missing or an eye gone
or stiffened joints. Most of them wore blue overcoats
of captured Yankees and, for a brief instant of horror,
those at Tara thought Sherman’s men had returned.
They stayed the night on the plantation, sleeping on
the floor in the parlor, luxuriating as they stretched
themselves on the velvet rug, for it had been weeks
since they had slept under a roof or on anything softer
than pine needles and hard earth. For all their dirty
beards and tatters they were a well-bred crowd, full of
pleasant small talk, jokes and compliments and very
glad to be spending Christmas Eve in a big house,
surrounded by pretty women as they had been accustomed to do in days long past. They refused to be
serious about the war, told outrageous lies to make
the girls laugh and brought to the bare and looted
house the first lightness, the first hint of festivity it
had known in many a day.
“It’s almost like the old days when we had house
parties, isn’t it?” whispered Suellen happily to Scar907
�PART THREE
lett. Suellen was raised to the skies by having a beau
of her own in the house again and she could hardly
take her eyes off Frank Kennedy. Scarlett was surprised to see that Suellen could be almost pretty, despite the thinness which had persisted since her illness. Her cheeks were flushed and there was a soft
luminous look in her eyes.
“She really must care about him,” thought Scarlett
in contempt. “And I guess she’d be almost human if
she ever had a husband of her own, even if her husband was old fuss-budget Frank.”
Carreen had brightened a little too, and some of the
sleep-walking look left her eyes that night. She had
found that one of the men had known Brent Tarleton
and had been with him the day he was killed, and she
promised herself a long private talk with him after
supper.
At supper Melanie surprised them all by forcing
herself out of her timidity and being almost vivacious. She laughed and joked and almost but not
quite coquetted with a one-eyed soldier who gladly
repaid her efforts with extravagant gallantries. Scarlett knew the effort this involved both mentally and
physically, for Melanie suffered torments of shyness
in the presence of anything male. Moreover she was
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�PART THREE
far from well. She insisted she was strong and did
more work even than Dilcey but Scarlett knew she
was sick. When she lifted things her face went white
and she had a way of sitting down suddenly after exertions, as if her legs would no longer support her.
But tonight she, like Suellen and Carreen, was doing
everything possible to make the soldiers enjoy their
Christmas Eve. Scarlett alone took no pleasure in the
guests.
The troop had added their ration of parched corn
and side meat to the supper of dried peas, stewed
dried apples and peanuts which Mammy set before
them and they declared it was the best meal they
had had in months. Scarlett watched them eat and
she was uneasy. She not only begrudged them every mouthful they ate but she was on tenterhooks lest
they discover somehow that Pork had slaughtered
one of the shoats the day before. It now hung in the
pantry and she had grimly promised her household
that she would scratch out the eyes of anyone who
mentioned the shoat to their guests or the presence
of the dead pig’s sisters and brothers, safe in their
pen in the swamp. These hungry men could devour
the whole shoat at one meal and, if they knew of the
live hogs, they could commandeer them for the army.
She was alarmed, too, for the cow and the horse and
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�PART THREE
wished they were hidden in the swamp, instead of
tied in the woods at the bottom of the pasture. If the
commissary took her stock, Tara could not possibly
live through the winter. There would be no way of
replacing them. As to what the army would eat, she
did not care. Let the army feed the army–if it could.
It was hard enough for her to feed her own.
The men added as dessert some “ramrod rolls” from
their knapsacks, and this was the first time Scarlett
had ever seen this Confederate article of diet about
which there were almost as many jokes as about
lice. They were charred spirals of what appeared
to be wood. The men dared her to take a bite and,
when she did, she discovered that beneath the smokeblackened surface was unsalted corn bread. The soldiers mixed their ration of corn meal with water,
and salt too when they could get it, wrapped the
thick paste about their ramrods and roasted the mess
over camp fires. It was as hard as rock candy and
as tasteless as sawdust and after one bite Scarlett
hastily handed it back amid roars of laughter. She
met Melanie’s eyes and the same thought was plain
in both faces. . . . “How can they go on fighting if
they have only this stuff to eat?”
The meal was gay enough and even Gerald, pre910
�PART THREE
siding absently at the head of the table, managed to
evoke from the back of his dim mind some of the manner of a host and an uncertain smile. The men talked,
the women smiled and flattered–but Scarlett turning
suddenly to Frank Kennedy to ask him news of Miss
Pittypat, caught an expression on his face which made
her forget what she intended to say.
His eyes had left Suellen’s and were wandering
about the room, to Gerald’s childlike puzzled eyes,
to the floor, bare of rugs, to the mantelpiece denuded of its ornaments, the sagging springs and torn
upholstery into which Yankee bayonets had ripped,
the cracked mirror above the sideboard, the unfaded
squares on the wall where pictures had hung before
the looters came, the scant table service, the decently
mended but old dresses of the girls, the flour sack
which had been made into a kilt for Wade.
Frank was remembering the Tara he had known before the war and on his face was a hurt look, a look
of tired impotent anger. He loved Suellen, liked her
sisters, respected Gerald and had a genuine fondness
for the plantation. Since Sherman had swept through
Georgia, Frank had seen many appalling sights as he
rode about the state trying to collect supplies, but
nothing had gone to his heart as Tara did now. He
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wanted to do something for the O’Haras, especially
Suellen, and there was nothing he could do. He was
unconsciously wagging his whiskered head in pity
and clicking his tongue against his teeth when Scarlett caught his eye. He saw the flame of indignant
pride in them and he dropped his gaze quickly to his
plate in embarrassment.
The girls were hungry for news. There had been no
mail service since Atlanta fell, now four months past,
and they were in complete ignorance as to where the
Yankees were, how the Confederate Army was faring, what had happened to Atlanta and to old friends.
Frank, whose work took him all over the section, was
as good as a newspaper, better even, for he was kin
to or knew almost everyone from Macon north to Atlanta, and he could supply bits of interesting personal
gossip which the papers always omitted. To cover
his embarrassment at being caught by Scarlett, he
plunged hastily into a recital of news. The Confederates, he told them, had retaken Atlanta after Sherman
marched out, but it was a valueless prize as Sherman
had burned it completely.
“But I thought Atlanta burned the night I left,” cried
Scarlett, bewildered. “I thought our boys burned it!”
“Oh, no, Miss Scarlett!”
912
cried Frank, shocked.
�PART THREE
“We’d never burn one of our own towns with our
own folks in it! What you saw burning was the warehouses and the supplies we didn’t want the Yankees
to capture and the foundries and the ammunition.
But that was all. When Sherman took the town the
houses and stores were standing there as pretty as
you please. And he quartered his men in them.”
“But what happened to the people? Did he–did he
kill them?”
“He killed some–but not with bullets,” said the oneeyed soldier grimly. “Soon’s he marched into Atlanta
he told the mayor that all the people in town would
have to move out, every living soul. And there were
plenty of old folks that couldn’t stand the trip and
sick folks that ought not to have been moved and
ladies who were– well, ladies who hadn’t ought to be
moved either. And he moved them out in the biggest
rainstorm you ever saw, hundreds and hundreds of
them, and dumped them in the woods near Rough
and Ready and sent word to General Hood to come
and get them. And a plenty of the folks died of pneumonia and not being able to stand that sort of treatment.”
“Oh, but why did he do that? They couldn’t have
done him any harm,” cried Melanie.
913
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“He said he wanted the town to rest his men and
horses in,” said Frank. “And he rested them there till
the middle of November and then he lit out. And he
set fire to the whole town when he left and burned
everything.”
“Oh, surely not everything!” cried the girls in dismay.
It was inconceivable that the bustling town they
knew, so full of people, so crowded with soldiers, was
gone. All the lovely homes beneath shady trees, all
the big stores and the fine hotels–surely they couldn’t
be gone! Melanie seemed ready to burst into tears,
for she had been born there and knew no other home.
Scarlett’s heart sank because she had come to love the
place second only to Tara.
“Well, almost everything,” Frank amended hastily,
disturbed by the expressions on their faces. He tried
to look cheerful, for he did not believe in upsetting
ladies. Upset ladies always upset him and made him
feel helpless. He could not bring himself to tell them
the worst. Let them find out from some one else.
He could not tell them what the army saw when
it marched back into Atlanta, the acres and acres of
chimneys standing blackly above ashes, piles of halfburned rubbish and tumbled heaps of brick clogging
914
�PART THREE
the streets, old trees dying from fire, their charred
limbs tumbling to the ground in the cold wind. He
remembered how the sight had turned him sick, remembered the bitter curses of the Confederates when
they saw the remains of the town. He hoped the
ladies would never hear of the horrors of the looted
cemetery, for they’d never get over that. Charlie Hamilton and Melanie’s mother and father were
buried there. The sight of that cemetery still gave
Frank nightmares. Hoping to find jewelry buried
with the dead, the Yankee soldiers had broken open
vaults, dug up graves. They had robbed the bodies,
stripped from the coffins gold and silver name plates,
silver trimmings and silver handles. The skeletons
and corpses, flung helterskelter among their splintered caskets, lay exposed and so pitiful.
And Frank couldn’t tell them about the dogs and the
cats. Ladies set such a store by pets. But the thousands of starving animals, left homeless when their
masters had been so rudely evacuated, had shocked
him almost as much as the cemetery, for Frank loved
cats and dogs. The animals had been frightened, cold,
ravenous, wild as forest creatures, the strong attacking the weak, the weak waiting for the weaker to die
so they could eat them. And, above the ruined town,
the buzzards splotched the wintry sky with graceful,
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�PART THREE
sinister bodies.
Frank cast about in his mind for some mitigating information that would make the ladies feel better.
“There’s some houses still standing,” he said,
“houses that set on big lots away from other houses
and didn’t catch fire. And the churches and the Masonic hall are left. And a few stores too. But the business section and all along the railroad tracks and at
Five Points–well, ladies, that part of town is flat on
the ground.”
“Then,” cried Scarlett bitterly, “that warehouse
Charlie left me, down on the tracks, it’s gone too?”
“If it was near the tracks, it’s gone, but–” Suddenly he smiled. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? “Cheer up, ladies! Your Aunt Pitty’s house is
still standing. It’s kind of damaged but there it is.”
“Oh, how did it escape?”
“Well, it’s made of brick and it’s got about the only
slate roof in Atlanta and that kept the sparks from setting it afire, I guess. And then it’s about the last house
on the north end of town and the fire wasn’t so bad
over that way. Of course, the Yankees quartered there
tore it up aplenty. They even burned the baseboard
and the mahogany stair rail for firewood, but shucks!
It’s in good shape. When I saw Miss Pitty last week
916
�PART THREE
in Macon–”
“You saw her? How is she?”
“Just fine. Just fine. When I told her her house was
still standing, she made up her mind to come home
right away. That is– if that old darky, Peter, will let
her come. Lots of the Atlanta people have already
come back, because they got nervous about Macon.
Sherman didn’t take Macon but everybody is afraid
Wilson’s raiders will get there soon and he’s worse
than Sherman.”
“But how silly of them to come back if there aren’t
any houses! Where do they live?”
“Miss Scarlett, they’re living in tents and shacks and
log cabins and doubling up six and seven families in
the few houses still standing. And they’re trying to
rebuild. Now, Miss Scarlett, don’t say they are silly.
You know Atlanta folks as well as I do. They are
plumb set on that town, most as bad as Charlestonians are about Charleston, and it’ll take more than
Yankees and a burning to keep them away. Atlanta
folks are–begging your pardon, Miss Melly–as stubborn as mules about Atlanta. I don’t know why, for I
always thought that town a mighty pushy, impudent
sort of place. But then, I’m a countryman born and
I don’t like any town. And let me tell you, the ones
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who are getting back first are the smart ones. The
ones who come back last won’t find a stick or stone
or brick of their houses, because everybody’s out salvaging things all over town to rebuild their houses.
Just day before yesterday, I saw Mrs. Merriwether
and Miss Maybelle and their old darky woman out
collecting brick in a wheelbarrow. And Mrs. Meade
told me she was thinking about building a log cabin
when the doctor comes back to help her. She said she
lived in a log cabin when she first came to Atlanta,
when it was Marthasville, and it wouldn’t bother her
none to do it again. ‘Course, she was only joking but
that shows you how they feel about it.”
“I think they’ve got a lot of spirit,” said Melanie
proudly. “Don’t you, Scarlett?”
Scarlett nodded, a grim pleasure and pride in her
adopted town filling her. As Frank said, it was a
pushy, impudent place and that was why she liked it.
It wasn’t hide-bound and stick-in-the- muddish like
the older towns and it had a brash exuberance that
matched her own. “I’m like Atlanta,” she thought.
“It takes more than Yankees or a burning to keep me
down.”
“If Aunt Pitty is going back to Atlanta, we’d better
go back and stay with her, Scarlett,” said Melanie, in918
�PART THREE
terrupting her train of thought. “She’ll die of fright
alone.”
“Now, how can I leave here, Melly?” Scarlett asked
crossly. “If you are so anxious to go, go. I won’t stop
you.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way, darling,” cried
Melanie, flushing with distress. “How thoughtless of
me! Of course, you can’t leave Tara and–and I guess
Uncle Peter and Cookie can take care of Auntie.”
“There’s nothing to keep you from going,” Scarlett
pointed out, shortly.
“You know I wouldn’t leave you,” answered
Melanie. “And I–I would be just frightened to death
without you.”
“Suit yourself. Besides, you wouldn’t catch me
going back to Atlanta. Just as soon as they get a
few houses up, Sherman will come back and burn it
again.”
“He won’t be back,” said Frank and, despite his efforts, his face drooped. “He’s gone on through the
state to the coast. Savannah was captured this week
and they say the Yankees are going on up into South
Carolina.”
“Savannah taken!”
919
�PART THREE
“Yes. Why, ladies, Savannah couldn’t help but fall.
They didn’t have enough men to hold it, though they
used every man they could get–every man who could
drag one foot after another. Do you know that when
the Yankees were marching on Milledgeville, they
called out all the cadets from the military academies,
no matter how young they were, and even opened the
state penitentiary to get fresh troops? Yes, sir, they
turned loose every convict who was willing to fight
and promised him a pardon if he lived through the
war. It kind of gave me the creeps to see those little
cadets in the ranks with thieves and cutthroats.”
“They turned loose the convicts on us!”
“Now, Miss Scarlett, don’t you get upset. They’re a
long way off from here, and furthermore they’re making good soldiers. I guess being a thief don’t keep a
man from being a good soldier, does it?”
“I think it’s wonderful,” said Melanie softly.
“Well, I don’t,” said Scarlett flatly. “There’s thieves
enough running around the country anyway, what
with the Yankees and–” She caught herself in time but
the men laughed.
“What with Yankees and our commissary department,” they finished and she flushed.
“But where’s General Hood’s army?” interposed
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�PART THREE
Melanie hastily. “Surely he could have held Savannah.”
“Why, Miss Melanie,” Frank was startled and reproachful, “General Hood hasn’t been down in that
section at all. He’s been fighting up in Tennessee, trying to draw the Yankees out of Georgia.”
“And didn’t his little scheme work well!” cried Scarlett sarcastically. “He left the damn Yankees to go
through us with nothing but schoolboys and convicts
and Home Guards to protect us.”
“Daughter,” said Gerald rousing himself, “you are
profane. Your mother will be grieved.”
“They are damn Yankees!” cried Scarlett passionately. “And I never expect to call them anything else.”
At the mention of Ellen everyone felt queer and conversation suddenly ceased. Melanie again interposed.
“When you were in Macon did you see India and
Honey Wilkes? Did they–had they heard anything of
Ashley?”
“Now, Miss Melly, you know if I’d had news of Ashley, I’d have ridden up here from Macon right away to
tell you,” said Frank reproachfully. “No, they didn’t
have any news but–now, don’t you fret about Ashley,
Miss Melly. I know it’s been a long time since you
heard from him, but you can’t expect to hear from
921
�PART THREE
a fellow when he’s in prison, can you? And things
aren’t as bad in Yankee prisons as they are in ours.
After all, the Yankees have plenty to eat and enough
medicines and blankets. They aren’t like we are– not
having enough to feed ourselves, much less our prisoners.”
“Oh, the Yankees have got plenty,” cried Melanie,
passionately bitter. “But they don’t give things to the
prisoners. You know they don’t, Mr. Kennedy. You
are just saying that to make me feel better. You know
that our boys freeze to death up there and starve too
and die without doctors and medicine, simply because the Yankees hate us so much! Oh, if we could
just wipe every Yankee off the face of the earth! Oh, I
know that Ashley is–”
“Don’t say it!” cried Scarlett, her heart in her throat.
As long as no one said Ashley was dead, there persisted in her heart a faint hope that he lived, but she
felt that if she heard the words pronounced, in that
moment he would die.
“Now, Mrs. Wilkes, don’t you bother about your
husband,” said the one-eyed man soothingly. “I was
captured after first Manassas and exchanged later and
when I was in prison, they fed me off the fat of the
land, fried chicken and hot biscuits–”
922
�PART THREE
“I think you are a liar,” said Melanie with a faint
smile and the first sign of spirit Scarlett had ever seen
her display with a man. “What do you think?”
“I think so too,” said the one-eyed man and slapped
his leg with a laugh.
“If you’ll all come into the parlor, I’ll sing you
some Christmas carols,” said Melanie, glad to change
the subject. “The piano was one thing the Yankees couldn’t carry away. Is it terribly out of tune,
Suellen?”
“Dreadfully,” answered Suellen, happily beckoning
with a smile to Frank.
But as they all passed from the room, Frank hung
back, tugging at Scarlett’s sleeve.
“May I speak to you alone?”
For an awful moment she feared he was going to ask
about her livestock and she braced herself for a good
lie.
When the room was cleared and they stood by
the fire, all the false cheerfulness which had colored
Frank’s face in front of the others passed and she saw
that he looked like an old man. His face was as dried
and brown as the leaves that were blowing about the
lawn of Tara and his ginger-colored whiskers were
thin and scraggly and streaked with gray. He clawed
923
�PART THREE
at them absently and cleared his throat in an annoying way before he spoke.
“I’m sorry about your ma, Miss Scarlett.”
“Please don’t talk about it.”
“And your pa– Has he been this way since–?”
“Yes–he’s–he’s not himself, as you can see.”
“He sure set a store by her.”
“Oh, Mr. Kennedy, please don’t let’s talk–”
“I’m sorry, Miss Scarlett,” and he shuffled his feet
nervously. “The truth is I wanted to take up something with your pa and now I see it won’t do any
good.”
“Perhaps I can help you, Mr. Kennedy. You see–I’m
the head of the house now.”
“Well, I,” began Frank and again clawed nervously
at his beard. “The truth is– Well, Miss Scarlett, I was
aiming to ask him for Miss Suellen.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” cried Scarlett in amused
amazement, “that you haven’t yet asked Pa for
Suellen? And you’ve been courting her for years!”
He flushed and grinned embarrassedly and in general looked like a shy and sheepish boy.
“Well, I–I didn’t know if she’d have me. I’m so
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�PART THREE
much older than she is and–there were so many goodlooking young bucks hanging around Tara–”
“Hump!” thought Scarlett, “they were hanging
around me, not her!”
“And I don’t know yet if she’ll have me. I’ve never
asked her but she must know how I feel. I–I thought
I’d ask Mr. O’Hara’s permission and tell him the
truth. Miss Scarlett, I haven’t got a cent now. I used to
have a lot of money, if you’ll forgive me mentioning
it, but right now all I own is my horse and the clothes
I’ve got on. You see, when I enlisted I sold most of my
land and I put all my money in Confederate bonds
and you know what they’re worth now. Less than the
paper they’re printed on. And anyway, I haven’t got
them now, because they burned up when the Yankees
burned my sister’s house. I know I’ve got gall asking
for Miss Suellen now when I haven’t a cent but–well,
it’s this way. I got to thinking that we don’t know how
things are going to turn out about this war. It sure
looks like the end of the world for me. There’s nothing we can be sure of and–and I thought it would be
a heap of comfort to me and maybe to her if we were
engaged. That would be something sure. I wouldn’t
ask to marry her till I could take care of her, Miss Scarlett, and I don’t know when that will be. But if true
925
�PART THREE
love carries any weight with you, you can be certain
Miss Suellen will be rich in that if nothing else.”
He spoke the last words with a simple dignity that
touched Scarlett, even in her amusement. It was
beyond her comprehension that anyone could love
Suellen. Her sister seemed to her a monster of selfishness, of complaints and of what she could only describe as pure cussedness.
“Why, Mr. Kennedy,” she said kindly, “it’s quite all
right. I’m sure I can speak for Pa. He always set a
store by you and he always expected Suellen to marry
you.”
“Did he now?” cried Frank, happiness in his face.
“Indeed yes,” answered Scarlett, concealing a grin
as she remembered how frequently Gerald had
rudely bellowed across the supper table to Suellen:
“How now, Missy! Hasn’t your ardent beau popped
the question yet? Shall I be asking him his intentions?”
“I shall ask her tonight,” he said, his face quivering,
and he clutched her hand and shook it. “You’re so
kind, Miss Scarlett.”
“I’ll send her to you,” smiled Scarlett, starting for
the parlor. Melanie was beginning to play. The piano
was sadly out of tune but some of the chords were
926
�PART THREE
musical and Melanie was raising her voice to lead the
others in “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!”
Scarlett paused. It did not seem possible that war
had swept over them twice, that they were living in
a ravaged country, close to the border of starvation,
when this old sweet Christmas hymn was being sung.
Abruptly she turned to Frank.
“What did you mean when you said it looked like
the end of the world to you?”
“I’ll talk frankly,” he said slowly, “but I wouldn’t
want you to be alarming the other ladies with what I
say. The war can’t go on much longer. There aren’t
any fresh men to fill the ranks and the desertions are
running high–higher than the army likes to admit.
You see, the men can’t stand to be away from their
families when they know they’re starving, so they go
home to try to provide for them. I can’t blame them
but it weakens the army. And the army can’t fight
without food and there isn’t any food. I know because, you see, getting food is my business. I’ve been
all up and down this section since we retook Atlanta
and there isn’t enough to feed a jaybird. It’s the same
way for three hundred miles south to Savannah. The
folks are starving and the railroads are torn up and
there aren’t any new rifles and the ammunition is giv927
�PART THREE
ing out and there’s no leather at all for shoes. . . . So,
you see, the end is almost here.”
But the fading hopes of the Confederacy weighed
less heavily on Scarlett than his remark about the
scarcity of food. It had been her intention to send
Pork out with the horse and wagon, the gold pieces
and the United States money to scour the countryside
for provisions and material for clothes. But if what
Frank said was true–
But Macon hadn’t fallen. There must be food in Macon. Just as soon as the commissary department was
safely on its way, she’d start Pork for Macon and take
the chance of having the precious horse picked up by
the army. She’d have to risk it.
“Well, let’s don’t talk about unpleasant things
tonight, Mr. Kennedy,” she said. “You go and sit in
Mother’s little office and I’ll send Suellen to you so
you can–well, so you’ll have a little privacy.”
Blushing, smiling, Frank slipped out of the room
and Scarlett watched him go.
“What a pity he can’t marry her now,” she thought.
“That would be one less mouth to feed.”
928
�CHAPTER XXIX
General Johnston, who had been
given back the shattered remnants of his old command, surrendered them in North Carolina and the
war was over. But not until two weeks later did the
news reach Tara. There was too much to do at Tara
for anyone to waste time traveling abroad and hearing gossip and, as the neighbors were just as busy as
they, there was little visiting and news spread slowly.
Spring plowing was at its height and the cotton
and garden seed Pork had brought from Macon was
being put into the ground. Pork had been almost
worthless since the trip, so proud was he of returning safely with his wagon-load of dress goods, seed,
fowls, hams, side meat and meal. Over and over, he
told the story of his many narrow escapes, of the bypaths and country lanes he had taken on his return to
Tara, the unfrequented roads, the old trails, the bridle
paths. He had been five weeks on the road, agonizing weeks for Scarlett. But she did not upbraid him
on his return, for she was happy that he had made
the trip successfully and pleased that he brought back
so much of the money she had given him. She had
a shrewd suspicion that the reason he had so much
money left over was that he had not bought the fowls
T HE
FOLLOWING
A PRIL
�PART THREE
or most of the food. Pork would have taken shame to
himself had he spent her money when there were unguarded hen coops along the road and smokehouses
handy.
Now that they had a little food, everyone at Tara
was busy trying to restore some semblance of naturalness to life. There was work for every pair of hands,
too much work, never-ending work. The withered
stalks of last year’s cotton had to be removed to make
way for this year’s seeds and the balky horse, unaccustomed to the plow, dragged unwillingly through
the fields. Weeds had to be pulled from the garden
and the seeds planted, firewood had to be cut, a beginning had to be made toward replacing the pens
and the miles and miles of fences so casually burned
by the Yankees. The snares Pork set for rabbits had
to be visited twice a day and the fishlines in the river
rebaited. There were beds to be made and floors to
be swept, food to be cooked and dishes washed, hogs
and chickens to be fed and eggs gathered. The cow
had to be milked and pastured near the swamp and
someone had to watch her all day for fear the Yankees
or Frank Kennedy’s men would return and take her.
Even little Wade had his duties. Every morning he
went out importantly with a basket to pick up twigs
and chips to start the fires with.
930
�PART THREE
It was the Fontaine boys, the first of the County men
home from the war, who brought the news of the surrender. Alex, who still had boots, was walking and
Tony, barefooted, was riding on the bare back of a
mule. Tony always managed to get the best of things
in that family. They were swarthier than ever from
four years’ exposure to sun and storm, thinner, more
wiry, and the wild black beards they brought back
from the war made them seem like strangers.
On their way to Mimosa and eager for home, they
only stopped a moment at Tara to kiss the girls and
give them news of the surrender. It was all over, they
said, all finished, and they did not seem to care much
or want to talk about it. All they wanted to know was
whether Mimosa had been burned. On the way south
from Atlanta, they had passed chimney after chimney
where the homes of friends had stood and it seemed
almost too much to hope that their own house had
been spared. They sighed with relief at the welcome
news and laughed, slapping their thighs when Scarlett told them of Sally’s wild ride and how neatly she
had cleared their hedge.
“She’s a spunky girl,” said Tony, “and it’s rotten luck
for her, Joe getting killed. You all got any chewing
tobacco, Scarlett?”
931
�PART THREE
“Nothing but rabbit tobacco. Pa smokes it in a corn
cob.”
“I haven’t fallen that low yet,” said Tony, “but I’ll
probably come to it.”
“Is Dimity Munroe all right?” asked Alex, eagerly
but a little embarrassed, and Scarlett recalled vaguely
that he had been sweet on Sally’s younger sister.
“Oh, yes. She’s living with her aunt over in Fayetteville now. You know their house in Lovejoy was
burned. And the rest of her folks are in Macon.”
“What he means is–has Dimity married some brave
colonel in the Home Guard?” jeered Tony, and Alex
turned furious eyes upon him.
“Of course, she isn’t married,” said Scarlett,
amused.
“Maybe it would be better if she had,” said Alex
gloomily. “How the hell–I beg your pardon, Scarlett.
But how can a man ask a girl to marry him when his
darkies are all freed and his stock gone and he hasn’t
got a cent in his pockets?”
“You know that wouldn’t bother Dimity,” said Scarlett. She could afford to be loyal to Dimity and say
nice things about her, for Alex Fontaine had never
been one of her own beaux.
932
�PART THREE
“Hell’s afire– Well, I beg your pardon again. I’ll have
to quit swearing or Grandma will sure tan my hide.
I’m not asking any girl to marry a pauper. It mightn’t
bother her but it would bother me.”
While Scarlett talked to the boys on the front porch,
Melanie, Suellen and Carreen slipped silently into the
house as soon as they heard the news of the surrender. After the boys had gone, cutting across the back
fields of Tara toward home, Scarlett went inside and
heard the girls sobbing together on the sofa in Ellen’s
little office. It was all over, the bright beautiful dream
they had loved and hoped for, the Cause which had
taken their friends, lovers, husbands and beggared
their families. The Cause they had thought could
never fall had fallen forever.
But for Scarlett, there were no tears. In the first moment when she heard the news she thought: Thank
God! Now the cow won’t be stolen. Now the horse is
safe. Now we can take the silver out of the well and
everybody can have a knife and fork. Now I won’t be
afraid to drive round the country looking for something to eat.
What a relief! Never again would she start in fear at
the sound of hooves. Never again would she wake in
the dark nights, holding her breath to listen, wonder933
�PART THREE
ing if it were reality or only a dream that she heard
in the yard the rattle of bits, the stamping of hooves
and the harsh crying of orders by the Yankees. And,
best of all, Tara was safe! Now her worst nightmare
would never come true. Now she would never have
to stand on the lawn and see smoke billowing from
the beloved house and hear the roar of flames as the
roof fell in.
Yes, the Cause was dead but war had always
seemed foolish to her and peace was better. She had
never stood starry eyed when the Stars and Bars ran
up a pole or felt cold chills when “Dixie” sounded.
She had not been sustained through privations, the
sickening duties of nursing, the fears of the siege and
the hunger of the last few months by the fanatic glow
which made all these things endurable to others, if
only the Cause prospered. It was all over and done
with and she was not going to cry about it.
All over! The war which had seemed so endless,
the war which, unbidden and unwanted, had cut her
life in two, had made so clean a cleavage that it was
difficult to remember those other care-free days. She
could look back, unmoved, at the pretty Scarlett with
her fragile green morocco slippers and her flounces
fragrant with lavender but she wondered if she could
934
�PART THREE
be that same girl. Scarlett O’Hara, with the County
at her feet, a hundred slaves to do her bidding, the
wealth of Tara like a wall behind her and doting parents anxious to grant any desire of her heart. Spoiled,
careless Scarlett who had never known an ungratified
wish except where Ashley was concerned.
Somewhere, on the long road that wound through
those four years, the girl with her sachet and dancing slippers had slipped away and there was left a
woman with sharp green eyes, who counted pennies
and turned her hands to many menial tasks, a woman
to whom nothing was left from the wreckage except
the indestructible red earth on which she stood.
As she stood in the hall, listening to the girls sobbing, her mind was busy.
“We’ll plant more cotton, lots more. I’ll send Pork
to Macon tomorrow to buy more seed. Now the Yankees won’t burn it and our troops won’t need it. Good
Lord! Cotton ought to go sky high this fall!”
She went into the little office and, disregarding the
weeping girls on the sofa, seated herself at the secretary and picked up a quill to balance the cost of more
cotton seed against her remaining cash.
“The war is over,” she thought and suddenly she
dropped the quill as a wild happiness flooded her.
935
�PART THREE
The war was over and Ashley–if Ashley was alive
he’d be coming home! She wondered if Melanie, in
the midst of mourning for the lost Cause, had thought
of this.
“Soon we’ll get a letter–no, not a letter. We can’t get
letters. But soon–oh, somehow he’ll let us know!”
But the days passed into weeks and there was no
news from Ashley. The mail service in the South was
uncertain and in the rural districts there was none
at all. Occasionally a passing traveler from Atlanta
brought a note from Aunt Pitty tearfully begging the
girls to come back. But never news of Ashley.
After the surrender, an ever-present feud over the
horse smoldered between Scarlett and Suellen. Now
that there was no danger of Yankees, Suellen wanted
to go calling on the neighbors. Lonely and missing
the happy sociability of the old days, Suellen longed
to visit friends, if for no other reason than to assure
herself that the rest of the County was as bad off as
Tara. But Scarlett was adamant. The horse was for
work, to drag logs from the woods, to plow and for
Pork to ride in search of food. On Sundays he had
earned the right to graze in the pasture and rest. If
Suellen wanted to go visiting she could go afoot.
Before the last year Suellen had never walked a hun936
�PART THREE
dred yards in her life and this prospect was anything
but pleasing. So she stayed at home and nagged
and cried and said, once too often: “Oh, if only
Mother was here!” At that, Scarlett gave her the longpromised slap, hitting her so hard it knocked her
screaming to the bed and caused great consternation
throughout the house. Thereafter, Suellen whined the
less, at least in Scarlett’s presence.
Scarlett spoke truthfully when she said she wanted
the horse to rest but that was only half of the truth.
The other half was that she had paid one round of
calls on the County in the first month after the surrender and the sight of old friends and old plantations
had shaken her courage more than she liked to admit.
The Fontaines had fared best of any, thanks to Sally’s
hard ride, but it was flourishing only by comparison with the desperate situation of the other neighbors. Grandma Fontaine had never completely recovered from the heart attack she had the day she led
the others in beating out the flames and saving the
house. Old Dr. Fontaine was convalescing slowly
from an amputated arm. Alex and Tony were turning awkward hands to plows and hoe handles. They
leaned over the fence rail to shake hands with Scarlett when she called and they laughed at her rickety
937
�PART THREE
wagon, their black eyes bitter, for they were laughing at themselves as well as her. She asked to buy
seed corn from them and they promised it and fell
to discussing farm problems. They had twelve chickens, two cows, five hogs and the mule they brought
home from the war. One of the hogs had just died and
they were worried about losing the others. At hearing
such serious words about hogs from these ex-dandies
who had never given life a more serious thought than
which cravat was most fashionable, Scarlett laughed
and this time her laugh was bitter too.
They had all made her welcome at Mimosa and had
insisted on giving, not selling, her the seed corn. The
quick Fontaine tempers flared when she put a greenback on the table and they flatly refused payment.
Scarlett took the corn and privately slipped a dollar
bill into Sally’s hand. Sally looked like a different person from the girl who had greeted her eight months
before when Scarlett first came home to Tara. Then
she had been pale and sad but there had been a buoyancy about her. Now that buoyancy had gone, as if
the surrender had taken all hope from her.
“Scarlett,” she whispered as she clutched the bill,
“what was the good of it all? Why did we ever fight?
Oh, my poor Joe! Oh, my poor baby!”
938
�PART THREE
“I don’t know why we fought and I don’t care,” said
Scarlett. “And I’m not interested. I never was interested. War is a man’s business, not a woman’s. All
I’m interested in now is a good cotton crop. Now take
this dollar and buy little Joe a dress. God knows, he
needs it. I’m not going to rob you of your corn, for all
Alex and Tony’s politeness.”
The boys followed her to the wagon and assisted
her in, courtly for all their rags, gay with the volatile
Fontaine gaiety, but with the picture of their destitution in her eyes, she shivered as she drove away
from Mimosa. She was so tired of poverty and pinching. What a pleasure it would be to know people who
were rich and not worried as to where the next meal
was coming from!
Cade Calvert was at home at Pine Bloom and, as
Scarlett came up the steps of the old house in which
she had danced so often in happier days, she saw
that death was in his face. He was emaciated and
he coughed as he lay in an easy chair in the sunshine
with a shawl across his knees, but his face lit up when
he saw her. Just a little cold which had settled in his
chest, he said, trying to rise to greet her. Got it from
sleeping so much in the rain. But it would be gone
soon and then he’d lend a hand in the work.
939
�PART THREE
Cathleen Calvert, who came out of the house at
the sound of voices, met Scarlett’s eyes above her
brother’s head and in them Scarlett read knowledge
and bitter despair. Cade might not know but Cathleen
knew. Pine Bloom looked straggly and overgrown
with weeds, seedling pines were beginning to show
in the fields and the house was sagging and untidy.
Cathleen was thin and taut.
The two of them, with their Yankee stepmother,
their four little half-sisters, and Hilton, the Yankee
overseer, remained in the silent, oddly echoing house.
Scarlett had never liked Hilton any more than she
liked their own overseer Jonas Wilkerson, and she
liked him even less now, as he sauntered forward
and greeted her like an equal. Formerly he had
the same combination of servility and impertinence
which Wilkerson possessed but now, with Mr. Calvert
and Raiford dead in the war and Cade sick, he had
dropped all servility. The second Mrs. Calvert had
never known how to compel respect from negro servants and it was not to be expected that she could get
it from a white man.
“Mr. Hilton has been so kind about staying with us
through these difficult times,” said Mrs. Calvert nervously, casting quick glances at her silent stepdaugh940
�PART THREE
ter. “Very kind. I suppose you heard how he saved
our house twice when Sherman was here. I’m sure
I don’t know how we would have managed without
him, with no money and Cade–”
A flush went over Cade’s white face and Cathleen’s
long lashes veiled her eyes as her mouth hardened.
Scarlett knew their souls were writhing in helpless
rage at being under obligations to their Yankee overseer. Mrs. Calvert seemed ready to weep. She had
somehow made a blunder. She was always blundering. She just couldn’t understand Southerners, for
all that she had lived in Georgia twenty years. She
never knew what not to say to her stepchildren and,
no matter what she said or did, they were always
so exquisitely polite to her. Silently she vowed she
would go North to her own people, taking her children with her, and leave these puzzling stiff-necked
strangers.
After these visits, Scarlett had no desire to see the
Tarletons. Now that the four boys were gone, the
house burned and the family cramped in the overseer’s cottage, she could not bring herself to go.
But Suellen and Carreen begged and Melanie said it
would be unneighborly not to call and welcome Mr.
Tarleton back from the war, so one Sunday they went.
941
�PART THREE
This was the worst of all.
As they drove up by the ruins of the house, they
saw Beatrice Tarleton dressed in a worn riding habit, a
crop under her arm, sitting on the top rail of the fence
about the paddock, staring moodily at nothing. Beside her perched the bow-legged little negro who had
trained her horses and he looked as glum as his mistress. The paddock, once full of frolicking colts and
placid brood mares, was empty now except for one
mule, the mule Mr. Tarleton had ridden home from
the surrender.
“I swear I don’t know what to do with myself now
that my darlings are gone,” said Mrs. Tarleton, climbing down from the fence. A stranger might have
thought she spoke of her four dead sons, but the girls
from Tara knew her horses were in her mind. “All
my beautiful horses dead. And oh, my poor Nellie!
If I just had Nellie! And nothing but a damned mule
on the place. A damned mule,” she repeated, looking indignantly at the scrawny beast. “It’s an insult to
the memory of my blooded darlings to have a mule
in their paddock. Mules are misbegotten, unnatural
critters and it ought to be illegal to breed them.”
Jim Tarleton, completely disguised by a bushy
beard, came out of the overseer’s house to welcome
942
�PART THREE
and kiss the girls and his four red-haired daughters
in mended dresses streamed out behind him, tripping
over the dozen black and tan hounds which ran barking to the door at the sound of strange voices. There
was an air of studied and determined cheerfulness
about the whole family which brought a colder chill
to Scarlett’s bones than the bitterness of Mimosa or
the deathly brooding of Pine Bloom.
The Tarletons insisted that the girls stay for dinner,
saying they had so few guests these days and wanted
to hear all the news. Scarlett did not want to linger,
for the atmosphere oppressed her, but Melanie and
her two sisters were anxious for a longer visit, so the
four stayed for dinner and ate sparingly of the side
meat and dried peas which were served them.
There was laughter about the skimpy fare and the
Tarleton girls giggled as they told of makeshifts for
clothes, as if they were telling the most amusing of
jokes. Melanie met them halfway, surprising Scarlett
with her unexpected vivacity as she told of trials at
Tara, making light of hardships. Scarlett could hardly
speak at all. The room seemed so empty without the
four great Tarleton boys, lounging and smoking and
teasing. And if it seemed empty to her, what must
it seem to the Tarletons who were offering a smiling
943
�PART THREE
front to their neighbors?
Carreen had said little during the meal but when it
was over she slipped over to Mrs. Tarleton’s side and
whispered something. Mrs. Tarleton’s face changed
and the brittle smile left her lips as she put her arm
around Carreen’s slender waist. They left the room,
and Scarlett, who felt she could not endure the house
another minute, followed them. They went down the
path through the garden and Scarlett saw they were
going toward the burying ground. Well, she couldn’t
go back to the house now. It would seem too rude.
But what on earth did Carreen mean dragging Mrs.
Tarleton out to the boys’ graves when Beatrice was
trying so hard to be brave?
There were two new marble markers in the brickinclosed lot under the funereal cedars–so new that no
rain had splashed them with red dust.
“We got them last week,” said Mrs. Tarleton
proudly. “Mr. Tarleton went to Macon and brought
them home in the wagon.”
Tombstones! And what they must have cost! Suddenly Scarlett did not feel as sorry for the Tarletons as
she had at first. Anybody who would waste precious
money on tombstones when food was so dear, so almost unattainable, didn’t deserve sympathy. And
944
�PART THREE
there were several lines carved on each of the stones.
The more carving, the more money. The whole family
must be crazy! And it had cost money, too, to bring
the three boys’ bodies home. They had never found
Boyd or any trace of him.
Between the graves of Brent and Stuart was a stone
which read: “They were lovely and pleasant in their
lives, and in their death they were not divided.”
On the other stone were the names of Boyd and
Tom with something in Latin which began “Dulce et–
” but it meant nothing to Scarlett who had managed
to evade Latin at the Fayetteville Academy.
All that money for tombstones! Why, they were
fools! She felt as indignant as if her own money had
been squandered.
Carreen’s eyes were shining oddly.
“I think it’s lovely,” she whispered pointing to the
first stone.
Carreen would think it lovely. Anything sentimental stirred her.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Tarleton and her voice was soft,
“we thought it very fitting–they died almost at the
same time. Stuart first and then Brent who caught up
the flag he dropped.”
945
�PART THREE
As the girls drove back to Tara, Scarlett was silent for
a while, thinking of what she had seen in the various
homes, remembering against her will the County in
its glory, with visitors at all the big houses and money
plentiful, negroes crowding the quarters and the welltended fields glorious with cotton.
“In another year, there’ll be little pines all over these
fields,” she thought and looking toward the encircling
forest she shuddered. “Without the darkies, it will be
all we can do to keep body and soul together. Nobody
can run a big plantation without the darkies, and lots
of the fields won’t be cultivated at all and the woods
will take over the fields again. Nobody can plant
much cotton, and what will we do then? What’ll become of country folks? Town folks can manage somehow. They’ve always managed. But we country folks
will go back a hundred years like the pioneers who
had little cabins and just scratched a few acres–and
barely existed.
“No–” she thought grimly, “Tara isn’t going to be
like that. Not even if I have to plow myself. This
whole section, this whole state can go back to woods
if it wants to, but I won’t let Tara go. And I don’t
intend to waste my money on tombstones or my
time crying about the war. We can make out some946
�PART THREE
how. I know we could make out somehow if the men
weren’t all dead. Losing the darkies isn’t the worst
part about this. It’s the loss of the men, the young
men.” She thought again of the four Tarletons and Joe
Fontaine, of Raiford Calvert and the Munroe brothers and all the boys from Fayetteville and Jonesboro
whose names she had read on the casualty lists. “If
there were just enough men left, we could manage
somehow but–”
Another thought struck her–suppose she wanted to
marry again. Of course, she didn’t want to marry
again. Once was certainly enough. Besides, the only
man she’d ever wanted was Ashley and he was married if he was still living. But suppose she would want
to marry. Who would there be to marry her? The
thought was appalling.
“Melly,” she said, “what’s going to happen to Southern girls?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. What’s going to happen to them?
There’s no one to marry them. Why, Melly, with all
the boys dead, there’ll be thousands of girls all over
the South who’ll die old maids.”
“And never have any children,” added Melanie, to
whom this was the most important thing.
947
�PART THREE
Evidently the thought was not new to Suellen who
sat in the back of the wagon, for she suddenly began
to cry. She had not heard from Frank Kennedy since
Christmas. She did not know if the lack of mail service was the cause, or if he had merely trifled with
her affections and then forgotten her. Or maybe he
had been killed in the last days of the war! The latter
would have been infinitely preferable to his forgetting
her, for at least there was some dignity about a dead
love, such as Carreen and India Wilkes had, but none
about a deserted fiancee.
“Oh, in the name of God, hush!” said Scarlett.
“Oh, you can talk,” sobbed Suellen, “because you’ve
been married and had a baby and everybody knows
some man wanted you. But look at me! And you’ve
got to be mean and throw it up to me that I’m an old
maid when I can’t help myself. I think you’re hateful.”
“Oh, hush! You know how I hate people who bawl
all the time. You know perfectly well old Ginger
Whiskers isn’t dead and that he’ll come back and
marry you. He hasn’t any better sense. But personally, I’d rather be an old maid than marry him.”
There was silence from the back of the wagon for a
while and Carreen comforted her sister with absent948
�PART THREE
minded pats, for her mind was a long way off, riding
paths three years old with Brent Tarleton beside her.
There was a glow, an exaltation in her eyes.
“Ah,” said Melanie, sadly, “what will the South be
like without all our fine boys? What would the South
have been if they had lived? We could use their
courage and their energy and their brains. Scarlett,
all of us with little boys must raise them to take the
places of the men who are gone, to be brave men like
them.”
“There will never again be men like them,” said Carreen softly. “No one can take their places.”
They drove home the rest of the way in silence,
One day not long after this, Cathleen Calvert rode
up to Tara at sunset. Her sidesaddle was strapped on
as sorry a mule as Scarlett had ever seen, a flop-eared
lame brute, and Cathleen was almost as sorry looking as the animal she rode. Her dress was of faded
gingham of the type once worn only by house servants, and her sunbonnet was secured under her chin
by a piece of twine. She rode up to the front porch
but did not dismount, and Scarlett and Melanie, who
had been watching the sunset, went down the steps
to meet her. Cathleen was as white as Cade had been
the day Scarlett called, white and hard and brittle, as
949
�PART THREE
if her face would shatter if she spoke. But her back
was erect and her head was high as she nodded to
them.
Scarlett suddenly remembered the day of the Wilkes
barbecue when she and Cathleen had whispered together about Rhett Butler. How pretty and fresh Cathleen had been that day in a swirl of blue organdie with
fragrant roses at her sash and little black velvet slippers laced about her small ankles. And now there was
not a trace of that girl in the stiff figure sitting on the
mule.
“I won’t get down, thank you,” she said. “I just
came to tell you that I’m going to be married.”
“What!”
“Who to?”
“Cathy, how grand!”
“When?”
“Tomorrow,” said Cathleen quietly and there was
something in her voice which took the eager smiles
from their faces. “I came to tell you that I’m going to
be married tomorrow, in Jonesboro–and I’m not inviting you all to come.”
They digested this in silence, looking up at her, puzzled. Then Melanie spoke.
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�PART THREE
“Is it someone we know, dear?”
“Yes,” said Cathleen, shortly. “It’s Mr. Hilton.”
“Mr. Hilton?”
“Yes, Mr. Hilton, our overseer.”
Scarlett could not even find voice to say “Oh!” but
Cathleen, peering down suddenly at Melanie, said in
a low savage voice: “If you cry, Melly, I can’t stand it.
I shall die!”
Melanie said nothing but patted the foot in its awkward home-made shoe which hung from the stirrup.
Her head was low.
“And don’t pat me! I can’t stand that either.”
Melanie dropped her hand but still did not look up.
“Well, I must go. I only came to tell you.” The white
brittle mask was back again and she picked up the
reins.
“How is Cade?” asked Scarlett, utterly at a loss but
fumbling for some words to break the awkward silence.
“He is dying,” said Cathleen shortly. There seemed
to be no feeling in her voice. “And he is going to die
in some comfort and peace if I can manage it, without
worry about who will take care of me when he’s gone.
You see, my stepmother and the children are going
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North for good, tomorrow. Well, I must be going.”
Melanie looked up and met Cathleen’s hard eyes.
There were bright tears on Melanie’s lashes and understanding in her eyes, and before them, Cathleen’s
lips curved into the crooked smile of a brave child
who tries not to cry. It was all very bewildering to
Scarlett who was still trying to grasp the idea that
Cathleen Calvert was going to marry an overseer–
Cathleen, daughter of a rich planter, Cathleen who,
next to Scarlett, had had more beaux than any girl in
the County.
Cathleen bent down and Melanie tiptoed. They
kissed. Then Cathleen flapped the bridle reins
sharply and the old mule moved off.
Melanie looked after her, the tears streaming down
her face. Scarlett stared, still dazed.
“Melly, is she crazy? You know she can’t be in love
with him.”
“In love? Oh, Scarlett, don’t even suggest such a
horrid thing! Oh, poor Cathleen! Poor Cade!”
“Fiddle-dee-dee!” cried Scarlett, beginning to be irritated. It was annoying that Melanie always seemed
to grasp more of situations than she herself did. Cathleen’s plight seemed to her more startling than catastrophic. Of course it was no pleasant thought, mar952
�PART THREE
rying Yankee white trash, but after all a girl couldn’t
live alone on a plantation; she had to have a husband
to help her run it.
“Melly, it’s like I said the other day. There isn’t
anybody for girls to marry and they’ve got to marry
someone.”
“Oh, they don’t have to marry! There’s nothing
shameful in being a spinster. Look at Aunt Pitty. Oh,
I’d rather see Cathleen dead! I know Cade would
rather see her dead. It’s the end of the Calverts. Just
think what her–what their children will be. Oh, Scarlett, have Pork saddle the horse quickly and you ride
after her and tell her to come live with us!”
“Good Lord!” cried Scarlett, shocked at the matterof-fact way in which Melanie was offering Tara. Scarlett certainly had no intention of feeding another
mouth. She started to say this but something in
Melanie’s stricken face halted the words.
“She wouldn’t come, Melly,” she amended. “You
know she wouldn’t. She’s so proud and she’d think it
was charity.”
“That’s true, that’s true!” said Melanie distractedly,
watching the small cloud of red dust disappear down
the road.
“You’ve been with me for months,” thought Scarlett
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grimly, looking at her sister-in-law, “and it’s never occurred to you that it’s charity you’re living on. And I
guess it never will. You’re one of those people the war
didn’t change and you go right on thinking and acting
just like nothing had happened–like we were still rich
as Croesus and had more food than we know what to
do with and guests didn’t matter. I guess I’ve got you
on my neck for the rest of my life. But I won’t have
Cathleen too.”
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�CHAPTER XXX
summer after peace came, Tara suddenly lost its isolation. And for months thereafter a
stream of scarecrows, bearded, ragged, footsore and
always hungry, toiled up the red hill to Tara and
came to rest on the shady front steps, wanting food
and a night’s lodging. They were Confederate soldiers walking home. The railroad had carried the
remains of Johnston’s army from North Carolina to
Atlanta and dumped them there, and from Atlanta
they began their pilgrimages afoot. When the wave
of Johnston’s men had passed, the weary veterans
from the Army of Virginia arrived and then men from
the Western troops, beating their way south toward
homes which might not exist and families which
might be scattered or dead. Most of them were walking, a few fortunate ones rode bony horses and mules
which the terms of the surrender had permitted them
to keep, gaunt animals which even an untrained eye
could tell would never reach far-away Florida and
south Georgia.
Going home! Going home! That was the only
thought in the soldiers’ minds. Some were sad and
silent, others gay and contemptuous of hardships,
but the thought that it was all over and they were
IN
THAT WARM
�PART THREE
going home was the one thing that sustained them.
Few of them were bitter. They left bitterness to their
women and their old people. They had fought a
good fight, had been licked and were willing to settle down peaceably to plowing beneath the flag they
had fought.
Going home! Going home! They could talk of nothing else, neither battles nor wounds, nor imprisonment nor the future. Later, they would refight battles and tell children and grandchildren of pranks and
forays and charges, of hunger, forced marches and
wounds, but not now. Some of them lacked an arm
or a leg or an eye, many had scars which would ache
in rainy weather if they lived for seventy years but
these seemed small matters now. Later it would be
different.
Old and young, talkative and taciturn, rich planter
and sallow Cracker, they all had two things in common, lice and dysentery. The Confederate soldier
was so accustomed to his verminous state he did not
give it a thought and scratched unconcernedly even in
the presence of ladies. As for dysentery–the “bloody
flux” as the ladies delicately called it–it seemed to
have spared no one from private to general. Four
years of half-starvation, four years of rations which
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were coarse or green or half-putrefied, had done its
work with them and every soldier who stopped at
Tara was either just recovering or was actively suffering from it.
“Dey ain’ a soun’ set of bowels in de whole Confedrut ahmy,” observed Mammy darkly as she sweated
over the fire, brewing a bitter concoction of blackberry
roots which had been Ellen’s sovereign remedy for
such afflictions. “It’s mah notion dat ‘twarn’t de Yankees whut beat our gempmum. ‘Twuz dey own innards. Kain no gempmum fight wid his bowels tuhnin’ ter water.”
One and all, Mammy dosed them, never waiting to
ask foolish questions about the state of their organs
and, one and all, they drank her doses meekly and
with wry faces, remembering, perhaps, other stern
black faces in far-off places and other inexorable black
hands holding medicine spoons.
In the matter of “comp’ny” Mammy was equally
adamant. No lice- ridden soldier should come into
Tara. She marched them behind a clump of thick
bushes, relieved them of their uniforms, gave them
a basin of water and strong lye soap to wash with and
provided them with quilts and blankets to cover their
nakedness, while she boiled their clothing in her huge
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�PART THREE
wash pot. It was useless for the girls to argue hotly
that such conduct humiliated the soldiers. Mammy
replied that the girls would be a sight more humiliated if they found lice upon themselves.
When the soldiers began arriving almost daily,
Mammy protested against their being allowed to use
the bedrooms. Always she feared lest some louse had
escaped her. Rather than argue the matter, Scarlett
turned the parlor with its deep velvet rug into a dormitory. Mammy cried out equally loudly at the sacrilege of soldiers being permitted to sleep on Miss
Ellen’s rug but Scarlett was firm. They had to sleep
somewhere. And, in the months after the surrender,
the deep soft nap began to show signs of wear and
finally the heavy warp and woof showed through in
spots where heels had worn it and spurs dug carelessly.
Of each soldier, they asked eagerly of Ashley.
Suellen, bridling, always asked news of Mr. Kennedy.
But none of the soldiers had ever heard of them nor
were they inclined to talk about the missing. It was
enough that they themselves were alive, and they did
not care to think of the thousands in unmarked graves
who would never come home.
The family tried to bolster Melanie’s courage after
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each of these disappointments. Of course, Ashley
hadn’t died in prison. Some Yankee chaplain would
have written if this were true. Of course, he was coming home but his prison was so far away. Why, goodness, it took days riding on a train to make the trip
and if Ashley was walking, like these men . . . Why
hadn’t he written? Well, darling, you know what the
mails are now–so uncertain and slipshod even where
mail routes are re-established. But suppose–suppose
he had died on the way home. Now, Melanie, some
Yankee woman would have surely written us about
it! . . . Yankee women! Bah! . . . Melly, there ARE
some nice Yankee women. Oh, yes, there are! God
couldn’t make a whole nation without having some
nice women in it! Scarlett, you remember we did meet
a nice Yankee woman at Saratoga that time–Scarlett,
tell Melly about her!
“Nice, my foot!” replied Scarlert. “She asked me
how many bloodhounds we kept to chase our darkies
with! I agree with Melly. I never saw a nice Yankee,
male or female. But don’t cry, Melly! Ashley’ll come
home. It’s a long walk and maybe–maybe he hasn’t
got any boots.”
Then at the thought of Ashley barefooted, Scarlett
could have cried. Let other soldiers limp by in rags
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�PART THREE
with their feet tied up in sacks and strips of carpet,
but not Ashley. He should come home on a prancing horse, dressed in fine clothes and shining boots, a
plume in his hat. It was the final degradation for her
to think of Ashley reduced to the state of these other
soldiers.
One afternoon in June when everyone at Tara was
assembled on the back porch eagerly watching Pork
cut the first half-ripe watermelon of the season, they
heard hooves on the gravel of the front drive. Prissy
started languidly toward the front door, while those
left behind argued hotly as to whether they should
hide the melon or keep it for supper, should the caller
at the door prove to be a soldier.
Melly and Carreen whispered that the soldier guest
should have a share and Scarlett, backed by Suellen
and Mammy, hissed to Pork to hide it quickly.
“Don’t be a goose, girls! There’s not enough for us as
it is and if there are two or three famished soldiers out
there, none of us will even get a taste,” said Scarlett.
While Pork stood with the little melon clutched to
him, uncertain as to the final decision, they heard
Prissy cry out.
“Gawdlmighty! Miss Scarlett! Miss Melly! Come
quick!”
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�PART THREE
“Who is it?” cried Scarlett, leaping up from the steps
and racing through the hall with Melly at her shoulder and the others streaming after her.
Ashley! she thought. Oh, perhaps–
“It’s Uncle Peter! Miss Pittypat’s Uncle Peter!”
They all ran out to the front porch and saw the
tall grizzled old despot of Aunt Pitty’s house climbing down from a rat-tailed nag on which a section of
quilting had been strapped. On his wide black face,
accustomed dignity strove with delight at seeing old
friends, with the result that his brow was furrowed in
a frown but his mouth was hanging open like a happy
toothless old hound’s.
Everyone ran down the steps to greet him, black
and white shaking his hand and asking questions, but
Melly’s voice rose above them all.
“Auntie isn’t sick, is she?”
“No’m. She’s po’ly, thank God,” answered Peter,
fastening a severe look first on Melly and then on
Scarlett, so that they suddenly felt guilty but could
think of no reason why. “She’s po’ly but she is plum
outdone wid you young Misses, an’ ef it come right
down to it, Ah is too!”
“Why! Uncle Peter! What on earth–”
961
�PART THREE
“Y’all nee’n try ter ‘scuse you’seffs. Ain’ Miss Pitty
writ you an’ writ you ter come home? Ain’ Ah seed
her write an’ seed her a-cryin’ w’en y’all writ her back
dat you got too much ter do on disyere ole farm ter
come home?”
“But, Uncle Peter–”
“Huccome you leave Miss Pitty by herseff lak dis
w’en she so scary lak? You know well’s Ah do Miss
Pitty ain’ never live by herseff an’ she been shakin’ in
her lil shoes ever since she come back frum Macom.
She say fer me ter tell y’all plain as Ah knows how
dat she jes’ kain unnerstan’ y’all desertin’ her in her
hour of need.”
“Now, hesh!” said Mammy tartly, for it sat ill upon
her to hear Tara referred to as an “ole farm.” Trust
an ignorant city-bred darky not to know the difference between a farm and a plantation. “Ain’ us got
no hours of need? Ain’ us needin’ Miss Scarlett an’
Miss Melly right hyah an’ needin’ dem bad? Huccome Miss Pitty doan ast her brudder fer ‘sistance,
does she need any?”
Uncle Peter gave her a withering look.
“Us ain’ had nuthin’ ter do wid Mist’ Henry fer
y’ars, an’ us is too ole ter start now.” He turned back
to the girls, who were trying to suppress their smiles.
962
�PART THREE
“You young Misses ought ter tek shame, leavin’ po’
Miss Pitty ‘lone, wid half her frens daid an’ de other
half in Macom, an’ ‘Lanta full of Yankee sojers an’
trashy free issue niggers.”
The two girls had borne the castigation with straight
faces as long as they could, but the thought of Aunt
Pitty sending Peter to scold them and bring them back
bodily to Atlanta was too much for their control. They
burst into laughter and hung on each other’s shoulders for support. Naturally, Pork and Dilcey and
Mammy gave vent to loud guffaws at hearing the detractor of their beloved Tara set at naught. Suellen
and Carreen giggled and even Gerald’s face wore a
vague smile. Everyone laughed except Peter, who
shifted from one large splayed foot to the other in
mounting indignation.
“Whut’s wrong wid you, nigger?”
inquired
Mammy with a grin. “Is you gittin’ too ole ter perteck
yo’ own Missus?”
Peter was outraged.
“Too ole! Me too ole? No, Ma’m! Ah kin perteck
Miss Pitty lak Ah allus done. Ain’ Ah perteck her
down ter Macom when us refugeed? Ain’ Ah perteck
her w’en de Yankees come ter Macom an’ she so
sceered she faintin’ all de time? An’ ain’ Ah ‘quire
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�PART THREE
disyere nag ter bring her back ter ‘Lanta an’ perteck
her an’ her pa’s silver all de way?” Peter drew himself to his full height as he vindicated himself. “Ah
ain’ talkin’ about perteckin’. Ah’s talkin’ ‘bout how it
LOOK.”
“How who look?”
“Ah’m talkin’ ‘bout how it look ter folks, seein’ Miss
Pitty livin’ ‘lone. Folks talks scan’lous ‘bout maiden
ladies dat lives by deyseff,” continued Peter, and it
was obvious to his listeners that Pittypat, in his mind,
was still a plump and charming miss of sixteen who
must be sheltered against evil tongues. “An’ Ah ain’
figgerin’ on havin’ folks criticize her. No, ma’m . . .
An’ Ah ain’ figgerin’ on her takin’ in no bo’ders, jes’
fer comp’ny needer. Ah done tole her dat. ‘Not w’ile
you got yo’ flesh an’ blood dat belongs wid you,’ Ah
says. An’ now her flesh an’ blood denyin’ her. Miss
Pitty ain’ nuthin’ but a chile an’–”
At this, Scarlett and Melly whooped louder and
sank down to the steps. Finally Melly wiped tears of
mirth from her eyes.
“Poor Uncle Peter! I’m sorry I laughed. Really and
truly. There! Do forgive me. Miss Scarlett and I just
can’t come home now. Maybe I’ll come in September
after the cotton is picked. Did Auntie send you all the
964
�PART THREE
way down here just to bring us back on that bag of
bones?”
At this question, Peter’s jaw suddenly dropped and
guilt and consternation swept over his wrinkled black
face. His protruding underlip retreated to normal as
swiftly as a turtle withdraws its head beneath its shell.
“Miss Melly. Ah is gittin’ ole, Ah spec’, ‘cause Ah
clean fergit fer de moment whut she sent me fer, an’
it’s important too. Ah got a letter fer you. Miss Pitty
wouldn’ trust de mails or nobody but me ter bring it
an’–”
“A letter? For me? Who from?”
“Well’m, it’s–Miss Pitty, she says ter me, ‘You, Peter,
you brek it gen’ly ter Miss Melly,’ an’ Ah say–”
Melly rose from the steps, her hand at her heart.
“Ashley! Ashley! He’s dead!”
“No’m! No’m!” cried Peter, his voice rising to a
shrill bawl, as he fumbled in the breast pocket of
his ragged coat. “He’s ‘live! Disyere a letter frum
him. He comin’ home. He– Gawdlmighty! Ketch her,
Mammy! Lemme–”
“Doan you tech her, you ole fool!” thundered
Mammy, struggling to keep Melanie’s sagging body
from falling to the ground. “You pious black ape!
965
�PART THREE
Brek it gen’ly! You, Poke, tek her feet. Miss Carreen,
steady her haid. Lessus lay her on de sofa in de parlor.”
There was a tumult of sound as everyone but Scarlett swarmed about the fainting Melanie, everyone
crying out in alarm, scurrying into the house for water and pillows, and in a moment Scarlett and Uncle
Peter were left standing alone on the walk. She stood
rooted, unable to move from the position to which she
had leaped when she heard his words, staring at the
old man who stood feebly waving a letter. His old
black face was as pitiful as a child’s under its mother’s
disapproval, his dignity collapsed.
For a moment she could not speak or move, and
though her mind shouted: “He isn’t dead! He’s coming home!” the knowledge brought neither joy nor
excitement, only a stunned immobility. Uncle Peter’s
voice came as from a far distance, plaintive, placating.
“Mist’ Willie Burr frum Macom whut is kin ter us, he
brung it ter Miss Pitty. Mist’ Willie he in de same jail
house wid Mist’ Ashley. Mist’ Willie he got a hawse
an’ he got hyah soon. But Mist’ Ashley he a-walkin’
an’–”
Scarlett snatched the letter from his hand. It was
addressed to Melly in Miss Pitty’s writing but that
966
�PART THREE
did not make her hesitate a moment. She ripped it
open and Miss Pitty’s inclosed note fell to the ground.
Within the envelope there was a piece of folded paper,
grimy from the dirty pocket in which it had been carried, creased and ragged about the edges. It bore the
inscription in Ashley’s hand: “Mrs. George Ashley
Wilkes, Care Miss Sarah Jane Hamilton, Atlanta, or
Twelve Oaks, Jonesboro, Ga.”
With fingers that shook, she opened it and read:
“Beloved, I am coming home to you–”
Tears began to stream down her face so that she
could not read and her heart swelled up until she felt
she could not bear the joy of it. Clutching the letter to
her, she raced up the porch steps and down the hall,
past the parlor where all the inhabitants of Tara were
getting in one another’s way as they worked over the
unconscious Melanie, and into Ellen’s office. She shut
the door and locked it and flung herself down on the
sagging old sofa crying, laughing, kissing the letter.
“Beloved,” she whispered, “I am coming home to
you.”
Common sense told them that unless Ashley developed wings, it would be weeks or even months
before he could travel from Illinois to Georgia, but
hearts nevertheless beat wildly whenever a soldier
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�PART THREE
turned into the avenue at Tara. Each bearded scarecrow might be Ashley. And if it were not Ashley, perhaps the soldier would have news of him or a letter
from Aunt Pitty about him. Black and white, they
rushed to the front porch every time they heard footsteps. The sight of a uniform was enough to bring
everyone flying from the woodpile, the pasture and
the cotton patch. For a month after the letter came,
work was almost at a standstill. No one wanted to
be out of the house when he arrived. Scarlett least of
all. And she could not insist on the others attending
to their duties when she so neglected hers.
But when the weeks crawled by and Ashley did
not come or any news of him, Tara settled back into
its old routine. Longing hearts could only stand so
much of longing. An uneasy fear crept into Scarlett’s
mind that something had happened to him along the
way. Rock Island was so far away and he might have
been weak or sick when released from prison. And
he had no money and was tramping through a country where Confederates were hated. If only she knew
where he was, she would send money to him, send
every penny she had and let the family go hungry, so
he could come home swiftly on the train.
“Beloved, I am coming home to you.”
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�PART THREE
In the first rush of joy when her eyes met those
words, they had meant only that Ashley was coming home to her. Now, in the light of cooler reason,
it was Melanie to whom he was returning, Melanie
who went about the house these days singing with
joy. Occasionally, Scarlett wondered bitterly why
Melanie could not have died in childbirth in Atlanta.
That would have made things perfect. Then she
could have married Ashley after a decent interval and
made little Beau a good stepmother too. When such
thoughts came she did not pray hastily to God, telling
Him she did not mean it. God did not frighten her any
more.
Soldiers came singly and in pairs and dozens and
they were always hungry. Scarlett thought despairingly that a plague of locusts would be more welcome. She cursed again the old custom of hospitality
which had flowered in the era of plenty, the custom
which would not permit any traveler, great or humble, to go on his journey without a night’s lodging,
food for himself and his horse and the utmost courtesy the house could give. She knew that era had
passed forever, but the rest of the household did not,
nor did the soldiers, and each soldier was welcomed
as if he were a long- awaited guest.
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�PART THREE
As the never-ending line went by, her heart hardened. They were eating the food meant for the
mouths of Tara, vegetables over whose long rows she
had wearied her back, food she had driven endless
miles to buy. Food was so hard to get and the money
in the Yankee’s wallet would not last forever. Only
a few greenbacks and the two gold pieces were left
now. Why should she feed this horde of hungry men?
The war was over. They would never again stand between her and danger. So, she gave orders to Pork
that when soldiers were in the house, the table should
be set sparely. This order prevailed until she noticed
that Melanie, who had never been strong since Beau
was born, was inducing Pork to put only dabs of food
on her plate and giving her share to the soldiers.
“You’ll have to stop it, Melanie,” she scolded.
“You’re half sick yourself and if you don’t eat more,
you’ll be sick in bed and we’ll have to nurse you. Let
these men go hungry. They can stand it. They’ve
stood it for four years and it won’t hurt them to stand
it a little while longer.”
Melanie turned to her and on her face was the first
expression of naked emotion Scarlett had ever seen in
those serene eyes.
“Oh, Scarlett, don’t scold me! Let me do it. You
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�PART THREE
don’t know how it helps me. Every time I give some
poor man my share I think that maybe, somewhere on
the road up north, some woman is giving my Ashley
a share of her dinner and it’s helping him to get home
to me!”
“My Ashley.”
“Beloved, I am coming home to you.”
Scarlett turned away, wordless. After that, Melanie
noticed there was more food on the table when guests
were present, even though Scarlett might grudge
them every mouthful.
When the soldiers were too ill to go on, and there
were many such, Scarlett put them to bed with none
too good grace. Each sick man meant another mouth
to feed. Someone had to nurse him and that meant
one less worker at the business of fence building, hoeing, weeding and plowing. One boy, on whose face a
blond fuzz had just begun to sprout, was dumped on
the front porch by a mounted soldier bound for Fayetteville. He had found him unconscious by the roadside and had brought him, across his saddle, to Tara,
the nearest house. The girls thought he must be one
of the little cadets who had been called out of military school when Sherman approached Milledgeville
but they never knew, for he died without regaining
971
�PART THREE
consciousness and a search of his pockets yielded no
information.
A nice-looking boy, obviously a gentleman, and
somewhere to the south, some woman was watching
the roads, wondering where he was and when he was
coming home, just as she and Melanie, with a wild
hope in their hearts, watched every bearded figure
that came up their walk. They buried the cadet in the
family burying ground, next to the three little O’Hara
boys, and Melanie cried sharply as Pork filled in the
grave, wondering in her heart if strangers were doing
this same thing to the tall body of Ashley.
Will Benteen was another soldier, like the nameless
boy, who arrived unconscious across the saddle of a
comrade. Will was acutely ill with pneumonia and
when the girls put him to bed, they feared he would
soon join the boy in the burying ground.
He had the sallow malarial face of the south Georgia Cracker, pale pinkish hair and washed-out blue
eyes which even in delirium were patient and mild.
One of his legs was gone at the knee and to the stump
was fitted a roughly whittled wooden peg. He was
obviously a Cracker, just as the boy they had buried
so short a while ago was obviously a planter’s son.
Just how the girls knew this they could not say. Cer972
�PART THREE
tainly Will was no dirtier, no more hairy, no more lice
infested than many fine gentlemen who came to Tara.
Certainly the language he used in his delirium was no
less grammatical than that of the Tarleton twins. But
they knew instinctively, as they knew thoroughbred
horses from scrubs, that he was not of their class. But
this knowledge did not keep them from laboring to
save him.
Emaciated from a year in a Yankee prison, exhausted by his long tramp on his ill-fitting wooden
peg, he had little strength to combat pneumonia and
for days he lay in the bed moaning, trying to get up,
fighting battles over again. Never once did he call for
mother, wife, sister or sweetheart and this omission
worried Carreen.
“A man ought to have some folks,” she said. “And
he sounds like he didn’t have a soul in the world.”
For all his lankiness he was tough, and good nursing pulled him through. The day came when his pale
blue eyes, perfectly cognizant of his surroundings, fell
upon Carreen sitting beside him, telling her rosary
beads, the morning sun shining through her fair hair.
“Then you warn’t a dream, after all,” he said, in his
flat toneless voice. “I hope I ain’t troubled you too
much, Ma’m.”
973
�PART THREE
His convalescence was a long one and he lay quietly
looking out of the window at the magnolias and causing very little trouble to anyone. Carreen liked him
because of his placid and unembarrassed silences.
She would sit beside him through the long hot afternoons, fanning him and saying nothing.
Carreen had very little to say these days as she
moved, delicate and wraithlike, about the tasks which
were within her strength. She prayed a good deal, for
when Scarlett came into her room without knocking,
she always found her on her knees by her bed. The
sight never failed to annoy her, for Scarlett felt that
the time for prayer had passed. If God had seen fit to
punish them so, then God could very well do without prayers. Religion had always been a bargaining
process with Scarlett. She promised God good behavior in exchange for favors. God had broken the
bargain time and again, to her way of thinking, and
she felt that she owed Him nothing at all now. And
whenever she found Carreen on her knees when she
should have been taking an afternoon nap or doing
the mending, she felt that Carreen was shirking her
share of the burdens.
She said as much to Will Benteen one afternoon
when he was able to sit up in a chair and was star974
�PART THREE
tled when he said in his flat voice: “Let her be, Miss
Scarlett. It comforts her.”
“Comforts her?”
“Yes, she’s prayin’ for your ma and him.”
“Who is ‘him’?”
His faded blue eyes looked at her from under sandy
lashes without surprise. Nothing seemed to surprise
or excite him. Perhaps he had seen too much of the
unexpected ever to be startled again. That Scarlett did
not know what was in her sister’s heart did not seem
odd to him. He took it as naturally as he did the fact
that Carreen had found comfort in talking to him, a
stranger.
“Her beau, that boy Brent something-or-other who
was killed at Gettysburg.”
“Her beau?” said Scarlett shortly. “Her beau, nothing! He and his brother were my beaux.”
“Yes, so she told me. Looks like most of the County
was your beaux. But, all the same, he was her beau
after you turned him down, because when he come
home on his last furlough they got engaged. She said
he was the only boy she’d ever cared about and so it
kind of comforts her to pray for him.”
“Well, fiddle-dee-dee!” said Scarlett, a very small
975
�PART THREE
dart of jealousy entering her.
She looked curiously at this lanky man with his
bony stooped shoulders, his pinkish hair and calm
unwavering eyes. So he knew things about her own
family which she had not troubled to discover. So that
was why Carreen mooned about, praying all the time.
Well, she’d get over it. Lots of girls got over dead
sweethearts, yes, dead husbands, too. She’d certainly
gotten over Charles. And she knew one girl in Atlanta who had been widowed three times by the war
and was still able to take notice of men. She said as
much to Will but he shook his head.
“Not Miss Carreen,” he said with finality.
Will was pleasant to talk to because he had so little
to say and yet was so understanding a listener. She
told him about her problems of weeding and hoeing
and planting, of fattening the hogs and breeding the
cow, and he gave good advice for he had owned a
small farm in south Georgia and two negroes. He
knew his slaves were free now and the farm gone to
weeds and seedling pines. His sister, his only relative,
had moved to Texas with her husband years ago and
he was alone in the world. Yet, none of these things
seemed to bother him any more than the leg he had
left in Virginia.
976
�PART THREE
Yes, Will was a comfort to Scarlett after hard days
when the negroes muttered and Suellen nagged and
cried and Gerald asked too frequently where Ellen
was. She could tell Will anything. She even told him
of killing the Yankee and glowed with pride when he
commented briefly: “Good work!”
Eventually all the family found their way to Will’s
room to air their troubles–even Mammy, who had at
first been distant with him because he was not quality
and had owned only two slaves.
When he was able to totter about the house, he
turned his hands to weaving baskets of split oak and
mending the furniture ruined by the Yankees. He was
clever at whittling and Wade was constantly by his
side, for he whittled out toys for him, the only toys
the little boy had. With Will in the house, everyone
felt safe in leaving Wade and the two babies while
they went about their tasks, for he could care for them
as deftly as Mammy and only Melly surpassed him at
soothing the screaming black and white babies.
“You’ve been mighty good to me, Miss Scarlett,” he
said, “and me a stranger and nothin’ to you all. I’ve
caused you a heap of trouble and worry and if it’s
all the same to you, I’m goin’ to stay here and help
you all with the work till I’ve paid you back some for
977
�PART THREE
your trouble. I can’t ever pay it all, ‘cause there ain’t
no payment a man can give for his life.”
So he stayed and, gradually, unobtrusively, a large
part of the burden of Tara shifted from Scarlett’s
shoulders to the bony shoulders of Will Benteen.
It was September and time to pick the cotton. Will
Benteen sat on the front steps at Scarlett’s feet in the
pleasant sunshine of the early autumn afternoon and
his flat voice went on and on languidly about the exorbitant costs of ginning the cotton at the new gin
near Fayetteville. However, he had learned that day
in Fayetteville that he could cut this expense a fourth
by lending the horse and wagon for two weeks to the
gin owner. He had delayed closing the bargain until
he discussed it with Scarlett.
She looked at the lank figure leaning against the
porch column, chewing a straw. Undoubtedly, as
Mammy frequently declared, Will was something the
Lord had provided and Scarlett often wondered how
Tara could have lived through the last few months
without him. He never had much to say, never displayed any energy, never seemed to take much interest in anything that went on about him, but he
knew everything about everybody at Tara. And he
did things. He did them silently, patiently and com978
�PART THREE
petently. Though he had only one leg, he could
work faster than Pork. And he could get work out
of Pork, which was, to Scarlett, a marvelous thing.
When the cow had the colic and the horse fell ill
with a mysterious ailment which threatened to remove him permanently from them, Will sat up nights
with them and saved them. That he was a shrewd
trader brought him Scarlett’s respect, for he could
ride out in the mornings with a bushel or two of apples, sweet potatoes and other vegetables and return
with seeds, lengths of cloth, flour and other necessities which she knew she could never have acquired,
good trader though she was.
He had gradually slipped into the status of a member of the family and slept on a cot in the little dressing room off Gerald’s room. He said nothing of leaving Tara, and Scarlett was careful not to question him,
fearful that he might leave them. Sometimes, she
thought that if he were anybody and had any gumption he would go home, even if he no longer had a
home. But even with this thought, she would pray
fervently that he would remain indefinitely. It was so
convenient to have a man about the house.
She thought, too, that if Carreen had the sense of
a mouse she would see that Will cared for her. Scar979
�PART THREE
lett would have been eternally grateful to Will, had he
asked her for Carreen’s hand. Of course, before the
war, Will would certainly not have been an eligible
suitor. He was not of the planter class at all, though
he was not poor white. He was just plain Cracker,
a small farmer, half-educated, prone to grammatical
errors and ignorant of some of the finer manners the
O’Haras were accustomed to in gentlemen. In fact,
Scarlett wondered if he could be called a gentleman
at all and decided that he couldn’t. Melanie hotly
defended him, saying that anyone who had Will’s
kind heart and thoughtfulness of others was of gentle birth. Scarlett knew that Ellen would have fainted
at the thought of a daughter of hers marrying such a
man, but now Scarlett had been by necessity forced
too far away from Ellen’s teachings to let that worry
her. Men were scarce, girls had to marry someone
and Tara had to have a man. But Carreen, deeper and
deeper immersed in her prayer book and every day
losing more of her touch with the world of realities,
treated Will as gently as a brother and took him as
much for granted as she did Pork.
“If Carreen had any sense of gratitude to me for
what I’ve done for her, she’d marry him and not
let him get away from here,” Scarlett thought indignantly. “But no, she must spend her time mooning
980
�PART THREE
about a silly boy who probably never gave her a serious thought.”
So Will remained at Tara, for what reason she did
not know and she found his businesslike man-to-man
attitude with her both pleasant and helpful. He was
gravely deferential to the vague Gerald but it was to
Scarlett that he turned as the real head of the house.
She gave her approval to the plan of hiring out the
horse even though it meant the family would be without any means of transportation temporarily. Suellen
would be especially grieved at this. Her greatest joy
lay in going to Jonesboro or Fayetteville with Will
when he drove over on business. Adorned in the assembled best of the family, she called on old friends,
heard all the gossip of the County and felt herself
again Miss O’Hara of Tara. Suellen never missed the
opportunity to leave the plantation and give herself
airs among people who did not know she weeded the
garden and made beds.
Miss Fine Airs will just have to do without gadding
for two weeks, thought Scarlett, and we’ll have to put
up with her nagging and her bawling.
Melanie joined them on the veranda, the baby in
her arms, and spreading an old blanket on the floor,
set little Beau down to crawl. Since Ashley’s let981
�PART THREE
ter Melanie had divided her time between glowing,
singing happiness and anxious longing. But happy or
depressed, she was too thin, too white. She did her
share of the work uncomplainingly but she was always ailing. Old Dr. Fontaine diagnosed her trouble
as female complaint and concurred with Dr. Meade
in saying she should never have had Beau. And he
said frankly that another baby would kill her.
“When I was over to Fayetteville today,” said Will,
“I found somethin’ right cute that I thought would interest you ladies and I brought it home.” He fumbled
in his back pants pocket and brought out the wallet of
calico, stiffened with bark, which Carreen had made
him. From it, he drew a Confederate bill.
“If you think Confederate money is cute, Will, I certainly don’t,” said Scarlett shortly, for the very sight of
Confederate money made her mad. “We’ve got three
thousand dollars of it in Pa’s trunk this minute, and
Mammy’s after me to let her paste it over the holes in
the attic walls so the draft won’t get her. And I think
I’ll do it. Then it’ll be good for something.”
“‘Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,”’ said
Melanie with a sad smile. “Don’t do that, Scarlett.
Keep it for Wade. He’ll be proud of it some day.”
“Well, I don’t know nothin’ about imperious Cae982
�PART THREE
sar,” said Will, patiently, “but what I’ve got is in line
with what you’ve just said about Wade, Miss Melly.
It’s a poem, pasted on the back of this bill. I know
Miss Scarlett ain’t much on poems but I thought this
might interest her.”
He turned the bill over. On its back was pasted a
strip of coarse brown wrapping paper, inscribed in
pale homemade ink. Will cleared his throat and read
slowly and with difficulty.
“The name is ‘Lines on the Back of a Confederate
Note,”’ he said.
“Representing nothing on God’s earth now And
naught in the waters below it– As the pledge of nation
that’s passed away Keep it, dear friend, and show it.
Show it to those who will lend an ear To the tale this
trifle will tell Of Liberty, born of patriots’ dream, Of a
storm-cradled nation that fell.”
“Oh, how beautiful! How touching!” cried Melanie.
“Scarlett, you mustn’t give the money to Mammy
to paste in the attic. It’s more than paper–just like
this poem said: ‘The pledge of a nation that’s passed
away!”’
“Oh, Melly, don’t be sentimental! Paper is paper and
we’ve got little enough of it and I’m tired of hearing
Mammy grumble about the cracks in the attic. I hope
983
�PART THREE
when Wade grows up I’ll have plenty of greenbacks
to give him instead of Confederate trash.”
Will, who had been enticing little Beau across the
blanket with the bill during this argument, looked up
and, shading his eyes, glanced down the driveway.
“More company,” he said, squinting in the sun.
“Another soldier.”
Scarlett followed his gaze and saw a familiar sight,
a bearded man coming slowly up the avenue under
the cedars, a man clad in a ragged mixture of blue
and gray uniforms, head bowed tiredly, feet dragging
slowly.
“I thought we were about through with soldiers,”
she said. “I hope this one isn’t very hungry.”
“He’ll be hungry,” said Will briefly.
Melanie rose.
“I’d better tell Dilcey to set an extra plate,” she said,
“and warn Mammy not to get the poor thing’s clothes
off his back too abruptly and–”
She stopped so suddenly that Scarlett turned to look
at her. Melanie’s thin hand was at her throat, clutching it as if it was torn with pain, and Scarlett could
see the veins beneath the white skin throbbing swiftly.
Her face went whiter and her brown eyes dilated
984
�PART THREE
enormously.
She’s going to faint, thought Scarlett, leaping to her
feet and catching her arm.
But, in an instant, Melanie threw off her hand and
was down the steps. Down the graveled path she
flew, skimming lightly as a bird, her faded skirts
streaming behind her, her arms outstretched. Then,
Scarlett knew the truth, with the impact of a blow.
She reeled back against an upright of the porch as the
man lifted a face covered with a dirty blond beard
and stopped still, looking toward the house as if he
was too weary to take another step. Her heart leaped
and stopped and then began racing, as Melly with
incoherent cries threw herself into the dirty soldier’s
arms and his head bent down toward hers. With rapture, Scarlett took two running steps forward but was
checked when Will’s hand closed upon her skirt.
“Don’t spoil it,” he said quietly.
“Turn me loose, you fool! Turn me loose! It’s Ashley!”
He did not relax his grip.
“After all, he’s HER husband, ain’t he?” Will asked
calmly and, looking down at him in a confusion of joy
and impotent fury, Scarlett saw in the quiet depths of
his eyes understanding and pity.
985
�PART FOUR
986
�CHAPTER XXXI
January afternoon in 1866, Scarlett sat in
the office writing a letter to Aunt Pitty, explaining in
detail for the tenth time why neither she, Melanie nor
Ashley could come back to Atlanta to live with her.
She wrote impatiently because she knew Aunt Pitty
would read no farther than the opening lines and then
write her again, wailing: “But I’m afraid to live by
myself!”
Her hands were chilled and she paused to rub them
together and to scuff her feet deeper into the strip of
old quilting wrapped about them. The soles of her
slippers were practically gone and were reinforced
with pieces of carpet. The carpet kept her feet off the
floor but did little to keep them warm. That morning Will had taken the horse to Jonesboro to get him
shod. Scarlett thought grimly that things were indeed
at a pretty pass when horses had shoes and people’s
feet were as bare as yard dogs’.
She picked up her quill to resume her writing but
laid it down when she heard Will coming in at the
back door. She heard the thump- thump of his
wooden leg in the hall outside the office and then he
stopped. She waited for a moment for him to enter
and when he made no move she called to him. He
ON
A COLD
�PART FOUR
came in, his ears red from the cold, his pinkish hair
awry, and stood looking down at her, a faintly humorous smile on his lips.
“Miss Scarlett,” he questioned, “just how much cash
money have you got?”
“Are you going to try to marry me for my money,
Will?” she asked somewhat crossly.
“No, Ma’m. But I just wanted to know.”
She stared at him inquiringly. Will didn’t look serious, but then he never looked serious. However, she
felt that something was wrong.
“I’ve got ten dollars in gold,” she said. “The last of
that Yankee’s money.”
“Well, Ma’m, that won’t be enough.”
“Enough for what?”
“Enough for the taxes,” he answered and, stumping
over to the fireplace, he leaned down and held his red
hands to the blaze.
“Taxes?” she repeated. “Name of God, Will! We’ve
already paid the taxes.”
“Yes’m. But they say you didn’t pay enough. I heard
about it today over to Jonesboro.”
“But, Will, I can’t understand. What do you mean?”
988
�PART FOUR
“Miss Scarlett, I sure hate to bother you with more
trouble when you’ve had your share but I’ve got to
tell you. They say you ought to paid lots more taxes
than you did. They’re runnin’ the assessment up on
Tara sky high–higher than any in the County, I’ll be
bound.”
“But they can’t make us pay more taxes when we’ve
already paid them once.”
“Miss Scarlett, you don’t never go to Jonesboro often and I’m glad you don’t. It ain’t no place for a lady
these days. But if you’d been there much, you’d know
there’s a mighty rough bunch of Scallawags and Republicans and Carpetbaggers been runnin’ things recently. They’d make you mad enough to pop. And
then, too, niggers pushin’ white folks off the sidewalks and–”
“But what’s that got to do with our taxes?”
“I’m gettin’ to it, Miss Scarlett. For some reason the
rascals have histed the taxes on Tara till you’d think
it was a thousand- bale place. After I heard about it,
I sorter oozed around the barrooms pickin’ up gossip and I found out that somebody wants to buy in
Tara cheap at the sheriff’s sale, if you can’t pay the
extra taxes. And everybody knows pretty well that
you can’t pay them. I don’t know yet who it is wants
989
�PART FOUR
this place. I couldn’t find out. But I think that pusillanimous feller, Hilton, that married Miss Cathleen
knows, because he laughed kind of nasty when I tried
to sound him out.”
Will sat down on the sofa and rubbed the stump
of his leg. It ached in cold weather and the wooden
peg was neither well padded nor comfortable. Scarlett looked at him wildly. His manner was so casual
when he was sounding the death knell of Tara. Sold
out at the sheriff’s sale? Where would they all go?
And Tara belonging to some one else! No, that was
unthinkable!
She had been so engrossed with the job of making
Tara produce she had paid little heed to what was
going on in the world outside. Now that she had
Will and Ashley to attend to whatever business she
might have in Jonesboro and Fayetteville, she seldom
left the plantation. And even as she had listened with
deaf ears to her father’s war talk in the days before the
war came, so she had paid little heed to Will and Ashley’s discussions around the table after supper about
the beginnings of Reconstruction.
Oh, of course, she knew about the Scallawags–
Southerners who had turned Republican very
profitably–and the Carpetbaggers, those Yankees
990
�PART FOUR
who came South like buzzards after the surrender
with all their worldly possessions in one carpetbag.
And she had had a few unpleasant experiences with
the Freedmen’s Bureau. She had gathered, also, that
some of the free negroes were getting quite insolent.
This last she could hardly believe, for she had never
seen an insolent negro in her life.
But there were many things which Will and Ashley
had conspired to keep from her. The scourge of war
had been followed by the worse scourge of Reconstruction, but the two men had agreed not to mention
the more alarming details when they discussed the
situation at home. And when Scarlett took the trouble
to listen to them at all, most of what they said went in
one ear and out the other.
She had heard Ashley say that the South was being treated as a conquered province and that vindictiveness was the dominant policy of the conquerors.
But that was the kind of statement which meant less
than nothing at all to Scarlett. Politics was men’s business. She had heard Will say it looked to him like the
North just wasn’t aiming to let the South get on its
feet again. Well, thought Scarlett, men always had to
have something foolish to worry about. As far as she
was concerned, the Yankees hadn’t whipped her once
991
�PART FOUR
and they wouldn’t do it this time. The thing to do
was to work like the devil and stop worrying about
the Yankee government. After all, the war was over.
Scarlett did not realize that all the rules of the game
had been changed and that honest labor could no
longer earn its just reward. Georgia was virtually under martial law now. The Yankee soldiers garrisoned
throughout the section and the Freedmen’s Bureau
were in complete command of everything and they
were fixing the rules to suit themselves.
This Bureau, organized by the Federal government
to take care of the idle and excited ex-slaves, was
drawing them from the plantations into the villages
and cities by the thousands. The Bureau fed them
while they loafed and poisoned their minds against
their former owners. Gerald’s old overseer, Jonas
Wilkerson, was in charge of the local Bureau, and
his assistant was Hilton, Cathleen Calvert’s husband.
These two industriously spread the rumor that the
Southerners and Democrats were just waiting for a
good chance to put the negroes back into slavery and
that the negroes’ only hope of escaping this fate was
the protection given them by the Bureau and the Republican party.
Wilkerson and Hilton furthermore told the negroes
992
�PART FOUR
they were as good as the whites in every way and
soon white and negro marriages would be permitted,
soon the estates of their former owners would be divided and every negro would be given forty acres and
a mule for his own. They kept the negroes stirred up
with tales of cruelty perpetrated by the whites and,
in a section long famed for the affectionate relations
between slaves and slave owners, hate and suspicion
began to grow.
The Bureau was backed up by the soldiers and the
military had issued many and conflicting orders governing the conduct of the conquered. It was easy to
get arrested, even for snubbing the officials of the Bureau. Military orders had been promulgated concerning the schools, sanitation, the kind of buttons one
wore on one’s suit, the sale of commodities and nearly
everything else. Wilkerson and Hilton had the power
to interfere in any trade Scarlett might make and to
fix their own prices on anything she sold or swapped.
Fortunately Scarlett had come into contact with the
two men very little, for Will had persuaded her to let
him handle the trading while she managed the plantation. In his mild-tempered way, Will had straightened out several difficulties of this kind and said
nothing to her about them. Will could get along with
993
�PART FOUR
Carpetbaggers and Yankees–if he had to. But now a
problem had arisen which was too big for him to handle. The extra tax assessment and the danger of losing Tara were matters Scarlett had to know about–and
right away.
She looked at him with flashing eyes.
“Oh, damn the Yankees!” she cried. “Isn’t it enough
that they’ve licked us and beggared us without turning loose scoundrels on us?”
The war was over, peace had been declared, but the
Yankees could still rob her, they could still starve her,
they could still drive her from her house. And fool
that she was, she had thought through weary months
that if she could just hold out until spring, everything
would be all right. This crushing news brought by
Will, coming on top of a year of back-breaking work
and hope deferred, was the last straw.
“Oh, Will, and I thought our troubles were all over
when the war ended!”
“No’m.” Will raised his lantern-jawed, countrylooking face and gave her a long steady look. “Our
troubles are just gettin’ started.”
“How much extra taxes do they want us to pay?”
“Three hundred dollars.”
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�PART FOUR
She was struck dumb for a moment. Three hundred
dollars! It might just as well be three million dollars.
“Why,” she floundered, “why–why, then we’ve got
to raise three hundred, somehow.”
“Yes’m–and a rainbow and a moon or two.”
“Oh, but Will! They couldn’t sell out Tara. Why–”
His mild pale eyes showed more hate and bitterness
than she thought possible.
“Oh, couldn’t they? Well, they could and they will
and they’ll like doin’ it! Miss Scarlett, the country’s
gone plumb to hell, if you’ll pardon me. Those Carpetbaggers and Scallawags can vote and most of us
Democrats can’t. Can’t no Democrat in this state vote
if he was on the tax books for more than two thousand
dollars in ‘sixty-five. That lets out folks like your pa
and Mr. Tarleton and the McRaes and the Fontaine
boys. Can’t nobody vote who was a colonel and over
in the war and, Miss Scarlett, I bet this state’s got more
colonels than any state in the Confederacy. And can’t
nobody vote who held office under the Confederate
government and that lets out everybody from the notaries to the judges, and the woods are full of folks
like that. Fact is, the way the Yankees have framed up
that amnesty oath, can’t nobody who was somebody
before the war vote at all. Not the smart folks nor the
995
�PART FOUR
quality folks nor the rich folks.
“Huh! I could vote if I took their damned oath. I
didn’t have any money in ‘sixty-five and I certainly
warn’t a colonel or nothin’ remarkable. But I ain’t
goin’ to take their oath. Not by a dinged sight! If
the Yankees had acted right, I’d have taken their oath
of allegiance but I ain’t now. I can be restored to
the Union but I can’t be reconstructed into it. I ain’t
goin’ to take their oath even if I don’t never vote
again– But scum like that Hilton feller, he can vote,
and scoundrels like Jonas Wilkerson and pore whites
like the Slatterys and no-counts like the MacIntoshes,
they can vote. And they’re runnin’ things now. And
if they want to come down on you for extra taxes a
dozen times, they can do it. Just like a nigger can kill
a white man and not get hung or–” He paused, embarrassed, and the memory of what had happened to
a lone white woman on an isolated farm near Lovejoy
was in both their minds. . . . “Those niggers can do
anything against us and the Freedmen’s Bureau and
the soldiers will back them up with guns and we can’t
vote or do nothin’ about it.”
“Vote!” she cried. “Vote! What on earth has voting
got to do with all this, Will? It’s taxes we’re talking
about. . . . Will, everybody knows what a good plan996
�PART FOUR
tation Tara is. We could mortgage it for enough to pay
the taxes, if we had to.”
“Miss Scarlett, you ain’t any fool but sometimes you
talk like one. Who’s got any money to lend you on
this property? Who except the Carpetbaggers who
are tryin’ to take Tara away from you? Why, everybody’s got land. Everybody’s land pore. You can’t
give away land.”
“I’ve got those diamond earbobs I got off that Yankee. We could sell them.”
“Miss Scarlett, who ‘round here has got money for
earbobs? Folks ain’t got money to buy side meat, let
alone gewgaws. If you’ve got ten dollars in gold, I
take oath that’s more than most folks have got.”
They were silent again and Scarlett felt as if she were
butting her head against a stone wall. There had been
so many stone walls to butt against this last year.
“What are we goin’ to do, Miss Scarlett?”
“I don’t know,” she said dully and felt that she
didn’t care. This was one stone wall too many and
she suddenly felt so tired that her bones ached. Why
should she work and struggle and wear herself out?
At the end of every struggle it seemed that defeat was
waiting to mock her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But don’t let Pa know. It
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might worry him.”
“I won’t.”
“Have you told anyone?”
“No, I came right to you.”
Yes, she thought, everyone always came right to her
with bad news and she was tired of it.
“Where is Mr. Wilkes? Perhaps he’ll have some suggestion.”
Will turned his mild gaze on her and she felt, as from
the first day when Ashley came home, that he knew
everything.
“He’s down in the orchard splittin’ rails. I heard his
axe when I was puttin’ up the horse. But he ain’t got
any money any more than we have.”
“If I want to talk to him about it, I can, can’t I?” she
snapped, rising to her feet and kicking the fragment
of quilting from her ankles.
Will did not take offense but continued rubbing his
hands before the flame. “Better get your shawl, Miss
Scarlett. It’s raw outside.”
But she went without the shawl, for it was upstairs
and her need to see Ashley and lay her troubles before
him was too urgent to wait.
How lucky for her if she could find him alone!
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Never once since his return had she had a private
word with him. Always the family clustered about
him, always Melanie was by his side, touching his
sleeve now and again to reassure herself he was really there. The sight of that happy possessive gesture had aroused in Scarlett all the jealous animosity
which had slumbered during the months when she
had thought Ashley probably dead. Now she was determined to see him alone. This time no one was going to prevent her from talking with him alone.
She went through the orchard under the bare
boughs and the damp weeds beneath them wet her
feet. She could hear the sound of the axe ringing
as Ashley split into rails the logs hauled from the
swamp. Replacing the fences the Yankees had so
blithely burned was a long hard task. Everything was
a long hard task, she thought wearily, and she was
tired of it, tired and mad and sick of it all. If only
Ashley were her husband, instead of Melanie’s, how
sweet it would be to go to him and lay her head upon
his shoulder and cry and shove her burdens onto him
to work out as best he might.
She rounded a thicket of pomegranate trees which
were shaking bare limbs in the cold wind and saw
him leaning on his axe, wiping his forehead with the
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back of his hand. He was wearing the remains of his
butternut trousers and one of Gerald’s shirts, a shirt
which in better times went only to Court days and
barbecues, a ruffled shirt which was far too short for
its present owner. He had hung his coat on a tree limb,
for the work was hot, and he stood resting as she came
up to him.
At the sight of Ashley in rags, with an axe in his
hand, her heart went out in a surge of love and of fury
at fate. She could not bear to see him in tatters, working, her debonaire immaculate Ashley. His hands
were not made for work or his body for anything but
broadcloth and fine linen. God intended him to sit in
a great house, talking with pleasant people, playing
the piano and writing things which sounded beautiful and made no sense whatsoever.
She could endure the sight of her own child in
aprons made of sacking and the girls in dingy old
gingham, could bear it that Will worked harder than
any field hand, but not Ashley. He was too fine for all
this, too infinitely dear to her. She would rather split
logs herself than suffer while he did it.
“They say Abe Lincoln got his start splitting rails,”
he said as she came up to him. “Just think to what
heights I may climb!”
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She frowned. He was always saying light things like
this about their hardships. They were deadly serious
matters to her and sometimes she was almost irritated
at his remarks.
Abruptly she told him Will’s news, tersely and in
short words, feeling a sense of relief as she spoke.
Surely, he’d have something helpful to offer. He said
nothing but, seeing her shiver, he took his coat and
placed it about her shoulders.
“Well,” she said finally, “doesn’t it occur to you that
we’ll have to get the money somewhere?”
“Yes,” he said, “but where?”
“I’m asking you,” she replied, annoyed. The sense
of relief at unburdening herself had disappeared.
Even if he couldn’t help, why didn’t he say something
comforting, even if it was only: “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
He smiled.
“In all these months since I’ve been home I’ve only
heard of one person, Rhett Butler, who actually has
money,” he said.
Aunt Pittypat had written Melanie the week before
that Rhett was back in Atlanta with a carriage and two
fine horses and pocketfuls of greenbacks. She had intimated, however, that he didn’t come by them honestly. Aunt Pitty had a theory, largely shared by At1001
�PART FOUR
lanta, that Rhett had managed to get away with the
mythical millions of the Confederate treasury.
“Don’t let’s talk about him,” said Scarlett shortly.
“He’s a skunk if ever there was one. What’s to become of us all?”
Ashley put down the axe and looked away and his
eyes seemed to be journeying to some far-off country
where she could not follow.
“I wonder,” he said. “I wonder not only what will
become of us at Tara but what will become of everybody in the South.”
She felt like snapping out abruptly: “To hell with
everybody in the South! What about us?” but she
remained silent because the tired feeling was back on
her more strongly than ever. Ashley wasn’t being any
help at all.
“In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people
who have brains and courage come through and the
ones who haven’t are winnowed out. At least, it has
been interesting, if not comfortable, to witness a Gotterdammerung.”
“A what?”
“A dusk of the gods. Unfortunately, we Southerners
did think we were gods.”
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“For Heaven’s sake, Ashley Wilkes! Don’t stand
there and talk nonsense at me when it’s us who are
going to be winnowed out!”
Something of her exasperated weariness seemed to
penetrate his mind, calling it back from its wanderings, for he raised her hands with tenderness and,
turning them palm up, looked at the calluses.
“These are the most beautiful hands I know,” he
said and kissed each palm lightly. “They are beautiful
because they are strong and every callus is a medal,
Scarlett, every blister an award for bravery and unselfishness. They’ve been roughened for all of us,
your father, the girls, Melanie, the baby, the negroes
and for me. My dear, I know what you are thinking.
You’re thinking, ‘Here stands an impractical fool talking tommyrot about dead gods when living people
are in danger.’ Isn’t that true?”
She nodded, wishing he would keep on holding her
hands forever, but he dropped them.
“And you came to me, hoping I could help you.
Well, I can’t.”
His eyes were bitter as he looked toward the axe and
the pile of logs.
“My home is gone and all the money that I so took
for granted I never realized I had it. And I am fitted
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for nothing in this world, for the world I belonged in
has gone. I can’t help you, Scarlett, except by learning
with as good grace as possible to be a clumsy farmer.
And that won’t keep Tara for you. Don’t you think I
realize the bitterness of our situation, living here on
your charity– Oh, yes, Scarlett, your charity. I can
never repay you what you’ve done for me and for
mine out of the kindness of your heart. I realize it
more acutely every day. And every day I see more
clearly how helpless I am to cope with what has come
on us all– Every day my accursed shrinking from realities makes it harder for me to face the new realities.
Do you know what I mean?”
She nodded. She had no very clear idea what he
meant but she clung breathlessly on his words. This
was the first time he had ever spoken to her of the
things he was thinking when he seemed so remote
from her. It excited her as if she were on the brink
of a discovery.
“It’s a curse–this not wanting to look on naked realities. Until the war, life was never more real to me
than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it
so. I do not like the outlines of things to be too sharp.
I like them gently blurred, a little hazy.”
He stopped and smiled faintly, shivering a little as
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the cold wind went through his thin shirt.
“In other words, Scarlett, I am a coward.”
His talk of shadow shows and hazy outlines conveyed no meaning to her but his last words were in
language she could understand. She knew they were
untrue. Cowardice was not in him. Every line of his
slender body spoke of generations of brave and gallant men and Scarlett knew his war record by heart.
“Why, that’s not so! Would a coward have climbed
on the cannon at Gettysburg and rallied the men?
Would the General himself have written Melanie a letter about a coward? And–”
“That’s not courage,” he said tiredly. “Fighting is
like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as
quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battle
field when it’s be brave or else be killed. I’m talking
of something else. And my kind of cowardice is infinitely worse than if I had run the first time I heard a
cannon fired.”
His words came slowly and with difficulty as if it
hurt to speak them and he seemed to stand off and
look with a sad heart at what he had said. Had any
other man spoken so, Scarlett would have dismissed
such protestations contemptuously as mock modesty
and a bid for praise. But Ashley seemed to mean them
1005
�PART FOUR
and there was a look in his eyes which eluded her–not
fear, not apology, but the bracing to a strain which
was inevitable and overwhelming. The wintry wind
swept her damp ankles and she shivered again but
her shiver was less from the wind than from the dread
his words evoked in her heart.
“But, Ashley, what are you afraid of?”
“Oh, nameless things. Things which sound very
silly when they are put into words. Mostly of having life suddenly become too real, of being brought
into personal, too personal, contact with some of the
simple facts of life. It isn’t that I mind splitting logs
here in the mud, but I do mind what it stands for. I
do mind, very much, the loss of the beauty of the old
life I loved. Scarlett, before the war, life was beautiful.
There was a glamor to it, a perfection and a completeness and a symmetry to it like Grecian art. Maybe it
wasn’t so to everyone. I know that now. But to me,
living at Twelve Oaks, there was a real beauty to living. I belonged in that life. I was a part of it. And now
it is gone and I am out of place in this new life, and I
am afraid. Now, I know that in the old days it was a
shadow show I watched. I avoided everything which
was not shadowy, people and situations which were
too real, too vital. I resented their intrusion. I tried
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to avoid you too, Scarlett. You were too full of living and too real and I was cowardly enough to prefer
shadows and dreams.”
“But–but–Melly?”
“Melanie is the gentlest of dreams and a part of my
dreaming. And if the war had not come I would have
lived out my life, happily buried at Twelve Oaks, contentedly watching life go by and never being a part of
it. But when the war came, life as it really is thrust
itself against me. The first time I went into action–it
was at Bull Run, you remember–I saw my boyhood
friends blown to bits and heard dying horses scream
and learned the sickeningly horrible feeling of seeing
men crumple up and spit blood when I shot them. But
those weren’t the worst things about the war, Scarlett.
The worst thing about the war was the people I had
to live with.
“I had sheltered myself from people all my life, I had
carefully selected my few friends. But the war taught
me I had created a world of my own with dream people in it. It taught me what people really are, but it
didn’t teach me how to live with them. And I’m afraid
I’ll never learn. Now, I know that in order to support my wife and child, I will have to make my way
among a world of people with whom I have nothing
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�PART FOUR
in common. You, Scarlett, are taking life by the horns
and twisting it to your will. But where do I fit in the
world any more? I tell you I am afraid.”
While his low resonant voice went on, desolate, with
a feeling she could not understand, Scarlett clutched
at words here and there, trying to make sense of them.
But the words swooped from her hands like wild
birds. Something was driving him, driving him with
a cruel goad, but she did not understand what it was.
“Scarlett, I don’t know just when it was that the
bleak realization came over me that my own private
shadow show was over. Perhaps in the first five minutes at Bull Run when I saw the first man I killed drop
to the ground. But I knew it was over and I could no
longer be a spectator. No, I suddenly found myself
on the curtain, an actor, posturing and making futile
gestures. My little inner world was gone, invaded
by people whose thoughts were not my thoughts,
whose actions were as alien as a Hottentot’s. They’d
tramped through my world with slimy feet and there
was no place left where I could take refuge when
things became too bad to stand. When I was in prison,
I thought: When the war is over, I can go back to the
old life and the old dreams and watch the shadow
show again. But, Scarlett, there’s no going back. And
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this which is facing all of us now is worse than war
and worse than prison–and, to me, worse than death.
. . . So, you see, Scarlett, I’m being punished for being
afraid.”
“But, Ashley,” she began, floundering in a quagmire
of bewilderment, “if you’re afraid we’ll starve, why–
why– Oh, Ashley, we’ll manage somehow! I know we
will!”
For a moment, his eyes came back to her, wide and
crystal gray, and there was admiration in them. Then,
suddenly, they were remote again and she knew with
a sinking heart that he had not been thinking about
starving. They were always like two people talking to
each other in different languages. But she loved him
so much that, when he withdrew as he had now done,
it was like the warm sun going down and leaving her
in chilly twilight dews. She wanted to catch him by
the shoulders and hug him to her, make him realize
that she was flesh and blood and not something he
had read or dreamed. If she could only feel that sense
of oneness with him for which she had yearned since
that day, so long ago, when he had come home from
Europe and stood on the steps of Tara and smiled up
at her.
“Starving’s not pleasant,” he said. “I know for I’ve
1009
�PART FOUR
starved, but I’m not afraid of that. I am afraid of facing life without the slow beauty of our old world that
is gone.”
Scarlett thought despairingly that Melanie would
know what he meant. Melly and he were always talking such foolishness, poetry and books and dreams
and moonrays and star dust. He was not fearing the
things she feared, not the gnawing of an empty stomach, nor the keenness of the winter wind nor eviction
from Tara. He was shrinking before some fear she had
never known and could not imagine. For, in God’s
name, what was there to fear in this wreck of a world
but hunger and cold and the loss of home?
And she had thought that if she listened closely she
would know the answer to Ashley.
“Oh!” she said and the disappointment in her voice
was that of a child who opens a beautifully wrapped
package to find it empty. At her tone, he smiled ruefully as though apologizing.
“Forgive me, Scarlett, for talking so. I can’t make
you understand because you don’t know the meaning of fear. You have the heart of a lion and an utter lack of imagination and I envy you both of those
qualities. You’ll never mind facing realities and you’ll
never want to escape from them as I do.”
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“Escape!”
It was as if that were the only understandable word
he had spoken. Ashley, like her, was tired of the struggle and he wanted to escape. Her breath came fast.
“Oh, Ashley,” she cried, “you’re wrong. I do want
to escape, too. I am so very tired of it all!”
His eyebrows went up in disbelief and she laid a
hand, feverish and urgent, on his arm.
“Listen to me,” she began swiftly, the words tumbling out one over the other. “I’m tired of it all, I
tell you. Bone tired and I’m not going to stand it any
longer. I’ve struggled for food and for money and I’ve
weeded and hoed and picked cotton and I’ve even
plowed until I can’t stand it another minute. I tell
you, Ashley, the South is dead! It’s dead! The Yankees and the free niggers and the Carpetbaggers have
got it and there’s nothing left for us. Ashley, let’s run
away!”
He peered at her sharply, lowering his head to look
into her face, now flaming with color.
“Yes, let’s run away–leave them all! I’m tired of
working for the folks. Somebody will take care of
them. There’s always somebody who takes care of
people who can’t take care of themselves. Oh, Ashley,
let’s run away, you and I. We could go to Mexico–they
1011
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want officers in the Mexican Army and we could be
so happy there. I’d work for you, Ashley. I’d do anything for you. You know you don’t love Melanie–”
He started to speak, a stricken look on his face, but
she stemmed his words with a torrent of her own.
“You told me you loved me better than her that day–
oh, you remember that day! And I know you haven’t
changed! I can tell you haven’t changed! And you’ve
just said she was nothing but a dream– Oh, Ashley,
let’s go away! I could make you so happy. And
anyway,” she added venomously, “Melanie can’t– Dr.
Fontaine said she couldn’t ever have any more children and I could give you–”
His hands were on her shoulders so tightly that they
hurt and she stopped, breathless.
“We were to forget that day at Twelve Oaks.”
“Do you think I could ever forget it? Have you forgotten it? Can you honestly say you don’t love me?”
He drew a deep breath and answered quickly.
“No. I don’t love you.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Even if it is a lie,” said Ashley and his voice was
deadly quiet, “it is not something which can be discussed.”
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“You mean–”
“Do you think I could go off and leave Melanie and
the baby, even if I hated them both? Break Melanie’s
heart? Leave them both to the charity of friends? Scarlett, are you mad? Isn’t there any sense of loyalty in
you? You couldn’t leave your father and the girls.
They’re your responsibility, just as Melanie and Beau
are mine, and whether you are tired or not, they are
here and you’ve got to bear them.”
“I could leave them–I’m sick of them–tired of them–
”
He leaned toward her and, for a moment, she
thought with a catch at her heart that he was going
to take her in his arms. But instead, he patted her arm
and spoke as one comforting a child.
“I know you’re sick and tired. That’s why you are
talking this way. You’ve carried the load of three
men. But I’m going to help you–I won’t always be
so awkward–”
“There’s only one way you can help me,” she said
dully, “and that’s to take me away from here and give
us a new start somewhere, with a chance for happiness. There’s nothing to keep us here.”
“Nothing,” he said quietly, “nothing–except honor.”
She looked at him with baffled longing and saw, as
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if for the first time, how the crescents of his lashes
were the thick rich gold of ripe wheat, how proudly
his head sat upon his bared neck and how the look of
race and dignity persisted in his slim erect body, even
through its grotesque rags. Her eyes met his, hers
naked with pleading, his remote as mountain lakes
under gray skies.
She saw in them defeat of her wild dream, her mad
desires.
Heartbreak and weariness sweeping over her, she
dropped her head in her hands and cried. He had
never seen her cry. He had never thought that women
of her strong mettle had tears, and a flood of tenderness and remorse swept him. He came to her swiftly
and in a moment had her in his arms, cradling her
comfortingly, pressing her black head to his heart,
whispering: “Dear! My brave dear–don’t! You
mustn’t cry!”
At his touch, he felt her change within his grip and
there was madness and magic in the slim body he
held and a hot soft glow in the green eyes which
looked up at him. Of a sudden, it was no longer bleak
winter. For Ashley, spring was back again, that halfforgotten balmy spring of green rustlings and murmurings, a spring of ease and indolence, careless days
1014
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when the desires of youth were warm in his body. The
bitter years since then fell away and he saw that the
lips turned up to his were red and trembling and he
kissed her.
There was a curious low roaring sound in her ears as
of sea shells held against them and through the sound
she dimly heard the swift thudding of her heart. Her
body seemed to melt into his and, for a timeless time,
they stood fused together as his lips took hers hungrily as if he could never have enough.
When he suddenly released her she felt that she
could not stand alone and gripped the fence for support. She raised eyes blazing with love and triumph
to him.
“You do love me! You do love me! Say it–say it!”
His hands still rested on her shoulders and she felt
them tremble and loved their trembling. She leaned
toward him ardently but he held her away from him,
looking at her with eyes from which all remoteness
had fled, eyes tormented with struggle and despair.
“Don’t!” he said. “Don’t! If you do, I shall take you
now, here.”
She smiled a bright hot smile which was forgetful
of time or place or anything but the memory of his
mouth on hers.
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Suddenly he shook her, shook her until her black
hair tumbled down about her shoulders, shook her
as if in a mad rage at her–and at himself.
“We won’t do this!” he said. “I tell you we won’t do
it!”
It seemed as if her neck would snap if he shook her
again. She was blinded by her hair and stunned by his
action. She wrenched herself away and stared at him.
There were small beads of moisture on his forehead
and his fists were curled into claws as if in pain. He
looked at her directly, his gray eyes piercing.
“It’s all my fault–none of yours and it will never
happen again, because I am going to take Melanie and
the baby and go.”
“Go?” she cried in anguish. “Oh, no!”
“Yes, by God! Do you think I’ll stay here after this?
When this might happen again–”
“But, Ashley, you can’t go. Why should you go? You
love me–”
“You want me to say it? All right, I’ll say it. I love
you.”
He leaned over her with a sudden savagery which
made her shrink back against the fence.
“I love you, your courage and your stubbornness
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and your fire and your utter ruthlessness. How much
do I love you? So much that a moment ago I would
have outraged the hospitality of the house which has
sheltered me and my family, forgotten the best wife
any man ever had–enough to take you here in the
mud like a–”
She struggled with a chaos of thoughts and there
was a cold pain in her heart as if an icicle had pierced
it. She said haltingly: “If you felt like that–and didn’t
take me–then you don’t love me.”
“I can never make you understand.”
They fell silent and looked at each other. Suddenly
Scarlett shivered and saw, as if coming back from a
long journey, that it was winter and the fields were
bare and harsh with stubble and she was very cold.
She saw too that the old aloof face of Ashley, the one
she knew so well, had come back and it was wintry
too, and harsh with hurt and remorse.
She would have turned and left him then, seeking
the shelter of the house to hide herself, but she was
too tired to move. Even speech was a labor and a
weariness.
“There is nothing left,” she said at last. “Nothing
left for me. Nothing to love. Nothing to fight for. You
are gone and Tara is going.”
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He looked at her for a long space and then, leaning,
scooped up a small wad of red clay from the ground.
“Yes, there is something left,” he said, and the ghost
of his old smile came back, the smile which mocked
himself as well as her. “Something you love better
than me, though you may not know it. You’ve still
got Tara.”
He took her limp hand and pressed the damp clay
into it and closed her fingers about it. There was no
fever in his hands now, nor in hers. She looked at
the red soil for a moment and it meant nothing to her.
She looked at him and realized dimly that there was
an integrity of spirit in him which was not to be torn
apart by her passionate hands, nor by any hands.
If it killed him, he would never leave Melanie. If
he burned for Scarlett until the end of his days, he
would never take her and he would fight to keep her
at a distance. She would never again get through that
armor. The words, hospitality and loyalty and honor,
meant more to him than she did.
The clay was cold in her hand and she looked at it
again.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve still got this.”
At first, the words meant nothing and the clay was
only red clay. But unbidden came the thought of the
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sea of red dirt which surrounded Tara and how very
dear it was and how hard she had fought to keep it–
how hard she was going to have to fight if she wished
to keep it hereafter. She looked at him again and wondered where the hot flood of feeling had gone. She
could think but could not feel, not about him nor Tara
either, for she was drained of all emotion.
“You need not go,” she said clearly. “I won’t have
you all starve, simply because I’ve thrown myself at
your head. It will never happen again.”
She turned away and started back toward the house
across the rough fields, twisting her hair into a knot
upon her neck. Ashley watched her go and saw her
square her small thin shoulders as she went. And that
gesture went to his heart, more than any words she
had spoken.
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�CHAPTER XXXII
clutching the ball of red clay when she
went up the front steps. She had carefully avoided
the back entrance, for Mammy’s sharp eyes would
certainly have seen that something was greatly amiss.
Scarlett did not want to see Mammy or anyone else.
She did not feel that she could endure seeing anyone or talking to anyone again. She had no feeling
of shame or disappointment or bitterness now, only a
weakness of the knees and a great emptiness of heart.
She squeezed the clay so tightly it ran out from her
clenched fist and she said over and over, parrot-like:
“I’ve still got this. Yes, I’ve still got this.”
There was nothing else she did have, nothing but
this red land, this land she had been willing to throw
away like a torn handkerchief only a few minutes before. Now, it was dear to her again and she wondered dully what madness had possessed her to hold
it so lightly. Had Ashley yielded, she could have gone
away with him and left family and friends without a
backward look but, even in her emptiness, she knew
it would have torn her heart to leave these dear red
hills and long washed gullies and gaunt black pines.
Her thoughts would have turned back to them hungrily until the day she died. Not even Ashley could
S HE
WAS STILL
�PART FOUR
have filled the empty spaces in her heart where Tara
had been uprooted. How wise Ashley was and how
well he knew her! He had only to press the damp
earth into her hand to bring her to her senses.
She was in the hall preparing to close the door when
she heard the sound of horse’s hooves and turned to
look down the driveway. To have visitors at this of
all times was too much. She’d hurry to her room and
plead a headache.
But when the carriage came nearer, her flight was
checked by her amazement. It was a new carriage,
shiny with varnish, and the harness was new too,
with bits of polished brass here and there. Strangers,
certainly. No one she knew had the money for such a
grand new turn-out as this.
She stood in the doorway watching, the cold draft
blowing her skirts about her damp ankles. Then the
carriage stopped in front of the house and Jonas Wilkerson alighted. Scarlett was so surprised at the sight
of their former overseer driving so fine a rig and in so
splendid a greatcoat she could not for a moment believe her eyes. Will had told her he looked quite prosperous since he got his new job with the Freedmen’s
Bureau. Made a lot of money, Will said, swindling the
niggers or the government, one or tuther, or confis1021
�PART FOUR
cating folks’ cotton and swearing it was Confederate
government cotton. Certainly he never came by all
that money honestly in these hard times.
And here he was now, stepping out of an elegant
carriage and handing down a woman dressed within
an inch of her life. Scarlett saw in a glance that the
dress was bright in color to the point of vulgarity but
nevertheless her eyes went over the outfit hungrily.
It had been so long since she had even seen stylish
new clothes. Well! So hoops aren’t so wide this year,
she thought, scanning the red plaid gown. And, as
she took in the black velvet paletot, how short jackets
are! And what a cunning hat! Bonnets must be out of
style, for this hat was only an absurd flat red velvet
affair, perched on the top of the woman’s head like a
stiffened pancake. The ribbons did not tie under the
chin as bonnet ribbons tied but in the back under the
massive bunch of curls which fell from the rear of the
hat, curls which Scarlett could not help noticing did
not match the woman’s hair in either color or texture.
As the woman stepped to the ground and looked toward the house, Scarlett saw there was something familiar about the rabbity face, caked with white powder.
“Why, it’s Emmie Slattery!” she cried, so surprised
1022
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she spoke the words aloud.
“Yes’m, it’s me,” said Emmie, tossing her head with
an ingratiating smile and starting toward the steps.
Emmie Slattery! The dirty tow-headed slut whose illegitimate baby Ellen had baptized, Emmie who had
given typhoid to Ellen and killed her. This overdressed, common, nasty piece of poor white trash was
coming up the steps of Tara, bridling and grinning as
if she belonged here. Scarlett thought of Ellen and,
in a rush, feeling came back into the emptiness of her
mind, a murderous rage so strong it shook her like the
ague.
“Get off those steps, you trashy wench!” she cried.
“Get off this land! Get out!”
Emmie’s jaw sagged suddenly and she glanced at
Jonas who came up with lowering brows. He made
an effort at dignity, despite his anger.
“You must not speak that way to my wife,” he said.
“Wife?” said Scarlett and burst into a laugh that
was cutting with contempt. “High time you made
her your wife. Who baptized your other brats after
you killed my mother?”
Emmie said “Oh!” and retreated hastily down the
steps but Jonas stopped her flight toward the carriage
with a rough grip on her arm.
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“We came out here to pay a call–a friendly call,” he
snarled. “And talk a little business with old friends–”
“Friends?” Scarlett’s voice was like a whiplash.
“When were we ever friends with the like of you?
The Slatterys lived on our charity and paid it back
by killing Mother–and you–you– Pa discharged you
about Emmie’s brat and you know it. Friends? Get off
this place before I call Mr. Benteen and Mr. Wilkes.”
Under the words, Emmie broke her husband’s hold
and fled for the carriage, scrambling in with a flash
of patent-leather boots with bright-red tops and red
tassels.
Now Jonas shook with a fury equal to Scarlett’s and
his sallow face was as red as an angry turkey gobbler’s.
“Still high and mighty, aren’t you? Well, I know all
about you. I know you haven’t got shoes for your feet.
I know your father’s turned idiot–”
“Get off this place!”
“Oh, you won’t sing that way very long. I know
you’re broke. I know you can’t even pay your taxes.
I came out here to offer to buy this place from you–to
make you a right good offer. Emmie had a hankering
to live here. But, by God, I won’t give you a cent now!
You highflying, bog-trotting Irish will find out who’s
1024
�PART FOUR
running things around here when you get sold out for
taxes. And I’ll buy this place, lock, stock and barrel–
furniture and all–and I’ll live in it.”
So it was Jonas Wilkerson who wanted Tara–Jonas
and Emmie, who in some twisted way thought to
even past slights by living in the home where they
had been slighted. All her nerves hummed with hate,
as they had hummed that day when she shoved the
pistol barrel into the Yankee’s bearded face and fired.
She wished she had that pistol now.
“I’ll tear this house down, stone by stone, and burn
it and sow every acre with salt before I see either of
you put foot over this threshold,” she shouted. “Get
out, I tell you! Get out!”
Jonas glared at her, started to say more and then
walked toward the carriage. He climbed in beside
his whimpering wife and turned the horse. As they
drove off, Scarlett had the impulse to spit at them. She
did spit. She knew it was a common, childish gesture
but it made her feel better. She wished she had done
it while they could see her.
Those damned nigger lovers daring to come here
and taunt her about her poverty! That hound never
intended offering her a price for Tara. He just used
that as an excuse to come and flaunt himself and Em1025
�PART FOUR
mie in her face. The dirty Scallawags, the lousy trashy
poor whites, boasting they would live at Tara!
Then, sudden terror struck her and her rage melted.
God’s nightgown! They will come and live here!
There was nothing she could do to keep them from
buying Tara, nothing to keep them from levying on
every mirror and table and bed, on Ellen’s shining
mahogany and rosewood, and every bit of it precious
to her, scarred though it was by the Yankee raiders.
And the Robillard silver too. I won’t let them do it,
thought Scarlett vehemently. No, not if I’ve got to
burn the place down! Emmie Slattery will never set
her foot on a single bit of flooring Mother ever walked
on!
She closed the door and leaned against it and she
was very frightened. More frightened even than she
had been that day when Sherman’s army was in the
house. That day the worst she could fear was that
Tara would be burned over her head. But this was
worse– these low common creatures living in this
house, bragging to their low common friends how
they had turned the proud O’Haras out. Perhaps
they’d even bring negroes here to dine and sleep. Will
had told her Jonas made a great to-do about being
equal with the negroes, ate with them, visited in their
1026
�PART FOUR
houses, rode them around with him in his carriage,
put his arms around their shoulders.
When she thought of the possibility of this final insult to Tara, her heart pounded so hard she could
scarcely breathe. She was trying to get her mind on
her problem, trying to figure some way out, but each
time she collected her thoughts, fresh gusts of rage
and fear shook her. There must be some way out,
there must be someone somewhere who had money
she could borrow. Money couldn’t just dry up and
blow away. Somebody had to have money. Then the
laughing words of Ashley came back to her:
“Only one person, Rhett Butler . . . who has money.”
Rhett Butler. She walked quickly into the parlor and
shut the door behind her. The dim gloom of drawn
blinds and winter twilight closed about her. No one
would think of hunting for her here and she wanted
time to think, undisturbed. The idea which had just
occurred to her was so simple she wondered why she
had not thought of it before.
“I’ll get the money from Rhett. I’ll sell him the diamond earbobs. Or I’ll borrow the money from him
and let him keep the earbobs till I can pay him back.”
For a moment, relief was so great she felt weak. She
would pay the taxes and laugh in Jonas Wilkerson’s
1027
�PART FOUR
face. But close on this happy thought came relentless
knowledge.
“It’s not only for this year that I’ll need tax money.
There’s next year and all the years of my life. If I
pay up this time, they’ll raise the taxes higher next
time till they drive me out. If I make a good cotton
crop, they’ll tax it till I’ll get nothing for it or maybe
confiscate it outright and say it’s Confederate cotton.
The Yankees and the scoundrels teamed up with them
have got me where they want me. All my life, as long
as I live, I’ll be afraid they’ll get me somehow. All my
life I’ll be scared and scrambling for money and working myself to death, only to see my work go for nothing and my cotton stolen. . . . Just borrowing three
hundred dollars for the taxes will be only a stopgap.
What I want is to get out of this fix, for good–so I can
go to sleep at night without worrying over what’s going to happen to me tomorrow, and next month, and
next year.”
Her mind ticked on steadily. Coldly and logically an
idea grew in her brain. She thought of Rhett, a flash
of white teeth against swarthy skin, sardonic black
eyes caressing her. She recalled the hot night in Atlanta, close to the end of the siege, when he sat on
Aunt Pitty’s porch half hidden in the summer dark1028
�PART FOUR
ness, and she felt again the heat of his hand upon her
arm as he said: “I want you more than I have ever
wanted any woman–and I’ve waited longer for you
than I’ve ever waited for any woman.”
“I’ll marry him,” she thought coolly. “And then I’ll
never have to bother about money again.”
Oh, blessed thought, sweeter than hope of Heaven,
never to worry about money again, to know that Tara
was safe, that the family was fed and clothed, that
she would never again have to bruise herself against
stone walls!
She felt very old. The afternoon’s events had
drained her of all feeling, first the startling news
about the taxes, then Ashley and, last, her murderous rage at Jonas Wilkerson. No, there was no emotion left in her. If all her capacity to feel had not
been utterly exhausted, something in her would have
protested against the plan taking form in her mind,
for she hated Rhett as she hated no other person in
all the world. But she could not feel. She could only
think and her thoughts were very practical.
“I said some terrible things to him that night when
he deserted us on the road, but I can make him forget them,” she thought contemptuously, still sure of
her power to charm. “Butter won’t melt in my mouth
1029
�PART FOUR
when I’m around him. I’ll make him think I always
loved him and was just upset and frightened that
night. Oh, men are so conceited they’ll believe anything that flatters them. . . . I must never let him
dream what straits we’re in, not till I’ve got him. Oh,
he mustn’t know! If he even suspected how poor we
are, he’d know it was his money I wanted and not
himself. After all, there’s no way he could know, for
even Aunt Pitty doesn’t know the worst. And after
I’ve married him, he’ll have to help us. He can’t let
his wife’s people starve.”
His wife. Mrs. Rhett Butler. Something of repulsion,
buried deep beneath her cold thinking, stirred faintly
and then was stilled. She remembered the embarrassing and disgusting events of her brief honeymoon
with Charles, his fumbling hands, his awkwardness,
his incomprehensible emotions–and Wade Hampton.
“I won’t think about it now. I’ll bother about it after
I’ve married him. . . .”
After she had married him. Memory rang a bell. A
chill went down her spine. She remembered again
that night on Aunt Pitty’s porch, remembered how
she asked him if he was proposing to her, remembered how hatefully he had laughed and said: “My
dear, I’m not a marrying man.”
1030
�PART FOUR
Suppose he was still not a marrying man. Suppose
despite all her charms and wiles, he refused to marry
her. Suppose–oh, terrible thought!–suppose he had
completely forgotten about her and was chasing after
some other woman.
“I want you more than I have ever wanted any
woman. . . .”
Scarlett’s nails dug into her palms as she clenched
her fists. “If he’s forgotten me, I’ll make him remember me. I’ll make him want me again.”
And, if he would not marry her but still wanted her,
there was a way to get the money. After all, he had
once asked her to be his mistress.
In the dim grayness of the parlor she fought a quick
decisive battle with the three most binding ties of her
soul–the memory of Ellen, the teachings of her religion and her love for Ashley. She knew that what
she had in her mind must be hideous to her mother
even in that warm far-off Heaven where she surely
was. She knew that fornication was a mortal sin. And
she knew that, loving Ashley as she did, her plan was
doubly prostitution.
But all these things went down before the merciless
coldness of her mind and the goad of desperation.
Ellen was dead and perhaps death gave an under1031
�PART FOUR
standing of all things. Religion forbade fornication
on pain of hell fire but if the Church thought she was
going to leave one stone unturned in saving Tara and
saving the family from starving–well, let the Church
bother about that. She wouldn’t. At least, not now.
And Ashley–Ashley didn’t want her. Yes, he did want
her. The memory of his warm mouth on hers told her
that. But he would never take her away with him.
Strange that going away with Ashley did not seem
like a sin, but with Rhett–
In the dull twilight of the winter afternoon she came
to the end of the long road which had begun the night
Atlanta fell. She had set her feet upon that road a
spoiled, selfish and untried girl, full of youth, warm
of emotion, easily bewildered by life. Now, at the end
of the road, there was nothing left of that girl. Hunger
and hard labor, fear and constant strain, the terrors of
war and the terrors of Reconstruction had taken away
all warmth and youth and softness. About the core of
her being, a shell of hardness had formed and, little
by little, layer by layer, the shell had thickened during the endless months.
But until this very day, two hopes had been left to
sustain her. She had hoped that the war being over,
life would gradually resume its old face. She had
1032
�PART FOUR
hoped that Ashley’s return would bring back some
meaning into life. Now both hopes were gone. The
sight of Jonas Wilkerson in the front walk of Tara had
made her realize that for her, for the whole South,
the war would never end. The bitterest fighting, the
most brutal retaliations, were just beginning. And
Ashley was imprisoned forever by words which were
stronger than any jail.
Peace had failed her and Ashley had failed her, both
in the same day, and it was as if the last crevice in the
shell had been sealed, the final layer hardened. She
had become what Grandma Fontaine had counseled
against, a woman who had seen the worst and so had
nothing else to fear. Not life nor Mother nor loss of
love nor public opinion. Only hunger and her nightmare dream of hunger could make her afraid.
A curious sense of lightness, of freedom, pervaded
her now that she had finally hardened her heart
against all that bound her to the old days and the old
Scarlett. She had made her decision and, thank God,
she wasn’t afraid. She had nothing to lose and her
mind was made up.
If she could only coax Rhett into marrying her, all
would be perfect. But if she couldn’t–well she’d get
the money just the same. For a brief moment she
1033
�PART FOUR
wondered with impersonal curiosity what would be
expected of a mistress. Would Rhett insist on keeping her in Atlanta as people said he kept the Watling
woman? If he made her stay in Atlanta, he’d have
to pay well–pay enough to balance what her absence
from Tara would be worth. Scarlett was very ignorant of the hidden side of men’s lives and had no way
of knowing just what the arrangement might involve.
And she wondered if she would have a baby. That
would be distinctly terrible.
“I won’t think of that now. I’ll think of it later,” and
she pushed the unwelcome idea into the back of her
mind lest it shake her resolution. She’d tell the family
tonight she was going to Atlanta to borrow money, to
try to mortgage the farm if necessary. That would be
all they needed to know until such an evil day when
they might find out differently.
With the thought of action, her head went up and
her shoulders went back. This affair was not going to
be easy, she knew. Formerly, it had been Rhett who
asked for her favors and she who held the power.
Now she was the beggar and a beggar in no position
to dictate terms.
“But I won’t go to him like a beggar. I’ll go like a
queen granting favors. He’ll never know.”
1034
�PART FOUR
She walked to the long pier glass and looked at herself, her head held high. And she saw framed in the
cracking gilt molding a stranger. It was as if she were
really seeing herself for the first time in a year. She
had glanced in the mirror every morning to see that
her face was clean and her hair tidy but she had always been too pressed by other things to really see
herself. But this stranger! Surely this thin hollowcheeked woman couldn’t be Scarlett O’Hara! Scarlett
O’Hara had a pretty, coquettish, high- spirited face.
This face at which she stared was not pretty at all and
had none of the charm she remembered so well. It
was white and strained and the black brows above
slanting green eyes swooped up startlingly against
the white skin like frightened bird’s wings. There was
a hard and hunted look about this face.
“I’m not pretty enough to get him!” she thought and
desperation came back to her. “I’m thin–oh, I’m terribly thin!”
She patted her cheeks, felt frantically at her collar
bones, feeling them stand out through her basque.
And her breasts were so small, almost as small as
Melanie’s. She’d have to put ruffles in her bosom to
make them look larger and she had always had contempt for girls who resorted to such subterfuges. Ruf1035
�PART FOUR
fles! That brought up another thought. Her clothes.
She looked down at her dress, spreading its mended
folds wide between her hands. Rhett liked women
who were well dressed, fashionably dressed. She remembered with longing the flounced green dress she
had worn when she first came out of mourning, the
dress she wore with the green plumed bonnet he had
brought her and she recalled the approving compliments he had paid her. She remembered, too, with
hate sharpened by envy the red plaid dress, the redtopped boots with tassels and the pancake hat of Emmie Slattery. They were gaudy but they were new
and fashionable and certainly they caught the eye.
And, oh, how she wanted to catch the eye! Especially
the eye of Rhett Butler! If he should see her in her
old clothes, he’d know everything was wrong at Tara.
And he must not know.
What a fool she had been to think she could go to
Atlanta and have him for the asking, she with her
scrawny neck and hungry cat eyes and raggedy dress!
If she hadn’t been able to pry a proposal from him at
the height of her beauty, when she had her prettiest
clothes, how could she expect to get one now when
she was ugly and dressed tackily? If Miss Pitty’s story
was true, he must have more money than anyone in
Atlanta and probably had his pick of all the pretty
1036
�PART FOUR
ladies, good and bad. Well, she thought grimly, I’ve
got something that most pretty ladies haven’t got–
and that’s a mind that’s made up. And if I had just
one nice dress–
There wasn’t a nice dress in Tara or a dress which
hadn’t been turned twice and mended.
“That’s that,” she thought, disconsolately looking
down at the floor. She saw Ellen’s moss-green velvet
carpet, now worn and scuffed and torn and spotted
from the numberless men who had slept upon it, and
the sight depressed her more, for it made her realize
that Tara was just as ragged as she. The whole darkening room depressed her and, going to the window,
she raised the sash, unlatched the shutters and let the
last light of the wintry sunset into the room. She
closed the window and leaned her head against the
velvet curtains and looked out across the bleak pasture toward the dark cedars of the burying ground.
The moss-green velvet curtains felt prickly and soft
beneath her cheek and she rubbed her face against
them gratefully, like a cat. And then suddenly she
looked at them.
A minute later, she was dragging a heavy marbletopped table across the floor. Its rusty castors screeching in protest. She rolled the table under the window,
1037
�PART FOUR
gathered up her skirts, climbed on it and tiptoed to
reach the heavy curtain pole. It was almost out of
her reach and she jerked at it so impatiently the nails
came out of the wood, and the curtains, pole and all,
fell to the floor with a clatter.
As if by magic, the door of the parlor opened and the
wide black face of Mammy appeared, ardent curiosity
and deepest suspicion evident in every wrinkle. She
looked disapprovingly at Scarlett, poised on the table
top, her skirts above her knees, ready to leap to the
floor. There was a look of excitement and triumph on
her face which brought sudden distrust to Mammy.
“Whut you up to wid Miss Ellen’s po’teers?” she
demanded.
“What are you up to listening outside doors?” asked
Scarlett, leaping nimbly to the floor and gathering up
a length of the heavy dusty velvet.
“Dat ain’ needer hyah no dar,” countered Mammy,
girding herself for combat. “You ain’ got no bizness
wid Miss Ellen’s po’teers, juckin’ de poles plum outer
de wood, an’ drappin’ dem on de flo’ in de dust. Miss
Ellen set gret sto’ by dem po’teers an’ Ah ain’ ‘tendin’
ter have you muss dem up dat way.”
Scarlett turned green eyes on Mammy, eyes which
were feverishly gay, eyes which looked like the bad
1038
�PART FOUR
little girl of the good old days Mammy sighed about.
“Scoot up to the attic and get my box of dress patterns, Mammy,” she cried, giving her a slight shove.
“I’m going to have a new dress.”
Mammy was torn between indignation at the very
idea of her two hundred pounds scooting anywhere,
much less to the attic, and the dawning of a horrid
suspicion. Quickly she snatched the curtain lengths
from Scarlett, holding them against her monumental,
sagging breasts as if they were holy relics.
“Not outer Miss Ellen’s po’teers is you gwine have
a new dress, ef dat’s whut you figgerin’ on. Not w’ile
Ah got breaf in mah body.”
For a moment the expression Mammy was wont to
describe to herself as “bullheaded” flitted over her
young mistress’ face and then it passed into a smile,
so difficult for Mammy to resist. But it did not fool
the old woman. She knew Miss Scarlett was employing that smile merely to get around her and in this
matter she was determined not to be gotten around.
“Mammy, don’t be mean. I’m going to Atlanta
to borrow some money and I’ve got to have a new
dress.”
“You doan need no new dress. Ain’ no other ladies
got new dresses. Dey weahs dey ole ones an’ dey
1039
�PART FOUR
weahs dem proudfully. Ain’ no reason why Miss
Ellen’s chile kain weah rags ef she wants ter, an’
eve’ybody respec’ her lak she wo’ silk.”
The bullheaded expression began to creep back.
Lordy, ‘twus right funny how de older Miss Scarlett
git de mo’ she look lak Mist’ Gerald and de less lak
Miss Ellen!
“Now, Mammy you know Aunt Pitty wrote us that
Miss Fanny Elsing is getting married this Saturday,
and of course I’ll go to the wedding. And I’ll need a
new dress to wear.”
“De dress you got on’ll be jes’ as nice as Miss
Fanny’s weddin’ dress. Miss Pitty done wrote dat de
Elsings mighty po’.”
“But I’ve got to have a new dress! Mammy, you
don’t know how we need money. The taxes–”
“Yas’m, Ah knows all ‘bout de taxes but–”
“You do?”
“Well’m, Gawd give me ears, din’ he, an’ ter hear
wid? Specially w’en Mist’ Will doan never tek trouble
ter close de do’.”
Was there nothing Mammy did not overhear? Scarlett wondered how that ponderous body which shook
the floors could move with such savage stealth when
1040
�PART FOUR
its owner wished to eavesdrop.
“Well, if you heard all that, I suppose you heard
Jonas Wilkerson and that Emmie–”
“Yas’m,” said Mammy with smoldering eyes.
“Well, don’t be a mule, Mammy. Don’t you see I’ve
got to go to Atlanta and get money for the taxes? I’ve
got to get some money. I’ve got to do it!” She hammered one small fist into the other. “Name of God,
Mammy, they’ll turn us all out into the road and then
where’ll we go? Are you going to argue with me
about a little matter of Mother’s curtains when that
trash Emmie Slattery who killed Mother is fixing to
move into this house and sleep in the bed Mother
slept in?”
Mammy shifted from one foot to another like a
restive elephant. She had a dim feeling that she was
being got around.
“No’m, Ah ain’ wantin’ ter see trash in Miss Ellen’s
house or us all in de road but–” She fixed Scarlett with
a suddenly accusing eye: “Who is you fixin’ ter git
money frum dat you needs a new dress?”
“That,” said Scarlett, taken aback, “is my own business.”
Mammy looked at her piercingly, just as she had
done when Scarlett was small and had tried un1041
�PART FOUR
successfully to palm off plausible excuses for misdeeds. She seemed to be reading her mind and Scarlett dropped her eyes unwillingly, the first feeling of
guilt at her intended conduct creeping over her.
“So you needs a spang new pretty dress ter borry
money wid. Dat doan lissen jes’ right ter me. An’ you
ain’ sayin’ whar de money ter come frum.”
“I’m not saying anything,” said Scarlett indignantly.
“It’s my own business. Are you going to give me that
curtain and help me make the dress?”
“Yas’m,” said Mammy softly, capitulating with a
suddenness which aroused all the suspicion in Scarlett’s mind. “Ah gwine he’p you mek it an’ Ah specs
we mout git a petticoat outer de satin linin’ of de
po’teers an’ trim a pa’r pantalets wid de lace cuttins.”
She handed the velvet curtain back to Scarlett and a
sly smile spread over her face.
“Miss Melly gwine ter ‘Lanta wid you, Miss Scarlett?”
“No,” said Scarlett sharply, beginning to realize
what was coming. “I’m going by myself.”
“Dat’s whut you thinks,” said Mammy firmly, “but
Ah is gwine wid you an’ dat new dress. Yas, Ma’m,
eve’y step of de way.”
1042
�PART FOUR
For an instant Scarlett envisaged her trip to Atlanta
and her conversation with Rhett with Mammy glowering chaperonage like a large black Cerberus in the
background. She smiled again and put a hand on
Mammy’s arm.
“Mammy darling, you’re sweet to want to go with
me and help me, but how on earth would the folks
here get on without you? You know you just about
run Tara.”
“Huh!” said Mammy. “Doan do no good ter sweet
talk me, Miss Scarlett. Ah been knowin’ you sence
Ah put de fust pa’r of diapers on you. Ah’s said Ah’s
gwine ter ‘Lanta wid you an’ gwine Ah is. Miss Ellen
be tuhnin’ in her grabe at you gwine up dar by yo’seff
wid dat town full up wid Yankees an’ free niggers an’
sech like.”
“But I’ll be at Aunt Pittypat’s,” Scarlett offered frantically.
“Miss Pittypat a fine woman an’ she think she see
eve’ything but she doan,” said Mammy, and turning
with the majestic air of having closed the interview,
she went into the hall. The boards trembled as she
called:
“Prissy, child! Fly up de stairs an’ fotch Miss Scarlett’s pattun box frum de attic an’ try an’ fine de scis1043
�PART FOUR
sors without takin’ all night ‘bout it.”
“This is a fine mess,” thought Scarlett dejectedly.
“I’d as soon have a bloodhound after me.”
After supper had been cleared away, Scarlett and
Mammy spread patterns on the dining-room table
while Suellen and Carreen busily ripped satin linings
from curtains and Melanie brushed the velvet with a
clean hairbrush to remove the dust. Gerald, Will and
Ashley sat about the room smoking, smiling at the
feminine tumult. A feeling of pleasurable excitement
which seemed to emanate from Scarlett was on them
all, an excitement they could not understand. There
was color in Scarlett’s face and a bright hard glitter in
her eyes and she laughed a good deal. Her laughter pleased them all, for it had been months since
they had heard her really laugh. Especially did it
please Gerald. His eyes were less vague than usual as
they followed her swishing figure about the room and
he patted her approvingly whenever she was within
reach. The girls were as excited as if preparing for a
ball and they ripped and cut and basted as if making
a ball dress of their own.
Scarlett was going to Atlanta to borrow money or
to mortgage Tara if necessary. But what was a mortgage, after all? Scarlett said they could easily pay it
1044
�PART FOUR
off out of next year’s cotton and have money left over,
and she said it with such finality they did not think to
question. And when they asked who was going to
lend the money she said: “Layovers catch meddlers,”
so archly they all laughed and teased her about her
millionaire friend.
“It must be Captain Rhett Butler,” said Melanie slyly
and they exploded with mirth at this absurdity, knowing how Scarlett hated him and never failed to refer to
him as “that skunk, Rhett Butler.”
But Scarlett did not laugh at this and Ashley, who
had laughed, stopped abruptly as he saw Mammy
shoot a quick, guarded glance at Scarlett.
Suellen, moved to generosity by the party spirit of
the occasion, produced her Irish-lace collar, somewhat worn but still pretty, and Carreen insisted that
Scarlett wear her slippers to Atlanta, for they were
in better condition than any others at Tara. Melanie
begged Mammy to leave her enough velvet scraps to
recover the frame of her battered bonnet and brought
shouts of laughter when she said the old rooster was
going to part with his gorgeous bronze and greenblack tail feathers unless he took to the swamp immediately.
Scarlett, watching the flying fingers, heard the
1045
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laughter and looked at them all with concealed bitterness and contempt.
“They haven’t an idea what is really happening to
me or to themselves or to the South. They still think,
in spite of everything, that nothing really dreadful can
happen to any of them because they are who they are,
O’Haras, Wilkeses, Hamiltons. Even the darkies feel
that way. Oh, they’re all fools! They’ll never realize!
They’ll go right on thinking and living as they always
have, and nothing will change them. Melly can dress
in rags and pick cotton and even help me murder a
man but it doesn’t change her. She’s still the shy wellbred Mrs. Wilkes, the perfect lady! And Ashley can
see death and war and be wounded and lie in jail and
come home to less than nothing and still be the same
gentleman he was when he had all Twelve Oaks behind him. Will is different. He knows how things
really are but then Will never had anything much to
lose. And as for Suellen and Carreen–they think all
this is just a temporary matter. They don’t change to
meet changed conditions because they think it’ll all be
over soon. They think God is going to work a miracle
especially for their benefit. But He won’t. The only
miracle that’s going to be worked around here is the
one I’m going to work on Rhett Butler. . . . They
won’t change. Maybe they can’t change. I’m the only
1046
�PART FOUR
one who’s changed– and I wouldn’t have changed if
I could have helped it.”
Mammy finally turned the men out of the dining
room and closed the door, so the fitting could begin.
Pork helped Gerald upstairs to bed and Ashley and
Will were left alone in the lamplight in the front hall.
They were silent for a while and Will chewed his tobacco like a placid ruminant animal. But his mild face
was far from placid.
“This goin’ to Atlanta,” he said at last in a slow
voice, “I don’t like it. Not one bit.”
Ashley looked at Will quickly and then looked away,
saying nothing but wondering if Will had the same
awful suspicion which was haunting him. But that
was impossible. Will didn’t know what had taken
place in the orchard that afternoon and how it had
driven Scarlett to desperation. Will couldn’t have
noticed Mammy’s face when Rhett Butler’s name
was mentioned and, besides, Will didn’t know about
Rhett’s money or his foul reputation. At least, Ashley
did not think he could know these things, but since
coming back to Tara he had realized that Will, like
Mammy, seemed to know things without being told,
to sense them before they happened. There was something ominous in the air, exactly what Ashley did not
1047
�PART FOUR
know, but he was powerless to save Scarlett from it.
She had not met his eyes once that evening and the
hard bright gaiety with which she had treated him
was frightening. The suspicions which tore at him
were too terrible to be put into words. He did not
have the right to insult her by asking her if they were
true. He clenched his fists. He had no rights at all
where she was concerned; this afternoon he had forfeited them all, forever. He could not help her. No
one could help her. But when he thought of Mammy
and the look of grim determination she wore as she
cut into the velvet curtains, he was cheered a little.
Mammy would take care of Scarlett whether Scarlett
wished it or not.
“I have caused all this,” he thought despairingly. “I
have driven her to this.”
He remembered the way she had squared her shoulders when she turned away from him that afternoon, remembered the stubborn lift of her head. His
heart went out to her, torn with his own helplessness,
wrenched with admiration. He knew she had no such
word in her vocabulary as gallantry, knew she would
have stared blankly if he had told her she was the
most gallant soul he had ever known. He knew she
would not understand how many truly fine things he
1048
�PART FOUR
ascribed to her when he thought of her as gallant. He
knew that she took life as it came, opposed her toughfibered mind to whatever obstacles there might be,
fought on with a determination that would not recognize defeat, and kept on fighting even when she saw
defeat was inevitable.
But, for four years, he had seen others who had refused to recognize defeat, men who rode gaily into
sure disaster because they were gallant. And they had
been defeated, just the same.
He thought as he stared at Will in the shadowy hall
that he had never known such gallantry as the gallantry of Scarlett O’Hara going forth to conquer the
world in her mother’s velvet curtains and the tail
feathers of a rooster.
1049
�CHAPTER XXXIII
was blowing stiffly and the scudding
clouds overhead were the deep gray of slate when
Scarlett and Mammy stepped from the train in Atlanta the next afternoon. The depot had not been rebuilt since the burning of the city and they alighted
amid cinders and mud a few yards above the blackened ruins which marked the site. Habit strong
upon her, Scarlett looked about for Uncle Peter and
Pitty’s carriage, for she had always been met by them
when returning from Tara to Atlanta during the war
years. Then she caught herself with a sniff at her own
absent-mindedness. Naturally, Peter wasn’t there for
she had given Aunt Pitty no warning of her coming
and, moreover, she remembered that one of the old
lady’s letters had dealt tearfully with the death of the
old nag Peter had “‘quired” in Macon to bring her
back to Atlanta after the surrender.
She looked about the rutted and cut-up space
around the depot for the equipage of some old friend
or acquaintance who might drive them to Aunt Pitty’s
house but she recognized no one, black or white.
Probably none of her old friends owned carriages
now, if what Pitty had written them was true. Times
were so hard it was difficult to feed and lodge huA
COLD WIND
�PART FOUR
mans, much less animals. Most of Pitty’s friends, like
herself, were afoot these days.
There were a few wagons loading at the freight
cars and several mud-splashed buggies with roughlooking strangers at the reins but only two carriages.
One was a closed carriage, the other open and occupied by a well-dressed woman and a Yankee officer. Scarlett drew in her breath sharply at the sight
of the uniform. Although Pitty had written that Atlanta was garrisoned and the streets full of soldiers,
the first sight of the bluecoat startled and frightened
her. It was hard to remember that the war was over
and that this man would not pursue her, rob her and
insult her.
The comparative emptiness around the train took
her mind back to that morning in 1862 when she had
come to Atlanta as a young widow, swathed in crepe
and wild with boredom. She recalled how crowded
this space had been with wagons and carriages and
ambulances and how noisy with drivers swearing
and yelling and people calling greetings to friends.
She sighed for the light-hearted excitement of the war
days and sighed again at the thought of walking all
the way to Aunt Pitty’s house. But she was hopeful
that once on Peachtree Street, she might meet some1051
�PART FOUR
one she knew who would give them a ride.
As she stood looking about her a saddle-colored negro of middle age drove the closed carriage toward
her and, leaning from the box, questioned: “Cah’ige,
lady? Two bits fer any whar in ‘Lanta.”
Mammy threw him an annihilating glance.
“A hired hack!” she rumbled. “Nigger, does you
know who we is?”
Mammy was a country negro but she had not always been a country negro and she knew that no
chaste woman ever rode in a hired conveyance–
especially a closed carriage–without the escort of
some male member of her family. Even the presence
of a negro maid would not satisfy the conventions.
She gave Scarlett a glare as she saw her look longingly
at the hack.
“Come ‘way frum dar, Miss Scarlett! A hired hack
an’ a free issue nigger! Well, dat’s a good combination.”
“Ah ain’ no free issue nigger,” declared the driver
with heat. “Ah b’longs ter Ole Miss Talbot an’ disyere
her cah’ige an’ Ah drives it ter mek money fer us.”
“Whut Miss Talbot is dat?”
“Miss Suzannah Talbot of Milledgeville. Us done
1052
�PART FOUR
move up hyah affer Old Marse wuz kilt.”
“Does you know her, Miss Scarlett?”
“No,” said Scarlett, regretfully. “I know so few
Milledgeville folks.”
“Den us’ll walk,” said Mammy sternly. “Drive on,
nigger.”
She picked up the carpetbag which held Scarlett’s
new velvet frock and bonnet and nightgown and
tucked the neat bandanna bundle that contained her
own belongings under her arm and shepherded Scarlett across the wet expanse of cinders. Scarlett did
not argue the matter, much as she preferred to ride,
for she wished no disagreement with Mammy. Ever
since yesterday afternoon when Mammy had caught
her with the velvet curtains, there had been an alert
suspicious look in her eyes which Scarlett did not like.
It was going to be difficult to escape from her chaperonage and she did not intend to rouse Mammy’s
fighting blood before it was absolutely necessary.
As they walked along the narrow sidewalk toward
Peachtree, Scarlett was dismayed and sorrowful, for
Atlanta looked so devastated and different from what
she remembered. They passed beside what had been
the Atlanta Hotel where Rhett and Uncle Henry had
lived and of that elegant hostelry there remained only
1053
�PART FOUR
a shell, a part of the blackened walls. The warehouses which had bordered the train tracks for a quarter of a mile and held tons of military supplies had
not been rebuilt and their rectangular foundations
looked dreary under the dark sky. Without the wall of
buildings on either side and with the car shed gone,
the railroad tracks seemed bare and exposed. Somewhere amid these ruins, undistinguishable from the
others, lay what remained of her own warehouse on
the property Charles had left her. Uncle Henry had
paid last year’s taxes on it for her. She’d have to repay that money some time. That was something else
to worry about.
As they turned the corner into Peachtree Street and
she looked toward Five Points, she cried out with
shock. Despite all Frank had told her about the town
burning to the ground, she had never really visualized complete destruction. In her mind the town she
loved so well still stood full of close-packed buildings and fine houses. But this Peachtree Street she
was looking upon was so denuded of landmarks it
was as unfamiliar as if she had never seen it before. This muddy street down which she had driven a
thousand times during the war, along which she had
fled with ducked head and fear-quickened legs when
shells burst over her during the siege, this street she
1054
�PART FOUR
had last seen in the heat and hurry and anguish of the
day of the retreat, was so strange looking she felt like
crying.
Though many new buildings had sprung up in
the year since Sherman marched out of the burning
town and the Confederates returned, there were still
wide vacant lots around Five Points where heaps of
smudged broken bricks lay amid a jumble of rubbish,
dead weeds and broom-sedge. There were the remains of a few buildings she remembered, roofless
brick walls through which the dull daylight shone,
glassless windows gaping, chimneys towering lonesomely. Here and there her eyes gladly picked out
a familiar store which had partly survived shell and
fire and had been repaired, the fresh red of new brick
glaring bright against the smut of the old walls. On
new store fronts and new office windows she saw the
welcome names of men she knew but more often the
names were unfamiliar, especially the dozens of shingles of strange doctors and lawyers and cotton merchants. Once she had known practically everyone in
Atlanta and the sight of so many strange names depressed her. But she was cheered by the sight of new
buildings going up all along the street.
There were dozens of them and several were three
1055
�PART FOUR
stories high! Everywhere building was going on, for
as she looked down the street, trying to adjust her
mind to the new Atlanta, she heard the blithe sound
of hammers and saws, noticed scaffoldings rising and
saw men climbing ladders with hods of bricks on
their shoulders. She looked down the street she loved
so well and her eyes misted a little.
“They burned you,” she thought, “and they laid you
flat. But they didn’t lick you. They couldn’t lick you.
You’ll grow back just as big and sassy as you used to
be!”
As she walked along Peachtree, followed by the
waddling Mammy, she found the sidewalks just as
crowded as they were at the height of the war and
there was the same air of rush and bustle about the
resurrecting town which had made her blood sing
when she came here, so long ago, on her first visit
to Aunt Pitty. There seemed to be just as many vehicles wallowing in the mud holes as there had been
then, except that there were no Confederate ambulances, and just as many horses and mules tethered to
hitching racks in front of the wooden awnings of the
stores. Though the sidewalks were jammed, the faces
she saw were as unfamiliar as the signs overhead,
new people, many rough-looking men and tawdrily
1056
�PART FOUR
dressed women. The streets were black with loafing
negroes who leaned against walls or sat on the curbing watching vehicles go past with the naive curiosity
of children at a circus parade.
“Free issue country niggers,” snorted Mammy.
“Ain’ never seed a proper cah’ige in dere lives. An’
impident lookin’, too.”
They were impudent looking, Scarlett agreed, for
they stared at her in an insolent manner, but she forgot them in the renewed shock of seeing blue uniforms. The town was full of Yankee soldiers, on
horses, afoot, in army wagons, loafing on the street,
reeling out of barrooms.
I’ll never get used to them, she thought, clenching
her fists. Never! and over her shoulder: “Hurry,
Mammy, let’s get out of this crowd.”
“Soon’s Ah kick dis black trash outer mah way,” answered Mammy loudly, swinging the carpetbag at a
black buck who loitered tantalizingly in front of her
and making him leap aside. “Ah doan lak disyere
town, Miss Scarlett. It’s too full of Yankees an’ cheap
free issue.”
“It’s nicer where it isn’t so crowded. When we get
across Five Points, it won’t be so bad.”
They picked their way across the slippery stepping
1057
�PART FOUR
stones that bridged the mud of Decatur Street and
continued up Peachtree, through a thinning crowd.
When they reached Wesley Chapel where Scarlett had
paused to catch her breath that day in 1864 when she
had run for Dr. Meade, she looked at it and laughed
aloud, shortly and grimly. Mammy’s quick old eyes
sought hers with suspicion and question but her curiosity went unsatisfied. Scarlett was recalling with
contempt the terror which had ridden her that day.
She had been crawling with fear, rotten with fear, terrified by the Yankees, terrified by the approaching
birth of Beau. Now she wondered how she could
have been so frightened, frightened like a child at a
loud noise. And what a child she had been to think
that Yankees and fire and defeat were the worst things
that could happen to her! What trivialities they were
beside Ellen’s death and Gerald’s vagueness, beside
hunger and cold and back-breaking work and the living nightmare of insecurity. How easy she would find
it now to be brave before an invading army, but how
hard to face the danger that threatened Tara! No,
she would never again be afraid of anything except
poverty.
Up Peachtree came a closed carriage and Scarlett
went to the curb eagerly to see if she knew the occupant, for Aunt Pitty’s house was still several blocks
1058
�PART FOUR
away. She and Mammy leaned forward as the carriage came abreast and Scarlett, with a smile arranged, almost called out when a woman’s head appeared for a moment at the window– a too bright red
head beneath a fine fur hat. Scarlett took a step back
as mutual recognition leaped into both faces. It was
Belle Watling and Scarlett had a glimpse of nostrils
distended with dislike before she disappeared again.
Strange that Belle’s should be the first familiar face
she saw.
“Who dat?” questioned Mammy suspiciously. “She
knowed you but she din’ bow. Ah ain’ never seed ha’r
dat color in mah life. Not even in de Tarleton fambly.
It look–well, it look dyed ter me!”
“It is,” said Scarlett shortly, walking faster.
“Does you know a dyed-ha’rd woman? Ah ast you
who she is.”
“She’s the town bad woman,” said Scarlett briefly,
“and I give you my word I don’t know her, so shut
up.”
“Gawdlmighty!” breathed Mammy, her jaw dropping as she looked after the carriage with passionate
curiosity. She had not seen a professional bad woman
since she left Savannah with Ellen more than twenty
years before and she wished ardently that she had ob1059
�PART FOUR
served Belle more closely.
“She sho dressed up fine an’ got a fine cah’ige an’
coachman,” she muttered. “Ah doan know whut de
Lawd thinkin’ ‘bout lettin’ de bad women flurrish lak
dat w’en us good folks is hongry an’ mos’ barefoot.”
“The Lord stopped thinking about us years ago,”
said Scarlett savagely. “And don’t go telling me
Mother is turning in her grave to hear me say it, either.”
She wanted to feel superior and virtuous about Belle
but she could not. If her plans went well, she might
be on the same footing with Belle and supported by
the same man. While she did not regret her decision
one whit, the matter in its true light discomfited her.
“I won’t think of it now,” she told herself and hurried
her steps.
They passed the lot where the Meade house had
stood and there remained of it only a forlorn pair of
stone steps and a walk, leading up to nothing. Where
the Whitings’ home had been was bare ground. Even
the foundation stones and the brick chimneys were
gone and there were wagon tracks where they had
been carted away. The brick house of the Elsings still
stood, with a new roof and a new second floor. The
Bonnell home, awkwardly patched and roofed with
1060
�PART FOUR
rude boards instead of shingles, managed to look livable for all its battered appearance. But in neither
house was there a face at the window or a figure on
the porch, and Scarlett was glad. She did not want to
talk to anyone now.
Then the new slate roof of Aunt Pitty’s house came
in view with its red-brick walls, and Scarlett’s heart
throbbed. How good of the Lord not to level it beyond repair! Coming out of the front yard was Uncle
Peter, a market basket on his arm, and when he saw
Scarlett and Mammy trudging along, a wide, incredulous smile split his black face.
I could kiss the old black fool, I’m so glad to see
him, thought Scarlett, joyfully and she called: “Run
get Auntie’s swoon bottle, Peter! It’s really me!”
That night the inevitable hominy and dried peas
were on Aunt Pitty’s supper table and, as Scarlett ate
them, she made a vow that these two dishes would
never appear on her table when she had money again.
And, no matter what price she had to pay, she was
going to have money again, more than just enough to
pay the taxes on Tara. Somehow, some day she was
going to have plenty of money if she had to commit
murder to get it.
In the yellow lamplight of the dining room, she
1061
�PART FOUR
asked Pitty about her finances, hoping against hope
that Charles’ family might be able to lend her the
money she needed. The questions were none too subtle but Pitty, in her pleasure at having a member of
the family to talk to, did not even notice the bald way
the questions were put. She plunged with tears into
the details of her misfortunes. She just didn’t know
where her farms and town property and money had
gone but everything had slipped away. At least, that
was what Brother Henry told her. He hadn’t been
able to pay the taxes on her estate. Everything except the house she was living in was gone and Pitty
did not stop to think that the house had never been
hers but was the joint property of Melanie and Scarlett. Brother Henry could just barely pay taxes on this
house. He gave her a little something every month
to live on and, though it was very humiliating to take
money from him, she had to do it.
“Brother Henry says he doesn’t know how he’ll
make ends meet with the load he’s carrying and the
taxes so high but, of course, he’s probably lying and
has loads of money and just won’t give me much.”
Scarlett knew Uncle Henry wasn’t lying. The few
letters she had had from him in connection with
Charles’ property showed that. The old lawyer was
1062
�PART FOUR
battling valiantly to save the house and the one piece
of downtown property where the warehouse had
been, so Wade and Scarlett would have something
left from the wreckage. Scarlett knew he was carrying these taxes for her at a great sacrifice.
“Of course, he hasn’t any money,” thought Scarlett
grimly. “Well, check him and Aunt Pitty off my list.
There’s nobody left but Rhett. I’ll have to do it. I must
do it. But I mustn’t think about it now. . . . I must get
her to talking about Rhett so I can casually suggest to
her to invite him to call tomorrow.”
She smiled and squeezed the plump palms of Aunt
Pitty between her own.
“Darling Auntie,” she said, “don’t let’s talk about
distressing things like money any more. Let’s forget
about them and talk of pleasanter things. You must
tell me all the news about our old friends. How is
Mrs. Merriwether and Maybelle? I heard that Maybelle’s little Creole came home safely. How are the
Elsings and Dr. and Mrs. Meade?”
Pittypat brightened at the change of subject and her
baby face stopped quivering with tears. She gave detailed reports about old neighbors, what they were
doing and wearing and eating and thinking. She told
with accents of horror how, before Rene Picard came
1063
�PART FOUR
home from the war, Mrs. Merriwether and Maybelle
had made ends meet by baking pies and selling them
to the Yankee soldiers. Imagine that! Sometimes there
were two dozen Yankees standing in the back yard of
the Merriwether home, waiting for the baking to be
finished. Now that Rene was home, he drove an old
wagon to the Yankee camp every day and sold cakes
and pies and beaten biscuits to the soldiers. Mrs. Merriwether said that when she made a little more money
she was going to open a bake shop downtown. Pitty
did not wish to criticize but after all– As for herself,
said Pitty, she would rather starve than have such
commerce with Yankees. She made a point of giving a
disdainful look to every soldier she met, and crossed
to the other side of the street in as insulting a manner
as possible, though, she said, this was quite inconvenient in wet weather. Scarlett gathered that no sacrifice, even though it be muddy shoes, was too great
to show loyalty to the Confederacy in so far as Miss
Pittypat was concerned.
Mrs. Meade and the doctor had lost their home
when the Yankees fired the town and they had neither
the money nor the heart to rebuild, now that Phil and
Darcy were dead. Mrs. Meade said she never wanted
a home again, for what was a home without children
and grandchildren in it? They were very lonely and
1064
�PART FOUR
had gone to live with the Elsings who had rebuilt the
damaged part of their home. Mr. and Mrs. Whiting
had a room there, too, and Mrs. Bonnell was talking
of moving in, if she was fortunate enough to rent her
house to a Yankee officer and his family.
“But how do they all squeeze in?” cried Scarlett.
“There’s Mrs. Elsing and Fanny and Hugh–”
“Mrs. Elsing and Fanny sleep in the parlor and
Hugh in the attic,” explained Pitty, who knew the domestic arrangements of all her friends. “My dear, I do
hate to tell you this but–Mrs. Elsing calls them ‘paying guests’ but,” Pitty dropped her voice, “they are
really nothing at all except boarders. Mrs. Elsing is
running a boarding house! Isn’t that dreadful?”
“I think it’s wonderful,” said Scarlett shortly. “I only
wish we’d had ‘paying guests’ at Tara for the last year
instead of free boarders. Maybe we wouldn’t be so
poor now.”
“Scarlett, how can you say such things? Your poor
mother must be turning in her grave at the very
thought of charging money for the hospitality of
Tara! Of course, Mrs. Elsing was simply forced to
it because, while she took in fine sewing and Fanny
painted china and Hugh made a little money peddling firewood, they couldn’t make ends meet. Imag1065
�PART FOUR
ine darling Hugh forced to peddle wood! And he all
set to be a fine lawyer! I could just cry at the things
our boys are reduced to!”
Scarlett thought of the rows of cotton beneath the
glaring coppery sky at Tara and how her back had
ached as she bent over them. She remembered the feel
of plow handles between her inexperienced, blistered
palms and she felt that Hugh Elsing was deserving
of no special sympathy. What an innocent old fool
Pitty was and, despite the ruin all around her, how
sheltered!
“If he doesn’t like peddling, why doesn’t he practice
law? Or isn’t there any law practice left in Atlanta?”
“Oh dear, yes! There’s plenty of law practice. Practically everybody is suing everybody else these days.
With everything burned down and boundary lines
wiped out, no one knows just where their land begins
or ends. But you can’t get any pay for suing because
nobody has any money. So Hugh sticks to his peddling. . . . Oh, I almost forgot! Did I write you?
Fanny Elsing is getting married tomorrow night and,
of course, you must attend. Mrs. Elsing will be only
too pleased to have you when she knows you’re in
town. I do hope you have some other frock besides
that one. Not that it isn’t a very sweet frock, dar1066
�PART FOUR
ling, but–well, it does look a bit worn. Oh, you have
a pretty frock? I’m so glad because it’s going to be the
first real wedding we’ve had in Atlanta since before
the town fell. Cake and wine and dancing afterward,
though I don’t know how the Elsings can afford it,
they are so poor.”
“Who is Fanny marrying? I thought after Dallas
McLure was killed at Gettysburg–”
“Darling, you mustn’t criticize Fanny. Everybody
isn’t as loyal to the dead as you are to poor Charlie.
Let me see. What is his name? I can never remember
names–Tom somebody. I knew his mother well, we
went to LaGrange Female Institute together. She was
a Tomlinson from LaGrange and her mother was–let
me see. . . . Perkins? Parkins? Parkinson! That’s it.
From Sparta. A very good family but just the same–
well, I know I shouldn’t say it but I don’t see how
Fanny can bring herself to marry him!”
“Does he drink or–”
“Dear, no! His character is perfect but, you see, he
was wounded low down, by a bursting shell and it
did something to his legs– makes them–makes them,
well, I hate to use the word but it makes him spraddle. It gives him a very vulgar appearance when he
walks– well, it doesn’t look very pretty. I don’t see
1067
�PART FOUR
why she’s marrying him.”
“Girls have to marry someone.”
“Indeed, they do not,” said Pitty, ruffling. “I never
had to.”
“Now, darling, I didn’t mean you! Everybody
knows how popular you were and still are! Why, old
Judge Canton used to throw sheep’s eyes at you till
I–”
“Oh, Scarlett, hush! That old fool!” giggled Pitty,
good humor restored. “But, after all, Fanny was so
popular she could have made a better match and I
don’t believe she loves this Tom what’s- his-name. I
don’t believe she’s ever gotten over Dallas McLure
getting killed, but she’s not like you, darling. You’ve
remained so faithful to dear Charlie, though you
could have married dozens of times. Melly and I have
often said how loyal you were to his memory when
everyone else said you were just a heartless coquette.”
Scarlett passed over this tactless confidence and
skillfully led Pitty from one friend to another but all
the while she was in a fever of impatience to bring
the conversation around to Rhett. It would never do
for her to ask outright about him, so soon after arriving. It might start the old lady’s mind to working on
channels better left untouched. There would be time
1068
�PART FOUR
enough for Pitty’s suspicions to be aroused if Rhett
refused to marry her.
Aunt Pitty prattled on happily, pleased as a child
at having an audience. Things in Atlanta were in a
dreadful pass, she said, due to the vile doings of the
Republicans. There was no end to their goings on and
the worst thing was the way they were putting ideas
in the poor darkies’ heads.
“My dear, they want to let the darkies vote! Did
you ever hear of anything more silly? Though–I don’t
know–now that I think about it, Uncle Peter has much
more sense than any Republican I ever saw and much
better manners but, of course, Uncle Peter is far too
well bred to want to vote. But the very notion has upset the darkies till they’re right addled. And some of
them are so insolent. Your life isn’t safe on the streets
after dark and even in the broad daylight they push
ladies off the sidewalks into the mud. And if any gentleman dares to protest, they arrest him and– My dear,
did I tell you that Captain Butler was in jail?”
“Rhett Butler?”
Even with this startling news, Scarlett was grateful
that Aunt Pitty had saved her the necessity of bringing his name into the conversation herself.
“Yes, indeed!” Excitement colored Pitty’s cheeks
1069
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pink and she sat upright. “He’s in jail this very
minute for killing a negro and they may hang him!
Imagine Captain Butler hanging!”
For a moment, the breath went out of Scarlett’s
lungs in a sickening gasp and she could only stare at
the fat old lady who was so obviously pleased at the
effect of her statement.
“They haven’t proved it yet but somebody killed
this darky who had insulted a white woman. And
the Yankees are very upset because so many uppity
darkies have been killed recently. They can’t prove it
on Captain Butler but they want to make an example
of someone, so Dr. Meade says. The doctor says that
if they do hang him it will be the first good honest job
the Yankees ever did, but then, I don’t know. . . . And
to think that Captain Butler was here just a week ago
and brought me the loveliest quail you ever saw for
a present and he was asking about you and saying he
feared he had offended you during the siege and you
would never forgive him.”
“How long will he be in jail?”
“Nobody knows. Perhaps till they hang him, but
maybe they won’t be able to prove the killing on
him, after all. However, it doesn’t seem to bother the
Yankees whether folks are guilty or not, so long as
1070
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they can hang somebody. They are so upset”–Pitty
dropped her voice mysteriously–“about the Ku Klux
Klan. Do you have the Klan down in the County?
My dear, I’m sure you must and Ashley just doesn’t
tell you girls anything about it. Klansmen aren’t supposed to tell. They ride around at night dressed
up like ghosts and call on Carpetbaggers who steal
money and negroes who are uppity. Sometimes they
just scare them and warn them to leave Atlanta, but
when they don’t behave they whip them and,” Pitty
whispered, “sometimes they kill them and leave them
where they’ll be easily found with the Ku Klux card
on them. . . . And the Yankees are very angry about
it and want to make an example of someone. . . . But
Hugh Elsing told me he didn’t think they’d hang Captain Butler because the Yankees think he does know
where the money is and just won’t tell. They are trying to make him tell.”
“The money?”
“Didn’t you know? Didn’t I write you? My dear,
you have been buried at Tara, haven’t you? The town
simply buzzed when Captain Butler came back here
with a fine horse and carriage and his pockets full of
money, when all the rest of us didn’t know where our
next meal was coming from. It simply made every1071
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body furious that an old speculator who always said
nasty things about the Confederacy should have so
much money when we were all so poor. Everybody
was bursting to know how he managed to save his
money but no one had the courage to ask him–except
me and he just laughed and said: ‘In no honest way,
you may be sure.’ You know how hard it is to get
anything sensible out of him.”
“But of course, he made his money out of the
blockade–”
“Of course, he did, honey, some of it. But that’s not
a drop in the bucket to what that man has really got.
Everybody, including the Yankees, believes he’s got
millions of dollars in gold belonging to the Confederate government hid out somewhere.”
“Millions–in gold?”
“Well, honey, where did all our Confederate gold go
to? Somebody got it and Captain Butler must be one
of the somebodies. The Yankees thought President
Davis had it when he left Richmond but when they
captured the poor man he had hardly a cent. There
just wasn’t any money m the treasury when the war
was over and everybody thinks some of the blockade
runners got it and are keeping quiet about it.”
“Millions–in gold! But how–”
1072
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“Didn’t Captain Butler take thousands of bales of
cotton to England and Nassau to sell for the Confederate government?” asked Pitty triumphantly. “Not
only his own cotton but government cotton too? And
you know what cotton brought in England during
the war! Any price you wanted to ask! He was a
free agent acting for the government and he was supposed to sell the cotton and buy guns with the money
and run the guns in for us. Well, when the blockade
got too tight, he couldn’t bring in the guns and he
couldn’t have spent one one-hundredth of the cotton
money on them anyway, so there were simply millions of dollars in English banks put there by Captain
Butler and other blockaders, waiting till the blockade loosened. And you can’t tell me they banked
that money in the name of the Confederacy. They
put it in their own names and it’s still there. . . .
Everybody has been talking about it ever since the
surrender and criticizing the blockaders severely, and
when the Yankees arrested Captain Butler for killing
this darky they must have heard the rumor, because
they’ve been at him to tell them where the money
is. You see, all of our Confederate funds belong to
the Yankees now–at least, the Yankees think so. But
Captain Butler says he doesn’t know anything. . . .
Dr. Meade says they ought to hang him anyhow, only
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hanging is too good for a thief and a profiteer– Dear,
you look so oddly! Do you feel faint? Have I upset
you talking like this? I knew he was once a beau of
yours but I thought you’d fallen out long ago. Personally, I never approved of him, for he’s such a scamp–”
“He’s no friend of mine,” said Scarlett with an effort.
“I had a quarrel with him during the siege, after you
went to Macon. Where– where is he?”
“In the firehouse over near the public square!”
“In the firehouse?”
Aunt Pitty crowed with laughter.
“Yes, he’s in the firehouse. The Yankees use it for
a military jail now. The Yankees are camped in huts
all round the city hall in the square and the firehouse
is just down the street, so that’s where Captain Butler is. And Scarlett, I heard the funniest thing yesterday about Captain Butler. I forget who told me.
You know how well groomed he always was–really a
dandy–and they’ve been keeping him in the firehouse
and not letting him bathe and every day he’s been insisting that he wanted a bath and finally they led him
out of his cell onto the square and there was a long
horse trough where the whole regiment had bathed
in the same water! And they told him he could bathe
there and he said No, that he preferred his own brand
1074
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of Southern dirt to Yankee dirt and–”
Scarlett heard the cheerful babbling voice going on
and on but she did not hear the words. In her mind
there were only two ideas, Rhett had more money
than she had even hoped and he was in jail. The
fact that he was in jail and possibly might be hanged
changed the face of matters somewhat, in fact made
them look a little brighter. She had very little feeling
about Rhett being hanged. Her need of money was
too pressing, too desperate, for her to bother about
his ultimate fate. Besides, she half shared Dr. Meade’s
opinion that hanging was too good for him. Any man
who’d leave a woman stranded between two armies
in the middle of the night, just to go off and fight
for a Cause already lost, deserved hanging. . . . If
she could somehow manage to marry him while he
was in jail, all those millions would be hers and hers
alone should he be executed. And if marriage was
not possible, perhaps she could get a loan from him
by promising to marry him when he was released or
by promising–oh promising anything! And if they
hanged him, her day of settlement would never come.
For a moment her imagination flamed at the thought
of being made a widow by the kindly intervention of
the Yankee government. Millions in gold! She could
1075
�PART FOUR
repair Tara and hire hands and plant miles and miles
of cotton. And she could have pretty clothes and all
she wanted to eat and so could Suellen and Carreen.
And Wade could have nourishing food to fill out his
thin cheeks and warm clothes and a governess and
afterward go to the university . . . and not grow up
barefooted and ignorant like a Cracker. And a good
doctor could look after Pa and as for Ashley–what
couldn’t she do for Ashley!
Aunt Pittypat’s monologue broke off suddenly as
she said inquiringly: “Yes, Mammy?” and Scarlett,
coming back from dreams, saw Mammy standing in
the doorway, her hands under her apron and in her
eyes an alert piercing look. She wondered how long
Mammy had been standing there and how much she
had heard and observed. Probably everything, to
judge by the gleam in her old eyes.
“Miss Scarlett look lak she tared. Ah spec she better
go ter bed.”
“I am tired,” said Scarlett, rising and meeting
Mammy’s eyes with a childlike, helpless look, “and
I’m afraid I’m catching a cold too. Aunt Pitty, would
you mind if I stayed in bed tomorrow and didn’t go
calling with you? I can go calling any time and I’m
so anxious to go to Fanny’s wedding tomorrow night.
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�PART FOUR
And if my cold gets worse I won’t be able to go. And
a day in bed would be such a lovely treat for me.”
Mammy’s look changed to faint worry as she felt
Scarlett’s hands and looked into her face. She
certainly didn’t look well. The excitement of her
thoughts had abruptly ebbed, leaving her white and
shaking.
“Yo’ han’s lak ice, honey. You come ter bed an’ Ah’ll
brew you some sassfrass tea an’ git you a hot brick ter
mek you sweat.”
“How thoughtless I’ve been,” cried the plump old
lady, hopping from her chair and patting Scarlett’s
arm. “Just chattering on and not thinking of you.
Honey, you shall stay in bed all tomorrow and rest
up and we can gossip together– Oh, dear, no! I can’t
be with you. I’ve promised to sit with Mrs. Bonnell
tomorrow. She is down with la grippe and so is her
cook. Mammy, I’m so glad you are here. You must go
over with me in the morning and help me.”
Mammy hurried Scarlett up the dark stairs, muttering fussy remarks about cold hands and thin shoes
and Scarlett looked meek and was well content. If
she could only lull Mammy’s suspicions further and
get her out of the house in the morning, all would
be well. Then she could go to the Yankee jail and
1077
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see Rhett. As she climbed the stairs, the faint rumbling of thunder began and, standing on the wellremembered landing, she thought how like the siege
cannon it sounded. She shivered. Forever, thunder
would mean cannon and war to her.
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�CHAPTER XXXIV
intermittently the next morning and
the hard wind that drove dark clouds swiftly across
its face rattled the windowpanes and moaned faintly
about the house. Scarlett said a brief prayer of thanksgiving that the rain of the previous night had ceased,
for she had lain awake listening to it, knowing that it
would mean the ruin of her velvet dress and new bonnet. Now that she could catch fleeting glimpses of the
sun, her spirits soared. She could hardly remain in
bed and look languid and make croaking noises until Aunt Pitty, Mammy and Uncle Peter were out of
the house and on their way to Mrs. Bonnell’s. When,
at last, the front gate banged and she was alone in
the house, except for Cookie who was singing in the
kitchen, she leaped from the bed and lifted her new
clothes from the closet hooks.
Sleep had refreshed her and given her strength and
from the cold hard core at the bottom of her heart,
she drew courage. There was something about the
prospect of a struggle of wits with a man–with any
man–that put her on her mettle and, after months
of battling against countless discouragements, the
knowledge that she was at last facing a definite adversary, one whom she might unhorse by her own efT HE
SUN SHONE
�PART FOUR
forts, gave her a buoyant sensation.
Dressing unaided was difficult but she finally accomplished it and putting on the bonnet with its rakish feathers she ran to Aunt Pitty’s room to preen
herself in front of the long mirror. How pretty she
looked! The cock feathers gave her a dashing air and
the dull-green velvet of the bonnet made her eyes
startlingly bright, almost emerald colored. And the
dress was incomparable, so rich and handsome looking and yet so dignified! It was wonderful to have
a lovely dress again. It was so nice to know that
she looked pretty and provocative, and she impulsively bent forward and kissed her reflection in the
mirror and then laughed at her own foolishness. She
picked up Ellen’s Paisley shawl to wrap about her
but the colors of the faded old square clashed with
the moss-green dress and made her appear a little
shabby. Opening Aunt Pitty’s closet she removed
a black broadcloth cloak, a thin fall garment which
Pitty used only for Sunday wear, and put it on. She
slipped into her pierced ears the diamond earrings
she had brought from Tara, and tossed her head to observe the effect. They made pleasant clicking noises
which were very satisfactory and she thought that
she must remember to toss her head frequently when
with Rhett. Dancing earrings always attracted a man
1080
�PART FOUR
and gave a girl such a spirited air.
What a shame Aunt Pitty had no other gloves than
the ones now on her fat hands! No woman could
really feel like a lady without gloves, but Scarlett
had not had a pair since she left Atlanta. And the
long months of hard work at Tara had roughened her
hands until they were far from pretty. Well, it couldn’t
be helped. She’d take Aunt Pitty’s little seal muff and
hide her bare hands in it. Scarlett felt that it gave her
the final finishing touch of elegance. No one, looking at her now, would suspect that poverty and want
were standing at her shoulder.
It was so important that Rhett should not suspect.
He must not think that anything but tender feelings
were driving her.
She tiptoed down the stairs and out of the house
while Cookie bawled on unconcernedly in the
kitchen. She hastened down Baker Street to avoid the
all seeing eyes of the neighbors and sat down on a carriage block on Ivy Street in front of a burned house,
to wait for some passing carriage or wagon which
would give her a ride. The sun dipped in and out
from behind hurrying clouds, lighting the street with
a false brightness which had no warmth in it, and the
wind fluttered the lace of her pantalets. It was colder
1081
�PART FOUR
than she had expected and she wrapped Aunt Pitty’s
thin cloak about her and shivered impatiently. Just
as she was preparing to start walking the long way
across town to the Yankee encampment, a battered
wagon appeared. In it was an old woman with a lip
full of snuff and a weather-beaten face under a drab
sunbonnet, driving a dawdling old mule. She was going in the direction of the city hall and she grudgingly
gave Scarlett a ride. But it was obvious that the dress,
bonnet and muff found no favor with her.
“She thinks I’m a hussy,” thought Scarlett. “And
perhaps she’s right at that!”
When at last they reached the town square and
the tall white cupola of the city hall loomed up, she
made her thanks, climbed down from the wagon
and watched the country woman drive off. Looking
around carefully to see that she was not observed, she
pinched her cheeks to give them color and bit her lips
until they stung to make them red. She adjusted the
bonnet and smoothed back her hair and looked about
the square. The two-story red-brick city hall had survived the burning of the city. But it looked forlorn
and unkempt under the gray sky. Surrounding the
building completely and covering the square of land
of which it was the center were row after row of army
1082
�PART FOUR
huts, dingy and mud splashed. Yankee soldiers loitered everywhere and Scarlett looked at them uncertainly, some of her courage deserting her. How would
she go about finding Rhett in this enemy camp?
She looked down the street toward the firehouse
and saw that the wide arched doors were closed and
heavily barred and two sentries passed and repassed
on each side of the building. Rhett was in there. But
what should she say to the Yankee soldiers? And
what would they say to her? She squared her shoulders. If she hadn’t been afraid to kill one Yankee, she
shouldn’t fear merely talking to another.
She picked her way precariously across the stepping
stones of the muddy street and walked forward until
a sentry, his blue overcoat buttoned high against the
wind, stopped her.
“What is it, Ma’m?” His voice had a strange midWestern twang but it was polite and respectful.
“I want to see a man in there–he is a prisoner.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the sentry, scratching his
head. “They are mighty particular about visitors and–
” He stopped and peered into her face sharply. “Lord,
lady! Don’t you cry! You go over to post headquarters
and ask the officers. They’ll let you see him, I bet.”
Scarlett, who had no intention of crying, beamed at
1083
�PART FOUR
him. He turned to another sentry who was slowly
pacing his beat: “Yee-ah, Bill. Come’eer.”
The second sentry, a large man muffled in a blue
overcoat from which villainous black whiskers burst,
came through the mud toward them.
“You take this lady to headquarters.”
Scarlett thanked him and followed the sentry.
“Mind you don’t turn your ankle on those stepping
stones,” said the soldier, taking her arm. “And you’d
better hist up your skirts a little to keep them out of
the mud.”
The voice issuing from the whiskers had the same
nasal twang but was kind and pleasant and his hand
was firm and respectful. Why, Yankees weren’t bad at
all!
“It’s a mighty cold day for a lady to be out in,” said
her escort. “Have you come a fer piece?”
“Oh, yes, from clear across the other side of town,”
she said, warming to the kindness in his voice.
“This ain’t no weather for a lady to be out in,” said
the soldier reprovingly, “with all this la grippe in the
air. Here’s Post Command, lady– What’s the matter?”
“This house–this house is your headquarters?” Scarlett looked up at the lovely old dwelling facing on the
1084
�PART FOUR
square and could have cried. She had been to so many
parties in this house during the war. It had been a
gay beautiful place and now–there was a large United
States flag floating over it.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing–only–only–I used to know the people
who lived here.”
“Well, that’s too bad. I guess they wouldn’t know
it themselves if they saw it, for it shore is torn up on
the inside. Now, you go on in, Ma’m, and ask for the
captain.”
She went up the steps, caressing the broken white
banisters, and pushed open the front door. The hall
was dark and as cold as a vault and a shivering sentry
was leaning against the closed folding doors of what
had been, in better days, the dining room.
“I want to see the captain,” she said.
He pulled back the doors and she entered the room,
her heart beating rapidly, her face flushing with embarrassment and excitement. There was a close stuffy
smell in the room, compounded of the smoking fire,
tobacco fumes, leather, damp woolen uniforms and
unwashed bodies. She had a confused impression of
bare walls with torn wallpaper, rows of blue overcoats and slouch hats hung on nails, a roaring fire, a
1085
�PART FOUR
long table covered with papers and a group of officers
in blue uniforms with brass buttons.
She gulped once and found her voice. She mustn’t
let these Yankees know she was afraid. She must look
and be her prettiest and most unconcerned self.
“The captain?”
“I’m one captain,” said a fat man whose tunic was
unbuttoned.
“I want to see a prisoner, Captain Rhett Butler.”
“Butler again? He’s popular, that man,” laughed the
captain, taking a chewed cigar from his mouth. “You
a relative, Ma’m?”
“Yes–his–his sister.”
He laughed again.
“He’s got a lot of sisters, one of them here yesterday.”
Scarlett flushed. One of those creatures Rhett consorted with, probably that Watling woman. And
these Yankees thought she was another one. It was
unendurable. Not even for Tara would she stay here
another minute and be insulted. She turned to the
door and reached angrily for the knob but another officer was by her side quickly. He was clean shaven
and young and had merry, kind eyes.
1086
�PART FOUR
“Just a minute, Ma’m. Won’t you sit down here by
the fire where it’s warm? I’ll go see what I can do
about it. What is your name? He refused to see the–
lady who called yesterday.”
She sank into the proffered chair, glaring at the discomfited fat captain, and gave her name. The nice
young officer slipped on his overcoat and left the
room and the others took themselves off to the far end
of the table where they talked in low tones and pawed
at the papers. She stretched her feet gratefully toward
the fire, realizing for the first time how cold they were
and wishing she had thought to put a piece of cardboard over the hole in the sole of one slipper. After
a time, voices murmured outside the door and she
heard Rhett’s laugh. The door opened, a cold draft
swept the room and Rhett appeared, hatless, a long
cape thrown carelessly across his shoulders. He was
dirty and unshaven and without a cravat but somehow jaunty despite his dishabille, and his dark eyes
were snapping joyfully at the sight of her.
“Scarlett!”
He had her hands in both of his and, as always,
there was something hot and vital and exciting about
his grip. Before she quite knew what he was about,
he had bent and kissed her cheek, his mustache tick1087
�PART FOUR
ling her. As he felt the startled movement of her
body away from him, he hugged her about the shoulders and said: “My darling little sister!” and grinned
down at her as if he relished her helplessness in resisting his caress. She couldn’t help laughing back at
him for the advantage he had taken. What a rogue he
was! Jail had not changed him one bit.
The fat captain was muttering through his cigar to
the merry-eyed officer.
“Most irregular. He should be in the firehouse. You
know the orders.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Henry! The lady would freeze
in that barn.”
“Oh, all right, all right! It’s your responsibility.”
“I assure you, gentlemen,” said Rhett, turning to
them but still keeping a grip on Scarlett’s shoulders,
“my–sister hasn’t brought me any saws or files to help
me escape.”
They all laughed and, as they did, Scarlett looked
quickly about her. Good Heavens, was she going to
have to talk to Rhett before six Yankee officers! Was he
so dangerous a prisoner they wouldn’t let him out of
their sight? Seeing her anxious glance, the nice officer
pushed open a door and spoke brief low words to two
privates who had leaped to their feet at his entrance.
1088
�PART FOUR
They picked up their rifles and went out into the hall,
closing the door behind them.
“If you wish, you may sit here in the orderly room,”
said the young captain. “And don’t try to bolt
through that door. The men are just outside.”
“You see what a desperate character I am, Scarlett,”
said Rhett. “Thank you, Captain. This is most kind or
you.”
He bowed carelessly and taking Scarlett’s arm
pulled her to her feet and propelled her into the dingy
orderly room. She was never to remember what the
room looked like except that it was small and dim and
none too warm and there were handwritten papers
tacked on the mutilated walls and chairs which had
cowhide seats with the hair still on them.
When he had closed the door behind them, Rhett
came to her swiftly and bent over her. Knowing
his desire, she turned her head quickly but smiled
provocatively at him out of the corners of her eyes.
“Can’t I really kiss you now?”
“On the forehead, like a good brother,” she answered demurely.
“Thank you, no. I prefer to wait and hope for better
things.” His eyes sought her lips and lingered there
a moment. “But how good of you to come to see me,
1089
�PART FOUR
Scarlett! You are the first respectable citizen who has
called on me since my incarceration, and being in jail
makes one appreciate friends. When did you come to
town?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“And you came out this morning? Why, my dear,
you are more than good.” He smiled down at her
with the first expression of honest pleasure she had
ever seen on his face. Scarlett smiled inwardly with
excitement and ducked her head as if embarrassed.
“Of course, I came out right away. Aunt Pitty told
me about you last night and I–I just couldn’t sleep all
night for thinking how awful it was. Rhett, I’m so
distressed!”
“Why, Scarlett!”
His voice was soft but there was a vibrant note in it,
and looking up into his dark face she saw in it none
of the skepticism, the jeering humor she knew so well.
Before his direct gaze her eyes fell again in real confusion. Things were going even better than she hoped.
“It’s worth being in jail to see you again and to hear
you say things like that. I really couldn’t believe my
ears when they brought me your name. You see, I
never expected you to forgive me for my patriotic
conduct that night on the road near Rough and Ready.
1090
�PART FOUR
But I take it that this call means you have forgiven
me?”
She could feel swift anger stir, even at this late date,
as she thought of that night but she subdued it and
tossed her head until the earrings danced.
“No, I haven’t forgiven you,” she said and pouted.
“Another hope crushed. And after I offered up myself for my country and fought barefooted in the snow
at Franklin and got the finest case of dysentery you
ever heard of for my pains!”
“I don’t want to hear about your–pains,” she said,
still pouting but smiling at him from up-tilted eyes. “I
still think you were hateful that night and I never expect to forgive you. Leaving me alone like that when
anything might have happened to me!”
“But nothing did happen to you. So, you see, my
confidence in you was justified. I knew you’d get
home safely and God help any Yankee who got in
your way!”
“Rhett, why on earth did you do such a silly thing–
enlisting at the last minute when you knew we were
going to get licked? And after all you’d said about
idiots who went out and got shot!”
“Scarlett, spare me! I am always overcome with
shame when I think about it.”
1091
�PART FOUR
“Well, I’m glad to learn you are ashamed of the way
you treated me.”
“You misunderstand. I regret to say that my conscience has not troubled me at all about deserting you.
But as for enlisting–when I think of joining the army
in varnished boots and a white linen suit and armed
with only a pair of dueling pistols– And those long
cold miles in the snow after my boots wore out and I
had no overcoat and nothing to eat . . . I cannot understand why I did not desert. It was all the purest insanity. But it’s in one’s blood. Southerners can never
resist a losing cause. But never mind my reasons. It’s
enough that I’m forgiven.”
“You’re not. I think you’re a hound.” But she caressed the last word until it might have been “darling.”
“Don’t fib. You’ve forgiven me. Young ladies don’t
dare Yankee sentries to see a prisoner, just for charity’s sweet sake, and come all dressed up in velvet
and feathers and seal muffs too. Scarlett, how pretty
you look! Thank God, you aren’t in rags or mourning!
I get so sick of women in dowdy old clothes and perpetual crepe. You look like the Rue de la Paix. Turn
around, my dear, and let me look at you.”
So he had noticed the dress. Of course, he would
1092
�PART FOUR
notice such things, being Rhett. She laughed in soft
excitement and spun about on her toes, her arms extended, her hoops tilting up to show her lace trimmed
pantalets. His black eyes took her in from bonnet to
heels in a glance that missed nothing, that old impudent unclothing glance which always gave her goose
bumps.
“You look very prosperous and very, very tidy. And
almost good enough to eat. If it wasn’t for the Yankees
outside–but you are quite safe, my dear. Sit down. I
won’t take advantage of you as I did the last time I
saw you.” He rubbed his cheek with pseudo ruefulness. “Honestly, Scarlett, don’t you think you were
a bit selfish that night? Think of all I had done for
you, risked my life–stolen a horse–and such a horse!
Rushed to the defense of Our Glorious Cause! And
what did I get for my pains? Some hard words and a
very hard slap in the face.”
She sat down. The conversation was not going in
quite the direction she hoped. He had seemed so
nice when he first saw her, so genuinely glad she had
come. He had almost seemed like a human being and
not the perverse wretch she knew so well.
“Must you always get something for your pains?”
“Why, of course! I am a monster of selfishness, as
1093
�PART FOUR
you ought to know. I always expect payment for anything I give.”
That sent a slight chill through her but she rallied
and jingled her earbobs again.
“Oh, you really aren’t so bad, Rhett. You just like to
show off.”
“My word, but you have changed!” he said and
laughed. “What has made a Christian of you? I
have kept up with you through Miss Pittypat but she
gave me no intimation that you had developed womanly sweetness. Tell me more about yourself, Scarlett.
What have you been doing since I last saw you?”
The old irritation and antagonism which he roused
in her was hot in her heart and she yearned to speak
tart words. But she smiled instead and the dimple
crept into her cheek. He had drawn a chair close beside hers and she leaned over and put a gentle hand
on his arm, in an unconscious manner.
“Oh, I’ve been doing nicely, thank you, and everything at Tara is fine now. Of course, we had a dreadful time right after Sherman went through but, after
all, he didn’t burn the house and the darkies saved
most of the livestock by driving it into the swamp.
And we cleared a fair crop this last fall, twenty bales.
Of course, that’s practically nothing compared with
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what Tara can do but we haven’t many field hands. Pa
says, of course, we’ll do better next year. But, Rhett,
it’s so dull in the country now! Imagine, there aren’t
any balls or barbecues and the only thing people talk
about is hard times! Goodness, I get sick of it! Finally
last week I got too bored to stand it any longer, so Pa
said I must take a trip and have a good time. So I
came up here to get me some frocks made and then
I’m going over to Charleston to visit my aunt. It’ll be
lovely to go to balls again.”
There, she thought with pride, I delivered that with
just the right airy way! Not too rich but certainly not
poor.
“You look beautiful in ball dresses, my dear, and you
know it too, worse luck! I suppose the real reason
you are going visiting is that you have run through
the County swains and are seeking fresh ones in fields
afar.”
Scarlett had a thankful thought that Rhett had spent
the last several months abroad and had only recently
come back to Atlanta. Otherwise, he would never
have made so ridiculous a statement. She thought
briefly of the County swains, the ragged embittered
little Fontaines, the poverty-stricken Munroe boys,
the Jonesboro and Fayetteville beaux who were so
1095
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busy plowing, splitting rails and nursing sick old animals that they had forgotten such things as balls and
pleasant flirtations ever existed. But she put down
this memory and giggled self-consciously as if admitting the truth of his assertion.
“Oh, well,” she said deprecatingly.
“You are a heartless creature, Scarlett, but perhaps
that’s part of your charm.” He smiled in his old way,
one corner of his mouth curving down, but she knew
he was complimenting her. “For, of course, you know
you have more charm than the law should permit.
Even I have felt it, case-hardened though I am. I’ve often wondered what it was about you that made me always remember you, for I’ve known many ladies who
were prettier than you and certainly more clever and,
I fear, morally more upright and kind. But, somehow,
I always remembered you. Even during the months
since the surrender when I was in France and England
and hadn’t seen you or heard of you and was enjoying
the society of many beautiful ladies, I always remembered you and wondered what you were doing.”
For a moment she was indignant that he should say
other women were prettier, more clever and kind than
she, but that momentary flare was wiped out in her
pleasure that he had remembered her and her charm.
1096
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So he hadn’t forgotten! That would make things easier. And he was behaving so nicely, almost like a gentleman would do under the circumstances. Now, all
she had to do was bring the subject around to himself,
so she could intimate that she had not forgotten him
either and then–
She gently squeezed his arm and dimpled again.
“Oh, Rhett, how you do run on, teasing a country
girl like me! I know mighty well you never gave me a
thought after you left me that night. You can’t tell me
you ever thought of me with all those pretty French
and English girls around you. But I didn’t come all
the way out here to hear you talk foolishness about
me. I came–I came–because–”
“Because?”
“Oh, Rhett, I’m so terribly distressed about you! So
frightened for you! When will they let you out of that
terrible place?”
He swiftly covered her hand with his and held it
hard against his arm.
“Your distress does you credit. There’s no telling
when I’ll be out. Probably when they’ve stretched the
rope a bit more.”
“The rope?”
1097
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“Yes, I expect to make my exit from here at the rope’s
end.”
“They won’t really hang you?”
“They will if they can get a little more evidence
against me.”
“Oh, Rhett!” she cried, her hand at her heart.
“Would you be sorry? If you are sorry enough, I’ll
mention you in my will.”
His dark eyes laughed at her recklessly and he
squeezed her hand.
His will! She hastily cast down her eyes for fear of
betrayal but not swiftly enough, for his eyes gleamed,
suddenly curious.
“According to the Yankees, I ought to have a fine
will. There seems to be considerable interest in my
finances at present. Every day, I am hauled up before another board of inquiry and asked foolish questions. The rumor seems current that I made off with
the mythical gold of the Confederacy.”
“Well–did you?”
“What a leading question! You know as well as I do
that the Confederacy ran a printing press instead of a
mint.”
“Where did you get all your money? Speculating?
1098
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Aunt Pittypat said–”
“What probing questions you ask!”
Damn him! Of course, he had the money. She was
so excited it became difficult to talk sweetly to him.
“Rhett, I’m so upset about your being here. Don’t
you think there’s a chance of your getting out?”
“‘Nihil desperandum’ is my motto.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means ‘maybe,’ my charming ignoramus.”
She fluttered her thick lashes up to look at him and
fluttered them down again.
“Oh, you’re too smart to let them hang you! I know
you’ll think of some clever way to beat them and get
out! And when you do–”
“And when I do?” he asked softly, leaning closer.
“Well, I–” and she managed a pretty confusion and
a blush. The blush was not difficult for she was
breathless and her heart was beating like a drum.
“Rhett, I’m so sorry about what I–I said to you that
night–you know–at Rough and Ready. I was–oh, so
very frightened and upset and you were so–so–” She
looked down and saw his brown hand tighten over
hers. “And–I thought then that I’d never, never forgive you! But when Aunt Pitty told me yesterday that
1099
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you–that they might hang you–it came over me of a
sudden and I–I–” She looked up into his eyes with
one swift imploring glance and in it she put an agony
of heartbreak. “Oh, Rhett, I’d die if they hanged you!
I couldn’t bear it! You see, I–” And, because she could
not longer sustain the hot leaping light that was in his
eyes, her lids fluttered down again.
In a moment I’ll be crying, she thought in a frenzy of
wonder and excitement. Shall I let myself cry? Would
that seem more natural?
He said quickly: “My God, Scarlett, you can’t mean
that you–” and his hands closed over hers in so hard
a grip that it hurt.
She shut her eyes tightly, trying to squeeze out tears,
but remembered to turn her face up slightly so he
could kiss her with no difficulty. Now, in an instant
his lips would be upon hers, the hard insistent lips
which she suddenly remembered with a vividness
that left her weak. But he did not kiss her. Disappointment queerly stirring her, she opened her eyes a
trifle and ventured a peep at him. His black head was
bent over her hands and, as she watched, he lifted
one and kissed it and, taking the other, laid it against
his cheek for a moment. Expecting violence, this gentle and loverlike gesture startled her. She wondered
1100
�PART FOUR
what expression was on his face but could not tell for
his head was bowed.
She quickly lowered her gaze lest he should look
up suddenly and see the expression on her face. She
knew that the feeling of triumph surging through her
was certain to be plain in her eyes. In a moment
he would ask her to marry him–or at least say that
he loved her and then . . . As she watched him
through the veil of her lashes he turned her hand over,
palm up, to kiss it too, and suddenly he drew a quick
breath. Looking down she saw her own palm, saw it
as it really was for the first time in a year, and a cold
sinking fear gripped her. This was a stranger’s palm,
not Scarlett O’Hara’s soft, white, dimpled, helpless
one. This hand was rough from work, brown with
sunburn, splotched with freckles. The nails were broken and irregular, there were heavy calluses on the
cushions of the palm, a half-healed blister on the
thumb. The red scar which boiling fat had left last
month was ugly and glaring. She looked at it in horror and, before she thought, she swiftly clenched her
fist.
Still he did not raise his head. Still she could not see
his face. He pried her fist open inexorably and stared
at it, picked up her other hand and held them both
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�PART FOUR
together silently, looking down at them.
“Look at me,” he said finally raising his head, and
his voice was very quiet. “And drop that demure expression.”
Unwillingly she met his eyes, defiance and perturbation on her face. His black brows were up and his
eyes gleamed.
“So you have been doing very nicely at Tara, have
you? Cleared so much money on the cotton you can
go visiting. What have you been doing with your
hands–plowing?”
She tried to wrench them away but he held them
hard, running his thumbs over the calluses.
“These are not the hands of a lady,” he said and
tossed them into her lap.
“Oh, shut up!” she cried, feeling a momentary
intense relief at being able to speak her feelings.
“Whose business is it what I do with my hands?”
What a fool I am, she thought vehemently. I should
have borrowed or stolen Aunt Pitty’s gloves. But I
didn’t realize my hands looked so bad. Of course, he
would notice them. And now I’ve lost my temper and
probably ruined everything. Oh, to have this happen
when he was right at the point of a declaration!
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“Your hands are certainly no business of mine,” said
Rhett coolly and lounged back in his chair indolently,
his face a smooth blank.
So he was going to be difficult. Well, she’d have
to bear it meekly, much as she disliked it, if she expected to snatch victory from this debacle. Perhaps if
she sweet-talked him–
“I think you’re real rude to throw off on my poor
hands. Just because I went riding last week without
my gloves and ruined them–”
“Riding, hell!” he said in the same level voice.
“You’ve been working with those hands, working like
a nigger. What’s the answer? Why did you lie to me
about everything being nice at Tara?”
“Now, Rhett–”
“Suppose we get down to the truth. What is the real
purpose of your visit? Almost, I was persuaded by
your coquettish airs that you cared something about
me and were sorry for me.”
“Oh, I am sorry! Indeed–”
“No, you aren’t. They can hang me higher than
Haman for all you care. It’s written as plainly on
your face as hard work is written on your hands.
You wanted something from me and you wanted it
badly enough to put on quite a show. Why didn’t you
1103
�PART FOUR
come out in the open and tell me what it was? You’d
have stood a much better chance of getting it, for if
there’s one virtue I value in women it’s frankness. But
no, you had to come jingling your earbobs and pouting and frisking like a prostitute with a prospective
client.”
He did not raise his voice at the last words or emphasize them in any way but to Scarlett they cracked
like a whiplash, and with despair she saw the end of
her hopes of getting him to propose marriage. Had he
exploded with rage and injured vanity or upbraided
her, as other men would have done, she could have
handled him. But the deadly quietness of his voice
frightened her, left her utterly at a loss as to her next
move. Although he was a prisoner and the Yankees
were in the next room, it came to her suddenly that
Rhett Butler was a dangerous man to run afoul of.
“I suppose my memory is getting faulty. I should
have recalled that you are just like me and that you
never do anything without an ulterior motive. Now,
let me see. What could you have had up your sleeve,
Mrs. Hamilton? It isn’t possible that you were so misguided as to think I would propose matrimony?”
Her face went crimson and she did not answer.
“But you can’t have forgotten my oft-repeated re1104
�PART FOUR
mark that I am not a marrying man?”
When she did not speak, he said with sudden violence:
“You hadn’t forgotten? Answer me.”
“I hadn’t forgotten,” she said wretchedly.
“What a gambler you are, Scarlett,” he jeered. “You
took a chance that my incarceration away from female
companionship would put me in such a state I’d snap
at you like a trout at a worm.”
And that’s what you did, thought Scarlett with inward rage, and if it hadn’t been for my hands–
“Now, we have most of the truth, everything except
your reason. See if you can tell me the truth about
why you wanted to lead me into wedlock.”
There was a suave, almost teasing note in his voice
and she took heart. Perhaps everything wasn’t lost,
after all. Of course, she had ruined any hope of
marriage but, even in her despair, she was glad.
There was something about this immobile man which
frightened her, so that now the thought of marrying him was fearful. But perhaps if she was clever
and played on his sympathies and his memories, she
could secure a loan. She pulled her face into a placating and childlike expression.
1105
�PART FOUR
“Oh, Rhett, you can help me so much–if you’ll just
be sweet.”
“There’s nothing I like better than being–sweet.”
“Rhett, for old friendship’s sake, I want you to do
me a favor.”
“So, at last the horny-handed lady comes to her real
mission. I feared that ‘visiting the sick and the imprisoned’ was not your proper role. What do you want?
Money?”
The bluntness of his question ruined all hopes of
leading up to the matter in any circuitous and sentimental way.
“Don’t be mean, Rhett,” she coaxed. “I do want
some money. I want you to lend me three hundred
dollars.”
“The truth at last. Talking love and thinking money.
How truly feminine! Do you need the money badly?”
“Oh, ye– Well, not so terribly but I could use it.”
“Three hundred dollars. That’s a vast amount of
money. What do you want it for?”
“To pay taxes on Tara.”
“So you want to borrow some money. Well, since
you’re so businesslike, I’ll be businesslike too. What
collateral will you give me?”
1106
�PART FOUR
“What what?”
“Collateral. Security on my investment. Of course, I
don’t want to lose all that money.” His voice was deceptively smooth, almost silky, but she did not notice.
Maybe everything would turn out nicely after all.
“My earrings.”
“I’m not interested in earrings.”
“I’ll give you a mortgage on Tara.”
“Now just what would I do with a farm?”
“Well, you could–you could–it’s a good plantation.
And you wouldn’t lose. I’d pay you back out of next
year’s cotton.”
“I’m not so sure.” He tilted back in his chair and
stuck his hands in his pockets. “Cotton prices are
dropping. Times are so hard and money’s so tight.”
“Oh, Rhett, you are teasing me! You know you have
millions!”
There was a warm dancing malice in his eyes as he
surveyed her.
“So everything is going nicely and you don’t need
the money very badly. Well, I’m glad to hear that. I
like to know that all is well with old friends.”
“Oh, Rhett, for God’s sake . . .” she began desperately, her courage and control breaking.
1107
�PART FOUR
“Do lower your voice. You don’t want the Yankees
to hear you, I hope. Did anyone ever tell you you had
eyes like a cat–a cat in the dark?”
“Rhett, don’t! I’ll tell you everything. I do need
the money so badly. I–I lied about everything being
all right. Everything’s as wrong as it could be. Father is–is–he’s not himself. He’s been queer ever since
Mother died and he can’t help me any. He’s just like a
child. And we haven’t a single field hand to work
the cotton and there’s so many to feed, thirteen of
us. And the taxes– they are so high. Rhett, I’ll tell
you everything. For over a year we’ve been just this
side of starvation. Oh, you don’t know! You can’t
know! We’ve never had enough to eat and it’s terrible
to wake up hungry and go to sleep hungry. And we
haven’t any warm clothes and the children are always
cold and sick and–”
“Where did you get the pretty dress?”
“It’s made out of Mother’s curtains,” she answered,
too desperate to lie about this shame. “I could stand
being hungry and cold but now–now the Carpetbaggers have raised our taxes. And the money’s got to be
paid right away. And I haven’t any money except one
five-dollar gold piece. I’ve got to have money for the
taxes! Don’t you see? If I don’t pay them, I’ll–we’ll
1108
�PART FOUR
lose Tara and we just can’t lose it! I can’t let it go!”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this at first instead of
preying on my susceptible heart–always weak where
pretty ladies are concerned? No, Scarlett, don’t cry.
You’ve tried every trick except that one and I don’t
think I could stand it. My feelings are already lacerated with disappointment at discovering it was my
money and not my charming self you wanted.”
She remembered that he frequently told bald truths
about himself when he spoke mockingly–mocking
himself as well as others, and she hastily looked up
at him. Were his feelings really hurt? Did he really
care about her? Had he been on the verge of a proposal when he saw her palms? Or had he only been
leading up to another such odious proposal as he had
made twice before? If he really cared about her, perhaps she could smooth him down. But his black eyes
raked her in no lover-like way and he was laughing
softly.
“I don’t like your collateral. I’m no planter. What
else have you to offer?”
Well, she had come to it at last. Now for it! She drew
a deep breath and met his eyes squarely, all coquetry
and airs gone as her spirit rushed out to grapple that
which she feared most.
1109
�PART FOUR
“I–I have myself.”
“Yes?”
Her jaw line tightened to squareness and her eyes
went emerald.
“You remember that night on Aunt Pitty’s porch,
during the siege? You said–you said then that you
wanted me.”
He leaned back carelessly in his chair and looked
into her tense face and his own dark face was inscrutable. Something flickered behind his eyes but he
said nothing.
“You said–you said you’d never wanted a woman
as much as you wanted me. If you still want me,
you can have me. Rhett, I’ll do anything you say but,
for God’s sake, write me a draft for the money! My
word’s good. I swear it. I won’t go back on it. I’ll put
it in writing if you like.”
He looked at her oddly, still inscrutable and as she
hurried on she could not tell if he were amused or
repelled. If he would only say something, anything!
She felt her cheeks getting hot.
“I have got to have the money soon, Rhett. They’ll
turn us out in the road and that damned overseer of
Father’s will own the place and–”
1110
�PART FOUR
“Just a minute. What makes you think I still want
you? What makes you think you are worth three hundred dollars? Most women don’t come that high.”
She blushed to her hair line and her humiliation was
complete.
“Why are you doing this? Why not let the farm go
and live at Miss Pittypat’s. You own half that house.”
“Name of God!” she cried. “Are you a fool? I can’t
let Tara go. It’s home. I won’t let it go. Not while I’ve
got breath left in me!”
“The Irish,” said he, lowering his chair back to level
and removing his hands from his pockets, “are the
damnedest race. They put so much emphasis on so
many wrong things. Land, for instance. And every
bit of earth is just like every other bit. Now, let me
get this straight, Scarlett. You are coming to me with
a business proposition. I’ll give you three hundred
dollars and you’ll become my mistress.”
“Yes.”
Now that the repulsive word had been said, she felt
somehow easier and hope awoke in her again. He had
said “I’ll give you.” There was a diabolic gleam in his
eyes as if something amused him greatly.
“And yet, when I had the effrontery to make you
this same proposition, you turned me out of the
1111
�PART FOUR
house. And also you called me a number of very hard
names and mentioned in passing that you didn’t want
a ‘passel of brats.’ No, my dear, I’m not rubbing it in.
I’m only wondering at the peculiarities of your mind.
You wouldn’t do it for your own pleasure but you will
to keep the wolf away from the door. It proves my
point that all virtue is merely a matter of prices.”
“Oh, Rhett, how you run on! If you want to insult
me, go on and do it but give me the money.”
She was breathing easier now. Being what he was,
Rhett would naturally want to torment and insult her
as much as possible to pay her back for past slights
and for her recent attempted trickery. Well, she could
stand it. She could stand anything. Tara was worth
it all. For a brief moment it was mid-summer and the
afternoon skies were blue and she lay drowsily in the
thick clover of Tara’s lawn, looking up at the billowing cloud castles, the fragrance of white blossoms in
her nose and the pleasant busy humming of bees in
her ears. Afternoon and hush and the far-off sound
of the wagons coming in from the spiraling red fields.
Worth it all, worth more.
Her head went up.
“Are you going to give me the money?”
He looked as if he were enjoying himself and when
1112
�PART FOUR
he spoke there was suave brutality in his voice.
“No, I’m not,” he said.
For a moment her mind could not adjust itself to his
words.
“I couldn’t give it to you, even if I wanted to. I
haven’t a cent on me. Not a dollar in Atlanta. I have
some money, yes, but not here. And I’m not saying
where it is or how much. But if I tried to draw a draft
on it, the Yankees would be on me like a duck on a
June bug and then neither of us would get it. What
do you think of that?”
Her face went an ugly green, freckles suddenly
standing out across her nose and her contorted mouth
was like Gerald’s in a killing rage. She sprang to her
feet with an incoherent cry which made the hum of
voices in the next room cease suddenly. Swift as a
panther, Rhett was beside her, his heavy hand across
her mouth, his arm tight about her waist. She struggled against him madly, trying to bite his hand, to
kick his legs, to scream her rage, despair, hate, her
agony of broken pride. She bent and twisted every
way against the iron of his arm, her heart near bursting, her tight stays cutting off her breath. He held her
so tightly, so roughly that it hurt and the hand over
her mouth pinched into her jaws cruelly. His face
1113
�PART FOUR
was white under its tan, his eyes hard and anxious
as he lifted her completely off her feet, swung her up
against his chest and sat down in the chair, holding
her writhing in his lap.
“Darling, for God’s sake! Stop! Hush! Don’t yell.
They’ll be in here in a minute if you do. Do calm yourself. Do you want the Yankees to see you like this?”
She was beyond caring who saw her, beyond anything except a fiery desire to kill him, but dizziness
was sweeping her. She could not breathe; he was
choking her; her stays were like a swiftly compressing band of iron; his arms about her made her shake
with helpless hate and fury. Then his voice became
thin and dim and his face above her swirled in a sickening mist which became heavier and heavier until
she no longer saw him–or anything else.
When she made feeble swimming motions to come
back to consciousness, she was tired to her bones,
weak, bewildered. She was lying back in the chair,
her bonnet off, Rhett was slapping her wrist, his black
eyes searching her face anxiously. The nice young
captain was trying to pour a glass of brandy into her
mouth and had spilled it down her neck. The other officers hovered helplessly about, whispering and waving their hands.
1114
�PART FOUR
“I–guess I must have fainted,” she said, and her
voice sounded so far away it frightened her.
“Drink this,” said Rhett, taking the glass and pushing it against her lips. Now she remembered and
glared feebly at him but she was too tired for anger.
“Please, for my sake.”
She gulped and choked and began coughing but he
pushed it to her mouth again. She swallowed deeply
and the hot liquid burned suddenly in her throat.
“I think she’s better now, gentlemen,” said Rhett,
“and I thank you very much. The realization that I’m
to be executed was too much for her.”
The group in blue shuffled their feet and looked embarrassed and after several clearings of throats, they
tramped out. The young captain paused in the doorway.
“If there’s anything more I can do–”
“No, thank you.”
He went out, closing the door behind him.
“Drink some more,” said Rhett.
“No.”
“Drink it.”
She swallowed another mouthful and the warmth
began spreading through her body and strength
1115
�PART FOUR
flowed slowly back into her shaking legs. She pushed
away the glass and tried to rise but he pressed her
back.
“Take your hands off me. I’m going.”
“Not yet. Wait a minute. You might faint again.”
“I’d rather faint in the road than be here with you.”
“Just the same, I won’t have you fainting in the
road.”
“Let me go. I hate you.”
A faint smile came back to his face at her words.
“That sounds more like you. You must be feeling
better.”
She lay relaxed for a moment, trying to summon
anger to her aid, trying to draw on her strength. But
she was too tired. She was too tired to hate or to care
very much about anything. Defeat lay on her spirit
like lead. She had gambled everything and lost everything. Not even pride was left. This was the dead
end of her last hope. This was the end of Tara, the end
of them all. For a long time she lay back with her eyes
closed, hearing his heavy breathing near her, and the
glow of the brandy crept gradually over her, giving a
false strength and warmth. When finally she opened
her eyes and looked him in the face, anger had roused
1116
�PART FOUR
again. As her slanting eyebrows rushed down together in a frown Rhett’s old smile came back.
“Now you are better. I can tell it by your scowl.”
“Of course, I’m all right. Rhett Butler, you are hateful, a skunk, if ever I saw one! You knew very well
what I was going to say as soon as I started talking and you knew you weren’t going to give me the
money. And yet you let me go right on. You could
have spared me–”
“Spared you and missed hearing all that? Not much.
I have so few diversions here. I don’t know when I’ve
ever heard anything so gratifying.” He laughed his
sudden mocking laugh. At the sound she leaped to
her feet, snatching up her bonnet.
He suddenly had her by the shoulders.
“Not quite yet. Do you feel well enough to talk
sense?”
“Let me go!”
“You are well enough, I see. Then, tell me this. Was I
the only iron you had in the fire?” His eyes were keen
and alert, watching every change in her face.
“What do you mean?”
“Was I the only man you were going to try this on?”
“Is that any of your business?”
1117
�PART FOUR
“More than you realize. Are there any other men on
your string? Tell me!”
“No.”
“Incredible. I can’t imagine you without five or six
in reserve. Surely someone will turn up to accept your
interesting proposition. I feel so sure of it that I want
to give you a little advice.”
“I don’t want your advice.”
“Nevertheless I will give it. Advice seems to be the
only thing I can give you at present. Listen to it, for
it’s good advice. When you are trying to get something out of a man, don’t blurt it out as you did to me.
Do try to be more subtle, more seductive. It gets better
results. You used to know how, to perfection. But just
now when you offered me your–er–collateral for my
money you looked as hard as nails. I’ve seen eyes like
yours above a dueling pistol twenty paces from me
and they aren’t a pleasant sight. They evoke no ardor
in the male breast. That’s no way to handle men, my
dear. You are forgetting your early training.”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to behave,” she
said and wearily put on her bonnet. She wondered
how he could jest so blithely with a rope about his
neck and her pitiful circumstances before him. She
did not even notice that his hands were jammed in
1118
�PART FOUR
his pockets in hard fists as if he were straining at his
own impotence.
“Cheer up,” he said, as she tied the bonnet strings.
“You can come to my hanging and it will make you
feel lots better. It’ll even up all your old scores with
me–even this one. And I’ll mention you in my will.”
“Thank you, but they may not hang you till it’s too
late to pay the taxes,” she said with a sudden malice
that matched his own, and she meant it.
1119
�CHAPTER XXXV
when she came out of the building and
the sky was a dull putty color. The soldiers on the
square had taken shelter in their huts and the streets
were deserted. There was no vehicle in sight and she
knew she would have to walk the long way home.
The brandy glow faded as she trudged along. The
cold wind made her shiver and the chilly needle-like
drops drove hard into her face. The rain quickly penetrated Aunt Pitty’s thin cloak until it hung in clammy
folds about her. She knew the velvet dress was being
ruined and as for the tail feathers on the bonnet, they
were as drooping and draggled as when their former
owner had worn them about the wet barn yard of
Tara. The bricks of the sidewalk were broken and,
for long stretches, completely gone. In these spots the
mud was ankle deep and her slippers stuck in it as if
it were glue, even coming completely off her feet. Every time she bent over to retrieve them, the hem of the
dress fell in the mud. She did not even try to avoid
puddles but stepped dully into them, dragging her
heavy skirts after her. She could feel her wet petticoat
and pantalets cold about her ankles, but she was beyond caring about the wreck of the costume on which
she had gambled so much. She was chilled and disI T WAS RAINING
�PART FOUR
heartened and desperate.
How could she ever go back to Tara and face them
after her brave words? How could she tell them they
must all go–somewhere? How could she leave it all,
the red fields, the tall pines, the dark swampy bottom
lands, the quiet burying ground where Ellen lay in the
cedars’ deep shade?
Hatred of Rhett burned in her heart as she plodded along the slippery way. What a blackguard he
was! She hoped they did hang him, so she would
never have to face him again with his knowledge of
her disgrace and her humiliation. Of course, he could
have gotten the money for her if he’d wanted to get
it. Oh, hanging was too good for him! Thank God,
he couldn’t see her now, with her clothes soaking wet
and her hair straggling and her teeth chattering. How
hideous she must look and how he would laugh!
The negroes she passed turned insolent grins at her
and laughed among themselves as she hurried by,
slipping and sliding in the mud, stopping, panting to
replace her slippers. How dared they laugh, the black
apes! How dared they grin at her, Scarlett O’Hara of
Tara! She’d like to have them all whipped until the
blood ran down their backs. What devils the Yankees
were to set them free, free to jeer at white people!
1121
�PART FOUR
As she walked down Washington Street, the landscape was as dreary as her own heart. Here there
was none of the bustle and cheerfulness which she
had noted on Peachtree Street. Here many handsome homes had once stood, but few of them had
been rebuilt. Smoked foundations and the lonesone
blackened chimneys, now known as “Sherman’s
Sentinels,” appeared with disheartening frequency.
Overgrown paths led to what had been houses–old
lawns thick with dead weeds, carriage blocks bearing
names she knew so well, hitching posts which would
never again know the knot of reins. Cold wind and
rain, mud and bare trees, silence and desolation. How
wet her feet were and how long the journey home!
She heard the splash of hooves behind her and
moved farther over on the narrow sidewalk to avoid
more mud splotches on Aunt Pittypat’s cloak. A
horse and buggy came slowly up the road and she
turned to watch it, determined to beg a ride if the
driver was a white person. The rain obscured her vision as the buggy came abreast, but she saw the driver
peer over the tarpaulin that stretched from the dashboard to his chin. There was something familiar about
his face and as she stepped out into the road to get
a closer view, there was an embarrassed little cough
from the man and a well-known voice cried in accents
1122
�PART FOUR
of pleasure and astonishment: “Surely, it can’t be Miss
Scarlett!”
“Oh, Mr. Kennedy!” she cried, splashing across the
road and leaning on the muddy wheel, heedless of
further damage to the cloak. “I was never so glad to
see anybody in my life!”
He colored with pleasure at the obvious sincerity of
her words, hastily squirted a stream of tobacco juice
from the opposite side of the buggy and leaped spryly
to the ground. He shook her hand enthusiastically
and holding up the tarpaulin, assisted her into the
buggy.
“Miss Scarlett, what are you doing over in this section by yourself? Don’t you know it’s dangerous
these days? And you are soaking wet. Here, wrap
the robe around your feet.”
As he fussed over her, clucking like a hen, she gave
herself up to the luxury of being taken care of. It was
nice to have a man fussing and clucking and scolding, even if it was only that old maid in pants, Frank
Kennedy. It was especially soothing after Rhett’s brutal treatment. And oh, how good to see a County face
when she was so far from home! He was well dressed,
she noticed, and the buggy was new too. The horse
looked young and well fed, but Frank looked far older
1123
�PART FOUR
than his years, older than on that Christmas eve when
he had been at Tara with his men. He was thin and
sallow faced and his yellow eyes were watery and
sunken in creases of loose flesh. His ginger-colored
beard was scantier than ever, streaked with tobacco
juice and as ragged as if he clawed at it incessantly.
But he looked bright and cheerful, in contrast with
the lines of sorrow and worry and weariness which
Scarlett saw in faces everywhere.
“It’s a pleasure to see you,” said Frank warmly. “I
didn’t know you were in town. I saw Miss Pittypat only last week and she didn’t tell me you were
coming. Did–er–ahem–did anyone else come up from
Tara with you?”
He was thinking of Suellen, the silly old fool.
“No,” she said, wrapping the warm lap robe about
her and trying to pull it up around her neck. “I came
alone. I didn’t give Aunt Pitty any warning.”
He chirruped to the horse and it plodded off, picking its way carefully down the slick road.
“All the folks at Tara well?”
“Oh, yes, so-so.”
She must think of something to talk about, yet it
was so hard to talk. Her mind was leaden with defeat and all she wanted was to lie back in this warm
1124
�PART FOUR
blanket and say to herself: “I won’t think of Tara now.
I’ll think of it later, when it won’t hurt so much.” If
she could just get him started talking on some subject which would hold him all the way home, so she
would have nothing to do but murmur “How nice”
and “You certainly are smart” at intervals.
“Mr. Kennedy, I’m so surprised to see you. I know
I’ve been a bad girl, not keeping up with old friends,
but I didn’t know you were here in Atlanta. I thought
somebody told me you were in Marietta.”
“I do business in Marietta, a lot of business,” he said.
“Didn’t Miss Suellen tell you I had settled in Atlanta?
Didn’t she tell you about my store?”
Vaguely she had a memory of Suellen chattering
about Frank and a store but she never paid much
heed to anything Suellen said. It had been sufficient
to know that Frank was alive and would some day
take Suellen off her hands.
“No, not a word,” she lied. “Have you a store? How
smart you must be!”
He looked a little hurt at hearing that Suellen had
not published the news but brightened at the flattery.
“Yes, I’ve got a store, and a pretty good one I think.
Folks tell me I’m a born merchant.”
He laughed pleasedly, the tittery cackling laugh
1125
�PART FOUR
which she always found so annoying.
Conceited old fool, she thought.
“Oh, you could be a success at anything you turned
your hand to, Mr. Kennedy. But how on earth did
you ever get started with the store? When I saw you
Christmas before last you said you didn’t have a cent
in the world.”
He cleared his throat raspingly, clawed at his
whiskers and smiled his nervous timid smile.
“Well, it’s a long story, Miss Scarlett.”
Thank the Lord! she thought. Perhaps it will hold
him till we get home. And aloud: “Do tell!”
“You recall when we came to Tara last, hunting for
supplies? Well, not long after that I went into active
service. I mean real fighting. No more commissary
for me. There wasn’t much need for a commissary,
Miss Scarlett, because we couldn’t hardly pick up a
thing for the army, and I thought the place for an ablebodied man was in the fighting line. Well, I fought
along with the cavalry for a spell till I got a minie ball
through the shoulder.”
He looked very proud and Scarlett said: “How
dreadful!”
“Oh, it wasn’t so bad, just a flesh wound,” he said
1126
�PART FOUR
deprecatingly. “I was sent down south to a hospital
and when I was just about well, the Yankee raiders
came through. My, my, but that was a hot time! We
didn’t have much warning and all of us who could
walk helped haul out the army stores and the hospital equipment to the train tracks to move it. We’d
gotten one train about loaded when the Yankees rode
in one end of town and out we went the other end
as fast as we could go. My, my, that was a mighty
sad sight, sitting on top of that train and seeing the
Yankees burn those supplies we had to leave at the
depot. Miss Scarlett, they burned about a half-mile of
stuff we had piled up there along the tracks. We just
did get away ourselves.”
“How dreadful!”
“Yes, that’s the word. Dreadful. Our men had come
back into Atlanta then and so our train was sent here.
Well, Miss Scarlett, it wasn’t long before the war was
over and–well, there was a lot of china and cots and
mattresses and blankets and nobody claiming them.
I suppose rightfully they belonged to the Yankees. I
think those were the terms of the surrender, weren’t
they?”
“Um,” said Scarlett absently.
warmer now and a little drowsy.
1127
She was getting
�PART FOUR
“I don’t know till now if I did right,” he said, a little
querulously. “But the way I figured it, all that stuff
wouldn’t do the Yankees a bit of good. They’d probably burn it. And our folks had paid good solid money
for it, and I thought it still ought to belong to the Confederacy or to the Confederates. Do you see what I
mean?”
“Um.”
“I’m glad you agree with me, Miss Scarlett. In a way,
it’s been on my conscience. Lots of folks have told me:
‘Oh, forget about it, Frank,’ but I can’t. I couldn’t hold
up my head if I thought I’d done what wasn’t right.
Do you think I did right?”
“Of course,” she said, wondering what the old fool
had been talking about. Some struggle with his conscience. When a man got as old as Frank Kennedy
he ought to have learned not to bother about things
that didn’t matter. But he always was so nervous and
fussy and old maidish.
“I’m glad to hear you say it. After the surrender I
had about ten dollars in silver and nothing else in the
world. You know what they did to Jonesboro and my
house and store there. I just didn’t know what to do.
But I used the ten dollars to put a roof on an old store
down by Five Points and I moved the hospital equip1128
�PART FOUR
ment in and started selling it. Everybody needed beds
and china and mattresses and I sold them cheap, because I figured it was about as much other folks’ stuff
as it was mine. But I cleared money on it and bought
some more stuff and the store just went along fine. I
think I’ll make a lot of money on it if things pick up.”
At the word “money,” her mind came back to him,
crystal clear.
“You say you’ve made money?”
He visibly expanded under her interest. Few
women except Suellen had ever given him more than
perfunctory courtesy and it was very flattering to
have a former belle like Scarlett hanging on his words.
He slowed the horse so they would not reach home
before he had finished his story.
“I’m not a millionaire, Miss Scarlett, and considering the money I used to have, what I’ve got now
sounds small. But I made a thousand dollars this year.
Of course, five hundred of it went to paying for new
stock and repairing the store and paying the rent. But
I’ve made five hundred clear and as things are certainly picking up, I ought to clear two thousand next
year. I can sure use it, too, for you see, I’ve got another
iron in the fire.”
Interest had sprung up sharply in her at the talk of
1129
�PART FOUR
money. She veiled her eyes with thick bristly lashes
and moved a little closer to him.
“What does that mean, Mr. Kennedy?”
He laughed and slapped the reins against the
horse’s back.
“I guess I’m boring you, talking about business,
Miss Scarlett. A pretty little woman like you doesn’t
need to know anything about business.”
The old fool.
“Oh, I know I’m a goose about business but I’m so
interested! Please tell me all about it and you can explain what I don’t understand.”
“Well, my other iron is a sawmill.”
“A what?”
“A mill to cut up lumber and plane it. I haven’t
bought it yet but I’m going to. There’s a man named
Johnson who has one, way out Peachtree road, and
he’s anxious to sell it. He needs some cash right away,
so he wants to sell and stay and run it for me at a
weekly wage. It’s one of the few mills in this section,
Miss Scarlett. The Yankees destroyed most of them.
And anyone who owns a sawmill owns a gold mine,
for nowadays you can ask your own price for lumber.
The Yankees burned so many houses here and there
1130
�PART FOUR
aren’t enough for people to live in and it looks like
folks have gone crazy about rebuilding. They can t
get enough lumber and they can’t get it fast enough.
People are just pouring into Atlanta now, all the folks
from the country districts who can’t make a go of
farming without darkies and the Yankees and Carpetbaggers who are swarming in trying to pick our bones
a little barer than they already are. I tell you Atlanta’s
going to be a big town soon. They’ve got to have lumber for their houses, so I’m going to buy this mill just
as soon as–well, as soon as some of the bills owing me
are paid. By this time next year, I ought to be breathing easier about money. I–I guess you know why I’m
so anxious to make money quickly, don’t you?”
He blushed and cackled again. He’s thinking of
Suellen, Scarlett thought in disgust.
For a moment she considered asking him to lend
her three hundred dollars, but wearily she rejected
the idea. He would be embarrassed; he would stammer; he would offer excuses, but he wouldn’t lend it
to her. He had worked hard for it, so he could marry
Suellen in the spring and if he parted with it, his wedding would be postponed indefinitely. Even if she
worked on his sympathies and his duty toward his
future family and gained his promise of a loan, she
1131
�PART FOUR
knew Suellen would never permit it. Suellen was getting more and more worried over the fact that she was
practically an old maid and she would move heaven
and earth to prevent anything from delaying her marriage.
What was there in that whining complaining girl to
make this old fool so anxious to give her a soft nest?
Suellen didn’t deserve a loving husband and the profits of a store and a sawmill. The minute Sue got
her hands on a little money she’d give herself unendurable airs and never contribute one cent toward the
upkeep of Tara. Not Suellen! She’d think herself well
out of it and not care if Tara went for taxes or burned
to the ground, so long as she had pretty clothes and a
“Mrs.” in front of her name.
As Scarlett thought of Suellen’s secure future and
the precarious one of herself and Tara, anger flamed
in her at the unfairness of life. Hastily she looked out
of the buggy into the muddy street, lest Frank should
see her expression. She was going to lose everything
she had, while Sue– Suddenly a determination was
born in her.
Suellen should not have Frank and his store and his
mill!
Suellen didn’t deserve them. She was going to have
1132
�PART FOUR
them herself. She thought of Tara and remembered
Jonas Wilkerson, venomous as a rattler, at the foot of
the front steps, and she grasped at the last straw floating above the shipwreck of her life. Rhett had failed
her but the Lord had provided Frank.
But can I get him? Her fingers clenched as she
looked unseeingly into the rain. Can I make him forget Sue and propose to me real quick? If I could make
Rhett almost propose, I know I could get Frank! Her
eyes went over him, her lids flickering. Certainly, he’s
no beauty, she thought coolly, and he’s got very bad
teeth and his breath smells bad and he’s old enough to
be my father. Moreover, he’s nervous and timid and
well meaning, and I don’t know of any more damning
qualities a man can have. But at least, he’s a gentleman and I believe I could stand living with him better
than with Rhett. Certainly I could manage him easier.
At any rate, beggars can’t be choosers.
That he was Suellen’s fiance caused her no qualm of
conscience. After the complete moral collapse which
had sent her to Atlanta and to Rhett, the appropriation of her sister’s betrothed seemed a minor affair
and one not to be bothered with at this time.
With the rousing of fresh hope, her spine stiffened
and she forgot that her feet were wet and cold. She
1133
�PART FOUR
looked at Frank so steadily, her eyes narrowing, that
he became somewhat alarmed and she dropped her
gaze swiftly, remembering Rhett’s words: “I’ve seen
eyes like yours above a dueling pistol. . . . They evoke
no ardor in the male breast.”
“What’s the matter, Miss Scarlett? You got a chill?”
“Yes,” she answered helplessly. “Would you mind–
” She hesitated timidly. “Would you mind if I put my
hand in your coat pocket? It’s so cold and my muff is
soaked through.”
“Why–why–of course not! And you haven’t any
gloves! My, my, what a brute I’ve been idling along
like this, talking my head off when you must be freezing and wanting to get to a fire. Giddap, Sally! By
the way, Miss Scarlett, I’ve been so busy talking about
myself I haven’t even asked you what you were doing
in this section in this weather?”
“I was at the Yankee headquarters,” she answered
before she thought. His sandy brows went up in astonishment.
“But Miss Scarlett! The soldiers– Why–”
“Mary, Mother of God, let me think of a real good
lie,” she prayed hastily. It would never do for Frank to
suspect she had seen Rhett. Frank thought Rhett the
blackest of blackguards and unsafe for decent women
1134
�PART FOUR
to speak to.
“I went there–I went there to see if–if any of the officers would buy fancy work from me to send home to
their wives. I embroider very nicely.”
He sank back against the seat aghast, indignation
struggling with bewilderment.
“You went to the Yankees– But Miss Scarlett! You
shouldn’t. Why–why . . . Surely your father doesn’t
know! Surely, Miss Pittypat–”
“Oh, I shall die if you tell Aunt Pittypat!” she cried
in real anxiety and burst into tears. It was easy to cry,
because she was so cold and miserable, but the effect
was startling. Frank could not have been more embarrassed or helpless if she had suddenly begun disrobing. He clicked his tongue against his teeth several times, muttering “My! My!” and made futile
gestures at her. A daring thought went through his
mind that he should draw her head onto his shoulder
and pat her but he had never done this to any woman
and hardly knew how to go about it. Scarlett O’Hara,
so high spirited and pretty, crying here in his buggy.
Scarlett O’Hara, the proudest of the proud, trying to
sell needlework to the Yankees. His heart burned.
She sobbed on, saying a few words now and then,
and he gathered that all was not well at Tara. Mr.
1135
�PART FOUR
O’Hara was still “not himself at all,” and there wasn’t
enough food to go around for so many. So she had to
come to Atlanta to try to make a little money for herself and her boy. Frank clicked his tongue again and
suddenly he found that her head was on his shoulder.
He did not quite know how it got there. Surely he had
not placed it there, but there her head was and there
was Scarlett helplessly sobbing against his thin chest,
an exciting and novel sensation for him. He patted
her shoulder timidly, gingerly at first, and when she
did not rebuff him he became bolder and patted her
firmly. What a helpless, sweet, womanly little thing
she was. And how brave and silly to try her hand at
making money by her needle. But dealing with the
Yankees–that was too much.
“I won’t tell Miss Pittypat, but you must promise
me, Miss Scarlett, that you won’t do anything like this
again. The idea of your father’s daughter–”
Her wet green eyes sought his helplessly.
“But, Mr. Kennedy, I must do something. I must
take care of my poor little boy and there is no one to
look after us now.”
“You are a brave little woman,” he pronounced,
“but I won’t have you do this sort of thing. Your family would die of shame.”
1136
�PART FOUR
“Then what will I do?” The swimming eyes looked
up to him as if she knew he knew everything and was
hanging on his words.
“Well, I don’t know right now. But I’ll think of something.”
“Oh, I know you will! You are so smart–Frank.”
She had never called him by his first name before
and the sound came to him as a pleasant shock and
surprise. The poor girl was probably so upset she
didn’t even notice her slip. He felt very kindly toward her and very protecting. If there was anything
he could do for Suellen O’Hara’s sister, he would certainly do it. He pulled out a red bandanna handkerchief and handed it to her and she wiped her eyes and
began to smile tremulously.
“I’m such a silly little goose,” she said apologetically. “Please forgive me.”
“You aren’t a silly little goose. You’re a very brave
little woman and you are trying to carry to heavy a
load. I’m afraid Miss Pittypat isn’t going to be much
help to you. I hear she lost most of her property and
Mr. Henry Hamilton’s in bad shape himself. I only
wish I had a home to offer you shelter in. But, Miss
Scarlett, you just remember this, when Miss Suellen
and I are married, there’ll always be a place for you
1137
�PART FOUR
under our roof and for Wade Hampton too.”
Now was the time! Surely the saints and angels
watched over her to give her such a Heaven-sent opportunity. She managed to look very startled and
embarrassed and opened her mouth as if to speak
quickly and then shut it with a pop.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know I was to be your
brother-in-law this spring,” he said with nervous jocularity.
And then, seeing her eyes fill up with tears, he questioned in alarm: “What’s the matter? Miss Sue’s not
ill, is she?”
“Oh, no! No!”
“There is something wrong. You must tell me.”
“Oh, I can’t! I didn’t know! I thought surely she
must have written you– Oh, how mean!”
“Miss Scarlett, what is it?”
“Oh, Frank, I didn’t mean to let it out but I thought,
of course, you knew–that she had written you–”
“Written me what?” He was trembling.
“Oh, to do this to a fine man like you!”
“What’s she done?”
“She didn’t write you? Oh, I guess she was too
1138
�PART FOUR
ashamed to write you. She should be ashamed! Oh,
to have such a mean sister!”
By this time, Frank could not even get questions to
his lips. He sat staring at her, gray faced, the reins
slack in his hands.
“She’s going to marry Tony Fontaine next month.
Oh, I’m so sorry, Frank. So sorry to be the one to tell
you. She just got tired of waiting and she was afraid
she’d be an old maid.”
Mammy was standing on the front porch when
Frank helped Scarlett out of the buggy. She had evidently been standing there for some time, for her head
rag was damp and the old shawl clutched tightly
about her showed rain spots. Her wrinkled black face
was a study in anger and apprehension and her lip
was pushed out farther than Scarlett could ever remember. She peered quickly at Frank and, when she
saw who it was, her face changed–pleasure, bewilderment and something akin to guilt spreading over it.
She waddled forward to Frank with pleased greetings
and grinned and curtsied when he shook her hand.
“It sho is good ter see home folks,” she said. “How
is you, Mist’ Frank? My, ain’ you lookin’ fine an’
gran’! Effen Ah’d knowed Miss Scarlett wuz out wid
you, Ah wouldn’ worrit so. Ah’d knowed she wuz
1139
�PART FOUR
tekken keer of. Ah come back hyah an’ fine she gone
an’ Ah been as ‘stracted as a chicken wid its haid off,
thinkin’ she runnin’ roun’ dis town by herseff wid all
dese trashy free issue niggers on de street. Huccome
you din’ tell me you gwine out, honey? An’ you wid
a cole!”
Scarlett winked slyly at Frank and, for all his distress
at the bad news he had just heard, he smiled, knowing
she was enjoining silence and making him one in a
pleasant conspiracy.
“You run up and fix me some dry clothes, Mammy,”
she said. “And some hot tea.”
“Lawd, yo’ new dress is plum ruint,” grumbled
Mammy. “Ah gwine have a time dryin’ it an’ brushin’
it, so it’ll be fit ter be wo’ ter de weddin’ ternight.”
She went into the house and Scarlett leaned close to
Frank and whispered: “Do come to supper tonight.
We are so lonesome. And we’re going to the wedding
afterward. Do be our escort! And, please don’t say
anything to Aunt Pitty about–about Suellen. It would
distress her so much and I can’t bear for her to know
that my sister–”
“Oh, I won’t! I won’t!” Frank said hastily, wincing
from the very thought.
“You’ve been so sweet to me today and done me so
1140
�PART FOUR
much good. I feel right brave again.” She squeezed
his hand in parting and turned the full battery of her
eyes upon him.
Mammy, who was waiting just inside the door, gave
her an inscrutable look and followed her, puffing,
up the stairs to the bedroom. She was silent while
she stripped off the wet clothes and hung them over
chairs and tucked Scarlett into bed. When she had
brought up a cup of hot tea and a hot brick, rolled
in flannel, she looked down at Scarlett and said, with
the nearest approach to an apology in her voice Scarlett had ever heard: “Lamb, huccome you din’ tell yo’
own Mammy whut you wuz upter? Den Ah wouldn’
had ter traipse all dis way up hyah ter ‘Lanta. Ah is
too ole an’ too fat fer sech runnin’ roun’.”
“What do you mean?”
“Honey, you kain fool me. Ah knows you. An’ Ah
seed Mist’ Frank’s face jes’ now an’ Ah seed yo’ face,
an’ Ah kin read yo’ mine lak a pahson read a Bible.
An’ Ah heerd dat whisperin’ you wuz givin’ him
‘bout Miss Suellen. Effen Ah’d had a notion ‘twuz
Mist’ Frank you wuz affer, Ah’d stayed home whar
Ah b’longs.”
“Well,” said Scarlett shortly, snuggling under the
blankets and realizing it was useless to try to throw
1141
�PART FOUR
Mammy off the scent, “who did you think it was?”
“Chile, Ah din’ know but Ah din’ lak de look on
yo’ face yestiddy. An’ Ah ‘membered Miss Pittypat
writin’ Miss Melly dat dat rapscallion Butler man had
lots of money an’ Ah doan fergit whut Ah hears. But
Mist’ Frank, he a gempmum even ef he ain’ so pretty.”
Scarlett gave her a sharp look and Mammy returned
the gaze with calm omniscience.
“Well, what are you going to do about it? Tattle to
Suellen?”
“Ah is gwine ter he’p you pleasure Mist’ Frank eve’y
way Ah knows how,” said Mammy, tucking the covers about Scarlett’s neck.
Scarlett lay quietly for a while, as Mammy fussed
about the room, relief flooding her that there was no
need for words between them. No explanations were
asked, no reproaches made. Mammy understood and
was silent. In Mammy, Scarlett had found a realist more uncompromising than herself. The mottled
wise old eyes saw deeply, saw clearly, with the directness of the savage and the child, undeterred by conscience when danger threatened her pet. Scarlett was
her baby and what her baby wanted, even though it
belonged to another, Mammy was willing to help her
obtain. The rights of Suellen and Frank Kennedy did
1142
�PART FOUR
not even enter her mind, save to cause a grim inward
chuckle. Scarlett was in trouble and doing the best she
could, and Scarlett was Miss Ellen’s child. Mammy
rallied to her with never a moment’s hesitation.
Scarlett felt the silent reinforcement and, as the hot
brick at her feet warmed her, the hope which had
flickered faintly on the cold ride home grew into a
flame. It swept through her, making her heart pump
the blood through her veins in pounding surges.
Strength was coming back and a reckless excitement
which made her want to laugh aloud. Not beaten yet,
she thought exultantly.
“Hand me the mirror, Mammy,” she said.
“Keep yo’ shoulders unner dat kivver,” ordered
Mammy, passing the hand mirror to her, a smile on
her thick lips.
Scarlett looked at herself.
“I look white as a hant,” she said, “and my hair is as
wild as a horse’s tail.”
“You doan look peart as you mout.”
“Hum. . . . Is it raining very hard?”
“You know it’s po’in’.”
“Well, just the same, you’ve got to go downtown for
me.”
1143
�PART FOUR
“Not in dis rain, Ah ain’.”
“Yes, you are or I’ll go myself.”
“Whut you got ter do dat woan wait? Look ter me
lak you done nuff fer one day.”
“I want,” said Scarlett, surveying herself carefully in
the mirror, “a bottle of cologne water. You can wash
my hair and rinse it with cologne. And buy me a jar
of quince-seed jelly to make it lie down flat.”
“Ah ain’ gwine wash yo’ ha’r in dis wedder an’
you ain’ gwine put no cologne on yo’ haid lak a fas’
woman needer. Not w’ile Ah got breaf in mah body.”
“Oh, yes, I am. Look in my purse and get that
five-dollar gold piece out and go to town. And–er,
Mammy, while you are downtown, you might get me
a–a pot of rouge.”
“Whut dat?” asked Mammy suspiciously.
Scarlett met her eyes with a coldness she was far
from feeling. There was never any way of knowing
just how far Mammy could be bullied.
“Never you mind. Just ask for it.”
“Ah ain’ buyin nuthin’ dat Ah doan know whut
‘tis.”
“Well, it’s paint, if you’re so curious! Face paint.
Don’t stand there and swell up like a toad. Go on.”
1144
�PART FOUR
“Paint!” ejaculated Mammy. “Face paint! Well, you
ain’ so big dat Ah kain whup you! Ah ain’ never been
so scan’lized! You is los’ yo’ mine! Miss Ellen be tuhnin’ in her grabe dis minute! Paintin’ yo face lak a–”
“You know very well Grandma Robillard painted
her face and–”
“Yas’m, an’ wo’ only one petticoat an’ it wrang out
wid water ter mek it stick an’ show de shape of her
laigs, but dat ain’ sayin’ you is gwine do sumpin’ lak
dat! Times wuz scan’lous w’en Ole Miss wuz young
but times changes, dey do an’–”
“Name of God!” cried Scarlett, losing her temper
and throwing back the covers. “You can go straight
back to Tara!”
“You kain sen’ me ter Tara ness Ah wants ter go.
Ah is free,” said Mammy heatedly. “An’ Ah is gwine
ter stay right hyah. Git back in dat baid. Does you
want ter ketch pneumony jes’ now? Put down dem
stays! Put dem down, honey. Now, Miss Scarlett, you
ain’ gwine nowhars in dis wedder. Lawd God! But
you sho look lak yo’ pa! Git back in baid–Ah kain go
buyin’ no paint! Ah die of shame, eve’ybody knowin
‘it wud fer mah chile! Miss Scarlett, you is so sweet
an’ pretty lookin’ you doan need no paint. Honey,
doan nobody but bad womens use dat stuff.”
1145
�PART FOUR
“Well, they get results, don’t they?”
“Jesus, hear her! Lamb, doan say bad things lak dat!
Put down dem wet stockin’s, honey. Ah kain have
you buy dat stuff yo’seff. Miss Ellen would hant me.
Git back in baid. Ah’ll go. Maybe Ah fine me a sto’
whar dey doan know us.”
That night at Mrs. Elsing’s, when Fanny had been
duly married and old Levi and the other musicians
were tuning up for the dance, Scarlett looked about
her with gladness. It was so exciting to be actually at a party again. She was pleased also with the
warm reception she had received. When she entered
the house on Frank’s arm, everyone had rushed to
her with cries of pleasure and welcome, kissed her,
shaken her hand, told her they had missed her dreadfully and that she must never go back to Tara. The
men seemed gallantly to have forgotten she had tried
her best to break their hearts in other days and the
girls that she had done everything in her power to
entice their beaux away from them. Even Mrs. Merriwether, Mrs. Whiting, Mrs. Meade and the other
dowagers who had been so cool to her during the last
days of the war, forgot her flighty conduct and their
disapproval of it and recalled only that she had suffered in their common defeat and that she was Pitty’s
1146
�PART FOUR
niece and Charles’ widow. They kissed her and spoke
gently with tears in their eyes of her dear mother’s
passing and asked at length about her father and her
sisters. Everyone asked about Melanie and Ashley,
demanding the reason why they, too, had not come
back to Atlanta.
In spite of her pleasure at the welcome, Scarlett felt
a slight uneasiness which she tried to conceal, an uneasiness about the appearance of her velvet dress. It
was still damp to the knees and still spotted about the
hem, despite the frantic efforts of Mammy and Cookie
with a steaming kettle, a clean hair brush and frantic
wavings in front of an open fire. Scarlett was afraid
someone would notice her bedraggled state and realize that this was her only nice dress. She was a little
cheered by the fact that many of the dresses of the
other guests looked far worse than hers. They were
so old and had such carefully mended and pressed
looks. At least, her dress was whole and new, damp
though it was–in fact, the only new dress at the gathering with the exception of Fanny’s white-satin wedding gown.
Remembering what Aunt Pitty had told her about
the Elsing finances, she wondered where the money
for the satin dress had been obtained and for the re1147
�PART FOUR
freshments and decorations and musicians too. It
must have cost a pretty penny. Borrowed money
probably or else the whole Elsing clan had contributed to give Fanny this expensive wedding. Such
a wedding in these hard times seemed to Scarlett an
extravagance on a par with the tombstones of the Tarleton boys and she felt the same irritation and lack
of sympathy she had felt as she stood in the Tarleton
burying ground. The days when money could be
thrown away carelessly had passed. Why did these
people persist in making the gestures of the old days
when the old days were gone?
But she shrugged off her momentary annoyance. It
wasn’t her money and she didn’t want her evening’s
pleasure spoiled by irritation at other people’s foolishness.
She discovered she knew the groom quite well, for
he was Tommy Wellburn from Sparta and she had
nursed him in 1863 when he had a wound in his
shoulder. He had been a handsome young six-footer
then and had given up his medical studies to go in
the cavalry. Now he looked like a little old man, so
bent was he by the wound in his hip. He walked
with some difficulty and, as Aunt Pitty had remarked,
spraddled in a very vulgar way. But he seemed totally
1148
�PART FOUR
unaware of his appearance, or unconcerned about it,
and had the manner of one who asks no odds from
any man. He had given up all hope of continuing his
medical studies and was now a contractor, working
a labor crew of Irishmen who were building the new
hotel. Scarlett wondered how he managed so onerous
a job in his condition but asked no questions, realizing
wryly that almost anything was possible when necessity drove.
Tommy and Hugh Elsing and the little monkey-like
Rene Picard stood talking with her while the chairs
and furniture were pushed back to the wall in preparation for the dancing. Hugh had not changed since
Scarlett last saw him in 1862. He was still the thin sensitive boy with the same lock of pale brown hair hanging over his forehead and the same delicate uselesslooking hands she remembered so well. But Rene had
changed since that furlough when he married Maybelle Merriwether. He still had the Gallic twinkle in
his black eyes and the Creole zest for living but, for
all his easy laughter, there was something hard about
his face which had not been there in the early days of
the war. And the air of supercilious elegance which
had clung about him in his striking Zouave uniform
was completely gone.
1149
�PART FOUR
“Cheeks lak ze rose, eyes lak ze emerald!” he said,
kissing Scarlett’s hand and paying tribute to the rouge
upon her face. “Pretty lak w’en I first see you at ze
bazaar. You remembaire? Nevaire have I forgot how
you toss your wedding ring in my basket. Ha, but zat
was brave! But I should nevaire have zink you wait
so long to get anothaire ring!”
His eyes sparkled wickedly and he dug his elbow
into Hugh’s ribs.
“And I never thought you’d be driving a pie wagon,
Renny Picard,” she said. Instead of being ashamed at
having his degrading occupation thrown in his face,
he seemed pleased and laughed uproariously, slapping Hugh on the back.
“Touche!” he cried. “Belle Mere, Madame Merriwether, she mek me do eet, ze first work I do en all
my life, Rene Picard, who was to grow old breeding
ze race horse, playing ze feedle! Now, I drive ze pie
wagon and I lak eet! Madame Belle Mere, she can mek
a man do annyzing. She should have been ze general
and we win ze war, eh, Tommy?”
Well! thought Scarlett. The idea of liking to drive
a pie wagon when his people used to own ten miles
along the Mississippi River and a big house in New
Orleans, too!
1150
�PART FOUR
“If we’d had our mothers-in-law in the ranks, we’d
have beat the Yankees in a week,” agreed Tommy, his
eyes straying to the slender, indomitable form of his
new mother-in-law. “The only reason we lasted as
long as we did was because of the ladies behind us
who wouldn’t give up.”
“Who’ll NEVER give up,” amended Hugh, and his
smile was proud but a little wry. “There’s not a lady
here tonight who has surrendered, no matter what
her men folks did at Appomattox. It’s a lot worse on
them than it ever was on us. At least, we took it out
in fighting.”
“And they in hating,” finished Tommy. “Eh, Scarlett? It bothers the ladies to see what their men folks
have come down to lots more than it bothers us.
Hugh was to be a judge, Rene was to play the fiddle
before the crowned heads of Europe–” He ducked as
Rene aimed a blow at him. “And I was to be a doctor
and now–”
“Geeve us ze time!” cried Rene. “Zen I become ze
Pie Prince of ze South! And my good Hugh ze King
of ze Kindling and you, my Tommy, you weel own ze
Irish slaves instead of ze darky slaves. What changes–
what fun! And what eet do for you, Mees Scarlett, and
Mees Melly? You meelk ze cow, peek ze cotton?”
1151
�PART FOUR
“Indeed, no!” said Scarlett coolly, unable to understand Rene’s gay acceptance of hardships. “Our darkies do that.”
“Mees Melly, I hear she call her boy ‘Beauregard.’
You tell her I, Rene, approve and say that except for
‘Jesus’ there is no bettaire name.”
And though he smiled, his eyes glowed proudly at
the name of Louisiana’s dashing hero.
“Well, there’s ‘Robert Edward Lee,”’ observed
Tommy. “And while I’m not trying to lessen Old
Beau’s reputation, my first son is going to be named
‘Bob Lee Wellburn.”’
Rend laughed and shrugged.
“I recount to you a joke but eet eez a true story. And
you see how Creoles zink of our brave Beauregard
and of your General Lee. On ze train near New Orleans a man of Virginia, a man of General Lee, he
meet wiz a Creole of ze troops of Beauregard. And
ze man of Virginia, he talk, talk, talk how General Lee
do zis, General Lee say zat. And ze Creole, he look
polite and he wreenkle hees forehead lak he try to remembaire, and zen he smile and say: ‘General Lee!
Ah, oui! Now I know! General Lee! Ze man General
Beauregard speak well of!”’
Scarlett tried to join politely in the laughter but she
1152
�PART FOUR
did not see any point to the story except that Creoles were just as stuck up as Charleston and Savannah
people. Moreover, she had always thought Ashley’s
son should have been named after him.
The musicians after preliminary tunings and
whangings broke into “Old Dan Tucker” and Tommy
turned to her.
“Will you dance, Scarlett? I can’t favor you but
Hugh or Rene–”
“No, thank you. I’m still mourning my mother,”
said Scarlett hastily. “I will sit them out.”
Her eyes singled out Frank Kennedy and beckoned
him from the side of Mrs. Elsing.
“I’ll sit in that alcove yonder if you’ll bring me some
refreshments and then we can have a nice chat,” she
told Frank as the other three men moved off.
When he had hurried away to bring her a glass of
wine and a paper thin slice of cake, Scarlett sat down
in the alcove at the end of the drawing room and carefully arranged her skirts so that the worst spots would
not show. The humiliating events of the morning with
Rhett were pushed from her mind by the excitement
of seeing so many people and hearing music again.
Tomorrow she would think of Rhett’s conduct and
her shame and they would make her writhe again.
1153
�PART FOUR
Tomorrow she would wonder if she had made any
impression on Frank’s hurt and bewildered heart. But
not tonight. Tonight she was alive to her finger tips,
every sense alert with hope, her eyes sparkling.
She looked from the alcove into the huge drawing
room and watched the dancers, remembering how
beautiful this room had been when first she came to
Atlanta during the war. Then the hardwood floors
had shone like glass, and overhead the chandelier
with its hundreds of tiny prisms had caught and reflected every ray of the dozens of candles it bore,
flinging them, like gleams from diamonds, flame
and sapphire about the room. The old portraits on
the walls had been dignified and gracious and had
looked down upon guests with an air of mellowed
hospitality. The rosewood sofas had been soft and
inviting and one of them, the largest, had stood in the
place of honor in this same alcove where she now sat.
It had been Scarlett’s favorite seat at parties. From
this point stretched the pleasant vista of drawing
room and dining room beyond, the oval mahogany
table which seated twenty and the twenty slimlegged chairs demurely against the walls, the massive sideboard and buffet weighted with heavy silver,
with seven-branched candlesticks, goblets, cruets, decanters and shining little glasses. Scarlett had sat on
1154
�PART FOUR
that sofa so often in the first years of the war, always
with some handsome officer beside her, and listened
to violin and bull fiddle, accordion and banjo, and
heard the exciting swishing noises which dancing feet
made on the waxed and polished floor.
Now the chandelier hung dark. It was twisted
askew and most of the prisms were broken, as if
the Yankee occupants had made their beauty a target for their boots. Now an oil lamp and a few candles lighted the room and the roaring fire in the wide
hearth gave most of the illumination. Its flickering
light showed how irreparably scarred and splintered
the dull old floor was. Squares on the faded paper
on the wall gave evidence that once the portraits had
hung there, and wide cracks in the plaster recalled
the day during the siege when a shell had exploded
on the house and torn off parts of the roof and second floor. The heavy old mahogany table, spread
with cake and decanters, still presided in the emptylooking dining room but it was scratched and the broken legs showed signs of clumsy repair. The sideboard, the silver and the spindly chairs were gone.
The dull-gold damask draperies which had covered
the arching French windows at the back of the room
were missing, and only the remnants of the lace curtains remained, clean but obviously mended.
1155
�PART FOUR
In place of the curved sofa she had liked so much
was a hard bench that was none too comfortable. She
sat upon it with as good grace as possible, wishing her
skirts were in such condition that she could dance. It
would be so good to dance again. But, of course, she
could do more with Frank in this sequestered alcove
than in a breathless reel and she could listen fascinated to his talk and encourage him to greater flights
of foolishness.
But the music certainly was inviting. Her slipper
patted longingly in time with old Levi’s large splayed
foot as he twanged a strident banjo and called the figures of the reel. Feet swished and scraped and patted
as the twin lines danced toward each other, retreated,
whirled and made arches of their arms.
“‘Ole Dan Tucker he got drunk–’ (Swing yo’ padners!) ‘Fell in de fiah’ an’ he kick up a chunk!’ (Skip
light, ladies!)”
After the dull and exhausting months at Tara it was
good to hear music again and the sound of dancing
feet, good to see familiar friendly faces laughing in
the feeble light, calling old jokes and catchwords, bantering, rallying, coquetting. It was like coming to life
again after being dead. It almost seemed that the
bright days of five years ago had come back again. If
1156
�PART FOUR
she could close her eyes and not see the worn madeover dresses and the patched boots and mended slippers, if her mind did not call up the faces of boys missing from the reel, she might almost think that nothing had changed. But as she looked, watching the old
men grouped about the decanter in the dining room,
the matrons lining the walls, talking behind fanless
hands, and the swaying, skipping young dancers, it
came to her suddenly, coldly, frighteningly that it was
all as greatly changed as if these familiar figures were
ghosts.
They looked the same but they were different. What
was it? Was it only that they were five years older?
No, it was something more than the passing of time.
Something had gone out of them, out of their world.
Five years ago, a feeling of security had wrapped
them all around so gently they were not even aware
of it. In its shelter they had flowered. Now it was
gone and with it had gone the old thrill, the old sense
of something delightful and exciting just around the
corner, the old glamor of their way of living.
She knew she had changed too, but not as they had
changed, and it puzzled her. She sat and watched
them and she felt herself an alien among them, as
alien and lonely as if she had come from another
1157
�PART FOUR
world, speaking a language they did not understand
and she not understanding theirs. Then she knew that
this feeling was the same one she felt with Ashley.
With him and with people of his kind–and they made
up most of her world–she felt outside of something
she could not understand.
Their faces were little changed and their manners
not at all but it seemed to her that these two things
were all that remained of her old friends. An ageless dignity, a timeless gallantry still clung about them
and would cling until they died but they would carry
undying bitterness to their graves, a bitterness too
deep for words. They were a soft-spoken, fierce, tired
people who were defeated and would not know defeat, broken yet standing determinedly erect. They
were crushed and helpless, citizens of conquered
provinces. They were looking on the state they loved,
seeing it trampled by the enemy, rascals making a
mock of the law, their former slaves a menace, their
men disfranchised, their women insulted. And they
were remembering graves.
Everything in their old world had changed but the
old forms. The old usages went on, must go on, for
the forms were all that were left to them. They were
holding tightly to the things they knew best and loved
1158
�PART FOUR
best in the old days, the leisured manners, the courtesy, the pleasant casualness in human contacts and,
most of all, the protecting attitude of the men toward
their women. True to the tradition in which they
had been reared, the men were courteous and tender
and they almost succeeded in creating an atmosphere
of sheltering their women from all that was harsh
and unfit for feminine eyes. That, thought Scarlett,
was the height of absurdity, for there was little, now,
which even the most cloistered women had not seen
and known in the last five years. They had nursed the
wounded, closed dying eyes, suffered war and fire
and devastation, known terror and flight and starvation.
But, no matter what sights they had seen, what
menial tasks they had done and would have to do,
they remained ladies and gentlemen, royalty in exile–
bitter, aloof, incurious, kind to one another, diamond
hard, as bright and brittle as the crystals of the broken chandelier over their heads. The old days had
gone but these people would go their ways as if the
old days still existed, charming, leisurely, determined
not to rush and scramble for pennies as the Yankees
did, determined to part with none of the old ways.
Scarlett knew that she, too, was greatly changed.
1159
�PART FOUR
Otherwise she could not have done the things she
had done since she was last in Atlanta; otherwise she
would not now be contemplating doing what she desperately hoped to do. But there was a difference in
their hardness and hers and just what the difference
was, she could not, for the moment, tell. Perhaps it
was that there was nothing she would not do, and
there were so many things these people would rather
die than do. Perhaps it was that they were without
hope but still smiling at life, bowing gracefully and
passing it by. And this Scarlett could not do.
She could not ignore life. She had to live it and it
was too brutal, too hostile, for her even to try to gloss
over its harshness with a smile. Of the sweetness and
courage and unyielding pride of her friends, Scarlett
saw nothing. She saw only a silly stiff-neckedness
which observed facts but smiled and refused to look
them in the face.
As she stared at the dancers, flushed from the reel,
she wondered if things drove them as she was driven,
dead lovers, maimed husbands, children who were
hungry, acres slipping away, beloved roofs that sheltered strangers. But, of course, they were driven! She
knew their circumstances only a little less thoroughly
than she knew her own. Their losses had been her
1160
�PART FOUR
losses, their privations her privations, their problems
her same problems. Yet they had reacted differently to
them. The faces she was seeing in the room were not
faces; they were masks, excellent masks which would
never drop.
But if they were suffering as acutely from brutal
circumstances as she was–and they were–how could
they maintain this air of gaiety and lightness of heart?
Why, indeed, should they even try to do it? They
were beyond her comprehension and vaguely irritating. She couldn’t be like them. She couldn’t survey
the wreck of the world with an air of casual unconcern. She was as hunted as a fox, running with a
bursting heart, trying to reach a burrow before the
hounds caught up.
Suddenly she hated them all because they were different from her, because they carried their losses with
an air that she could never attain, would never wish
to attain. She hated them, these smiling, light-footed
strangers, these proud fools who took pride in something they had lost, seeming to be proud that they had
lost it. The women bore themselves like ladies and
she knew they were ladies, though menial tasks were
their daily lot and they didn’t know where their next
dress was coming from. Ladies all! But she could not
1161
�PART FOUR
feel herself a lady, for all her velvet dress and scented
hair, for all the pride of birth that stood behind her
and the pride of wealth that had once been hers.
Harsh contact with the red earth of Tara had stripped
gentility from her and she knew she would never feel
like a lady again until her table was weighted with silver and crystal and smoking with rich food, until her
own horses and carriages stood in her stables, until
black hands and not white took the cotton from Tara.
“Ah!” she thought angrily, sucking in her breath.
“That’s the difference! Even though they’re poor,
they still feel like ladies and I don’t. The silly fools
don’t seem to realize that you can’t be a lady without
money!”
Even in this flash of revelation, she realized vaguely
that, foolish though they seemed, theirs was the right
attitude. Ellen would have thought so. This disturbed
her. She knew she should feel as these people felt, but
she could not. She knew she should believe devoutly,
as they did, that a born lady remained a lady, even
if reduced to poverty, but she could not make herself
believe it now.
All her life she had heard sneers hurled at the Yankees because their pretensions to gentility were based
on wealth, not breeding. But at this moment, heresy
1162
�PART FOUR
though it was, she could not help thinking the Yankees were right on this one matter, even if wrong in
all others. It took money to be a lady. She knew Ellen
would have fainted had she ever heard such words
from her daughter. No depth of poverty could ever
have made Ellen feel ashamed. Ashamed! Yes, that
was how Scarlett felt. Ashamed that she was poor
and reduced to galling shifts and penury and work
that negroes should do.
She shrugged in irritation. Perhaps these people
were right and she was wrong but, just the same,
these proud fools weren’t looking forward as she was
doing, straining every nerve, risking even honor and
good name to get back what they had lost. It was
beneath the dignity of any of them to indulge in a
scramble for money. The times were rude and hard.
They called for rude and hard struggle if one was
to conquer them. Scarlett knew that family tradition
would forcibly restrain many of these people from
such a struggle– with the making of money admittedly its aim. They all thought that obvious moneymaking and even talk of money were vulgar in the
extreme. Of course, there were exceptions. Mrs. Merriwether and her baking and Rene driving the pie
wagon. And Hugh Elsing cutting and peddling firewood and Tommy contracting. And Frank having the
1163
�PART FOUR
gumption to start a store. But what of the rank and
file of them? The planters would scratch a few acres
and live in poverty. The lawyers and doctors would
go back to their professions and wait for clients who
might never come. And the rest, those who had lived
in leisure on their incomes? What would happen to
them?
But she wasn’t going to be poor all her life. She
wasn’t going to sit down and patiently wait for a miracle to help her. She was going to rush into life and
wrest from it what she could. Her father had started
as a poor immigrant boy and had won the broad acres
of Tara. What he had done, his daughter could do.
She wasn’t like these people who had gambled everything on a Cause that was gone and were content
to be proud of having lost that Cause, because it was
worth any sacrifice. They drew their courage from the
past. She was drawing hers from the future. Frank
Kennedy, at present, was her future. At least, he had
the store and he had cash money. And if she could
only marry him and get her hands on that money, she
could make ends meet at Tara for another year. And
after that–Frank must buy the sawmill. She could see
for herself how quickly the town was rebuilding and
anyone who could establish a lumber business now,
when there was so little competition, would have a
1164
�PART FOUR
gold mine.
There came to her, from the recesses of her mind,
words Rhett had spoken in the early years of the war
about the money he made in the blockade. She had
not taken the trouble to understand them then, but
now they seemed perfectly clear and she wondered if
it had been only her youth or plain stupidity which
had kept her from appreciating them.
“There’s just as much money to be made in the
wreck of a civilization as in the upbuilding of one.”
“This is the wreck he foresaw,” she thought, “and he
was right. There’s still plenty of money to be made by
anyone who isn’t afraid to work–or to grab.”
She saw Frank coming across the floor toward her
with a glass of blackberry wine in his hand and a
morsel of cake on a saucer and she pulled her face
into a smile. It did not occur to her to question
whether Tara was worth marrying Frank. She knew it
was worth it and she never gave the matter a second
thought.
She smiled up at him as she sipped the wine, knowing that her cheeks were more attractively pink than
any of the dancers’. She moved her skirts for him to
sit by her and waved her handkerchief idly so that the
faint sweet smell of the cologne could reach his nose.
1165
�PART FOUR
She was proud of the cologne, for no other woman in
the room was wearing any and Frank had noticed it.
In a fit of daring he had whispered to her that she was
as pink and fragrant as a rose.
If only he were not so shy! He reminded her of
a timid old brown field rabbit. If only he had the
gallantry and ardor of the Tarleton boys or even the
coarse impudence of Rhett Butler. But, if he possessed
those qualities, he’d probably have sense enough to
feel the desperation that lurked just beneath her demurely fluttering eyelids. As it was, he didn’t know
enough about women even to suspect what she was
up to. That was her good fortune but it did not increase her respect for him.
1166
�CHAPTER XXXVI
Kennedy two weeks later after a
whirlwind courtship which she blushingly told him
left her too breathless to oppose his ardor any longer.
He did not know that during those two weeks she
had walked the floor at night, gritting her teeth at the
slowness with which he took hints and encouragements, praying that no untimely letter from Suellen
would reach him and ruin her plans. She thanked
God that her sister was the poorest of correspondents, delighting to receive letters and disliking to
write them. But there was always a chance, always
a chance, she thought in the long night hours as she
padded back and forth across the cold floor of her
bedroom, with Ellen’s faded shawl clutched about her
nightdress. Frank did not know she had received a
laconic letter from Will, relating that Jonas Wilkerson
had paid another call at Tara and, finding her gone
to Atlanta, had stormed about until Will and Ashley threw him bodily off the place. Will’s letter hammered into her mind the fact she knew only too well–
that time was getting shorter and shorter before the
extra taxes must be paid. A fierce desperation drove
her as she saw the days slipping by and she wished
she might grasp the hourglass in her hands and keep
S HE
MARRIED
F RANK
�PART FOUR
the sands from running.
But so well did she conceal her feelings, so well
did she enact her role, Frank suspected nothing, saw
no more than what lay on the surface–the pretty
and helpless young widow of Charles Hamilton who
greeted him every night in Miss Pittypat’s parlor and
listened, breathless with admiration, as he told of future plans for his store and how much money he expected to make when he was able to buy the sawmill.
Her sweet sympathy and her bright-eyed interest in
every word he uttered were balm upon the wound
left by Suellen’s supposed defection. His heart was
sore and bewildered at Suellen’s conduct and his vanity, the shy, touchy vanity of a middle-aged bachelor who knows himself to be unattractive to women,
was deeply wounded. He could not write Suellen,
upbraiding her for her faithlessness; he shrank from
the very idea. But he could ease his heart by talking
about her to Scarlett. Without saying a disloyal word
about Suellen, she could tell him she understood how
badly her sister had treated him and what good treatment he merited from a woman who really appreciated him.
Little Mrs. Hamilton was such a pretty pinkcheeked person, alternating between melancholy
1168
�PART FOUR
sighs when she thought of her sad plight, and laughter as gay and sweet as the tinkling of tiny silver bells
when he made small jokes to cheer her. Her green
gown, now neatly cleaned by Mammy, showed off
her slender figure with its tiny waist to perfection,
and how bewitching was the faint fragrance which
always clung about her handkerchief and her hair!
It was a shame that such a fine little woman should
be alone and helpless in a world so rough that she
didn’t even understand its harshness. No husband
nor brother nor even a father now to protect her.
Frank thought the world too rude a place for a lone
woman and, in that idea, Scarlett silently and heartily
concurred.
He came to call every night, for the atmosphere of
Pitty’s house was pleasant and soothing. Mammy’s
smile at the front door was the smile reserved for
quality folks, Pitty served him coffee laced with
brandy and fluttered about him and Scarlett hung on
his every utterance. Sometimes in the afternoons he
took Scarlett riding with him in his buggy when he
went out on business. These rides were merry affairs because she asked so many foolish questions–
“just like a woman,” he told himself approvingly. He
couldn’t help laughing at her ignorance about business matters and she laughed too, saying: “Well, of
1169
�PART FOUR
course, you can’t expect a silly little woman like me
to understand men’s affairs.”
She made him feel, for the first time in his oldmaidish life, that he was a strong upstanding man
fashioned by God in a nobler mold than other men,
fashioned to protect silly helpless women.
When, at last, they stood together to be married, her
confiding little hand in his and her downcast lashes
throwing thick black crescents on her pink cheeks, he
still did not know how it all came about. He only
knew he had done something romantic and exciting
for the first time in his life. He, Frank Kennedy, had
swept this lovely creature off her feet and into his
strong arms. That was a heady feeling.
No friend or relative stood up with them at their
marriage. The witnesses were strangers called in from
the street. Scarlett had insisted on that and he had
given in, though reluctantly, for he would have liked
his sister and his brother-in-law from Jonesboro to be
with him. And a reception with toasts drunk to the
bride in Miss Pitty’s parlor amid happy friends would
have been a joy to him. But Scarlett would not hear of
even Miss Pitty being present.
“Just us two, Frank,” she begged, squeezing his arm.
“Like an elopement. I always did want to run away
1170
�PART FOUR
and be married! Please, sweetheart, just for me!”
It was that endearing term, still so new to his ears,
and the bright teardrops which edged her pale green
eyes as she looked up pleadingly at him that won him
over. After all, a man had to make some concessions
to his bride, especially about the wedding, for women
set such a store by sentimental things.
And before he knew it, he was married.
Frank gave her the three hundred dollars, bewildered by her sweet urgency, reluctant at first, because
it meant the end of his hope of buying the sawmill
immediately. But he could not see her family evicted,
and his disappointment soon faded at the sight of her
radiant happiness, disappeared entirely at the loving
way she “took on” over his generosity. Frank had
never before had a woman “take on” over him and
he came to feel that the money had been well spent,
after all.
Scarlett dispatched Mammy to Tara immediately for
the triple purpose of giving Will the money, announcing her marriage and bringing Wade to Atlanta. In
two days she had a brief note from Will which she carried about with her and read and reread with mounting joy. Will wrote that the taxes had been paid and
Jonas Wilkerson “acted up pretty bad” at the news but
1171
�PART FOUR
had made no other threats so far. Will closed by wishing her happiness, a laconic formal statement which
he qualified in no way. She knew Will understood
what she had done and why she had done it and
neither blamed nor praised. But what must Ashley
think? she wondered feverishly. What must he think
of me now, after what I said to him so short a while
ago in the orchard at Tara?
She also had a letter from Suellen, poorly spelled, violent, abusive, tear splotched, a letter so full of venom
and truthful observations upon her character that she
was never to forget it nor forgive the writer. But
even Suellen’s words could not dim her happiness
that Tara was safe, at least from immediate danger.
It was hard to realize that Atlanta and not Tara was
her permanent home now. In her desperation to obtain the tax money, no thought save Tara and the
fate which threatened it had any place in her mind.
Even at the moment of marriage, she had not given a
thought to the fact that the price she was paying for
the safety of home was permanent exile from it. Now
that the deed was done, she realized this with a wave
of homesickness hard to dispel. But there it was. She
had made her bargain and she intended to stand by it.
And she was so grateful to Frank for saving Tara she
1172
�PART FOUR
felt a warm affection for him and an equally warm
determination that he should never regret marrying
her.
The ladies of Atlanta knew their neighbors’ business only slightly less completely than they knew
their own and were far more interested in it. They
all knew that for years Frank Kennedy had had an
“understanding” with Suellen O’Hara. In fact, he had
said, sheepishly, that he expected to get married in
the spring. So the tumult of gossip, surmise and deep
suspicion which followed the announcement of his
quiet wedding to Scarlett was not surprising. Mrs.
Merriwether, who never let her curiosity go long unsatisfied if she could help it, asked him point-blank
just what he meant by marrying one sister when he
was betrothed to the other. She reported to Mrs. Elsing that all the answer she got for her pains was a
silly look. Not even Mrs. Merriwether, doughty soul
that she was, dared to approach Scarlett on the subject. Scarlett seemed demure and sweet enough these
days, but there was a pleased complacency in her eyes
which annoyed people and she carried a chip on her
shoulder which no one cared to disturb.
She knew Atlanta was talking but she did not care.
Alter all, there wasn’t anything immoral in marrying
1173
�PART FOUR
a man. Tara was safe. Let people talk. She had too
many other matters to occupy her mind. The most
important was how to make Frank realize, in a tactful
manner, that his store should bring in more money.
After the fright Jonas Wilkerson had given her, she
would never rest easy until she and Frank had some
money ahead. And even if no emergency developed,
Frank would need to make more money, if she was
going to save enough for next year’s taxes. Moreover, what Frank had said about the sawmill stuck
in her mind. Frank could make lots of money out of a
mill. Anybody could, with lumber selling at such outrageous prices. She fretted silently because Frank’s
money had not been enough to pay the taxes on Tara
and buy the mill as well. And she made up her mind
that he had to make more money on the store somehow, and do it quickly, so he could buy that mill before some one else snapped it up. She could see it was
a bargain.
If she were a man she would have that mill, if she
had to mortgage the store to raise the money. But,
when she intimated this delicately to Frank, the day
after they married, he smiled and told her not to
bother her sweet pretty little head about business
matters. It had come as a surprise to him that she
even knew what a mortgage was and, at first, he was
1174
�PART FOUR
amused. But this amusement quickly passed and a
sense of shock took its place in the early days of their
marriage. Once, incautiously, he had told her that
“people” (he was careful not to mention names) owed
him money but could not pay just now and he was, of
course, unwilling to press old friends and gentlefolk.
Frank regretted ever mentioning it for, thereafter, she
had questioned him about it again and again. She
had the most charmingly childlike air but she was just
curious, she said, to know who owed him and how
much they owed. Frank was very evasive about the
matter. He coughed nervously and waved his hands
and repeated his annoying remark about her sweet
pretty little head.
It had begun to dawn on him that this same sweet
pretty little head was a “good head for figures.” In
fact, a much better one than his own and the knowledge was disquieting. He was thunderstruck to discover that she could swiftly add a long column of figures in her head when he needed a pencil and paper for more than three figures. And fractions presented no difficulties to her at all. He felt there was
something unbecoming about a woman understanding fractions and business matters and he believed
that, should a woman be so unfortunate as to have
such unladylike comprehension, she should pretend
1175
�PART FOUR
not to. Now he disliked talking business with her as
much as he had enjoyed it before they were married.
Then he had thought it all beyond her mental grasp
and it had been pleasant to explain things to her. Now
he saw that she understood entirely too well and he
felt the usual masculine indignation at the duplicity
of women. Added to it was the usual masculine disillusionment in discovering that a woman has a brain.
Just how early in his married life Frank learned of
the deception Scarlett had used in marrying him, no
one ever knew. Perhaps the truth dawned on him
when Tony Fontaine, obviously fancy free, came to
Atlanta on business. Perhaps it was told him more directly in letters from his sister in Jonesboro who was
astounded at his marriage. Certainly he never learned
from Suellen herself. She never wrote him and naturally he could not write her and explain. What good
would explanations do anyway, now that he was married? He writhed inwardly at the thought that Suellen
would never know the truth and would always think
he had senselessly jilted her. Probably everyone else
was thinking this too and criticizing him. It certainly
put him in an awkward position. And he had no way
of clearing himself, for a man couldn’t go about saying he had lost his head about a woman–and a gentleman couldn’t advertise the fact that his wife had
1176
�PART FOUR
entrapped him with a lie.
Scarlett was his wife and a wife was entitled to the
loyalty of her husband. Furthermore, he could not
bring himself to believe she had married him coldly
and with no affection for him at all. His masculine
vanity would not permit such a thought to stay long
in his mind. It was more pleasant to think she had
fallen so suddenly in love with him she had been willing to lie to get him. But it was all very puzzling. He
knew he was no great catch for a woman half his age
and pretty and smart to boot, but Frank was a gentleman and he kept his bewilderment to himself. Scarlett was his wife and he could not insult her by asking
awkward questions which, after all, would not remedy matters.
Not that Frank especially wanted to remedy matters, for it appeared that his marriage would be a
happy one. Scarlett was the most charming and exciting of women and he thought her perfect in all
things–except that she was so headstrong. Frank
learned early in his marriage that so long as she had
her own way, life could be very pleasant, but when
she was opposed– Given her own way, she was as
gay as a child, laughed a good deal, made foolish little
jokes, sat on his knee and tweaked his beard until he
1177
�PART FOUR
vowed he felt twenty years younger. She could be unexpectedly sweet and thoughtful, having his slippers
toasting at the fire when he came home at night, fussing affectionately about his wet feet and interminable
head colds, remembering that he always liked the gizzard of the chicken and three spoonfuls of sugar in
his coffee. Yes, life was very sweet and cozy with
Scarlett–as long as she had her own way.
When the marriage was two weeks old, Frank contracted the grippe and Dr. Meade put him to bed. In
the first year of the war, Frank had spent two months
in the hospital with pneumonia and he had lived in
dread of another attack since that time, so he was
only too glad to lie sweating under three blankets
and drink the hot concoctions Mammy and Aunt Pitty
brought him every hour.
The illness dragged on and Frank worried more and
more about the store as each day passed. The place
was in charge of the counter boy, who came to the
house every night to report on the day’s transactions,
but Frank was not satisfied. He fretted until Scarlett
who had only been waiting for such an opportunity
laid a cool hand on his forehead and said: “Now,
sweetheart, I shall be vexed if you take on so. I’ll go
to town and see how things are.”
1178
�PART FOUR
And she went, smiling as she smothered his feeble
protests. During the three weeks of her new marriage,
she had been in a fever to see his account books and
find out just how money matters stood. What luck
that he was bedridden!
The store stood near Five Points, its new roof glaring
against the smoked bricks of the old walls. Wooden
awnings covered the sidewalk to the edge of the
street, and at the long iron bars connecting the uprights horses and mules were hitched, their heads
bowed against the cold misty rain, their backs covered with torn blankets and quilts. The inside of
the store was almost like Bullard’s store in Jonesboro, except that there were no loungers about the
roaring red-hot stove, whittling and spitting streams
of tobacco juice at the sand boxes. It was bigger
than Bullard’s store and much darker. The wooden
awnings cut off most of the winter daylight and the
interior was dim and dingy, only a trickle of light
coming in through the small fly-specked windows
high up on the side walls. The floor was covered with
muddy sawdust and everywhere was dust and dirt.
There was a semblance of order in the front of the
store, where tall shelves rose into the gloom stacked
with bright bolts of cloth, china, cooking utensils and
notions. But in the back, behind the partition, chaos
1179
�PART FOUR
reigned.
Here there was no flooring and the assorted jumble
of stock was piled helter-skelter on the hard-packed
earth. In the semi- darkness she saw boxes and bales
of goods, plows and harness and saddles and cheap
pine coffins. Secondhand furniture, ranging from
cheap gum to mahogany and rosewood, reared up in
the gloom, and the rich but worn brocade and horsehair upholstery gleamed incongruously in the dingy
surroundings. China chambers and bowl and pitcher
sets littered the floor and all around the four walls
were deep bins, so dark she had to hold the lamp
directly over them to discover they contained seeds,
nails, bolts and carpenters’ tools.
“I’d think a man as fussy and old maidish as Frank
would keep things tidier,” she thought, scrubbing her
grimy hands with her handkerchief. “This place is a
pig pen. What a way to run a store! If he’d only dust
up this stuff and put it out in front where folks could
see it, he could sell things much quicker.”
And if his stock was in such condition, what mustn’t
his accounts be!
I’ll look at his account book now, she thought and,
picking up the lamp, she went into the front of the
store. Willie, the counter boy, was reluctant to give
1180
�PART FOUR
her the large dirty-backed ledger. It was obvious
that, young as he was, he shared Frank’s opinion that
women had no place in business. But Scarlett silenced
him with a sharp word and sent him out to get his dinner. She felt better when he was gone, for his disapproval annoyed her, and she settled herself in a splitbottomed chair by the roaring stove, tucked one foot
under her and spread the book across her lap. It was
dinner time and the streets were deserted. No customers called and she had the store to herself.
She turned the pages slowly, narrowly scanning the
rows of names and figures written in Frank’s cramped
copperplate hand. It was just as she had expected,
and she frowned as she saw this newest evidence of
Frank’s lack of business sense. At least five hundred
dollars in debts, some of them months old, were set
down against the names of people she knew well,
the Merriwethers and the Elsings among other familiar names. From Frank’s deprecatory remarks about
the money “people” owed him, she had imagined the
sums to be small. But this!
“If they can’t pay, why do they keep on buying?”
she thought irritably. “And if he knows they can’t pay,
why does he keep on selling them stuff? Lots of them
could pay if he’d just make them do it. The Elsings
1181
�PART FOUR
certainly could if they could give Fanny a new satin
dress and an expensive wedding. Frank’s just too soft
hearted, and people take advantage of him. Why, if
he’d collected half this money, he could have bought
the sawmill and easily spared me the tax money, too.”
Then she thought: “Just imagine Frank trying to operate a sawmill! God’s nightgown! If he runs this
store like a charitable institution, how could he expect
to make money on a mill? The sheriff would have it
in a month. Why, I could run this store better than
he does! And I could run a mill better than he could,
even if I don’t know anything about the lumber business!”
A startling thought this, that a woman could handle
business matters as well as or better than a man, a revolutionary thought to Scarlett who had been reared in
the tradition that men were omniscient and women
none too bright. Of course, she had discovered that
this was not altogether true but the pleasant fiction
still stuck in her mind. Never before had she put this
remarkable idea into words. She sat quite still, with
the heavy book across her lap, her mouth a little open
with surprise, thinking that during the lean months at
Tara she had done a man’s work and done it well. She
had been brought up to believe that a woman alone
1182
�PART FOUR
could accomplish nothing, yet she had managed the
plantation without men to help her until Will came.
Why, why, her mind stuttered, I believe women could
manage everything in the world without men’s help–
except having babies, and God knows, no woman in
her right mind would have babies if she could help it.
With the idea that she was as capable as a man came
a sudden rush of pride and a violent longing to prove
it, to make money for herself as men made money.
Money which would be her own, which she would
neither have to ask for nor account for to any man.
“I wish I had money enough to buy that mill myself,” she said aloud and sighed. “I’d sure make it
hum. And I wouldn’t let even one splinter go out on
credit.”
She sighed again. There was nowhere she could get
any money, so the idea was out of the question. Frank
would simply have to collect this money owing him
and buy the mill. It was a sure way to make money,
and when he got the mill, she would certainly find
some way to make him be more businesslike in its operation than he had been with the store.
She pulled a back page out of the ledger and began
copying the list of debtors who had made no payments in several months. She’d take the matter up
1183
�PART FOUR
with Frank just as soon as she reached home. She’d
make him realize that these people had to pay their
bills even if they were old friends, even if it did embarrass him to press them for money. That would
probably upset Frank, for he was timid and fond of
the approbation of his friends. He was so thin skinned
he’d rather lose the money than be businesslike about
collecting it.
And he’d probably tell her that no one had any
money with which to pay him. Well, perhaps that
was true. Poverty was certainly no news to her. But
nearly everybody had saved some silver or jewelry or
was hanging on to a little real estate. Frank could take
them in lieu of cash.
She could imagine how Frank would moan when
she broached such an idea to him. Take the jewelry
and property of his friends! Well, she shrugged, he
can moan all he likes. I’m going to tell him that he
may be willing to stay poor for friendship’s sake but
I’m not. Frank will never get anywhere if he doesn’t
get up some gumption. And he’s got to get somewhere! He’s got to make money, even if I’ve got to
wear the pants in the family to make him do.
She was writing busily, her face screwed up with the
effort, her tongue clamped between her teeth, when
1184
�PART FOUR
the front door opened and a great draft of cold wind
swept the store. A tall man came into the dingy room
walking with a light Indian-like tread, and looking up
she saw Rhett Butler.
He was resplendent in new clothes and a greatcoat with a dashing cape thrown back from his heavy
shoulders. His tall hat was off in a deep bow when her
eyes met his and his hand went to the bosom of a spotless pleated shirt. His white teeth gleamed startlingly
against his brown face and his bold eyes raked her.
“My dear Mrs. Kennedy,” he said, walking toward
her. “My very dear Mrs. Kennedy!” and he broke
into a loud merry laugh.
At first she was as startled as if a ghost had invaded
the store and then, hastily removing her foot from beneath her, she stiffened her spine and gave him a cold
stare.
“What are you doing here?”
“I called on Miss Pittypat and learned of your marriage and so I hastened here to congratulate you.”
The memory of her humiliation at his hands made
her go crimson with shame.
“I don’t see how you have the gall to face me!” she
cried.
1185
�PART FOUR
“On the contrary! How have you the gall to face
me?”
“Oh, you are the most–”
“Shall we let the bugles sing truce?” he smiled down
at her, a wide flashing smile that had impudence in it
but no shame for his own actions or condemnation
for hers. In spite of herself, she had to smile too, but
it was a wry, uncomfortable smile.
“What a pity they didn’t hang you!”
“Others share your feeling, I fear. Come, Scarlett,
relax. You look like you’d swallowed a ramrod and
it isn’t becoming. Surely, you’ve had time to recover
from my–er–my little joke.”
“Joke? Ha! I’ll never get over it!”
“Oh, yes, you will. You are just putting on this indignant front because you think it’s proper and respectable. May I sit down?”
“No.”
He sank into a chair beside her and grinned.
“I hear you couldn’t even wait two weeks for me,”
he said and gave a mock sigh. “How fickle is
woman!”
When she did not reply he continued.
“Tell me, Scarlett, just between friends–between
1186
�PART FOUR
very old and very intimate friends–wouldn’t it have
been wiser to wait until I got out of jail? Or are the
charms of wedlock with old Frank Kennedy more alluring than illicit relations with me?”
As always when his mockery aroused wrath within
her, wrath fought with laughter at his impudence.
“Don’t be absurd.”
“And would you mind satisfying my curiosity on
one point which has bothered me for some time?
Did you have no womanly repugnance, no delicate
shrinking from marrying not just one man but two for
whom you had no love or even affection? Or have I
been misinformed about the delicacy of our Southern
womanhood?”
“Rhett!”
“I have my answer. I always felt that women had
a hardness and endurance unknown to men, despite
the pretty idea taught me in childhood that women
are frail, tender, sensitive creatures. But after all, according to the Continental code of etiquette, it’s very
bad form for husband and wife to love each other.
Very bad taste, indeed. I always felt that the Europeans had the right idea in that matter. Marry for
convenience and love for pleasure. A sensible system,
don’t you think? You are closer to the old country
1187
�PART FOUR
than I thought.”
How pleasant it would be to shout at him: “I did not
marry for convenience!” But unfortunately, Rhett had
her there and any protest of injured innocence would
only bring more barbed remarks from him.
“How you do run on,” she said coolly. Anxious to
change the subject, she asked: “How did you ever get
out of jail?”
“Oh, that!” he answered, making an airy gesture.
“Not much trouble. They let me out this morning. I
employed a delicate system of blackmail on a friend
in Washington who is quite high in the councils of
the Federal government. A splendid fellow–one of
the staunch Union patriots from whom I used to buy
muskets and hoop skirts for the Confederacy. When
my distressing predicament was brought to his attention in the right way, he hastened to use his influence,
and so I was released. Influence is everything, and
guilt or innocence merely an academic question.”
“I’ll take oath you weren’t innocent.”
“No, now that I am free of the toils, I’ll frankly admit that I’m as guilty as Cain. I did kill the nigger. He
was uppity to a lady, and what else could a Southern
gentleman do? And while I’m confessing, I must admit that I shot a Yankee cavalryman after some words
1188
�PART FOUR
in a barroom. I was not charged with that peccadillo,
so perhaps some other poor devil has been hanged for
it, long since.”
He was so blithe about his murders her blood
chilled. Words of moral indignation rose to her lips
but suddenly she remembered the Yankee who lay
under the tangle of scuppernong vines at Tara. He
had not been on her conscience any more than a roach
upon which she might have stepped. She could not sit
in judgment on Rhett when she was as guilty as he.
“And, as I seem to be making a clean breast of it,
I must tell you, in strictest confidence (that means,
don’t tell Miss Pittypat!) that I did have the money,
safe in a bank in Liverpool.”
“The money?”
“Yes, the money the Yankees were so curious about.
Scarlett, it wasn’t altogether meanness that kept me
from giving you the money you wanted. If I’d drawn
a draft they could have traced it somehow and I doubt
if you’d have gotten a cent. My only hope lay in doing nothing. I knew the money was pretty safe, for if
worst came to worst, if they had located it and tried
to take it away from me, I would have named every
Yankee patriot who sold me bullets and machinery
during the war. Then there would have been a stink,
1189
�PART FOUR
for some of them are high up in Washington now.
In fact, it was my threat to unbosom my conscience
about them that got me out of jail. I–”
“Do you mean you–you actually have the Confederate gold?”
“Not all of it. Good Heavens, no! There must be
fifty or more ex- blockaders who have plenty salted
away in Nassau and England and Canada. We will be
pretty unpopular with the Confederates who weren’t
as slick as we were. I have got close to half a million.
Just think, Scarlett, a half-million dollars, if you’d
only restrained your fiery nature and not rushed into
wedlock again!”
A half-million dollars. She felt a pang of almost
physical sickness at the thought of so much money.
His jeering words passed over her head and she did
not even hear them. It was hard to believe there was
so much money in all this bitter and poverty- stricken
world. So much money, so very much money, and
someone else had it, someone who took it lightly and
didn’t need it. And she had only a sick elderly husband and this dirty, piddling, little store between her
and a hostile world. It wasn’t fair that a reprobate like
Rhett Butler should have so much and she, who carried so heavy a load, should have so little. She hated
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him, sitting there in his dandified attire, taunting her.
Well, she wouldn’t swell his conceit by complimenting him on his cleverness. She longed viciously for
sharp words with which to cut him.
“I suppose you think it’s honest to keep the Confederate money. Well, it isn’t. It’s plain out and out
stealing and you know it. I wouldn’t have that on my
conscience.”
“My! How sour the grapes are today!” he exclaimed, screwing up his face. “And just whom am
I stealing from?”
She was silent, trying to think just whom indeed.
After all, he had only done what Frank had done on a
small scale.
“Half the money is honestly mine,” he continued,
“honestly made with the aid of honest Union patriots who were willing to sell out the Union behind its
back–for one-hundred-per-cent profit on their goods.
Part I made out of my little investment in cotton at
the beginning of the war, the cotton I bought cheap
and sold for a dollar a pound when the British mills
were crying for it. Part I got from food speculation.
Why should I let the Yankees have the fruits of my labor? But the rest did belong to the Confederacy. It
came from Confederate cotton which I managed to
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run through the blockade and sell in Liverpool at skyhigh prices. The cotton was given me in good faith
to buy leather and rifles and machinery with. And it
was taken by me in good faith to buy the same. My
orders were to leave the gold in English banks, under my own name, in order that my credit would be
good. You remember when the blockade tightened,
I couldn’t get a boat out of any Confederate port or
into one, so there the money stayed in England. What
should I have done? Drawn out all that gold from English banks, like a simpleton, and tried to run it into
Wilmington? And let the Yankees capture it? Was it
my fault that the blockade got too tight? Was it my
fault that our Cause failed? The money belonged to
the Confederacy. Well, there is no Confederacy now–
though you’d never know it, to hear some people talk.
Whom shall I give the money to? The Yankee government? I should so hate for people to think me a thief.”
He removed a leather case from his pocket, extracted a long cigar and smelled it approvingly, meanwhile watching her with pseudo anxiety as if he hung
on her words.
Plague take him, she thought, he’s always one jump
ahead of me. There is always something wrong with
his arguments but I never can put my finger on just
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what it is.
“You might,” she said with dignity, “distribute it
to those who are in need. The Confederacy is gone
but there are plenty of Confederates and their families who are starving.”
He threw back his bead and laughed rudely.
“You are never so charming or so absurd as when
you are airing some hypocrisy like that,” he cried
in frank enjoyment. “Always tell the truth, Scarlett.
You can’t lie. The Irish are the poorest liars in the
world. Come now, be frank. You never gave a damn
about the late lamented Confederacy and you care
less about the starving Confederates. You’d scream in
protest if I even suggested giving away all the money
unless I started off by giving you the lion’s share.”
“I don’t want your money,” she began, trying to be
coldly dignified.
“Oh, don’t you! Your palm is itching to beat the
band this minute. If I showed you a quarter, you’d
leap on it.”
“If you have come here to insult me and laugh at
my poverty, I will wish you good day,” she retorted,
trying to rid her lap of the heavy ledger so she might
rise and make her words more impressive. Instantly,
he was on his feet bending over her, laughing as he
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pushed her back into her chair.
“When will you ever get over losing your temper
when you hear the truth? You never mind speaking
the truth about other people, so why should you mind
hearing it about yourself? I’m not insulting you. I
think acquisitiveness is a very fine quality.”
She was not sure what acquisitiveness meant but as
he praised it she felt slightly mollified.
“I didn’t come to gloat over your poverty but
to wish you long life and happiness in your marriage. By the way, what did sister Sue think of your
larceny?”
“My what?”
“Your stealing Frank from under her nose.”
“I did not–”
“Well, we won’t quibble about the word. What did
she say?”
“She said nothing,” said Scarlett. His eyes danced
as they gave her the lie.
“How unselfish of her. Now, let’s hear about your
poverty. Surely I have the right to know, after your
little trip out to the jail not long ago. Hasn’t Frank as
much money as you hoped?”
There was no evading his impudence. Either she
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would have to put up with it or ask him to leave. And
now she did not want him to leave. His words were
barbed but they were the barbs of truth. He knew
what she had done and why she had done it and he
did not seem to think the less of her for it. And though
his questions were unpleasantly blunt, they seemed
actuated by a friendly interest. He was one person to
whom she could tell the truth. That would be a relief, for it had been so long since she had told anyone
the truth about herself and her motives. Whenever
she spoke her mind everyone seemed to be shocked.
Talking to Rhett was comparable only to one thing,
the feeling of ease and comfort afforded by a pair of
old slippers after dancing in a pair too tight.
“Didn’t you get the money for the taxes? Don’t tell
me the wolf is still at the door of Tara.” There was a
different tone in his voice.
She looked up to meet his dark eyes and caught an
expression which startled and puzzled her at first,
and then made her suddenly smile, a sweet and
charming smile which was seldom on her face these
days. What a perverse wretch he was, but how nice
he could be at times! She knew now that the real reason for his call was not to tease her but to make sure
she had gotten the money for which she had been so
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desperate. She knew now that he had hurried to her
as soon as he was released, without the slightest appearance of hurry, to lend her the money if she still
needed it. And yet he would torment and insult her
and deny that such was his intent, should she accuse
him. He was quite beyond all comprehension. Did he
really care about her, more than he was willing to admit? Or did he have some other motive? Probably the
latter, she thought. But who could tell? He did such
strange things sometimes.
“No,” she said, “the wolf isn’t at the door any
longer. I–I got the money.”
“But not without a struggle, I’ll warrant. Did you
manage to restrain yourself until you got the wedding
ring on your finger?”
She tried not to smile at his accurate summing up
of her conduct but she could not help dimpling. He
seated himself again, sprawling his long legs comfortably.
“Well, tell me about your poverty. Did Frank, the
brute, mislead you about his prospects? He should
be soundly thrashed for taking advantage of a helpless female. Come, Scarlett, tell me everything. You
should have no secrets from me. Surely, I know the
worst about you.”
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“Oh, Rhett, you’re the worst–well, I don’t know
what! No, he didn’t exactly fool me but–” Suddenly
it became a pleasure to unburden herself. “Rhett, if
Frank would just collect the money people owe him, I
wouldn’t be worried about anything. But, Rhett, fifty
people owe him and he won’t press them. He’s so
thin skinned. He says a gentleman can’t do that to
another gentleman. And it may be months and may
be never before we get the money.”
“Well, what of it? Haven’t you enough to eat on until he does collect?”
“Yes, but–well, as a matter of fact, I could use a little money right now.” Her eyes brightened as she
thought of the mill. “Perhaps–”
“What for? More taxes?”
“Is that any of your business?”
“Yes, because you are getting ready to touch me for a
loan. Oh, I know all the approaches. And I’ll lend it to
you–without, my dear Mrs. Kennedy, that charming
collateral you offered me a short while ago. Unless, of
course, you insist.”
“You are the coarsest–”
“Not at all. I merely wanted to set your mind at ease.
I knew you’d be worried about that point. Not much
worried but a little. And I’m willing to lend you the
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money. But I do want to know how you are going to
spend it. I have that right, I believe. If it’s to buy you
pretty frocks or a carriage, take it with my blessing.
But if it’s to buy a new pair of breeches for Ashley
Wilkes, I fear I must decline to lend it.”
She was hot with sudden rage and she stuttered until words came.
“Ashley Wilkes has never taken a cent from me!
I couldn’t make him take a cent if he were starving! You don’t understand him, how honorable, how
proud he is! Of course, you can’t understand him, being what you are–”
“Don’t let’s begin calling names. I could call you
a few that would match any you could think of for
me. You forget that I have been keeping up with
you through Miss Pittypat, and the dear soul tells all
she knows to any sympathetic listener. I know that
Ashley has been at Tara ever since he came home
from Rock Island. I know that you have even put up
with having his wife around, which must have been
a strain on you.”
“Ashley is–”
“Oh, yes,” he said, waving his hand negligently.
“Ashley is too sublime for my earthy comprehension.
But please don’t forget I was an interested witness to
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your tender scene with him at Twelve Oaks and something tells me he hasn’t changed since then. And neither have you. He didn’t cut so sublime a figure that
day, if I remember rightly. And I don’t think the figure
he cuts now is much better. Why doesn’t he take his
family and get out and find work? And stop living at
Tara? Of course, it’s just a whim of mine, but I don’t
intend to lend you a cent for Tara to help support him.
Among men, there’s a very unpleasant name for men
who permit women to support them.”
“How dare you say such things? He’s been working like a field hand!” For all her rage, her heart was
wrung by the memory of Ashley splitting fence rails.
“And worth his weight in gold, I dare say. What a
hand he must be with the manure and–”
“He’s–”
“Oh, yes, I know. Let’s grant that he does the best
he can but I don’t imagine he’s much help. You’ll
never make a farm hand out of a Wilkes–or anything
else that’s useful. The breed is purely ornamental.
Now, quiet your ruffled feathers and overlook my
boorish remarks about the proud and honorable Ashley. Strange how these illusions will persist even in
women as hard headed as you are. How much money
do you want and what do you want it for?”
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When she did not answer he repeated:
“What do you want it for? And see if you can manage to tell me the truth. It will do as well as a lie. In
fact, better, for if you lie to me, I’ll be sure to find it
out, and think how embarrassing that would be. Always remember this, Scarlett, I can stand anything
from you but a lie–your dislike for me, your tempers,
all your vixenish ways, but not a lie. Now what do
you want it for?”
Raging as she was at his attack on Ashley, she would
have given anything to spit on him and throw his offer of money proudly into his mocking face. For a
moment she almost did, but the cold hand of common sense held her back. She swallowed her anger
with poor grace and tried to assume an expression of
pleasant dignity. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs toward the stove.
“If there’s one thing in the world that gives me more
amusement than anything else,” he remarked, “it’s
the sight of your mental struggles when a matter of
principle is laid up against something practical like
money. Of course, I know the practical in you will always win, but I keep hanging around to see if your
better nature won’t triumph some day. And when
that day comes I shall pack my bag and leave Atlanta
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forever. There are too many women whose better natures are always triumphing. . . . Well, let’s get back
to business. How much and what for?”
“I don’t know quite how much I’ll need,” she said
sulkily. “But I want to buy a sawmill–and I think I
can get it cheap. And I’ll need two wagons and two
mules. I want good mules, too. And a horse and
buggy for my own use.”
“A sawmill?”
“Yes, and if you’ll lend me the money, I’ll give you a
half- interest in it.”
“Whatever would I do with a sawmill?”
“Make money! We can make loads of money. Or I’ll
pay you interest on the loan–let’s see, what is good
interest?”
“Fifty per cent is considered very fine.”
“Fifty–oh, but you are joking! Stop laughing, you
devil. I’m serious.”
“That’s why I’m laughing. I wonder if anyone but
me realizes what goes on in that head back of your
deceptively sweet face.”
“Well, who cares? Listen, Rhett, and see if this
doesn’t sound like good business to you. Frank told
me about this man who has a sawmill, a little one out
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Peachtree road, and he wants to sell it. He’s got to
have cash money pretty quick and he’ll sell it cheap.
There aren’t many sawmills around here now, and the
way people are rebuilding–why, we could sell lumber
sky high. The man will stay and run the mill for a
wage. Frank told me about it. Frank would buy the
mill himself if he had the money. I guess he was intending buying it with the money he gave me for the
taxes.”
“Poor Frank! What is he going to say when you tell
him you’ve bought it yourself right out from under
him? And how are you going to explain my lending
you the money without compromising your reputation?”
Scarlett had given no thought to this, so intent was
she upon the money the mill would bring in.
“Well, I just won’t tell him.”
“He’ll know you didn’t pick it off a bush.”
“I’ll tell him–why, yes, I’ll tell him I sold you my
diamond earbobs. And I will give them to you, too.
That’ll be my collat– my whatchucallit.”
“I wouldn’t take your earbobs.”
“I don’t want them. I don’t like them. They aren’t
really mine, anyway.”
1202
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“Whose are they?”
Her mind went swiftly back to the still hot noon
with the country hush deep about Tara and the dead
man in blue sprawled in the hall.
“They were left with me–by someone who’s dead.
They’re mine all right. Take them. I don’t want them.
I’d rather have the money for them.”
“Good Lord!” he cried impatiently. “Don’t you ever
think of anything but money?”
“No,” she replied frankly, turning hard green eyes
upon him. “And if you’d been through what I have,
you wouldn’t either. I’ve found out that money is the
most important thing in the world and, as God is my
witness, I don’t ever intend to be without it again.”
She remembered the hot sun, the soft red earth under her sick head, the niggery smell of the cabin behind the ruins of Twelve Oaks, remembered the refrain her heart had beaten: “I’ll never be hungry
again. I’ll never be hungry again.”
“I’m going to have money some day, lots of it, so
I can have anything I want to eat. And then there’ll
never be any hominy or dried peas on my table. And
I’m going to have pretty clothes and all of them are
going to be silk–”
“All?”
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“All,” she said shortly, not even troubling to blush at
his implication. “I’m going to have money enough so
the Yankees can never take Tara away from me. And
I’m going to have a new roof for Tara and a new barn
and fine mules for plowing and more cotton than you
ever saw. And Wade isn’t ever going to know what
it means to do without the things he needs. Never!
He’s going to have everything in the world. And all
my family, they aren’t ever going to be hungry again.
I mean it. Every word. You don’t understand, you’re
such a selfish hound. You’ve never had the Carpetbaggers trying to drive you out. You’ve never been
cold and ragged and had to break your back to keep
from starving!”
He said quietly: “I was in the Confederate Army for
eight months. I don’t know any better place for starving.”
“The army! Bah! You’ve never had to pick cotton
and weed corn. You’ve– Don’t you laugh at me!”
His hands were on hers again as her voice rose
harshly.
“I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing at the
difference in what you look and what you really are.
And I was remembering the first time I ever saw you,
at the barbecue at the Wilkes’. You had on a green
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dress and little green slippers, and you were knee
deep in men and quite full of yourself. I’ll wager you
didn’t know then how many pennies were in a dollar.
There was only one idea in your whole mind then and
that was ensnaring Ash–”
She jerked her hands away from him.
“Rhett, if we are to get on at all, you’ll have to stop
talking about Ashley Wilkes. We’ll always fall out
about him, because you can’t understand him.”
“I suppose you understand him like a book,” said
Rhett maliciously. “No, Scarlett, if I am to lend you
the money I reserve the right to discuss Ashley Wilkes
in any terms I care to. I waive the right to collect interest on my loan but not that right. And there are
a number of things about that young man I’d like to
know.”
“I do not have to discuss him with you,” she answered shortly.
“Oh, but you do! I hold the purse strings, you see.
Some day when you are rich, you can have the power
to do the same to others. . . . It’s obvious that you still
care about him–”
“I do not.”
“Oh, it’s so obvious from the way you rush to his
defense. You–”
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“I won’t stand having my friends sneered at.”
“Well, we’ll let that pass for the moment. Does he
still care for you or did Rock Island make him forget?
Or perhaps he’s learned to appreciate what a jewel of
a wife he has?”
At the mention of Melanie, Scarlett began to breathe
hard and could scarcely restrain herself from crying
out the whole story, that only honor kept Ashley with
Melanie. She opened her mouth to speak and then
closed it.
“Oh. So he still hasn’t enough sense to appreciate
Mrs. Wilkes? And the rigors of prison didn’t dim his
ardor for you?”
“I see no need to discuss the subject.”
“I wish to discuss it,” said Rhett. There was a low
note in his voice which Scarlett did not understand
but did not like to hear. “And, by God, I will discuss
it and I expect you to answer me. So he’s still in love
with you?”
“Well, what if he is?” cried Scarlett, goaded. “I don’t
care to discuss him with you because you can’t understand him or his kind of love. The only kind of love
you know about is just–well, the kind you carry on
with creatures like that Watling woman.”
“Oh,” said Rhett softly. “So I am only capable of
1206
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carnal lusts?”
“Well, you know it’s true.”
“Now I appreciate your hesitance in discussing the
matter with me. My unclean hands and lips besmirch
the purity of his love.”
“Well, yes–something like that.”
“I’m interested in this pure love–”
“Don’t be so nasty, Rhett Butler. If you are vile
enough to think there’s ever been anything wrong between us–”
“Oh, the thought never entered my head, really.
That’s why it all interests me. Just why hasn’t there
been anything wrong between you?”
“If you think that Ashley would–”
“Ah, so it’s Ashley, and not you, who has fought the
fight for purity. Really, Scarlett, you should not give
yourself away so easily.”
Scarlett looked into his smooth unreadable face in
confusion and indignation.
“We won’t go any further with this and I don’t want
your money. So, get out!”
“Oh, yes, you do want my money and, as we’ve
gone this far, why stop? Surely there can be no harm
in discussing so chaste an idyl– when there hasn’t
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been anything wrong. So Ashley loves you for your
mind, your soul, your nobility of character?”
Scarlett writhed at his words. Of course, Ashley
loved her for just these things. It was this knowledge
that made life endurable, this knowledge that Ashley, bound by honor, loved her from afar for beautiful
things deep buried in her that he alone could see. But
they did not seem so beautiful when dragged to the
light by Rhett, especially in that deceptively smooth
voice that covered sarcasm.
“It gives me back my boyish ideals to know that
such a love can exist in this naughty world,” he continued. “So there’s no touch of the flesh in his love
for you? It would be the same if you were ugly and
didn’t have that white skin? And if you didn’t have
those green eyes which make a man wonder just what
you would do if he took you in his arms? And a
way of swaying your hips, that’s an allurement to any
man under ninety? And those lips which are– well, I
mustn’t let my carnal lusts obtrude. Ashley sees none
of these things? Or if he sees them, they move him
not at all?”
Unbidden, Scarlett’s mind went back to that day in
the orchard when Ashley’s arms shook as he held her,
when his mouth was hot on hers as if he would never
1208
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let her go. She went crimson at the memory and her
blush was not lost on Rhett.
“So,” he said and there was a vibrant note almost
like anger in his voice. “I see. He loves you for your
mind alone.”
How dare he pry with dirty fingers, making the one
beautiful sacred thing in her life seem vile? Coolly,
determinedly, he was breaking down the last of her
reserves and the information he wanted was forthcoming.
“Yes, he does!” she cried, pushing back the memory
of Ashley’s lips.
“My dear, he doesn’t even know you’ve got a mind.
If it was your mind that attracted him, he would not
need to struggle against you, as he must have done
to keep this love so–shall we say ‘holy’? He could rest
easily for, after all, a man can admire a woman’s mind
and soul and still be an honorable gentleman and true
to his wife. But it must be difficult for him to reconcile
the honor of the Wilkeses with coveting your body as
he does.”
“You judge everybody’s mind by your own vile
one!”
“Oh, I’ve never denied coveting you, if that’s what
you mean. But, thank God, I’m not bothered about
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matters of honor. What I want I take if I can get it,
and so I wrestle neither with angels nor devils. What
a merry hell you must have made for Ashley! Almost
I can be sorry for him.”
“I–I make a hell for him?”
“Yes, you! There you are, a constant temptation to
him, but like most of his breed he prefers what passes
in these parts as honor to any amount of love. And it
looks to me as if the poor devil now had neither love
nor honor to warm himself!”
“He has love! . . . I mean, he loves me!”
“Does he? Then answer me this and we are through
for the day and you can take the money and throw it
in the gutter for all I care.”
Rhett rose to his feet and threw his half-smoked
cigar into the spittoon. There was about his movements the same pagan freedom and leashed power
Scarlett had noted that night Atlanta fell, something
sinister and a little frightening. “If he loved you, then
why in hell did he permit you to come to Atlanta to
get the tax money? Before I’d let a woman I loved do
that, I’d–”
“He didn’t know! He had no idea that I–”
“Doesn’t it occur to you that he should have
known?” There was barely suppressed savagery in
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his voice. “Loving you as you say he does, he should
have known just what you would do when you were
desperate. He should have killed you rather than let
you come up here–and to me, of all people! God in
Heaven!”
“But he didn’t know!”
“If he didn’t guess it without being told, he’ll never
know anything about you and your precious mind.”
How unfair he was! As if Ashley was a mind reader!
As if Ashley could have stopped her, even had he
known! But, she knew suddenly, Ashley could have
stopped her. The faintest intimation from him, in
the orchard, that some day things might be different and she would never have thought of going to
Rhett. A word of tenderness, even a parting caress
when she was getting on the train, would have held
her back. But he had only talked of honor. Yet–was
Rhett right? Should Ashley have known her mind?
Swiftly she put the disloyal thought from her. Of
course, he didn’t suspect. Ashley would never suspect that she would even think of doing anything so
immoral. Ashley was too fine to have such thoughts.
Rhett was just trying to spoil her love. He was trying
to tear down what was most precious to her. Some
day, she thought viciously, when the store was on its
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feet and the mill doing nicely and she had money, she
would make Rhett Butler pay for the misery and humiliation he was causing her.
He was standing over her, looking down at her,
faintly amused. The emotion which had stirred him
was gone.
“What does it all matter to you anyway?” she asked.
“It’s my business and Ashley’s and not yours.”
He shrugged.
“Only this. I have a deep and impersonal admiration for your endurance, Scarlett, and I do not like to
see your spirit crushed beneath too many millstones.
There’s Tara. That’s a man-sized job in itself. There’s
your sick father added on. He’ll never be any help to
you. And the girls and the darkies. And now you’ve
taken on a husband and probably Miss Pittypat, too.
You’ve enough burdens without Ashley Wilkes and
his family on your hands.”
“He’s not on my hands. He helps–”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he said impatiently. “Don’t
let’s have any more of that. He’s no help. He’s on
your hands and he’ll be on them, or on somebody’s,
till he dies. Personally, I’m sick of him as a topic of
conversation. . . . How much money do you want?”
Vituperative words rushed to her lips. After all his
1212
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insults, after dragging from her those things which
were most precious to her and trampling on them, he
still thought she would take his money!
But the words were checked unspoken. How wonderful it would be to scorn his offer and order him out
of the store! But only the truly rich and the truly secure could afford this luxury. So long as she was poor,
just so long would she have to endure such scenes
as this. But when she was rich–oh, what a beautiful
warming thought that was!–when she was rich, she
wouldn’t stand anything she didn’t like, do without
anything she desired or even be polite to people unless they pleased her.
I shall tell them all to go to Halifax, she thought, and
Rhett Butler will be the first one!
The pleasure in the thought brought a sparkle into
her green eyes and a half-smile to her lips. Rhett
smiled too.
“You’re a pretty person, Scarlett,” he said. “Especially when you are meditating devilment. And just
for the sight of that dimple I’ll buy you a baker’s
dozen of mules if you want them.”
The front door opened and the counter boy entered,
picking his teeth with a quill. Scarlett rose, pulled her
shawl about her and tied her bonnet strings firmly un1213
�PART FOUR
der her chin. Her mind was made up.
“Are you busy this afternoon? Can you come with
me now?” she asked.
“Where?”
“I want you to drive to the mill with me. I promised
Frank I wouldn’t drive out of town by myself.”
“To the mill in this rain?”
“Yes, I want to buy that mill now, before you change
your mind.”
He laughed so loudly the boy behind the counter
started and looked at him curiously.
“Have you forgotten you are married?
Mrs.
Kennedy can’t afford to be seen driving out into the
country with that Butler reprobate, who isn’t received
in the best parlors. Have you forgotten your reputation?”
“Reputation, fiddle-dee-dee! I want that mill before
you change your mind or Frank finds out that I’m
buying it. Don’t be a slow poke, Rhett. What’s a little
rain? Let’s hurry.”
That sawmill! Frank groaned every time he thought
of it, cursing himself for ever mentioning it to her. It
was bad enough for her to sell her earrings to Captain Butler (of all people!) and buy the mill without
1214
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even consulting her own husband about it, but it was
worse still that she did not turn it over to him to operate. That looked bad. As if she did not trust him or
his judgment.
Frank, in common with all men he knew, felt that
a wife should be guided by her husband’s superior
knowledge, should accept his opinions in full and
have none of her own. He would have given most
women their own way. Women were such funny little creatures and it never hurt to humor their small
whims. Mild and gentle by nature, it was not in him
to deny a wife much. He would have enjoyed gratifying the foolish notions of some soft little person and
scolding her lovingly for her stupidity and extravagance. But the things Scarlett set her mind on were
unthinkable.
That sawmill, for example. It was the shock of his
life when she told him with a sweet smile, in answer
to his questions, that she intended to run it herself.
“Go into the lumber business myself,” was the way
she put it. Frank would never forget the horror of that
moment. Go into business for herself! It was unthinkable. There were no women in business in Atlanta. In
fact, Frank had never heard of a woman in business
anywhere. If women were so unfortunate as to be
1215
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compelled to make a little money to assist their families in these hard times, they made it in quiet womanly ways–baking as Mrs. Merriwether was doing,
or painting china and sewing and keeping boarders,
like Mrs. Elsing and Fanny, or teaching school like
Mrs. Meade or giving music lessons like Mrs. Bonnell. These ladies made money but they kept themselves at home while they did it, as a woman should.
But for a woman to leave the protection of her home
and venture out into the rough world of men, competing with them in business, rubbing shoulders with
them, being exposed to insult and gossip. . . . Especially when she wasn’t forced to do it, when she had
a husband amply able to provide for her!
Frank had hoped she was only teasing or playing
a joke on him, a joke of questionable taste, but he
soon found she meant what she said. She did operate the sawmill. She rose earlier than he did to drive
out Peachtree road and frequently did not come home
until long after he had locked up the store and returned to Aunt Pitty’s for supper. She drove the long
miles to the mill with only the disapproving Uncle Peter to protect her and the woods were full of free niggers and Yankee riffraff. Frank couldn’t go with her,
the store took all of his time, but when he protested,
she said shortly: “If I don’t keep an eye on that slick
1216
�PART FOUR
scamp, Johnson, he’ll steal my lumber and sell it and
put the money in his pocket. When I can get a good
man to run the mill for me, then I won’t have to go
out there so often. Then I can spend my time in town
selling lumber.”
Selling lumber in town! That was worst of all. She
frequently did take a day off from the mill and peddle
lumber and, on those days, Frank wished he could
hide in the dark back room of his store and see no
one. His wife selling lumber!
And people were talking terrible about her. Probably about him too, for permitting her to behave in
so unwomanly a fashion. It embarrassed him to face
his customers over the counter and hear them say: “I
saw Mrs. Kennedy a few minutes ago over at . . .”
Everyone took pains to tell him what she did. Everyone was talking about what happened over where
the new hotel was being built. Scarlett had driven
up just as Tommy Wellburn was buying some lumber from another man and she climbed down out of
the buggy among the rough Irish masons who were
laying the foundations, and told Tommy briefly that
he was being cheated. She said her lumber was better and cheaper too, and to prove it she ran up a long
column of figures in her head and gave him an esti1217
�PART FOUR
mate then and there. It was bad enough that she had
intruded herself among strange rough workmen, but
it was still worse for a woman to show publicly that
she could do mathematics like that. When Tommy
accepted her estimate and gave her the order, Scarlett had not taken her departure speedily and meekly
but had idled about, talking to Johnnie Gallegher,
the foreman of the Irish workers, a hard-bitten little
gnome of a man who had a very bad reputation. The
town talked about it for weeks.
On top of everything else, she was actually making
money out of the mill, and no man could feel right
about a wife who succeeded in so unwomanly an activity. Nor did she turn over the money or any part of
it to him to use in the store. Most of it went to Tara and
she wrote interminable letters to Will Benteen telling
him just how it should be spent. Furthermore, she
told Frank that if the repairs at Tara could ever be
completed, she intended to lend out her money on
mortgages.
“My! My!” moaned Frank whenever he thought of
this. A woman had no business even knowing what a
mortgage was.
Scarlett was full of plans these days and each one of
them seemed worse to Frank than the previous one.
1218
�PART FOUR
She even talked of building a saloon on the property
where her warehouse had been until Sherman burned
it. Frank was no teetotaler but he feverishly protested
against the idea. Owning saloon property was a bad
business, an unlucky business, almost as bad as renting to a house of prostitution. Just why it was bad, he
could not explain to her and to his lame arguments
she said “Fiddle-dee-dee!”
“Saloons are always good tenants. Uncle Henry said
so,” she told him. “They always pay their rent and,
look here, Frank, I could put up a cheap salon out of
poor-grade lumber I can’t sell and get good rent for
it, and with the rent money and the money from the
mill and what I could get from mortgages, I could buy
some more sawmills.”
“Sugar, you don’t need any more sawmills!” cried
Frank, appalled. “What you ought to do is sell the
one you’ve got. It’s wearing you out and you know
what trouble you have keeping free darkies at work
there–”
“Free darkies are certainly worthless,” Scarlett
agreed, completely ignoring his hint that she should
sell. “Mr. Johnson says he never knows when he
comes to work in the morning whether he’ll have a
full crew or not. You just can’t depend on the darkies
1219
�PART FOUR
any more. They work a day or two and then lay off
till they’ve spent their wages, and the whole crew is
like as not to quit overnight. The more I see of emancipation the more criminal I think it is. It’s just ruined
the darkies. Thousands of them aren’t working at all
and the ones we can get to work at the mill are so lazy
and shiftless they aren’t worth having. And if you so
much as swear at them, much less hit them a few licks
for the good of their souls, the Freedmen’s Bureau is
down on you like a duck on a June bug.”
“Sugar, you aren’t letting Mr. Johnson beat those–”
“Of course not,” she returned impatiently. “Didn’t I
just say the Yankees would put me in jail if I did?”
“I’ll bet your pa never hit a darky a lick in his life,”
said Frank.
“Well, only one. A stable boy who didn’t rub down
his horse after a day’s hunt. But, Frank; it was different then. Free issue niggers are something else,
and a good whipping would do some of them a lot
of good.”
Frank was not only amazed at his wife’s views and
her plans but at the change which had come over her
in the few months since their marriage. This wasn’t
the soft, sweet, feminine person he had taken to wife.
In the brief period of the courtship, he thought he
1220
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had never known a woman more attractively feminine in her reactions to life, ignorant, timid and helpless. Now her reactions were all masculine. Despite
her pink cheeks and dimples and pretty smiles, she
talked and acted like a man. Her voice was brisk
and decisive and she made up her mind instantly and
with no girlish shilly- shallying. She knew what she
wanted and she went after it by the shortest route,
like a man, not by the hidden and circuitous routes
peculiar to women.
It was not that Frank had never seen commanding
women before this. Atlanta, like all Southern towns,
had its share of dowagers whom no one cared to
cross. No one could be more dominating than stout
Mrs. Merriwether, more imperious than frail Mrs.
Elsing, more artful in securing her own ends than the
silver-haired sweet-voiced Mrs. Whiting. But no matter what devices these ladies employed in order to get
their own way, they were always feminine devices.
They made a point of being deferential to men’s opinions, whether they were guided by them or not. They
had the politeness to appear to be guided by what
men said, and that was what mattered. But Scarlett
was guided by no one but herself and was conducting
her affairs in a masculine way which had the whole
town talking about her.
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�PART FOUR
“And,” thought Frank miserably, “probably talking
about me too, for letting her act so unwomanly.”
Then, there was that Butler man. His frequent calls
at Aunt Pitty’s house were the greatest humiliation
of all. Frank had always disliked him, even when he
had done business with him before the war. He often
cursed the day he had brought Rhett to Twelve Oaks
and introduced him to his friends. He despised him
for the cold-blooded way he had acted in his speculations during the war and for the fact that he had
not been in the army. Rhett’s eight months’ service
with the Confederacy was known only to Scarlett, for
Rhett had begged her, with mock fear, not to reveal
his “shame” to anyone. Most of all Frank had contempt for him for holding on to the Confederate gold,
when honest men like Admiral Bulloch and others
confronted with the same situation had turned back
thousands to the Federal treasury. But whether Frank
liked it or not, Rhett was a frequent caller.
Ostensibly it was Miss Pitty he came to see and she
had no better sense than to believe it and give herself
airs over his visits. But Frank had an uncomfortable
feeling that Miss Pitty was not the attraction which
brought him. Little Wade was very fond of him,
though the boy was shy of most people, and even
1222
�PART FOUR
called him “Uncle Rhett,” which annoyed Frank. And
Frank could not help remembering that Rhett had
squired Scarlett about during the war days and there
had been talk about them then. He imagined there
might be even worse talk about them now. None of
his friends had the courage to mention anything of
this sort to Frank, for all their outspoken words on
Scarlett’s conduct in the matter of the mill. But he
could not help noticing that he and Scarlett were less
frequently invited to meals and parties and fewer and
fewer people came to call on them. Scarlett disliked
most of her neighbors and was too busy with her mill
to care about seeing the ones she did like, so the lack
of calls did not disturb her. But Frank felt it keenly.
All of his life, Frank had been under the domination of the phrase “What will the neighbors say?” and
he was defenseless against the shocks of his wife’s repeated disregard of the proprieties. He felt that everyone disapproved of Scarlett and was contemptuous of
him for permitting her to “unsex herself.” She did so
many things a husband should not permit, according
to his views, but if he ordered her to stop them, argued or even criticized, a storm broke on his head.
“My! My!” he thought helplessly. “She can get mad
quicker and stay mad longer than any woman I ever
1223
�PART FOUR
saw!”
Even at the times when things were most pleasant,
it was amazing how completely and how quickly the
teasing, affectionate wife who hummed to herself as
she went about the house could be transformed into
an entirely different person. He had only to say:
“Sugar, if I were you, I wouldn’t–” and the tempest
would break.
Her black brows rushed together to meet in a sharp
angle over her nose and Frank cowered, almost visibly. She had the temper of a Tartar and the rages of
a wild cat and, at such times, she did not seem to
care what she said or how much it hurt. Clouds of
gloom hung over the house on such occasions. Frank
went early to the store and stayed late. Pitty scrambled into her bedroom like a rabbit panting for its
burrow. Wade and Uncle Peter retired to the carriage
house and Cookie kept to her kitchen and forebore
to raise her voice to praise the Lord in song. Only
Mammy endured Scarlett’s temper with equanimity
and Mammy had had many years of training with
Gerald O’Hara and his explosions.
Scarlett did not mean to be short tempered and she
really wanted to make Frank a good wife, for she was
fond of him and grateful for his help in saving Tara.
1224
�PART FOUR
But he did try her patience to the breaking point so
often and in so many different ways.
She could never respect a man who let her run over
him and the timid, hesitant attitude he displayed in
any unpleasant situation, with her or with others, irritated her unbearably. But she could have overlooked
these things and even been happy, now that some of
her money problems were being solved, except for
her constantly renewed exasperation growing out of
the many incidents which showed that Frank was neither a good business man nor did he want her to be a
good business man.
As she expected, he had refused to collect the unpaid bills until she prodded him into it, and then he
had done it apologetically and half heartedly. That
experience was the final evidence she needed to show
her that the Kennedy family would never have more
than a bare living, unless she personally made the
money she was determined to have. She knew now
that Frank would be contented to dawdle along with
his dirty little store for the rest of his life. He didn’t
seem to realize what a slender fingerhold they had
on security and how important it was to make more
money in these troublous times when money was the
only protection against fresh calamities.
1225
�PART FOUR
Frank might have been a successful business man
in the easy days before the war but he was so annoyingly old-fashioned, she thought, and so stubborn
about wanting to do things in the old ways, when the
old ways and the old days were gone. He was utterly
lacking in the aggressiveness needed in these new bitter times. Well, she had the aggressiveness and she
intended to use it, whether Frank liked it or not. They
needed money and she was making money and it was
hard work. The very least Frank could do, in her
opinion, was not to interfere with her plans which
were getting results.
With her inexperience, operating the new mill was
no easy job and competition was keener now than it
had been at first, so she was usually tired and worried
and cross when she came home at nights. And when
Frank would cough apologetically and say: “Sugar,
I wouldn’t do this,” or “I wouldn’t do that, Sugar, if
I were you,” it was all she could do to restrain herself from flying into a rage, and frequently she did
not restrain herself. If he didn’t have the gumption to
get out and make some money, why was he always
finding fault with her? And the things he nagged her
about were so silly! What difference did it make in
times like these if she was being unwomanly? Especially when her unwomanly sawmill was bringing in
1226
�PART FOUR
money they needed so badly, she and the family and
Tara, and Frank too.
Frank wanted rest and quiet. The war in which
he had served so conscientiously had wrecked his
health, cost him his fortune and made him an old
man. He regretted none of these things and after
four years of war, all he asked of life was peace and
kindliness, loving faces about him and the approval
of friends. He soon found that domestic peace had
its price, and that price was letting Scarlett have her
own way, no matter what she might wish to do. So,
because he was tired, he bought peace at her own
terms. Sometimes, he thought it was worth it to have
her smiling when she opened the front door in the
cold twilights, kissing him on the ear or the nose or
some other inappropriate place, to feel her head snuggling drowsily on his shoulder at night under warm
quilts. Home life could be so pleasant when Scarlett
was having her own way. But the peace he gained
was hollow, only an outward semblance, for he had
purchased it at the cost of everything he held to be
right in married life.
“A woman ought to pay more attention to her home
and her family and not be gadding about like a man,”
he thought. “Now, if she just had a baby–”
1227
�PART FOUR
He smiled when he thought of a baby and he
thought of a baby very often. Scarlett had been most
outspoken about not wanting a child, but then babies
seldom waited to be invited. Frank knew that many
women said they didn’t want babies but that was all
foolishness and fear. If Scarlett had a baby, she would
love it and be content to stay home and tend it like
other women. Then she would be forced to sell the
mill and his problems would be ended. All women
needed babies to make them completely happy and
Frank knew that Scarlett was not happy. Ignorant as
he was of women, he was not so blind that he could
not see she was unhappy at times.
Sometimes he awoke at night and heard the soft
sound of tears muffled in the pillow. The first time he
had waked to feel the bed shaking with her sobbing,
he had questioned, in alarm: “Sugar, what is it?” and
had been rebuked by a passionate cry: “Oh, let me
alone!”
Yes, a baby would make her happy and would take
her mind off things she had no business fooling with.
Sometimes Frank sighed, thinking he had caught a
tropic bird, all flame and jewel color, when a wren
would have served him just as well. In fact, much
better.
1228
�CHAPTER XXXVII
a wild wet night in April that Tony Fontaine
rode in from Jonesboro on a lathered horse that was
half dead from exhaustion and came knocking at their
door, rousing her and Frank from sleep with their
hearts in their throats. Then for the second time in
four months, Scarlett was made to feel acutely what
Reconstruction in all its implications meant, made
to understand more completely what was in Will’s
mind when he said “Our troubles have just begun,”
to know that the bleak words of Ashley, spoken in the
wind- swept orchard of Tara, were true: “This that’s
facing all of us is worse than war–worse than prison–
worse than death.”
The first time she had come face to face with Reconstruction was when she learned that Jonas Wilkerson
with the aid of the Yankees could evict her from Tara.
But Tony’s advent brought it all home to her in a far
more terrifying manner. Tony came in the dark and
the lashing rain and in a few minutes he was gone
back into the night forever, but in the brief interval
between he raised the curtain on a scene of new horror, a curtain that she felt hopelessly would never be
lowered again.
That stormy night when the knocker hammered on
I T WAS ON
�PART FOUR
the door with such hurried urgency, she stood on the
landing, clutching her wrapper to her and, looking
down into the hall below, had one glimpse of Tony’s
swarthy saturnine face before he leaned forward and
blew out the candle in Frank’s hand. She hurried
down in the darkness to grasp his cold wet hand and
hear him whisper: “They’re after me– going to Texas–
my horse is about dead–and I’m about starved. Ashley said you’d– Don’t light the candle! Don’t wake the
darkies. . . . I don’t want to get you folks in trouble if
I can help it.”
With the kitchen blinds drawn and all the shades
pulled down to the sills, he permitted a light and
he talked to Frank in swift jerky sentences as Scarlett hurried about, trying to scrape together a meal
for him.
He was without a greatcoat and soaked to the skin.
He was hatless and his black hair was plastered to his
little skull. But the merriment of the Fontaine boys, a
chilling merriment that night, was in his little dancing
eyes as he gulped down the whisky she brought him.
Scarlett thanked God that Aunt Pittypat was snoring
undisturbed upstairs. She would certainly swoon if
she saw this apparition.
“One damned bast–Scallawag less,” said Tony, hold1230
�PART FOUR
ing out his glass for another drink. “I’ve ridden hard
and it’ll cost me my skin if I don’t get out of here
quick, but it was worth it. By God, yes! I’m going to
try to get to Texas and lay low there. Ashley was with
me in Jonesboro and he told me to come to you all.
Got to have another horse, Frank, and some money.
My horse is nearly dead–all the way up here at a dead
run–and like a fool I went out of the house today like a
bat out of hell without a coat or hat or a cent of money.
Not that there’s much money in our house.”
He laughed and applied himself hungrily to the cold
corn pone and cold turnip greens on which congealed
grease was thick in white flakes.
“You can have my horse,” said Frank calmly. “I’ve
only ten dollars with me but if you can wait till
morning–”
“Hell’s afire, I can’t wait!” said Tony, emphatically
but jovially. “They’re probably right behind me. I
didn’t get much of a start. If it hadn’t been for Ashley
dragging me out of there and making me get on my
horse, I’d have stayed there like a fool and probably
had my neck stretched by now. Good fellow, Ashley.”
So Ashley was mixed up in this frightening puzzle.
Scarlett went cold, her hand at her throat. Did the
Yankees have Ashley now? Why, why didn’t Frank
1231
�PART FOUR
ask what it was all about? Why did he take it all so
coolly, so much as a matter of course? She struggled
to get the question to her lips.
“What–” she began. “Who–”
“Your father’s old overseer–that damned–Jonas
Wilkerson.”
“Did you–is he dead?”
“My God, Scarlett O’Hara!” said Tony peevishly.
“When I start out to cut somebody up, you don’t think
I’d be satisfied with scratching him with the blunt
side of my knife, do you? No, by God, I cut him to
ribbons.”
“Good,” said Frank casually. “I never liked the fellow.”
Scarlett looked at him. This was not the meek Frank
she knew, the nervous beard clawer who she had
learned could be bullied with such ease. There was
an air about him that was crisp and cool and he was
meeting the emergency with no unnecessary words.
He was a man and Tony was a man and this situation
of violence was men’s business in which a woman
had no part.
“But Ashley– Did he–”
“No. He wanted to kill him but I told him it was my
1232
�PART FOUR
right, because Sally is my sister-in-law, and he saw
reason finally. He went into Jonesboro with me, in
case Wilkerson got me first. But I don’t think old Ash
will get in any trouble about it. I hope not. Got any
jam for this corn pone? And can you wrap me up
something to take with me?”
“I shall scream if you don’t tell me everything.”
“Wait till I’ve gone and then scream if you’ve got
to. I’ll tell you about it while Frank saddles the horse.
That damned–Wilkerson has caused enough trouble
already. I know how he did you about your taxes.
That’s just one of his meannesses. But the worst thing
was the way he kept the darkies stirred up. If anybody had told me I’d ever live to see the day when
I’d hate darkies! Damn their black souls, they believe
anything those scoundrels tell them and forget every
living thing we’ve done for them. Now the Yankees
are talking about letting the darkies vote. And they
won’t let us vote. Why, there’s hardly a handful of
Democrats in the whole County who aren’t barred
from voting, now that they’ve ruled out every man
who fought in the Confederate Army. And if they
give the negroes the vote, it’s the end of us. Damn
it, it’s our state! It doesn’t belong to the Yankees! By
God, Scarlett, it isn’t to be borne! And it won’t be
1233
�PART FOUR
borne! We’ll do something about it if it means another war. Soon we’ll be having nigger judges, nigger
legislators–black apes out of the jungle–”
“Please–hurry, tell me! What did you do?”
“Give me another mite of that pone before you wrap
it up. Well, the word got around that Wilkerson had
gone a bit too far with his nigger-equality business.
Oh, yes, he talks it to those black fools by the hour.
He had the gall–the–” Tony spluttered helplessly, “to
say niggers had a right to–to–white women.”
“Oh, Tony, no!”
“By God, yes! I don’t wonder you look sick. But
hell’s afire, Scarlett, it can’t be news to you. They’ve
been telling it to them here in Atlanta.”
“I–I didn’t know.”
“Well, Frank would have kept it from you. Anyway,
after that, we all sort of thought we’d call on Mr. Wilkerson privately by night and tend to him, but before
we could– You remember that black buck, Eustis, who
used to be our foreman?”
“Yes.”
“Came to the kitchen door today while Sally was fixing dinner and– I don’t know what he said to her. I
guess I’ll never know now. But he said something and
1234
�PART FOUR
I heard her scream and I ran into the kitchen and there
he was, drunk as a fiddler’s bitch–I beg your pardon,
Scarlett, it just slipped out.”
“Go on.”
“I shot him and when Mother ran in to take care
of Sally, I got my horse and started to Jonesboro for
Wilkerson. He was the one to blame. The damned
black fool would never have thought of it but for
him. And on the way past Tara, I met Ashley and,
of course, he went with me. He said to let him do it
because of the way Wilkerson acted about Tara and I
said No, it was my place because Sally was my own
dead brother’s wife, and he went with me arguing the
whole way. And when we got to town, by God, Scarlett, do you know I hadn’t even brought my pistol, I’d
left it in the stable. So mad I forgot–”
He paused and gnawed the tough pone and Scarlett shivered. The murderous rages of the Fontaines
had made County history long before this chapter had
opened.
“So I had to take my knife to him. I found him in the
barroom. I got him in a corner with Ashley holding
back the others and I told him why before I lit into
him. Why, it was over before I knew it,” said Tony
reflecting. “First thing I knew, Ashley had me on my
1235
�PART FOUR
horse and told me to come to you folks. Ashley’s a
good man in a pinch. He keeps his head.”
Frank came in, his greatcoat over his arm, and
handed it to Tony. It was his only heavy coat but Scarlett made no protest. She seemed so much on the outside of this affair, this purely masculine affair.
“But Tony–they need you at home. Surely, if you
went back and explained–”
“Frank, you’ve married a fool,” said Tony with a
grin, struggling into the coat. “She thinks the Yankees
will reward a man for keeping niggers off his women
folks. So they will, with a drumhead court and a rope.
Give me a kiss, Scarlett. Frank won’t mind and I may
never see you again. Texas is a long way off. I won’t
dare write, so let the home folks know I got this far in
safety.”
She let him kiss her and the two men went out into
the driving rain and stood for a moment, talking on
the back porch. Then she heard a sudden splashing
of hooves and Tony was gone. She opened the door
a crack and saw Frank leading a heaving, stumbling
horse into the carriage house. She shut the door again
and sat down, her knees trembling.
Now she knew what Reconstruction meant, knew
as well as if the house were ringed about by naked
1236
�PART FOUR
savages, squatting in breech clouts. Now there came
rushing to her mind many things to which she had
given little thought recently, conversations she had
heard but to which she had not listened, masculine
talk which had been checked half finished when she
came into rooms, small incidents in which she had
seen no significance at the time, Frank’s futile warnings to her against driving out to the mill with only
the feeble Uncle Peter to protect her. Now they fitted
themselves together into one horrifying picture.
The negroes were on top and behind them were
the Yankee bayonets. She could be killed, she could
be raped and, very probably, nothing would ever be
done about it. And anyone who avenged her would
be hanged by the Yankees, hanged without benefit of
trial by judge and jury. Yankee officers who knew
nothing of law and cared less for the circumstances
of the crime could go through the motions of holding
a trial and put a rope around a Southerner’s neck.
“What can we do?” she thought, wringing her
hands in an agony of helpless fear. “What can we do
with devils who’d hang a nice boy like Tony just for
killing a drunken buck and a scoundrelly Scallawag
to protect his women folks?”
“It isn’t to be borne!” Tony had cried and he was
1237
�PART FOUR
right. It couldn’t be borne. But what could they do
except bear it, helpless as they were? She fell to trembling and, for the first time in her life, she saw people and events as something apart from herself, saw
clearly that Scarlett O’Hara, frightened and helpless,
was not all that mattered. There were thousands of
women like her, all over the South, who were frightened and helpless. And thousands of men, who had
laid down their arms at Appomattox, had taken them
up again and stood ready to risk their necks on a
minute’s notice to protect those women.
There had been something in Tony’s face which had
been mirrored in Frank’s, an expression she had seen
recently on the faces of other men in Atlanta, a look
she had noticed but had not troubled to analyze.
It was an expression vastly different from the tired
helplessness she had seen in the faces of men coming home from the war after the surrender. Those
men had not cared about anything except getting
home. Now they were caring about something again,
numbed nerves were coming back to life and the old
spirit was beginning to burn. They were caring again
with a cold ruthless bitterness. And, like Tony, they
were thinking: “It isn’t to be borne!”
She had seen Southern men, soft voiced and dan1238
�PART FOUR
gerous in the days before the war, reckless and hard
in the last despairing days of the fighting. But in the
faces of the two men who stared at each other across
the candle flame so short a while ago there had been
something that was different, something that heartened her but frightened her–fury which could find no
words, determination which would stop at nothing.
For the first time, she felt a kinship with the people about her, felt one with them in their fears, their
bitterness, their determination. No, it wasn’t to be
borne! The South was too beautiful a place to be let go
without a struggle, too loved to be trampled by Yankees who hated Southerners enough to enjoy grinding them into the dirt, too dear a homeland to be
turned over to ignorant negroes drunk with whisky
and freedom.
As she thought of Tony’s sudden entrance and swift
exit, she felt herself akin to him, for she remembered
the old story how her father had left Ireland, left
hastily and by night, after a murder which was no
murder to him or to his family. Gerald’s blood was
in her, violent blood. She remembered her hot joy in
shooting the marauding Yankee. Violent blood was in
them all, perilously close to the surface, lurking just
beneath the kindly courteous exteriors. All of them,
1239
�PART FOUR
all the men she knew, even the drowsy-eyed Ashley and fidgety old Frank, were like that underneath–
murderous, violent if the need arose. Even Rhett, conscienceless scamp that he was, had killed a negro for
being “uppity to a lady.”
“Oh, Frank, how long will it be like this?” she
leaped to her feet.
“As long as the Yankees hate us so, Sugar.”
“Is there nothing anybody can do?”
Frank passed a tired hand over his wet beard. “We
are doing things.”
“What?”
“Why talk of them till we have accomplished something? It may take years. Perhaps–perhaps the South
will always be like this.”
“Oh, no!”
“Sugar, come to bed. You must be chilled. You are
shaking.”
“When will it all end?”
“When we can all vote again, Sugar. When every
man who fought for the South can put a ballot in the
box for a Southerner and a Democrat.”
“A ballot?” she cried despairingly. “What good’s a
ballot when the darkies have lost their minds–when
1240
�PART FOUR
the Yankees have poisoned them against us?”
Frank went on to explain in his patient manner, but
the idea that ballots could cure the trouble was too
complicated for her to follow. She was thinking gratefully that Jonas Wilkerson would never again be a
menace of Tara and she was thinking about Tony.
“Oh, the poor Fontaines!” she exclaimed. “Only
Alex left and so much to do at Mimosa. Why didn’t
Tony have sense enough to–to do it at night when no
one would know who it was? A sight more good he’d
do helping with the spring plowing than in Texas.”
Frank put an arm about her. Usually he was gingerly when he did this, as if he anticipated being impatiently shaken off, but tonight there was a far-off
look in his eyes and his arm was firm about her waist.
“There are things more important now than plowing, Sugar. And scaring the darkies and teaching the
Scallawags a lesson is one of them. As long as there
are fine boys like Tony left, I guess we won’t need to
worry about the South too much. Come to bed.”
“But, Frank–”
“If we just stand together and don’t give an inch to
the Yankees, we’ll win, some day. Don’t you bother
your pretty head about it, Sugar. You let your men
folks worry about it. Maybe it won’t come in our time,
1241
�PART FOUR
but surely it will come some day. The Yankees will get
tired of pestering us when they see they can’t even
dent us, and then we’ll have a decent world to live in
and raise our children in.”
She thought of Wade and the secret she had carried silently for some days. No, she didn’t want her
children raised in this welter of hate and uncertainty,
of bitterness and violence lurking just below the surface, of poverty and grinding hardships and insecurity. She never wanted children of hers to know
what all this was like. She wanted a secure and wellordered world in which she could look forward and
know there was a safe future ahead for them, a world
where her children would know only softness and
warmth and good clothes and fine food.
Frank thought this could he accomplished by voting. Voting? What did votes matter? Nice people
in the South would never have the vote again. There
was only one thing in the world that was a certain
bulwark against any calamity which fate could bring,
and that was money. She thought feverishly that they
must have money, lots of it to keep them safe against
disaster.
Abruptly, she told him she was going to have a baby.
For weeks after Tony’s escape, Aunt Pitty’s house
1242
�PART FOUR
was subjected to repeated searches by parties of Yankee soldiers. They invaded the house at all hours and
without warning. They swarmed through the rooms,
asking questions, opening closets, prodding clothes
hampers, peering under beds. The military authorities had heard that Tony had been advised to go to
Miss Pitty’s house, and they were certain he was still
hiding there or somewhere m the neighborhood.
As a result, Aunt Pitty was chronically in what Uncle Peter called a “state,” never knowing when her
bedroom would be entered by an officer and a squad
of men. Neither Frank nor Scarlett had mentioned
Tony’s brief visit, so the old lady could have revealed
nothing, even had she been so inclined. She was entirely honest in her fluttery protestations that she had
seen Tony Fontaine only once in her life and that was
at Christmas time in 1862.
“And,” she would add breathlessly to the Yankee
soldiers, in an effort to be helpful, “he was quite intoxicated at the time.”
Scarlett, sick and miserable in the early stage of
pregnancy, alternated between a passionate hatred of
the bluecoats who invaded her privacy, frequently
carrying away any little knick-knack that appealed to
them, and an equally passionate fear that Tony might
1243
�PART FOUR
prove the undoing of them all. The prisons were full
of people who had been arrested for much less reason. She knew that if one iota of the truth were proved
against them, not only she and Frank but the innocent
Pitty as well would go to jail.
For some time there had been an agitation in Washington to confiscate all “Rebel property” to pay the
United States’ war debt and this agitation had kept
Scarlett in a state of anguished apprehension. Now, in
addition to this, Atlanta was full of wild rumors about
the confiscation of property of offenders against military law, and Scarlett quaked lest she and Frank lose
not only their freedom but the house, the store and
the mill. And even if their property were not appropriated by the military, it would be as good as lost if
she and Frank went to jail, for who would look after
their business in their absence?
She hated Tony for bringing such trouble upon
them. How could he have done such a thing to
friends? And how could Ashley have sent Tony to
them? Never again would she give aid to anyone if
it meant having the Yankees come down on her like a
swarm of hornets. No, she would bar the door against
anyone needing help. Except, of course, Ashley. For
weeks after Tony’s brief visit she woke from uneasy
1244
�PART FOUR
dreams at any sound in the road outside, fearing it
might be Ashley trying to make his escape, fleeing to
Texas because of the aid he had given Tony. She did
not know how matters stood with him, for they did
not dare write to Tara about Tony’s midnight visit.
Their letters might be intercepted by the Yankees and
bring trouble upon the plantation as well. But, when
weeks went by and they heard no bad news, they
knew that Ashley had somehow come clear. And finally, the Yankees ceased annoying them.
But even this relief did not free Scarlett from the
state of dread which began when Tony came knocking at their door, a dread which was worse than the
quaking fear of the siege shells, worse even than the
terror of Sherman’s men during the last days of the
war. It was as if Tony’s appearance that wild rainy
night had stripped merciful blinders from her eyes
and forced her to see the true uncertainty of her life.
Looking about her in that cold spring of 1866, Scarlett realized what was facing her and the whole South.
She might plan and scheme, she might work harder
than her slaves had ever worked, she might succeed
in overcoming all of her hardships, she might through
dint of determination solve problems for which her
earlier life had provided no training at all. But for all
1245
�PART FOUR
her labor and sacrifice and resourcefulness, her small
beginnings purchased at so great a cost might be
snatched away from her at any minute. And should
this happen, she had no legal rights, no legal redress,
except those same drumhead courts of which Tony
had spoken so bitterly, those military courts with their
arbitrary powers. Only the negroes had rights or redress these days. The Yankees had the South prostrate
and they intended to keep it so. The South had been
tilted as by a giant malicious hand, and those who
had once ruled were now more helpless than their former slaves had ever been.
Georgia was heavily garrisoned with troops and Atlanta had more than its share. The commandants of
the Yankee troops in the various cities had complete
power, even the power of life and death, over the
civilian population, and they used that power. They
could and did imprison citizens for any cause, or no
cause, seize their property, hang them. They could
and did harass and hamstring them with conflicting
regulations about the operation of their business, the
wages they must pay their servants, what they should
say in public and private utterances and what they
should write in newspapers. They regulated how,
when and where they must dump their garbage and
they decided what songs the daughters and wives
1246
�PART FOUR
of ex-Confederates could sing, so that the singing of
“Dixie” or “Bonnie Blue Flag” became an offense only
a little less serious than treason. They ruled that no
one could get a letter our of the post office without
taking the Iron Clad oath and, in some instances, they
even prohibited the issuance of marriage licenses unless the couples had taken the hated oath.
The newspapers were so muzzled that no public
protest could be raised against the injustices or depredations of the military, and individual protests were
silenced with jail sentences. The jails were full of
prominent citizens and there they stayed without
hope of early trial. Trial by jury and the law of habeas
corpus were practically suspended. The civil courts
still functioned after a fashion but they functioned at
the pleasure of the military, who could and did interfere with their verdicts, so that citizens so unfortunate as to get arrested were virtually at the mercy
of the military authorities. And so many did get arrested. The very suspicion of seditious utterances
against the government, suspected complicity in the
Ku Klux Klan, or complaint by a negro that a white
man had been uppity to him were enough to land a
citizen in jail. Proof and evidence were not needed.
The accusation was sufficient. And thanks to the incitement of the Freedmen’s Bureau, negroes could al1247
�PART FOUR
ways be found who were willing to bring accusations.
The negroes had not yet been given the right to
vote but the North was determined that they should
vote and equally determined that their vote should be
friendly to the North. With this in mind, nothing was
too good for the negroes. The Yankee soldiers backed
them up in anything they chose to do, and the surest
way for a white person to get himself into trouble was
to bring a complaint of any kind against a negro.
The former slaves were now the lords of creation
and, with the aid of the Yankees, the lowest and most
ignorant ones were on top. The better class of them,
scorning freedom, were suffering as severely as their
white masters. Thousands of house servants, the
highest caste in the slave population, remained with
their white folks, doing manual labor which had been
beneath them in the old days. Many loyal field hands
also refused to avail themselves of the new freedom,
but the hordes of “trashy free issue niggers,” who
were causing most of the trouble, were drawn largely
from the field-hand class.
In slave days, these lowly blacks had been despised
by the house negroes and yard negroes as creatures
of small worth. Just as Ellen had done, other plantation mistresses throughout the South had put the
1248
�PART FOUR
pickaninnies through courses of training and elimination to select the best of them for the positions of
greater responsibility. Those consigned to the fields
were the ones least willing or able to learn, the least
energetic, the least honest and trustworthy, the most
vicious and brutish. And now this class, the lowest
in the black social order, was making life a misery for
the South.
Aided by the unscrupulous adventurers who operated the Freedmen’s Bureau and urged on by a fervor
of Northern hatred almost religious in its fanaticism,
the former field hands found themselves suddenly elevated to the seats of the mighty. There they conducted themselves as creatures of small intelligence
might naturally be expected to do. Like monkeys or
small children turned loose among treasured objects
whose value is beyond their comprehension, they ran
wild–either from perverse pleasure in destruction or
simply because of their ignorance.
To the credit of the negroes, including the least intelligent of them, few were actuated by malice and those
few had usually been “mean niggers” even in slave
days. But they were, as a class, childlike in mentality,
easily led and from long habit accustomed to taking
orders. Formerly their white masters had given the
1249
�PART FOUR
orders. Now they had a new set of masters, the Bureau and the Carpetbaggers, and their orders were:
“You’re just as good as any white man, so act that
way. Just as soon as you can vote the Republican
ticket, you are going to have the white man’s property. It’s as good as yours now. Take it, if you can get
it!”
Dazzled by these tales, freedom became a neverending picnic, a barbecue every day of the week, a
carnival of idleness and theft and insolence. Country
negroes flocked into the cities, leaving the rural districts without labor to make the crops. Atlanta was
crowded with them and still they came by the hundreds, lazy and dangerous as a result of the new doctrines being taught them. Packed into squalid cabins,
smallpox, typhoid and tuberculosis broke out among
them. Accustomed to the care of their mistresses
when they were ill in slave days, they did not know
how to nurse themselves or their sick. Relying upon
their masters in the old days to care for their aged and
their babies, they now had no sense of responsibility
for their helpless. And the Bureau was far too interested in political matters to provide the care the plantation owners had once given.
Abandoned negro children ran like frightened ani1250
�PART FOUR
mals about the town until kind-hearted white people
took them into their kitchens to raise. Aged country darkies, deserted by their children, bewildered
and panic stricken in the bustling town, sat on the
curbs and cried to the ladies who passed: “Mistis,
please Ma’m, write mah old Marster down in Fayette
County dat Ah’s up hyah. He’ll come tek dis ole nigger home agin. ‘Fo’ Gawd, Ah done got nuff of dis
freedom!”
The Freedmen’s Bureau, overwhelmed by the numbers who poured in upon them, realized too late a
part of the mistake and tried to send them back to
their former owners. They told the negroes that if
they would go back, they would go as free workers, protected by written contracts specifying wages
by the day. The old darkies went back to the plantations gladly, making a heavier burden than ever on
the poverty-stricken planters who had not the heart
to turn them out, but the young ones remained in Atlanta. They did not want to be workers of any kind,
anywhere. Why work when the belly is full?
For the first time in their lives the negroes were able
to get all the whisky they might want. In slave days, it
was something they never tasted except at Christmas,
when each one received a “drap” along with his gift.
1251
�PART FOUR
Now they had not only the Bureau agitators and the
Carpetbaggers urging them on, but the incitement of
whisky as well, and outrages were inevitable. Neither life nor property was safe from them and the
white people, unprotected by law, were terrorized.
Men were insulted on the streets by drunken blacks,
houses and barns were burned at night, horses and
cattle and chickens stolen in broad daylight, crimes of
all varieties were committed and few of the perpetrators were brought to justice.
But these ignominies and dangers were as nothing
compared with the peril of white women, many bereft
by the war of male protection, who lived alone in the
outlying districts and on lonely roads. It was the large
number of outrages on women and the ever-present
fear for the safety of their wives and daughters that
drove Southern men to cold and trembling fury and
caused the Ku Klux Klan to spring up overnight. And
it was against this nocturnal organization that the
newspapers of the North cried out most loudly, never
realizing the tragic necessity that brought it into being. The North wanted every member of the Ku Klux
hunted down and hanged, because they had dared
take the punishment of crime into their own hands at
a time when the ordinary processes of law and order
had been overthrown by the invaders.
1252
�PART FOUR
Here was the astonishing spectacle of half a nation
attempting, at the point of bayonet, to force upon the
other half the rule of negroes, many of them scarcely
one generation out of the African jungles. The vote
must be given to them but it must be denied to most
of their former owners. The South must be kept down
and disfranchisement of the whites was one way to
keep the South down. Most of those who had fought
for the Confederacy, held office under it or given aid
and comfort to it were not allowed to vote, had no
choice in the selection of their public officials and
were wholly under the power of an alien rule. Many
men, thinking soberly of General Lee’s words and example, wished to take the oath, become citizens again
and forget the past. But they were not permitted to
take it. Others who were permitted to take the oath,
hotly refused to do so, scorning to swear allegiance
to a government which was deliberately subjecting
them to cruelty and humiliation.
Scarlett heard over and over until she could have
screamed at the repetition: “I’d have taken their
damned oath right after the surrender if they’d acted
decent. I can be restored to the Union, but by God, I
can’t be reconstructed into it!”
Through these anxious days and nights, Scarlett was
1253
�PART FOUR
torn with fear. The ever-present menace of lawless
negroes and Yankee soldiers preyed on her mind,
the danger of confiscation was constantly with her,
even in her dreams, and she dreaded worse terrors
to come. Depressed by the helplessness of herself and
her friends, of the whole South, it was not strange that
she often remembered during these days the words
which Tony Fontaine had spoken so passionately:
“Good God, Scarlett, it isn’t to be borne! And it
won’t be borne!”
In spite of war, fire and Reconstruction, Atlanta had
again become a boom town. In many ways, the place
resembled the busy young city of the Confederacy’s
early days. The only trouble was that the soldiers
crowding the streets wore the wrong kind of uniforms, the money was in the hands of the wrong people, and the negroes were living in leisure while their
former masters struggled and starved.
Underneath the surface were misery and fear, but
all the outward appearances were those of a thriving town that was rapidly rebuilding from its ruins, a bustling, hurrying town. Atlanta, it seemed,
must always be hurrying, no matter what its circumstances might be. Savannah, Charleston, Augusta,
Richmond, New Orleans would never hurry. It was
1254
�PART FOUR
ill bred and Yankeefied to hurry. But in this period,
Atlanta was more ill bred and Yankeefied than it had
ever been before or would ever be again. With “new
people” thronging in from all directions, the streets
were choked and noisy from morning till night. The
shiny carriages of Yankee officers’ wives and newly
rich Carpetbaggers splashed mud on the dilapidated
buggies of the townspeople, and gaudy new homes
of wealthy strangers crowded in among the sedate
dwellings of older citizens.
The war had definitely established the importance
of Atlanta in the affairs of the South and the hitherto
obscure town was now known far and wide. The railroads for which Sherman had fought an entire summer and killed thousands of men were again stimulating the life of the city they had brought into being. Atlanta was again the center of activities for a
wide region, as it had been before its destruction, and
the town was receiving a great influx of new citizens,
both welcome and unwelcome.
Invading Carpetbaggers made Atlanta their headquarters and on the streets they jostled against representatives of the oldest families in the South who
were likewise newcomers in the town. Families from
the country districts who had been burned out dur1255
�PART FOUR
ing Sherman’s march and who could no longer make
a living without the slaves to till the cotton had come
to Atlanta to live. New settlers were coming in every
day from Tennessee and the Carolinas where the hand
of Reconstruction lay even heavier than in Georgia.
Many Irish and Germans who had been bounty men
in the Union Army had settled in Atlanta after their
discharge. The wives and families of the Yankee garrison, filled with curiosity about the South after four
years of war, came to swell the population. Adventurers of every kind swarmed in, hoping to make their
fortunes, and the negroes from the country continued
to come by the hundreds.
The town was roaring–wide open like a frontier village, making no effort to cover its vices and sins. Saloons blossomed overnight, two and sometimes three
in a block, and after nightfall the streets were full of
drunken men, black and white, reeling from wall to
curb and back again. Thugs, pickpockets and prostitutes lurked in the unlit alleys and shadowy streets.
Gambling houses ran full blast and hardly a night
passed without its shooting or cutting affray. Respectable citizens were scandalized to find that Atlanta had a large and thriving red-light district, larger
and more thriving than during the war. All night long
pianos jangled from behind drawn shades and rowdy
1256
�PART FOUR
songs and laughter floated out, punctuated by occasional screams and pistol shots. The inmates of these
houses were bolder than the prostitutes of the war
days and brazenly hung out of their windows and
called to passers-by. And on Sunday afternoons, the
handsome closed carriages of the madams of the district rolled down the main streets, filled with girls in
their best finery, taking the air from behind lowered
silk shades.
Belle Watling was the most notorious of the
madams. She had opened a new house of her own,
a large two-story building that made neighboring
houses in the district look like shabby rabbit warrens.
There was a long barroom downstairs, elegantly hung
with oil paintings, and a negro orchestra played every night. The upstairs, so rumor said, was fitted out
with the finest of plush upholstered furniture, heavy
lace curtains and imported mirrors in gilt frames. The
dozen young ladies with whom the house was furnished were comely, if brightly painted, and comported themselves more quietly than those of other
houses. At least, the police were seldom summoned
to Belle’s.
This house was something that the matrons of
Atlanta whispered about furtively and ministers
1257
�PART FOUR
preached against in guarded terms as a cesspool of iniquity, a hissing and a reproach. Everyone knew that
a woman of Belle’s type couldn’t have made enough
money by herself to set up such a luxurious establishment. She had to have a backer and a rich one at that.
And Rhett Butler had never had the decency to conceal his relations with her, so it was obvious that he
and no other must be that backer. Belle herself presented a prosperous appearance when glimpsed occasionally in her closed carriage driven by an impudent
yellow negro. When she drove by, behind a fine pair
of bays, all the little boys along the street who could
evade their mothers ran to peer at her and whisper
excitedly: “That’s her! That’s ole Belle! I seen her red
hair!”
Shouldering the shell-pitted houses patched with
bits of old lumber and smoke-blackened bricks, the
fine homes of the Carpetbaggers and war profiteers
were rising, with mansard roofs, gables and turrets,
stained-glass windows and wide lawns. Night after night, in these newly built homes, the windows
were ablaze with gas light and the sound of music
and dancing feet drifted out upon the air. Women in
stiff bright-colored silks strolled about long verandas,
squired by men in evening clothes. Champagne corks
popped, and on lace tablecloths seven-course dinners
1258
�PART FOUR
were laid. Hams in wine, pressed duck, pate de foie
gras, rare fruits in and out of season, were spread in
profusion.
Behind the shabby doors of the old houses, poverty
and hunger lived–all the more bitter for the brave
gentility with which they were borne, all the more
pinching for the outward show of proud indifference
to material wants. Dr. Meade could tell unlovely stories of those families who had been driven from mansions to boarding houses and from boarding houses to
dingy rooms on back streets. He had too many lady
patients who were suffering from “weak hearts” and
“declines.” He knew, and they knew he knew, that
slow starvation was the trouble. He could tell of consumption making inroads on entire families and of
pellagra, once found only among poor whites, which
was now appearing in Atlanta’s best families. And
there were babies with thin rickety legs and mothers
who could not nurse them. Once the old doctor had
been wont to thank God reverently for each child he
brought into the world. Now he did not think life was
such a boon. It was a hard world for little babies and
so many died in their first few months of life.
Bright lights and wine, fiddles and dancing, brocade and broadcloth in the showy big houses and, just
1259
�PART FOUR
around the corners, slow starvation and cold. Arrogance and callousness for the conquerors, bitter endurance and hatred for the conquered.
1260
�CHAPTER XXXVIII
all, lived with it by day, took it to
bed with her at night, dreading always what might
happen next. She knew that she and Frank were already in the Yankees’ black books, because of Tony,
and disaster might descend on them at any hour. But,
now of all times, she could not afford to be pushed
back to her beginnings–not now with a baby coming,
the mill just commencing to pay and Tara depending
on her for money until the cotton came in in the fall.
Oh, suppose she should lose everything! Suppose she
should have to start all over again with only her puny
weapons against this mad world! To have to pit her
red lips and green eyes and her shrewd shallow brain
against the Yankees and everything the Yankees stood
for. Weary with dread, she felt that she would rather
kill herself than try to make a new beginning.
In the ruin and chaos of that spring of 1866, she single mindedly turned her energies to making the mill
pay. There was money in Atlanta. The wave of rebuilding was giving her the opportunity she wanted
and she knew she could make money if only she
could stay out of jail. But, she told herself time and
again, she would have to walk easily, gingerly, be
meek under insults, yielding to injustices, never givS CARLETT
SAW IT
�PART FOUR
ing offense to anyone, black or white, who might do
her harm. She hated the impudent free negroes as
much as anyone and her flesh crawled with fury every time she heard their insulting remarks and highpitched laughter as she went by. But she never even
gave them a glance of contempt. She hated the Carpetbaggers and Scallawags who were getting rich
with ease while she struggled, but she said nothing
in condemnation of them. No one in Atlanta could
have loathed the Yankees more than she, for the very
sight of a blue uniform made her sick with rage, but
even in the privacy of her family she kept silent about
them.
I won’t be a big-mouthed fool, she thought grimly.
Let others break their hearts over the old days and
the men who’ll never come back. Let others burn
with fury over the Yankee rule and losing the ballot. Let others go to jail for speaking their minds and
get themselves hanged for being in the Ku Klux Klan.
(Oh, what a dreaded name that was, almost as terrifying to Scarlett as to the negroes.) Let other women
be proud that their husbands belonged. Thank God,
Frank had never been mixed up in it! Let others stew
and fume and plot and plan about things they could
not help. What did the past matter compared with
the tense present and the dubious future? What did
1262
�PART FOUR
the ballot matter when bread, a roof and staying out
of jail were the real problems? And, please God, just
let me stay out of trouble until June!
Only till June! By that month Scarlett knew she
would be forced to retire into Aunt Pitty’s house and
remain secluded there until after her child was born.
Already people were criticizing her for appearing in
public when she was in such a condition. No lady
ever showed herself when she was pregnant. Already Frank and Pitty were begging her not to expose herself–and them–to embarrassment and she
had promised them to stop work in June.
Only till June! By June she must have the mill well
enough established for her to leave it. By June she
must have money enough to give her at least some
little protection against misfortune. So much to do
and so little time to do it! She wished for more hours
of the day and counted the minutes, as she strained
forward feverishly in her pursuit of money and still
more money.
Because she nagged the timid Frank, the store was
doing better now and he was even collecting some
of the old bills. But it was the sawmill on which her
hopes were pinned. Atlanta these days was like a giant plant which had been cut to the ground but now
1263
�PART FOUR
was springing up again with sturdier shoots, thicker
foliage, more numerous branches. The demand for
building materials was far greater than could be supplied. Prices of lumber, brick and stone soared and
Scarlett kept the mill running from dawn until lantern
light.
A part of every day she spent at the mill, prying into
everything, doing her best to check the thievery she
felt sure was going on. But most of the time she was
riding about the town, making the rounds of builders,
contractors and carpenters, even calling on strangers
she had heard might build at future dates, cajoling
them into promises of buying from her and her only.
Soon she was a familiar sight on Atlanta’s streets,
sitting in her buggy beside the dignified, disapproving old darky driver, a lap robe pulled high about her,
her little mittened hands clasped in her lap. Aunt
Pitty had made her a pretty green mantelet which hid
her figure and a green pancake hat which matched
her eyes, and she always wore these becoming garments on her business calls. A faint dab of rouge on
her cheeks and a fainter fragrance of cologne made
her a charming picture, as long as she did not alight
from the buggy and show her figure. And there was
seldom any need for this, for she smiled and beck1264
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oned and the men came quickly to the buggy and frequently stood bareheaded in the rain to talk business
with her.
She was not the only one who had seen the opportunities for making money out of lumber, but she did
not fear her competitors. She knew with conscious
pride in her own smartness that she was the equal of
any of them. She was Gerald’s own daughter and the
shrewd trading instinct she had inherited was now
sharpened by her needs.
At first the other dealers had laughed at her,
laughed with good- natured contempt at the very idea
of a woman in business. But now they did not laugh.
They swore silently as they saw her ride by. The fact
that she was a woman frequently worked in her favor, for she could upon occasion look so helpless and
appealing that she melted hearts. With no difficulty
whatever she could mutely convey the impression of
a brave but timid lady, forced by brutal circumstance
into a distasteful position, a helpless little lady who
would probably starve if customers didn’t buy her
lumber. But when ladylike airs failed to get results
she was coldly businesslike and willingly undersold
her competitors at a loss to herself if it would bring
her a new customer. She was not above selling a poor
1265
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grade of lumber for the price of good lumber if she
thought she would not be detected, and she had no
scruples about black-guarding the other lumber dealers. With every appearance of reluctance at disclosing
the unpleasant truth, she would sigh and tell prospective customers that her competitors’ lumber was far
too high in price, rotten, full of knot holes and in general of deplorably poor quality.
The first time Scarlett lied in this fashion she felt
disconcerted and guilty–disconcerted because the lie
sprang so easily and naturally to her lips, guilty because the thought flashed into her mind: What would
Mother say?
There was no doubt what Ellen would say to a
daughter who told lies and engaged in sharp practices. She would be stunned and incredulous and
would speak gentle words that stung despite their
gentleness, would talk of honor and honesty and
truth and duty to one’s neighbor. Momentarily, Scarlett cringed as she pictured the look on her mother’s
face. And then the picture faded, blotted out by
an impulse, hard, unscrupulous and greedy, which
had been born in the lean days at Tara and was now
strengthened by the present uncertainty of life. So she
passed this milestone as she had passed others before
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it–with a sigh that she was not as Ellen would like
her to be, a shrug and the repetition of her unfailing
charm: “I’ll think of all this later.”
But she never again thought of Ellen in connection with her business practices, never again regretted
any means she used to take trade away from other
lumber dealers. She knew she was perfectly safe in
lying about them. Southern chivalry protected her.
A Southern lady could lie about a gentleman but a
Southern gentleman could not lie about a lady or,
worse still, call the lady a liar. Other lumbermen
could only fume inwardly and state heatedly, in the
bosoms of their families, that they wished to God Mrs.
Kennedy was a man for just about five minutes.
One poor white who operated a mill on the Decatur
road did try to fight Scarlett with her own weapons,
saying openly that she was a liar and a swindler. But
it hurt him rather than helped, for everyone was appalled that even a poor white should say such shocking things about a lady of good family, even when
the lady was conducting herself in such an unwomanly way. Scarlett bore his remarks with silent dignity and, as time went by, she turned all her attention
to him and his customers. She undersold him so relentlessly and delivered, with secret groans, such an
1267
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excellent quality of lumber to prove her probity that
he was soon bankrupt. Then, to Frank’s horror, she
triumphantly bought his mill at her own price.
Once in her possession there arose the perplexing problem of finding a trustworthy man to put in
charge of it. She did not want another man like Mr.
Johnson. She knew that despite all her watchfulness
he was still selling her lumber behind her back, but
she thought it would be easy to find the right sort of
man. Wasn’t everybody as poor as Job’s turkey, and
weren’t the streets full of men, some of them formerly
rich, who were without work? The day never went
by that Frank did not give money to some hungry exsoldier or that Pitty and Cookie did not wrap up food
for gaunt beggars.
But Scarlett, for some reason she could not understand, did not want any of these. “I don’t want men
who haven’t found something to do after a year,” she
thought. “If they haven’t adjusted to peace yet, they
couldn’t adjust to me. And they all look so hangdog
and licked. I don’t want a man who’s licked. I want
somebody who’s smart and energetic like Renny or
Tommy Wellburn or Kells Whiting or one of the Simmons boys or–or any of that tribe. They haven’t got
that I-don’t-care-about-anything look the soldiers had
1268
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right after the surrender. They look like they cared a
heap about a heap of things.”
But to her surprise the Simmons boys, who had
started a brick kiln, and Kells Whiting, who was selling a preparation made up in his mother’s kitchen,
that was guaranteed to straighten the kinkiest negro
hair in six applications, smiled politely, thanked her
and refused. It was the same with the dozen others
she approached. In desperation she raised the wage
she was offering but she was still refused. One of Mrs.
Merriwether’s nephews observed impertinently that
while he didn’t especially enjoy driving a dray, it was
his own dray and he would rather get somewhere under his own steam than Scarlett’s.
One afternoon, Scarlett pulled up her buggy beside
Rene Picard’s pie wagon and hailed Rene and the
crippled Tommy Wellburn, who was catching a ride
home with his friend.
“Look here, Renny, why don’t you come and work
for me? Managing a mill is a sight more respectable
than driving a pie wagon. I’d think you’d be
ashamed.”
“Me, I am dead to shame,” grinned Rene. “Who
would be respectable? All of my days I was respectable until ze war set me free lak ze darkies.
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�PART FOUR
Nevaire again must I be deegneefied and full of ennui. Free lak ze bird! I lak my pie wagon. I lak my
mule. I lak ze dear Yankees who so kindly buy ze pie
of Madame Belle Mere. No, my Scarlett, I must be ze
King of ze Pies. Eet ees my destiny! Lak Napoleon, I
follow my star.” He flourished his whip dramatically.
“But you weren’t raised to sell pies any more than
Tommy was raised to wrastle with a bunch of wild
Irish masons. My kind of work is more–”
“And I suppose you were raised to run a lumber
mill,” said Tommy, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Yes, I can just see little Scarlett at her mother’s
knee, lisping her lesson, ‘Never sell good lumber if
you can get a better price for bad.”’
Rene roared at this, his small monkey eyes dancing
with glee as he whacked Tommy on his twisted back.
“Don’t be impudent,” said Scarlett coldly, for she
saw little humor in Tommy’s remark. “Of course, I
wasn’t raised to run a sawmill.”
“I didn’t mean to be impudent. But you are running
a sawmill, whether you were raised to it or not. And
running it very well, too. Well, none of us, as far as I
can see, are doing what we intended to do right now,
but I think we’ll make out just the same. It’s a poor
person and a poor nation that sits down and cries be1270
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cause life isn’t precisely what they expected it to be.
Why don’t you pick up some enterprising Carpetbagger to work for you, Scarlett? The woods are full of
them, God knows.”
“I don’t want a Carpetbagger. Carpetbaggers will
steal anything that isn’t red hot or nailed down. If
they amounted to anything they’d have stayed where
they were, instead of coming down here to pick our
bones. I want a nice man, from nice folks, who is
smart and honest and energetic and–”
“You don’t want much. And you won’t get it for
the wage you’re offering. All the men of that description, barring the badly maimed ones, have already got
something to do. They may be round pegs in square
holes but they’ve all got something to do. Something
of their own that they’d rather do than work for a
woman.”
“Men haven’t got much sense, have they, when you
get down to rock bottom?”
“Maybe not but they’ve got a heap of pride,” said
Tommy soberly.
“Pride! Pride tastes awfully good, especially when
the crust is flaky and you put meringue on it,” said
Scarlett tartly.
The two men laughed, a bit unwillingly, and it
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seemed to Scarlett that they drew together in united
masculine disapproval of her. What Tommy said was
true, she thought, running over in her mind the men
she had approached and the ones she intended to
approach. They were all busy, busy at something,
working hard, working harder than they would have
dreamed possible in the days before the war. They
weren’t doing what they wanted to do perhaps, or
what was easiest to do, or what they had been reared
to do, but they were doing something. Times were
too hard for men to be choosy. And if they were sorrowing for lost hopes, longing for lost ways of living,
no one knew it but they. They were fighting a new
war, a harder war than the one before. And they were
caring about life again, caring with the same urgency
and the same violence that animated them before the
war had cut their lives in two.
“Scarlett,” said Tommy awkwardly, “I do hate to ask
a favor of you, after being impudent to you, but I’m
going to ask it just the same. Maybe it would help you
anyway. My brother-in-law, Hugh Elsing, isn’t doing
any too well peddling kindling wood. Everybody except the Yankees goes out and collects his own kindling wood. And I know things are mighty hard with
the whole Elsing family. I–I do what I can, but you
see I’ve got Fanny to support, and then, too, I’ve got
1272
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my mother and two widowed sisters down in Sparta
to look after. Hugh is nice, and you wanted a nice
man, and he’s from nice folks, as you know, and he’s
honest.”
“But–well, Hugh hasn’t got much gumption or else
he’d make a success of his kindling.”
Tommy shrugged.
“You’ve got a hard way of looking at things, Scarlett,” he said. “But you think Hugh over. You could
go far and do worse. I think his honesty and his willingness will outweigh his lack of gumption.”
Scarlett did not answer, for she did not want to be
too rude. But to her mind there were few, if any, qualities that out-weighed gumption.
After she had unsuccessfully canvassed the town
and refused the importuning of many eager Carpetbaggers, she finally decided to take Tommy’s suggestion and ask Hugh Elsing. He had been a dashing
and resourceful officer during the war, but two severe
wounds and four years of fighting seemed to have
drained him of all his resourcefulness, leaving him to
face the rigors of peace as bewildered as a child. There
was a lost-dog look in his eyes these days as he went
about peddling his firewood, and he was not at all the
kind of man she had hoped to get.
1273
�PART FOUR
“He’s stupid,” she thought. “He doesn’t know a
thing about business and I’ll bet he can’t add two and
two. And I doubt if he’ll ever learn. But, at least, he’s
honest and won’t swindle me.”
Scarlett had little use these days for honesty in herself, but the less she valued it in herself the more she
was beginning to value it in others.
“It’s a pity Johnnie Gallegher is tied up with Tommy
Wellburn on that construction work,” she thought.
“He’s just the kind of man I want. He’s hard as nails
and slick as a snake, but he’d be honest if it paid
him to be honest. I understand him and he understands me and we could do business together very
well. Maybe I can get him when the hotel is finished
and till then I’ll have to make out on Hugh and Mr.
Johnson. If I put Hugh in charge of the new mill and
leave Mr. Johnson at the old one, I can stay in town
and see to the selling while they handle the milling
and hauling. Until I can get Johnnie I’ll have to risk
Mr. Johnson robbing me if I stay in town all the time.
If only he wasn’t a thief! I believe I’ll build a lumber
yard on half that lot Charles left me. If only Frank
didn’t holler so loud about me building a saloon on
the other half! Well, I shall build the saloon just as
soon as I get enough money ahead, no matter how he
1274
�PART FOUR
takes on. If only Frank wasn’t so thin skinned. Oh,
God, if only I wasn’t going to have a baby at this of all
times! In a little while I’ll be so big I can’t go out. Oh,
God, if only I wasn’t going to have a baby! And oh,
God, if the damned Yankees will only let me alone!
If–”
If! If! If! There were so many ifs in life, never any
certainty of anything, never any sense of security, always the dread of losing everything and being cold
and hungry again. Of course, Frank was making a
little more money now, but Frank was always ailing
with colds and frequently forced to stay in bed for
days. Suppose he should become an invalid. No,
she could not afford to count on Frank for much. She
must not count on anything or anybody but herself.
And what she could earn seemed so pitiably small.
Oh, what would she do if the Yankees came and took
it all away from her? If! If! If!
Half of what she made every month went to Will at
Tara, part to Rhett to repay his loan and the rest she
hoarded. No miser ever counted his gold oftener than
she and no miser ever had greater fear of losing it. She
would not put the money in the bank, for it might
fail or the Yankees might confiscate it. So she carried what she could with her, tucked into her corset,
1275
�PART FOUR
and hid small wads of bills about the house, under
loose bricks on the hearth, in her scrap bag, between
the pages of the Bible. And her temper grew shorter
and shorter as the weeks went by, for every dollar she
saved would be just one more dollar to lose if disaster
descended.
Frank, Pitty and the servants bore her outbursts
with maddening kindness, attributing her bad disposition to her pregnancy, never realizing the true cause.
Frank knew that pregnant women must be humored,
so he put his pride in his pocket and said nothing
more about her running the mills and her going about
town at such a time, as no lady should do. Her conduct was a constant embarrassment to him but he
reckoned he could endure it for a while longer. After the baby came, he knew she would be the same
sweet, feminine girl he had courted. But in spite of everything he did to appease her, she continued to have
her tantrums and often he thought she acted like one
possessed.
No one seemed to realize what really possessed her,
what drove her like a mad woman. It was a passion to
get her affairs in order before she had to retire behind
doors, to have as much money as possible in case the
deluge broke upon her again, to have a stout levee
1276
�PART FOUR
of cash against the rising tide of Yankee hate. Money
was the obsession dominating her mind these days.
When she thought of the baby at all, it was with baffled rage at the untimeliness of it.
“Death and taxes and childbirth! There’s never any
convenient time for any of them!”
Atlanta had been scandalized enough when Scarlett, a woman, began operating the sawmill but, as
time went by, the town decided there was no limit to
what she would do. Her sharp trading was shocking,
especially when her poor mother had been a Robillard, and it was positively indecent the way she kept
on going about the streets when everyone knew she
was pregnant. No respectable white woman and few
negroes ever went outside their homes from the moment they first suspected they were with child, and
Mrs. Merriwether declared indignantly that from the
way Scarlett was acting she was likely to have the
baby on the public streets.
But all the previous criticism of her conduct was as
nothing compared with the buzz of gossip that now
went through the town. Scarlett was not only trafficking with the Yankees but was giving every appearance of really liking it!
Mrs.
Merriwether and many other Southerners
1277
�PART FOUR
were also doing business with the newcomers from
the North, but the difference was that they did not
like it and plainly showed they did not like it. And
Scarlett did, or seemed to, which was just as bad. She
had actually taken tea with the Yankee officers’ wives
in their homes! In fact, she had done practically everything short of inviting them into her own home,
and the town guessed she would do even that, except
for Aunt Pitty and Frank.
Scarlett knew the town was talking but she did not
care, could not afford to care. She still hated the Yankees with as fierce a hate as on the day when they
tried to burn Tara, but she could dissemble that hate.
She knew that if she was going to make money, she
would have to make it out of the Yankees, and she
had learned that buttering them up with smiles and
kind words was the surest way to get their business
for her mill.
Some day when she was very rich and her money
was hidden away where the Yankees could not find
it, then, then she would tell them exactly what she
thought of them, tell them how she hated and loathed
and despised them. And what a joy that would
be! But until that time came, it was just plain common sense to get along with them. And if that was
1278
�PART FOUR
hypocrisy, let Atlanta make the most of it.
She discovered that making friends with the Yankee
officers was as easy as shooting birds on the ground.
They were lonely exiles in a hostile land and many
of them were starved for polite feminine associations
in a town where respectable women drew their skirts
aside in passing and looked as if they would like to
spit on them. Only the prostitutes and the negro
women had kind words for them. But Scarlett was
obviously a lady and a lady of family, for all that she
worked, and they thrilled to her flashing smile and
the pleasant light in her green eyes.
Frequently when Scarlett sat in her buggy talking
to them and making her dimples play, her dislike for
them rose so strong that it was hard not to curse them
to their faces. But she restrained herself and she found
that twisting Yankee men around her finger was no
more difficult than that same diversion had been with
Southern men. Only this was no diversion but a grim
business. The role she enacted was that of a refined
sweet Southern lady in distress. With an air of dignified reserve she was able to keep her victims at their
proper distance, but there was nevertheless a graciousness in her manner which left a certain warmth
in the Yankee officers’ memories of Mrs. Kennedy.
1279
�PART FOUR
This warmth was very profitable–as Scarlett had intended it to be. Many of the officers of the garrison,
not knowing how long they would be stationed in Atlanta, had sent for their wives and families. As the
hotels and boarding houses were overflowing, they
were building small houses; and they were glad to
buy their lumber from the gracious Mrs. Kennedy,
who treated them more politely than anyone else in
town. The Carpetbaggers and Scallawags also, who
were building fine homes and stores and hotels with
their new wealth, found it more pleasant to do business with her than with the former Confederate soldiers who were courteous but with a courtesy more
formal and cold than outspoken hate.
So, because she was pretty and charming and could
appear quite helpless and forlorn at times, they gladly
patronized her lumber yard and also Frank’s store,
feeling that they should help a plucky little woman
who apparently had only a shiftless husband to
support her. And Scarlett, watching the business
grow, felt that she was safeguarding not only the
present with Yankee money but the future with Yankee friends.
Keeping her relations with the Yankee officers on
the plane she desired was easier than she expected,
1280
�PART FOUR
for they all seemed to be in awe of Southern ladies,
but Scarlett soon found that their wives presented a
problem she had not anticipated. Contacts with the
Yankee women were not of her seeking. She would
have been glad to avoid them but she could not, for
the officers’ wives were determined to meet her. They
had an avid curiosity about the South and Southern
women, and Scarlett gave them their first opportunity to satisfy it. Other Atlanta women would have
nothing to do with them and even refused to bow to
them in church, so when business brought Scarlett to
their homes, she was like an answer to prayer. Often
when Scarlett sat in her buggy in front of a Yankee
home talking of uprights and shingles with the man
of the house, the wife came out to join in the conversation or insist that she come inside for a cup of tea.
Scarlett seldom refused, no matter how distasteful the
idea might be, for she always hoped to have an opportunity to suggest tactfully that they do their trading at
Frank’s store. But her self-control was severely tested
many times, because of the personal questions they
asked and because of the smug and condescending
attitude they displayed toward all things Southern.
Accepting Uncle Tom’s Cabin as revelation second
only to the Bible, the Yankee women all wanted to
know about the bloodhounds which every South1281
�PART FOUR
erner kept to track down runaway slaves. And they
never believed her when she told them she had only
seen one bloodhound in all her life and it was a small
mild dog and not a huge ferocious mastiff. They
wanted to know about the dreadful branding irons
which planters used to mark the faces of their slaves
and the cat- o’-nine-tails with which they beat them
to death, and they evidenced what Scarlett felt was a
very nasty and ill-bred interest in slave concubinage.
Especially did she resent this in view of the enormous
increase in mulatto babies in Atlanta since the Yankee
soldiers had settled in the town.
Any other Atlanta woman would have expired in
rage at having to listen to such bigoted ignorance but
Scarlett managed to control herself. Assisting her in
this was the fact that they aroused her contempt more
than her anger. After all, they were Yankees and no
one expected anything better from Yankees. So their
unthinking insults to her state, her people and their
morals, glanced off and never struck deep enough to
cause her more than a well-concealed sneer until an
incident occurred which made her sick with rage and
showed her, if she needed any showing, how wide
was the gap between North and South and how utterly impossible it was to bridge it.
1282
�PART FOUR
While driving home with Uncle Peter one afternoon,
she passed the house into which were crowded the
families of three officers who were building their own
homes with Scarlett’s lumber. The three wives were
standing in the walk as she drove by and they waved
to her to stop. Coming out to the carriage block they
greeted her in accents that always made her feel that
one could forgive Yankees almost anything except
their voices.
“You are just the person I want to see, Mrs.
Kennedy,” said a tall thin woman from Maine. “I
want to get some information about this benighted
town.”
Scarlett swallowed the insult to Atlanta with the
contempt it deserved and smiled her best.
“And what can I tell you?”
“My nurse, my Bridget, has gone back North. She
said she wouldn’t stay another day down here among
the ‘naygurs’ as she calls them. And the children are
just driving me distracted! Do tell me how to go about
getting another nurse. I do not know where to apply.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult,” said Scarlett and
laughed. “If you can find a darky just in from the
country who hasn’t been spoiled by the Freedmen’s
Bureau, you’ll have the best kind of servant possi1283
�PART FOUR
ble. Just stand at your gate here and ask every darky
woman who passes and I’m sure–”
The three women broke into indignant outcries.
“Do you think I’d trust my babies to a black nigger?”
cried the Maine woman. “I want a good Irish girl.”
“I’m afraid you’ll find no Irish servants in Atlanta,”
answered Scarlett, coolness in her voice. “Personally,
I’ve never seen a white servant and I shouldn’t care
to have one in my house. And,” she could not keep a
slight note of sarcasm from her words, “I assure you
that darkies aren’t cannibals and are quite trustworthy.”
“Goodness, no! I wouldn’t have one in my house.
The idea!”
“I wouldn’t trust them any farther than I could see
them and as for letting them handle my babies . . .”
Scarlett thought of the kind, gnarled hands of
Mammy worn rough in Ellen’s service and hers and
Wade’s. What did these strangers know of black
hands, how dear and comforting they could be, how
unerringly they knew how to soothe, to pat, to fondle? She laughed shortly.
“It’s strange you should feel that way when it was
you all who freed them.”
1284
�PART FOUR
“Lor’! Not I, dearie,” laughed the Maine woman. “I
never saw a nigger till I came South last month and
I don’t care if I never see another. They give me the
creeps. I wouldn’t trust one of them. . . .”
For some moments Scarlett had been conscious that
Uncle Peter was breathing hard and sitting up very
straight as he stared steadily at the horse’s ears. Her
attention was called to him more forcibly when the
Maine woman broke off suddenly with a laugh and
pointed him out to her companions.
“Look at that old nigger swell up like a toad,” she
giggled. “I’ll bet he’s an old pet of yours, isn’t he? You
Southerners don’t know how to treat niggers. You
spoil them to death.”
Peter sucked in his breath and his wrinkled brow
showed deep furrows but he kept his eyes straight
ahead. He had never had the term “nigger” applied
to him by a white person in all his life. By other negroes, yes. But never by a white person. And to be
called untrustworthy and an “old pet,” he, Peter, who
had been the dignified mainstay of the Hamilton family for years!
Scarlett felt, rather than saw, the black chin begin
to shake with hurt pride, and a killing rage swept
over her. She had listened with calm contempt while
1285
�PART FOUR
these women had underrated the Confederate Army,
blackguarded Jeff Davis and accused Southerners of
murder and torture of their slaves. If it were to her
advantage she would have endured insults about her
own virtue and honesty. But the knowledge that they
had hurt the faithful old darky with their stupid remarks fired her like a match in gunpowder. For a moment she looked at the big horse pistol in Peter’s belt
and her hands itched for the feel of it. They deserved
killing, these insolent, ignorant, arrogant conquerors.
But she bit down on her teeth until her jaw muscles
stood out, reminding herself that the time had not yet
come when she could tell the Yankees just what she
thought of them. Some day, yes. My God, yes! But
not yet.
“Uncle Peter is one of our family,” she said, her
voice shaking. “Good afternoon. Drive on, Peter.”
Peter laid the whip on the horse so suddenly that
the startled animal jumped forward and as the buggy
jounced off, Scarlett heard the Maine woman say with
puzzled accents: “Her family? You don’t suppose she
meant a relative? He’s exceedingly black.”
God damn them! They ought to be wiped off the
face of the earth. If ever I get money enough, I’ll spit
in all their faces! I’ll–
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�PART FOUR
She glanced at Peter and saw that a tear was trickling down his nose. Instantly a passion of tenderness,
of grief for his humiliation swamped her, made her
eyes sting. It was as though someone had been senselessly brutal to a child. Those women had hurt Uncle Peter–Peter who had been through the Mexican
War with old Colonel Hamilton, Peter who had held
his master in his arms when he died, who had raised
Melly and Charles and looked after the feckless, foolish Pittypat, “pertecked” her when she refugeed, and
“‘quired” a horse to bring her back from Macon
through a war-torn country after the surrender. And
they said they wouldn’t trust niggers!
“Peter,” she said, her voice breaking as she put her
hand on his thin arm. “I’m ashamed of you for crying.
What do you care? They aren’t anything but damned
Yankees!”
“Dey talked in front of me lak Ah wuz a mule an’
couldn’ unnerstan’ dem–lak Ah wuz a Affikun an’
din’ know whut dey wuz talkin’ ‘bout,” said Peter,
giving a tremendous sniff. “An’ dey call me a nigger
an’ Ah’ ain’ never been call a nigger by no w’ite folks,
an’ dey call me a ole pet an’ say dat niggers ain’ ter be
trus’ed! Me not ter be trus’ed! Why, w’en de ole Cunnel wuz dyin’ he say ter me, ‘You, Peter! You look
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affer mah chillun. Tek keer of yo’ young Miss Pittypat,’ he say, ’‘cause she ain’ got no mo’ sense dan a
hoppergrass.’ An’ Ah done tek keer of her good all
dese y’ars–”
“Nobody but the Angel Gabriel could have done
better,” said Scarlett soothingly. “We just couldn’t
have lived without you.”
“Yas’m, thankee kinely, Ma’m. Ah knows it an’ you
knows it, but dem Yankee folks doan know it an’ dey
doan want ter know it. Huccome dey come mixin’ in
our bizness, Miss Scarlett? Dey doan unnerstan’ us
Confedruts.”
Scarlett said nothing for she was still burning
with the wrath she had not exploded in the Yankee
women’s faces. The two drove home in silence. Peter’s sniffles stopped and his underlip began to protrude gradually until it stuck out alarmingly. His indignation was mounting, now that the initial hurt was
subsiding.
Scarlett thought: What damnably queer people Yankees are! Those women seemed to think that because Uncle Peter was black, he had no ears to hear
with and no feelings, as tender as their own, to be
hurt. They did not know that negroes had to be handled gently, as though they were children, directed,
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praised, petted, scolded. They didn’t understand negroes or the relations between the negroes and their
former masters. Yet they had fought a war to free
them. And having freed them, they didn’t want to
have anything to do with them, except to use them to
terrorize Southerners. They didn’t like them, didn’t
trust them, didn’t understand them, and yet their constant cry was that Southerners didn’t know how to get
along with them.
Not trust a darky! Scarlett trusted them far more
than most white people, certainly more than she
trusted any Yankee. There were qualities of loyalty
and tirelessness and love in them that no strain could
break, no money could buy. She thought of the faithful few who remained at Tara in the face of the Yankee invasion when they could have fled or joined
the troops for lives of leisure. But they had stayed.
She thought of Dilcey toiling in the cotton fields beside her, of Pork risking his life in neighboring hen
houses that the family might eat, of Mammy coming
to Atlanta with her to keep her from doing wrong.
She thought of the servants of her neighbors who
had stood loyally beside their white owners, protecting their mistresses while the men were at the front,
refugeeing with them through the terrors of the war,
nursing the wounded, burying the dead, comforting
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the bereaved, working, begging, stealing to keep food
on the tables. And even now, with the Freedmen’s
Bureau promising all manner of wonders, they still
stuck with their white folks and worked much harder
than they ever worked in slave times. But the Yankees didn’t understand these things and would never
understand them.
“Yet they set you free,” she said aloud.
“No, Ma’m! Dey din’ sot me free. Ah wouldn’
let no sech trash sot me free,” said Peter indignantly.
“Ah still b’longs ter Miss Pitty an’ w’en Ah dies she
gwine lay me in de Hamilton buhyin’ groun’ whar Ah
b’longs. . . . Mah Miss gwine ter be in a state w’en Ah
tells her ‘bout how you let dem Yankee women ‘sult
me.”
“I did no such thing!” cried Scarlett, startled.
“You did so, Miss Scarlett,” said Peter, pushing out
his lip even farther. “De pint is, needer you nor me
had no bizness bein’ wid Yankees, so dey could ‘sult
me. Ef you hadn’t talked wid dem, dey wouldn’ had
no chance ter treat me lak a mule or a Affikun. An’
you din’ tek up fer me, needer.”
“I did, too!” said Scarlett, stung by the criticism.
“Didn’t I tell them you were one of the family?”
“Dat ain’ tekkin’ up. Dat’s jes’ a fac’,” said Pe1290
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ter. “Miss Scarlett, you ain’ got no bizness havin’ no
truck wid Yankees. Ain’ no other ladies doin’ it. You
wouldn’ ketch Miss Pitty wipin’ her lil shoes on sech
trash. An’ she ain’ gwine lake it w’en she hear ‘bout
whut dey said ‘bout me.”
Peter’s criticism hurt worse than anything Frank or
Aunt Pitty or the neighbors had said and it so annoyed her she longed to shake the old darky until his
toothless gums clapped together. What Peter said was
true but she hated to hear it from a negro and a family
negro, too. Not to stand high in the opinion of one’s
servants was as humiliating a thing as could happen
to a Southerner.
“A ole pet!” Peter grumbled. “Ah specs Miss Pitty
ain’t gwine want me ter drive you roun’ no mo’ after
dat. No, Ma’m!”
“Aunt Pitty will want you to drive me as usual,” she
said sternly, “so let’s hear no more about it.”
“Ah’ll git a mizry in mak back,” warned Peter
darkly. “Mah back huttin’ me so bad dis minute Ah
kain sceercely set up. Mah Miss ain’ gwine want me
ter do no drivin’ w’en Ah got a mizry. . . . Miss Scarlett, it ain’ gwine do you no good ter stan’ high wid
de Yankees an’ de w’ite trash, ef yo’ own folks doan
‘prove of you.”
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That was as accurate a summing up of the situation
as could be made and Scarlett relapsed into infuriated
silence. Yes, the conquerors did approve of her and
her family and her neighbors did not. She knew all
the things the town was saying about her. And now
even Peter disapproved of her to the point of not caring to be seen in public with her. That was the last
straw.
Heretofore she had been careless of public opinion,
careless and a little contemptuous. But Peter’s words
caused fierce resentment to burn in her breast, drove
her to a defensive position, made her suddenly dislike
her neighbors as much as she disliked the Yankees.
“Why should they care what I do?” she thought.
“They must think I enjoy associating with Yankees
and working like a field hand. They’re just making
a hard job harder for me. But I don’t care what they
think. I won’t let myself care. I can’t afford to care
now. But some day–some day–”
Oh some day! When there was security in her world
again, then she would sit back and fold her hands
and be a great lady as Ellen had been. She would
be helpless and sheltered, as a lady should be, and
then everyone would approve of her. Oh, how grand
she would be when she had money again! Then she
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could permit herself to be kind and gentle, as Ellen
had been, and thoughtful of other people and of the
proprieties, to. She would not be driven by fears,
day and night, and life would be a placid, unhurried
affair. She would have time to play with her children and listen to their lessons. There would be long
warm afternoons when ladies would call and, amid
the rustlings of taffeta petticoats and the rhythmic
harsh cracklings of palmetto fans, she would serve
tea and delicious sandwiches and cakes and leisurely
gossip the hours away. And she would be so kind to
those who were suffering misfortune, take baskets to
the poor and soup and jelly to the sick and “air” those
less fortunate in her fine carriage. She would be a lady
in the true Southern manner, as her mother had been.
And then, everyone would love her as they had loved
Ellen and they would say how unselfish she was and
call her “Lady Bountiful.”
Her pleasure in these thoughts of the future was
undimmed by any realization that she had no real
desire to be unselfish or charitable or kind. All she
wanted was the reputation for possessing these qualities. But the meshes of her brain were too wide, too
coarse, to filter such small differences. It was enough
that some day, when she had money, everyone would
approve of her.
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Some day! But not now. Not now, in spite of what
anyone might say of her. Now, there was no time to
be a great lady.
Peter was as good as his word. Aunt Pitty did get
into a state, and Peter’s misery developed overnight
to such proportions that he never drove the buggy
again. Thereafter Scarlett drove alone and the calluses
which had begun to leave her palms came back again.
So the spring months went by, the cool rains of April
passing into the warm balm of green May weather.
The weeks were packed with work and worry and the
handicaps of increasing pregnancy, with old friends
growing cooler and her family increasingly more
kind, more maddeningly solicitous and more completely blind to what was driving her. During those
days of anxiety and struggle there was only one dependable, understanding person in her world, and
that person was Rhett Butler. It was odd that he of all
people should appear in this light, for he was as unstable as quicksilver and as perverse as a demon fresh
from the pit. But he gave her sympathy, something
she had never had from anyone and never expected
from him.
Frequently he was out of town on those mysterious
trips to New Orleans which he never explained but
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which she felt sure, in a faintly jealous way, were connected with a woman–or women. But after Uncle Peter’s refusal to drive her, he remained in Atlanta for
longer and longer intervals.
While in town, he spent most of his time gambling
in the rooms above the Girl of the Period Saloon, or
in Belle Watling’s bar hobnobbing with the wealthier
of the Yankees and Carpetbaggers in money-making
schemes which made the townspeople detest him
even more than his cronies. He did not call at the
house now, probably in deference to the feelings of
Frank and Pitty who would have been outraged at
a male caller while Scarlett was in a delicate condition. But she met him by accident almost every day.
Time and again, he came riding up to her buggy when
she was passing through lonely stretches of Peachtree
road and Decatur road where the mills lay. He always
drew rein and talked and sometimes he tied his horse
to the back of the buggy and drove her on her rounds.
She tired more easily these days than she liked to admit and she was always silently grateful when he took
the reins. He always left her before they reached the
town again but all Atlanta knew about their meetings,
and it gave the gossips something new to add to the
long list of Scarlett’s affronts to the proprieties.
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She wondered occasionally if these meetings were
not more than accidental. They became more and
more numerous as the weeks went by and as the tension in town heightened over negro outrages. But
why did he seek her out, now of all times when she
looked her worst? Certainly he had no designs upon
her if he had ever had any, and she was beginning to
doubt even this. It had been months since he made
any joking references to their distressing scene at the
Yankee jail. He never mentioned Ashley and her love
for him, or made any coarse and ill-bred remarks
about “coveting her.” She thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie, so she did not ask for an explanation of
their frequent meetings. And finally she decided that,
because he had little to do besides gamble and had
few enough nice friends in Atlanta, he sought her out
solely for companionship’s sake.
Whatever his reason might be, she found his company most welcome. He listened to her moans about
lost customers and bad debts, the swindling ways of
Mr. Johnson and the incompetency of Hugh. He applauded her triumphs, where Frank merely smiled indulgently and Pitty said “Dear me!” in a dazed manner. She was sure that he frequently threw business
her way, for he knew all the rich Yankees and Carpetbaggers intimately, but he always denied being help1296
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ful. She knew him for what he was and she never
trusted him, but her spirits always rose with pleasure
at the sight of him riding around the curve of a shady
road on his big black horse. When he climbed into
the buggy and took the reins from her and threw her
some impertinent remark, she felt young and gay and
attractive again, for all her worries and her increasing
bulk. She could talk to him about almost everything,
with no care for concealing her motives or her real
opinions and she never ran out of things to say as she
did with Frank–or even with Ashley, if she must be
honest with herself. But of course, in all her conversations with Ashley there were so many things which
could not be said, for honor’s sake, that the sheer
force of them inhibited other remarks. It was comforting to have a friend like Rhett, now that for some
unaccountable reason he had decided to be on good
behavior with her. Very comforting, for she had so
few friends these days.
“Rhett,” she asked stormily, shortly after Uncle Peter’s ultimatum, “why do folks in this town treat me
so scurvily and talk about me so? It’s a toss-up who
they talk worst about, me or the Carpetbaggers! I’ve
minded my own business and haven’t done anything
wrong and–”
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“If you haven’t done anything wrong, it’s because
you haven’t had the opportunity, and perhaps they
dimly realize it.”
“Oh, do be serious! They make me so mad. All I’ve
done is try to make a little money and–”
“All you’ve done is to be different from other
women and you’ve made a little success at it. As I’ve
told you before, that is the one unforgivable sin in
any society. Be different and be damned! Scarlett, the
mere fact that you’ve made a success of your mill is an
insult to every man who hasn’t succeeded. Remember, a well-bred female’s place is in the home and she
should know nothing about this busy, brutal world.”
“But if I had stayed in my home, I wouldn’t have
had any home left to stay in.”
“The inference is that you should have starved genteelly and with pride.”
“Oh, fiddle-dee-dee! But look at Mrs. Merriwether.
She’s selling pies to Yankees and that’s worse than
running a sawmill, and Mrs. Elsing takes in sewing
and keeps boarders, and Fanny paints awful- looking
china things that nobody wants and everybody buys
to help her and–”
“But you miss the point, my pet. They aren’t successful and so they aren’t affronting the hot Southern
1298
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pride of their men folks. The men can still say, ‘Poor
sweet sillies, how hard they try! Well, I’ll let them
think they’re helping.’ And besides, the ladies you
mentioned don’t enjoy having to work. They let it
be known that they are only doing it until some man
comes along to relieve them of their unwomanly burdens. And so everybody feels sorry for them. But obviously you do like to work and obviously you aren’t
going to let any man tend to your business for you,
and so no one can feel sorry for you. And Atlanta is
never going to forgive you for that. It’s so pleasant to
feel sorry for people.”
“I wish you’d be serious, sometimes.”
“Did you ever hear the Oriental proverb: ‘The dogs
bark but the caravan passes on?’ Let them bark, Scarlett. I fear nothing will stop your caravan.”
“But why should they mind my making a little
money?”
“You can’t have everything, Scarlett. You can either
make money in your present unladylike manner and
meet cold shoulders everywhere you go, or you can
be poor and genteel and have lots of friends. You’ve
made your choice.”
“I won’t be poor,” she said swiftly. “But–it is the
right choice, isn’t it?”
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“If it’s money you want most.”
“Yes, I want money more than anything else in the
world.”
“Then you’ve made the only choice. But there’s a
penalty attached, as there is to most things you want.
It’s loneliness.”
That silenced her for a moment. It was true.
When she stopped to think about it, she was a little lonely–lonely for feminine companionship. During the war years she had had Ellen to visit when she
felt blue. And since Ellen’s death, there had always
been Melanie, though she and Melanie had nothing
in common except the hard work at Tara. Now there
was no one, for Aunt Pitty had no conception of life
beyond her small round of gossip.
“I think–I think,” she began hesitantly, “that I’ve always been lonely where women were concerned. It
isn’t just my working that makes Atlanta ladies dislike me. They just don’t like me anyway. No woman
ever really liked me, except Mother. Even my sisters.
I don’t know why, but even before the war, even before I married Charlie, ladies didn’t seem to approve
of anything I did–”
“You forget Mrs. Wilkes,” said Rhett and his eyes
gleamed maliciously. “She has always approved of
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you up to the hilt. I daresay she’d approve of anything you did, short of murder.”
Scarlett thought grimly: “She’s even approved of
murder,” and she laughed contemptuously.
“Oh, Melly!” she said, and then, ruefully: “It’s certainly not to my credit that Melly is the only woman
who approves of me, for she hasn’t the sense of a
guinea hen. If she had any sense–” She stopped in
some confusion.
“If she had any sense, she’d realize a few things
and she couldn’t approve,” Rhett finished. “Well, you
know more about that than I do, of course.”
“Oh, damn your memory and your bad manners!”
“I’ll pass over your unjustified rudeness with the
silence it deserves and return to our former subject.
Make up your mind to this. If you are different, you
are isolated, not only from people of your own age
but from those of your parents’ generation and from
your children’s generation too. They’ll never understand you and they’ll be shocked no matter what you
do. But your grandparents would probably be proud
of you and say: ‘There’s a chip off the old block,’
and your grandchildren will sigh enviously and say:
‘What an old rip Grandma must have been!’ and
they’ll try to be like you.”
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Scarlett laughed with amusement.
“Sometimes you do hit on the truth! Now there was
my Grandma Robillard. Mammy used to hold her
over my head whenever I was naughty. Grandma
was as cold as an icicle and strict about her manners
and everybody else’s manners, but she married three
times and had any number of duels fought over her
and she wore rouge and the most shockingly low-cut
dresses and no–well, er–not much under her dresses.”
“And you admired her tremendously, for all that
you tried to be like your mother! I had a grandfather
on the Butler side who was a pirate.”
“Not really! A walk-the-plank kind?”
“I daresay he made people walk the plank if there
was any money to be made that way. At any rate,
he made enough money to leave my father quite
wealthy. But the family always referred to him carefully as a ‘sea captain.’ He was killed in a saloon
brawl long before I was born. His death was, needless to say, a great relief to his children, for the old
gentleman was drunk most of the time and when in
his cups was apt to forget that he was a retired sea
captain and give reminiscences that curled his children’s hair. However, I admired him and tried to copy
him far more than I ever did my father, for Father is
1302
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an amiable gentleman full of honorable habits and pious saws–so you see how it goes. I’m sure your children won’t approve of you, Scarlett, any more than
Mrs. Merriwether and Mrs. Elsing and their broods
approve of you now. Your children will probably be
soft, prissy creatures, as the children of hard-bitten
characters usually are. And to make them worse, you,
like every other mother, are probably determined that
they shall never know the hardships you’ve known.
And that’s all wrong. Hardships make or break people. So you’ll have to wait for approval from your
grandchildren.”
“I wonder what our grandchildren will be like!”
“Are you suggesting by that ‘our’ that you and I will
have mutual grandchildren? Fie, Mrs. Kennedy!”
Scarlett, suddenly conscious of her error of speech,
went red. It was more than his joking words that
shamed her, for she was suddenly aware again of her
thickening body. In no way had either of them ever
hinted at her condition and she had always kept the
lap robe high under her armpits when with him, even
on warm days, comforting herself in the usual feminine manner with the belief that she did not show
at all when thus covered, and she was suddenly sick
with quick rage at her own condition and shame that
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he should know.
“You get out of this buggy, you dirty-minded varmit,” she said, her voice shaking.
“I’ll do nothing of the kind,” he returned calmly.
“It’ll be dark before you get home and there’s a new
colony of darkies living in tents and shanties near the
next spring, mean niggers I’ve been told, and I see no
reason why you should give the impulsive Ku Klux
a cause for putting on their nightshirts and riding
abroad this evening.”
“Get out!” she cried, tugging at the reins and suddenly nausea overwhelmed her. He stopped the
horse quickly, passed her two clean handkerchiefs
and held her head over the side of the buggy with
some skill. The afternoon sun, slanting low through
the newly leaved trees, spun sickeningly for a few
moments in a swirl of gold and green. When the spell
had passed, she put her head in her hands and cried
from sheer mortification. Not only had she vomited
before a man–in itself as horrible a contretemps as
could overtake a woman–but by doing so, the humiliating fact of her pregnancy must now be evident. She
felt that she could never look him in the face again. To
have this happen with him, of all people, with Rhett
who had no respect for women! She cried, expecting
1304
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some coarse and jocular remark from him which she
would never be able to forget.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said quietly. “And you are
a fool, if you are crying for shame. Come, Scarlett,
don’t be a child. Surely you must know that, not being blind, I knew you were pregnant.”
She said “Oh” in a stunned voice and tightened her
fingers over her crimson face. The word itself horrified her. Frank always referred to her pregnancy
embarrassedly as “your condition,” Gerald had been
wont to say delicately “in the family way,” when he
had to mention such matters, and ladies genteelly referred to pregnancy as being “in a fix.”
“You are a child if you thought I didn’t know, for all
your smothering yourself under that hot lap robe. Of
course, I knew. Why else do you think I’ve been–”
He stopped suddenly and a silence fell between
them. He picked up the reins and clucked to the
horse. He went on talking quietly and as his drawl
fell pleasantly on her ears, some of the color faded
from her down-tucked face.
“I didn’t think you could be so shocked, Scarlett. I
thought you were a sensible person and I’m disappointed. Can it be possible that modesty still lingers
in your breast? I’m afraid I’m not a gentleman to
1305
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have mentioned the matter. And I know I’m not a
gentleman, in view of the fact that pregnant women
do not embarrass me as they should. I find it possible to treat them as normal creatures and not look
at the ground or the sky or anywhere else in the universe except their waist lines–and then cast at them
those furtive glances I’ve always thought the height
of indecency. Why should I? It’s a perfectly normal
state. The Europeans are far more sensible than we
are. They compliment expectant mothers upon their
expectations. While I wouldn’t advise going that far,
still it’s more sensible than our way of trying to ignore
it. It’s a normal state and women should be proud of
it, instead of hiding behind closed doors as if they’d
committed a crime.”
“Proud!” she cried in a strangled voice. “Proud–
ugh!”
“Aren’t you proud to be having a child?”
“Oh dear God, no! I–I hate babies!”
“You mean–Frank’s baby.”
“No–anybody’s baby.”
For a moment she went sick again at this new error
of speech, but his voice went on as easily as though
he had not marked it.
“Then we’re different. I like babies.”
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“You like them?” she cried, looking up, so startled
at the statement that she forgot her embarrassment.
“What a liar you are!”
“I like babies and I like little children, till they begin
to grow up and acquire adult habits of thought and
adult abilities to lie and cheat and be dirty. That can’t
be news to you. You know I like Wade Hampton a lot,
for all that he isn’t the boy he ought to be.”
That was true, thought Scarlett, suddenly marveling. He did seem to enjoy playing with Wade and
often brought him presents.
“Now that we’ve brought this dreadful subject into
the light and you admit that you expect a baby some
time in the not too distant future, I’ll say something
I’ve been wanting to say for weeks–two things. The
first is that it’s dangerous for you to drive alone. You
know it. You’ve been told it often enough. If you
don’t care personally whether or not you are raped,
you might consider the consequences. Because of
your obstinacy, you may get yourself into a situation
where your gallant fellow townsmen will be forced
to avenge you by stringing up a few darkies. And
that will bring the Yankees down on them and someone will probably get hanged. Has it ever occurred
to you that perhaps one of the reasons the ladies do
1307
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not like you is that your conduct may cause the neckstretching of their sons and husbands? And furthermore, if the Ku Klux handles many more negroes,
the Yankees are going to tighten up on Atlanta in a
way that will make Sherman’s conduct look angelic.
I know what I’m talking about, for I’m hand in glove
with the Yankees. Shameful to state, they treat me
as one of them and I hear them talk openly. They
mean to stamp out the Ku Klux if it means burning
the whole town again and hanging every male over
ten. That would hurt you, Scarlett. You might lose
money. And there’s no telling where a prairie fire will
stop, once it gets started. Confiscation of property,
higher taxes, fines for suspected women– I’ve heard
them all suggested. The Ku Klux–”
“Do you know any Ku Klux? Is Tommy Wellburn or
Hugh or–”
He shrugged impatiently.
“How should I know? I’m a renegade, a turncoat,
a Scallawag. Would I be likely to know? But I do
know men who are suspected by the Yankees and one
false move from them and they are as good as hanged.
While I know you would have no regrets at getting
your neighbors on the gallows, I do believe you’d regret losing your mills. I see by the stubborn look on
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your face that you do not believe me and my words
are falling on stony ground. So all I can say is, keep
that pistol of yours handy–and when I’m in town, I’ll
try to be on hand to drive you.”
“Rhett, do you really–is it to protect me that you–”
“Yes, my dear, it is my much advertised chivalry
that makes me protect you.” The mocking light began
to dance in his black eyes and all signs of earnestness
fled from his face. “And why? Because of my deep
love for you, Mrs. Kennedy. Yes, I have silently hungered and thirsted for you and worshipped you from
afar; but being an honorable man, like Mr. Ashley
Wilkes, I have concealed it from you. You are, alas,
Frank’s wife and honor has forbidden my telling this
to you. But even as Mr. Wilkes’ honor cracks occasionally, so mine is cracking now and I reveal my secret passion and my–”
“Oh, for God’s sake, hush!” interrupted Scarlett, annoyed as usual when he made her look like a conceited fool, and not caring to have Ashley and his
honor become the subject of further conversation.
“What was the other thing you wanted to tell me?”
“What! You change the subject when I am baring
a loving but lacerated heart? Well, the other thing is
this.” The mocking light died out of his eyes again
1309
�PART FOUR
and his face was dark and quiet.
“I want you to do something about this horse. He’s
stubborn and he’s got a mouth as tough as iron. Tires
you to drive him, doesn’t it? Well, if he chose to bolt,
you couldn’t possibly stop him. And if you turned
over in a ditch, it might kill your baby and you too.
You ought to get the heaviest curb bit you can, or else
let me swap him for a gentle horse with a more sensitive mouth.”
She looked up into his blank, smooth face and suddenly her irritation fell away, even as her embarrassment had disappeared after the conversation about
her pregnancy. He had been kind, a few moments
before, to put her at her ease when she was wishing
that she were dead. And he was being kinder now
and very thoughtful about the horse. She felt a rush
of gratitude to him and she wondered why he could
not always be this way.
“The horse is hard to drive,” she agreed meekly.
“Sometimes my arms ache all night from tugging at
him. You do what you think best about him, Rhett.”
His eyes sparkled wickedly.
“That sounds very sweet and feminine, Mrs.
Kennedy. Not in your usual masterful vein at all.
Well, it only takes proper handling to make a cling1310
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ing vine out of you.”
She scowled and her temper came back.
“You will get out of this buggy this time, or I will
hit you with the whip. I don’t know why I put up
with you–why I try to be nice to you. You have no
manners. You have no morals. You are nothing but
a– Well, get out. I mean it.”
But when he had climbed down and untied his
horse from the back of the buggy and stood in the twilight road, grinning tantalizingly at her, she could not
smother her own grin as she drove off.
Yes, he was coarse, he was tricky, he was unsafe to
have dealings with, and you never could tell when the
dull weapon you put into his hands in an unguarded
moment might turn into the keenest of blades. But,
after all, he was as stimulating as–well, as a surreptitious glass of brandy!
During these months Scarlett had learned the use of
brandy. When she came home in the late afternoons,
damp from the rain, cramped and aching from long
hours in the buggy, nothing sustained her except the
thought of the bottle hidden in her top bureau drawer,
locked against Mammy’s prying eyes. Dr. Meade had
not thought to warn her that a woman in her condition should not drink, for it never occurred to him that
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a decent woman would drink anything stronger than
scuppernong wine. Except, of course, a glass of champagne at a wedding or a hot toddy when confined to
bed with a hard cold. Of course, there were unfortunate women who drank, to the eternal disgrace of
their families, just as there were women who were insane or divorced or who believed, with Miss Susan B.
Anthony, that women should have the vote. But as
much as the doctor disapproved of Scarlett, he never
suspected her of drinking.
Scarlett had found that a drink of neat brandy before supper helped immeasurably and she would always chew coffee or gargle cologne to disguise the
smell. Why were people so silly about women drinking, when men could and did get reeling drunk whenever they wanted to? Sometimes when Frank lay
snoring beside her and sleep would not come, when
she lay tossing, torn with fears of poverty, dreading
the Yankees, homesick for Tara and yearning for Ashley, she thought she would go crazy were it not for
the brandy bottle. And when the pleasant familiar
warmth stole through her veins, her troubles began
to fade. After three drinks, she could always say to
herself: “I’ll think of these things tomorrow when I
can stand them better.”
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�PART FOUR
But there were some nights when even brandy
would not still the ache in her heart, the ache that was
even stronger than fear of losing the mills, the ache to
see Tara again. Atlanta, with its noises, its new buildings, its strange faces, its narrow streets crowded with
horses and wagons and bustling crowds sometimes
seemed to stifle her. She loved Atlanta but–oh, for the
sweet peace and country quiet of Tara, the red fields
and the dark pines about it! Oh, to be back at Tara,
no matter how hard the life might be! And to be near
Ashley, just to see him, to hear him speak, to be sustained by the knowledge of his love! Each letter from
Melanie, saying that they were well, each brief note
from Will reporting about the plowing, the planting,
the growing of the cotton made her long anew to be
home again.
I’ll go home in June. I can’t do anything here after
that. I’ll go home for a couple of months, she thought,
and her heart would rise. She did go home in June but
not as she longed to go, for early in that month came
a brief message from Will that Gerald was dead.
1313
�CHAPTER XXXIX
very late and the long, deeply blue
twilight of June was settling over the countryside
when Scarlett alighted in Jonesboro. Yellow gleams
of lamplight showed in the stores and houses which
remained in the village, but they were few. Here
and there were wide gaps between the buildings on
the main street where dwellings had been shelled
or burned. Ruined houses with shell holes in their
roofs and half the walls torn away stared at her, silent
and dark. A few saddle horses and mule teams
were hitched outside the wooden awning of Bullard’s
store. The dusty red road was empty and lifeless, and
the only sounds in the village were a few whoops and
drunken laughs that floated on the still twilight air
from a saloon far down the street.
The depot had not been rebuilt since it was burned
in the battle and in its place was only a wooden shelter, with no sides to keep out the weather. Scarlett
walked under it and sat down on one of the empty
kegs that were evidently put there for seats. She
peered up and down the street for Will Benteen. Will
should have been here to meet her. He should have
known she would take the first train possible after receiving his laconic message that Gerald was dead.
T HE
TRAIN WAS
�PART FOUR
She had come so hurriedly that she had in her small
carpetbag only a nightgown and a tooth brush, not
even a change of underwear. She was uncomfortable in the tight black dress she had borrowed from
Mrs. Meade, for she had had no time to get mourning
clothes for herself. Mrs. Meade was thin now, and
Scarlett’s pregnancy being advanced, the dress was
doubly uncomfortable. Even in her sorrow at Gerald’s death, she did not forget the appearance she was
making and she looked down at her body with distaste. Her figure was completely gone and her face
and ankles were puffy. Heretofore she had not cared
very much how she looked but now that she would
see Ashley within the hour she cared greatly. Even in
her heartbreak, she shrank from the thought of facing
him when she was carrying another man’s child. She
loved him and he loved her, and this unwanted child
now seemed to her a proof of infidelity to that love.
But much as she disliked having him see her with
the slenderness gone from her waist and the lightness
from her step, it was something she could not escape
now.
She patted her foot impatiently. Will should have
met her. Of course, she could go over to Bullard’s
and inquire after him or ask someone there to drive
her over to Tara, should she find he had been unable
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�PART FOUR
to come. But she did not want to go to Bullard’s. It
was Saturday night and probably half the men of the
County would be there. She did not want to display
her condition in this poorly fitting black dress which
accentuated rather than hid her figure. And she did
not want to hear the kindly sympathy that would be
poured out about Gerald. She did not want sympathy.
She was afraid she would cry if anyone even mentioned his name to her. And she wouldn’t cry. She
knew if she once began it would be like the time she
cried into the horse’s mane, that dreadful night when
Atlanta fell and Rhett had left her on the dark road
outside the town, terrible tears that tore her heart and
could not be stopped.
No, she wouldn’t cry! She felt the lump in her throat
rising again, as it had done so often since the news
came, but crying wouldn’t do any good. It would
only confuse and weaken her. Why, oh, why hadn’t
Will or Melanie or the girls written her that Gerald
was ailing? She would have taken the first train to
Tara to care for him, brought a doctor from Atlanta
if necessary. The fools– all of them! Couldn’t they
manage anything without her? She couldn’t be in two
places at once and the good Lord knew she was doing
her best for them all in Atlanta.
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�PART FOUR
She twisted about on the keg, becoming nervous
and fidgety as Will still did not come. Where was
he? Then she heard the scrunching of cinders on
the railroad tracks behind her and, twisting her body,
she saw Alex Fontaine crossing the tracks toward a
wagon, a sack of oats on his shoulder.
“Good Lord! Isn’t that you, Scarlett?” he cried,
dropping the sack and running to take her hand, pleasure written all over his bitter, swarthy little face. “I’m
so glad to see you. I saw Will over at the blacksmith’s
shop, getting the horse shod. The train was late and
he thought he’d have time. Shall I run fetch him?”
“Yes, please, Alex,” she said, smiling in spite of her
sorrow. It was good to see a County face again.
“Oh–er–Scarlett,” he began awkwardly, still holding
her hand, “I’m mighty sorry about your father.”
“Thank you,” she replied, wishing he had not said
it. His words brought up Gerald’s florid face and bellowing voice so clearly.
“If it’s any comfort to you, Scarlett, we’re mighty
proud of him around here,” Alex continued, dropping her hand. “He–well, we figure he died like a
soldier and in a soldier’s cause.”
Now what did he mean by that, she thought confusedly. A soldier? Had someone shot him? Had
1317
�PART FOUR
he gotten into a fight with the Scallawags as Tony
had? But she mustn’t hear more. She would cry if she
talked about him and she mustn’t cry, not until she
was safely in the wagon with Will and out in the country where no stranger could see her. Will wouldn’t
matter. He was just like a brother.
“Alex, I don’t want to talk about it,” she said shortly.
“I don’t blame you one bit, Scarlett,” said Alex while
the dark blood of anger flooded his face. “If it was my
sister, I’d–well, Scarlett, I’ve never yet said a harsh
word about any woman, but personally I think somebody ought to take a rawhide whip to Suellen.”
What foolishness was he talking about now, she
wondered. What had Suellen to do with it all?
“Everybody around here feels the same way about
her, I’m sorry to say. Will’s the only one who takes up
for her–and, of course, Miss Melanie, but she’s a saint
and won’t see bad in anyone and–”
“I said I didn’t want to talk about it,” she said coldly
but Alex did not seem rebuffed. He looked as though
he understood her rudeness and that was annoying.
She didn’t want to hear bad tidings about her own
family from an outsider, didn’t want him to know of
her ignorance of what had happened. Why hadn’t
Will sent her the full details?
1318
�PART FOUR
She wished Alex wouldn’t look at her so hard. She
felt that he realized her condition and it embarrassed
her. But what Alex was thinking as he peered at her
in the twilight was that her face had changed so completely he wondered how he had ever recognized her.
Perhaps it was because she was going to have a baby.
Women did look like the devil at such times. And,
of course, she must be feeling badly about old man
O’Hara. She had been his pet. But, no, the change was
deeper than that. She really looked as if she had three
square meals a day. And the hunted-animal look had
partly gone from her eyes. Now, the eyes which had
been fearful and desperate were hard. There was an
air of command, assurance and determination about
her, even when she smiled. Bet she led old Frank a
merry life! Yes, she had changed. She was a handsome woman, to be sure, but all that pretty, sweet softness had gone from her face and that flattering way
of looking up at a man, like he knew more than God
Almighty, had utterly vanished.
Well, hadn’t they all changed? Alex looked down at
his rough clothes and his face fell into its usual bitter
lines. Sometimes at night when he lay awake, wondering how his mother was going to get that operation and how poor dead Joe’s little boy was going to
get an education and how he was going to get money
1319
�PART FOUR
for another mule, he wished the war was still going
on, wished it had gone on forever. They didn’t know
their luck then. There was always something to eat in
the army, even if it was just corn bread, always somebody to give orders and none of this torturing sense
of facing problems that couldn’t be solved–nothing to
bother about in the army except getting killed. And
then there was Dimity Munroe. Alex wanted to marry
her and he knew he couldn’t when so many were
already looking to him for support. He had loved
her for so long and now the roses were fading from
her cheeks and the joy from her eyes. If only Tony
hadn’t had to run away to Texas. Another man on the
place would make all the difference in the world. His
lovable bad-tempered little brother, penniless somewhere in the West. Yes, they had all changed. And
why not? He sighed heavily.
“I haven’t thanked you for what you and Frank did
for Tony,” he said. “It was you who helped him get
away, wasn’t it? It was fine of you. I heard in a roundabout way that he was safe in Texas. I was afraid to
write and ask you–but did you or Frank lend him any
money? I want to repay–”
“Oh, Alex, please hush! Not now!” cried Scarlett.
For once, money meant nothing to her.
1320
�PART FOUR
Alex was silent for a moment.
“I’ll get Will for you,” he said, “and we’ll all be over
tomorrow for the funeral.”
As he picked up the sack of oats and turned away,
a wobbly-wheeled wagon swayed out of a side street
and creaked up to them. Will called from the seat:
“I’m sorry I’m late, Scarlett.”
Climbing awkwardly down from the wagon, he
stumped toward her and, bending, kissed her cheek.
Will had never kissed her before, had never failed to
precede her name with “Miss” and, while it surprised
her, it warmed her heart and pleased her very much.
He lifted her carefully over the wheel and into the
wagon and, looking down, she saw that it was the
same old rickety wagon in which she had fled from
Atlanta. How had it ever held together so long? Will
must have kept it patched up very well. It made her
slightly sick to look at it and to remember that night.
If it took the shoes off her feet or food from Aunt
Pitty’s table, she’d see that there was a new wagon
at Tara and this one burned.
Will did not speak at first and Scarlett was grateful.
He threw his battered straw hat into the back of the
wagon, clucked to the horse and they moved off. Will
was just the same, lank and gangling, pink of hair,
1321
�PART FOUR
mild of eye, patient as a draft animal.
They left the village behind and turned into the
red road to Tara. A faint pink still lingered about
the edges of the sky and fat feathery clouds were
tinged with gold and palest green. The stillness of
the country twilight came down about them as calming as a prayer. How had she ever borne it, she
thought, away for all these months, away from the
fresh smell of country air, the plowed earth and the
sweetness of summer nights? The moist red earth
smelled so good, so familiar, so friendly, she wanted
to get out and scoop up a handful. The honeysuckle
which draped the gullied red sides of the road in tangled greenery was piercingly fragrant as always after
rain, the sweetest perfume in the world. Above their
heads a flock of chimney swallows whirled suddenly
on swift wings and now and then a rabbit scurried
startled across the road, his white tail bobbing like
an eiderdown powder puff. She saw with pleasure
that the cotton stood well, as they passed between
plowed fields where the green bushes reared themselves sturdily out of the red earth. How beautiful all
this was! The soft gray mist in the swampy bottoms,
the red earth and growing cotton, the sloping fields
with curving green rows and the black pines rising
behind everything like sable walls. How had she ever
1322
�PART FOUR
stayed in Atlanta so long?
“Scarlett, before I tell you about Mr. O’Hara–and
I want to tell you everything before you get home–I
want to ask your opinion on a matter. I figger you’re
the head of the house now.”
“What is it, Will?”
He turned his mild sober gaze on her for a moment.
“I just wanted your approval to my marryin’
Suellen.”
Scarlett clutched the seat, so surprised that she almost fell backwards. Marry Suellen! She’d never
thought of anybody marrying Suellen since she had
taken Frank Kennedy from her. Who would have
Suellen?
“Goodness, Will!”
“Then I take it you don’t mind?”
“Mind? No, but– Why, Will, you’ve taken my breath
away! You marry Suellen? Will, I always thought you
were sweet on Carreen.”
Will kept his eyes on the horse and flapped the reins.
His profile did not change but she thought he sighed
slightly.
“Maybe I was,” he said.
“Well, won’t she have you?”
1323
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“I never asked her.”
“Oh, Will, you’re a fool. Ask her. She’s worth two of
Suellen!”
“Scarlett, you don’t know a lot of things that’s been
going on at Tara. You ain’t favored us with much of
your attention these last months.”
“I haven’t, haven’t I?” she flared. “What do you
suppose I’ve been doing in Atlanta? Riding around
in a coach and four and going to balls? Haven’t I sent
you money every month? Haven’t I paid the taxes
and fixed the roof and bought the new plow and the
mules? Haven’t–”
“Now, don’t fly off the handle and get your Irish
up,” he interrupted imperturbably. “If anybody
knows what you’ve done, I do, and it’s been two
men’s work.”
Slightly mollified, she questioned, “Well then, what
do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve kept the roof over us and food in the
pantry and I ain’t denyin’ that, but you ain’t given
much thought to what’s been goin’ on in anybody’s
head here at Tara. I ain’t blamin’ you, Scarlett. That’s
just your way. You warn’t never very much interested
in what was in folks’ heads. But what I’m tryin’ to tell
you is that I didn’t never ask Miss Carreen because
1324
�PART FOUR
I knew it wouldn’t be no use. She’s been like a little
sister to me and I guess she talks to me plainer than
to anybody in the world. But she never got over that
dead boy and she never will. And I might as well
tell you now she’s aimin’ to go in a convent over to
Charleston.”
“Are you joking?”
“Well, I knew it would take you back and I just want
to ask you, Scarlett, don’t you argue with her about it
or scold her or laugh at her. Let her go. It’s all she
wants now. Her heart’s broken.”
“But God’s nightgown! Lots of people’s hearts have
been broken and they didn’t run off to convents. Look
at me. I lost a husband.”
“But your heart warn’t broken,” Will said calmly
and, picking up a straw from the bottom of the
wagon, he put it in his mouth and chewed slowly.
That remark took the wind out of her. As always
when she heard the truth spoken, no matter how unpalatable it was, basic honesty forced her to acknowledge it as truth. She was silent a moment, trying to
accustom herself to the idea of Carreen as a nun.
“Promise you won’t fuss at her.”
“Oh, well, I promise,” and then she looked at him
with a new understanding and some amazement.
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�PART FOUR
Will had loved Carreen, loved her now enough to
take her part and make her retreat easy. And yet he
wanted to marry Suellen.
“Well, what’s all this about Suellen? You don’t care
for her, do you?”
“Oh, yes, I do in a way,” he said removing the
straw and surveying it as if it were highly interesting. “Suellen ain’t as bad as you think, Scarlett. I
think we’ll get along right well. The only trouble with
Suellen is that she needs a husband and some children
and that’s just what every woman needs.”
The wagon jolted over the rutty road and for a few
minutes while the two sat silent Scarlett’s mind was
busy. There must be something more to it than appeared on the surface, something deeper, more important, to make the mild and soft-spoken Will want
to marry a complaining nagger like Suellen.
“You haven’t told me the real reason, Will. If I’m
head of the family, I’ve got a right to know.”
“That’s right,” said Will, “and I guess you’ll understand. I can’t leave Tara. It’s home to me, Scarlett, the
only real home I ever knew and I love every stone of
it. I’ve worked on it like it was mine. And when you
put out work on somethin’, you come to love it. You
know what I mean?”
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�PART FOUR
She knew what he meant and her heart went out in
a surge of warm affection for him, hearing him say he,
too, loved the thing she loved best.
“And I figger it this way. With your pa gone and
Carreen a nun, there’ll be just me and Suellen left here
and, of course, I couldn’t live on at Tara without marryin’ Suellen. You know how folks talk.”
“But–but Will, there’s Melanie and Ashley–”
At Ashley’s name he turned and looked at her, his
pale eyes unfathomable. She had the old feeling that
Will knew all about her and Ashley, understood all
and did not either censure or approve.
“They’ll be goin’ soon.”
“Going? Where? Tara is their home as well as
yours.”
“No, it ain’t their home. That’s just what’s eatin’ on
Ashley. It ain’t his home and he don’t feel like he’s
earnin’ his keep. He’s a mighty pore farmer and he
knows it. God knows he tries his best but he warn’t
cut out for farmin’ and you know it as well as I do. If
he splits kindlin’, like as not he’ll slice off his foot. He
can’t no more keep a plow straight in a furrow than
little Beau can, and what he don’t know about makin’
things grow would fill a book. It ain’t his fault. He
just warn’t bred for it. And it worries him that he’s a
1327
�PART FOUR
man livin’ at Tara on a woman’s charity and not givin’
much in return.”
“Charity? Has he ever said–”
“No, he’s never said a word. You know Ashley. But
I can tell. Last night when we were sittin’ up with
your pa, I tole him I had asked Suellen and she’d said
Yes. And then Ashley said that relieved him because
he’d been feelin’ like a dog, stayin’ on at Tara, and he
knew he and Miss Melly would have to keep stayin’
on, now that Mr. O’Hara was dead, just to keep folks
from talkin’ about me and Suellen. So then he told me
he was aimin’ to leave Tara and get work.”
“Work? What kind? Where?”
“I don’t know exactly what he’ll do but he said he
was goin’ up North. He’s got a Yankee friend in
New York who wrote him about workin’ in a bank
up there.”
“Oh, no!” cried Scarlett from the bottom of her heart
and, at the cry, Will gave her the same look as before.
“Maybe ‘twould be better all ‘round if he did go
North.”
“No! No! I don’t think so.”
Her mind was working feverishly. Ashley couldn’t
go North! She might never see him again. Even
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�PART FOUR
though she had not seen him in months, had not spoken to him alone since that fateful scene in the orchard, there had not been a day when she had not
thought of him, been glad he was sheltered under her
roof. She had never sent a dollar to Will that she had
not been pleased that it would make Ashley’s life easier. Of course, he wasn’t any good as a farmer. Ashley was bred for better things, she thought proudly.
He was born to rule, to live in a large house, ride
fine horses, read books of poetry and tell negroes
what to do. That there were no more mansions and
horses and negroes and few books did not alter matters. Ashley wasn’t bred to plow and split rails. No
wonder he wanted to leave Tara.
But she could not let him go away from Georgia.
If necessary, she would bully Frank into giving him
a job in the store, make Frank turn off the boy he
now had behind the counter. But, no–Ashley’s place
was no more behind a counter than it was behind a
plow. A Wilkes a shopkeeper! Oh, never that! There
must be something– why, her mill of course! Her relief at the thought was so great that she smiled. But
would he accept an offer from her? Would he still
think it was charity? She must manage it so he would
think he was doing her a favor. She would discharge
Mr. Johnson and put Ashley in charge of the old mill
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�PART FOUR
while Hugh operated the new one. She would explain
to Ashley how Frank’s ill health and the pressure of
work at the store kept him from helping her, and she
would plead her condition as another reason why she
needed his help.
She would make him realize somehow that she
couldn’t do without his aid at this time. And she
would give him a half-interest in the mill, if he would
only take it over–anything just to have him near her,
anything to see that bright smile light up his face, anything for the chance of catching an unguarded look in
his eyes that showed he still cared. But, she promised
herself, never, never would she again try to prod him
into words of love, never again would she try to make
him throw away that foolish honor he valued more
than love. Somehow, she must delicately convey to
him this new resolution of hers. Otherwise he might
refuse, fearing another scene such as that last terrible
one had been.
“I can get him something to do in Atlanta,” she said.
“Well, that’s yours and Ashley’s business,” said Will
and put the straw back in his mouth. “Giddap, Sherman. Now, Scarlett. there’s somethin’ else I’ve got
to ask you before I tell you about your pa. I won’t
have you lightin’ into Suellen. What she’s done, she’s
1330
�PART FOUR
done, and you snatchin’ her baldheaded won’t bring
Mr. O’Hara back. Besides she honestly thought she
was actin’ for the best!”
“I wanted to ask you about that. What is all this
about Suellen? Alex talked riddles and said she ought
to be whipped. What has she done?”
“Yes, folks are pretty riled up about her. Everybody
I run into this afternoon in Jonesboro was promisin’ to
cut her dead the next time they seen her, but maybe
they’ll get over it. Now, promise me you won’t light
into her. I won’t be havin’ no quarrelin’ tonight with
Mr. O’Hara layin’ dead in the parlor.”
HE won’t be having any quarreling! thought Scarlett, indignantly. He talks like Tara was his already!
And then she thought of Gerald, dead in the parlor,
and suddenly she began to cry, cry in bitter, gulping
sobs. Will put his arm around her, drew her comfortably close and said nothing.
As they jolted slowly down the darkening road, her
head on his shoulder, her bonnet askew, she had forgotten the Gerald of the last two years, the vague old
gentleman who stared at doors waiting for a woman
who would never enter. She was remembering the vital, virile old man with his mane of crisp white hair,
his bellowing cheerfulness, his stamping boots, his
1331
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clumsy jokes, his generosity. She remembered how,
as a child, he had seemed the most wonderful man in
the world, this blustering father who carried her before him on his saddle when he jumped fences, turned
her up and paddled her when she was naughty, and
then cried when she cried and gave her quarters to
get her to hush. She remembered him coming home
from Charleston and Atlanta laden with gifts that
were never appropriate, remembered too, with a faint
smile through tears, how he came home in the wee
hours from Court Day at Jonesboro, drunk as seven
earls, jumping fences, his rollicking voice raised in
“The Wearin’ o’ the Green.” And how abashed he
was, facing Ellen on the morning after. Well, he was
with Ellen now.
“Why didn’t you write me that he was ill? I’d have
come so fast–”
“He warn’t ill, not a minute. Here, honey, take my
handkerchief and I’ll tell you all about it.”
She blew her nose on his bandanna, for she had
come from Atlanta without even a handkerchief, and
settled back into the crook of Will’s arm. How nice
Will was. Nothing ever upset him.
“Well, it was this way, Scarlett. You been sendin’ us
money right along and Ashley and me, well, we’ve
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paid taxes and bought the mule and seeds and whatall and a few hogs and chickens. Miss Melly’s done
mighty well with the hens, yes sir, she has. She’s a
fine woman, Miss Melly is. Well, anyway, after we
bought things for Tara, there warn’t so much left over
for folderols, but none of us warn’t complainin’. Except Suellen.
“Miss Melanie and Miss Carreen stay at home and
wear their old clothes like they’re proud of them but
you know Suellen, Scarlett. She hasn’t never got used
to doin’ without. It used to stick in her craw that
she had to wear old dresses every time I took her
into Jonesboro or over to Fayetteville. ‘Specially as
some of those Carpetbaggers’ ladi–women was always flouncin’ around in fancy trimmin’s. The wives
of those damn Yankees that run the Freedmen’s Bureau, do they dress up! Well, it’s kind of been a point
of honor with the ladies of the County to wear their
worst- lookin’ dresses to town, just to show how they
didn’t care and was proud to wear them. But not
Suellen. And she wanted a horse and carriage too.
She pointed out that you had one.”
“It’s not a carriage, it’s an old buggy,” said Scarlett
indignantly.
“Well, no matter what. I might as well tell you
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Suellen never has got over your marryin’ Frank
Kennedy and I don’t know as I blame her. You know
that was a kind of scurvy trick to play on a sister.”
Scarlett rose from his shoulder, furious as a rattler
ready to strike.
“Scurvy trick, hey? I’ll thank you to keep a civil
tongue in your head, Will Benteen! Could I help it
if he preferred me to her?”
“You’re a smart girl, Scarlett, and I figger, yes, you
could have helped him preferrin’ you. Girls always
can. But I guess you kind of coaxed him. You’re a
mighty takin’ person when you want to be, but all the
same, he was Suellen’s beau. Why, she’d had a letter
from him a week before you went to Atlanta and he
was sweet as sugar about her and talked about how
they’d get married when he got a little more money
ahead. I know because she showed me the letter.”
Scarlett was silent because she knew he was telling
the truth and she could think of nothing to say. She
had never expected Will, of all people, to sit in judgment on her. Moreover the lie she had told Frank had
never weighed heavily upon her conscience. If a girl
couldn’t keep a beau, she deserved to lose him.
“Now, Will, don’t be mean,” she said. “If Suellen
had married him, do you think she’d ever have spent
1334
�PART FOUR
a penny on Tara or any of us?”
“I said you could be right takin’ when you wanted
to,” said Will, turning to her with a quiet grin. “No,
I don’t think we’d ever seen a penny of old Frank’s
money. But still there’s no gettin’ ‘round it, it was
a scurvy trick and if you want to justify the end by
the means, it’s none of my business and who am I to
complain? But just the same Suellen has been like a
hornet ever since. I don’t think she cared much about
old Frank but it kind of teched her vanity and she’s
been sayin’ as how you had good clothes and a carriage and lived in Atlanta while she was buried here
at Tara. She does love to go callin’ and to parties, you
know, and wear pretty clothes. I ain’t blamin’ her.
Women are like that.
“Well, about a month ago I took her into Jonesboro
and left her to go callin’ while I tended to business
and when I took her home, she was still as a mouse
but I could see she was so excited she was ready to
bust. I thought she’d found out somebody was goin’
to have a–that she’d heard some gossip that was interestin’, and I didn’t pay her much mind. She went
around home for about a week all swelled up and excited and didn’t have much to say. She went over
to see Miss Cathleen Calvert–Scarlett, you’d cry your
1335
�PART FOUR
eyes out at Miss Cathleen. Pore girl, she’d better
be dead than married to that pusillanimous Yankee
Hilton. You knew he’d mortgaged the place and lost
it and they’re goin’ to have to leave?”
“No, I didn’t know and I don’t want to know. I want
to know about Pa.”
“Well, I’m gettin’ to that,” said Will patiently.
“When she come back from over there she said we’d
all misjudged Hilton. She called him Mr. Hilton and
she said he was a smart man, but we just laughed at
her. Then she took to takin’ your pa out to walk in the
afternoons and lots of times when I was comin’ home
from the field I’d see her sittin’ with him on the wall
‘round the buryin’ ground, talkin’ at him hard and
wavin’ her hands. And the old gentleman would just
look at her sort of puzzled-like and shake his head.
You know how he’s been, Scarlett. He just got kind of
vaguer and vaguer, like he didn’t hardly know where
he was or who we were. One time, I seen her point
to your ma’s grave and the old gentleman begun to
cry. And when she come in the house all happy and
excited lookin’, I gave her a talkin’ to, right sharp, too,
and I said: ‘Miss Suellen, why in hell are you devilin’
your poor pa and bringin’ up your ma to him? Most
of the time he don’t realize she’s dead and here you
1336
�PART FOUR
are rubbin’ it in.’ And she just kind of tossed her head
and laughed and said: ‘Mind your business. Some
day you’ll be glad of what I’m doin’.’ Miss Melanie
told me last night that Suellen had told her about her
schemes but Miss Melly said she didn’t have no notion Suellen was serious. She said she didn’t tell none
of us because she was so upset at the very idea.”
“What idea? Are you ever going to get to the point?
We’re halfway home now. I want to know about Pa.”
“I’m trying to tell you,” said Will, “and we’re so near
home, I guess I’d better stop right here till I’ve finished.”
He drew rein and the horse stopped and snorted.
They had halted by the wild overgrown mock-orange
hedge that marked the Macintosh property. Glancing
under the dark trees Scarlett could just discern the tall
ghostly chimneys still rearing above the silent ruin.
She wished that Will had chosen any other place to
stop.
“Well, the long and the short of her idea was to make
the Yankees pay for the cotton they burned and the
stock they drove off and the fences and the barns they
tore down.”
“The Yankees?”
“Haven’t you heard about it? The Yankee govern1337
�PART FOUR
ment’s been payin’ claims on all destroyed property
of Union sympathizers in the South.”
“Of course I’ve heard about that,” said Scarlett. “But
what’s that got to do with us?”
“A heap, in Suellen’s opinion. That day I took
her to Jonesboro, she run into Mrs. MacIntosh and
when they were gossipin’ along, Suellen couldn’t
help noticin’ what fine-lookin’ clothes Mrs. Macintosh had on and she couldn’t help askin’ about them.
Then Mrs. MacIntosh gave herself a lot of airs and
said as how her husband had put in a claim with
the Federal government for destroyin’ the property
of a loyal Union sympathizer who had never given
aid and comfort to the Confederacy in any shape or
form.”
“They never gave aid and comfort to anybody,”
snapped Scarlett. “Scotch-Irish!”
“Well, maybe that’s true. I don’t know them. Anyway, the government gave them, well–I forget how
many thousand dollars. A right smart sum it was,
though. That started Suellen. She thought about it all
week and didn’t say nothin’ to us because she knew
we’d just laugh. But she just had to talk to somebody
so she went over to Miss Cathleen’s and that damned
white trash, Hilton, gave her a passel of new ideas.
1338
�PART FOUR
He pointed out that your pa warn’t even born in this
country, that he hadn’t fought in the war and hadn’t
had no sons to fight, and hadn’t never held no office
under the Confederacy. He said they could strain a
point about Mr. O’Hara bein’ a loyal Union sympathizer. He filled her up with such truck and she come
home and begun workin’ on Mr. O’Hara. Scarlett, I
bet my life your pa didn’t even know half the time
what she was talkin’ about. That was what she was
countin’ on, that he would take the Iron Clad oath and
not even know it.”
“Pa take the Iron Clad oath!” cried Scarlett.
“Well, he’d gotten right feeble in his mind these last
months and I guess she was countin’ on that. Mind
you, none of us suspicioned nothin’ about it. We
knew she was cookin’ up somethin’, but we didn’t
know she was usin’ your dead ma to reproach him for
his daughters bein’ in rags when he could get a hundred and fifty thousand dollars out of the Yankees.”
“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” murmured Scarlett, her horror at the oath fading.
What a lot of money that was! And to be had for
the mere signing of an oath of allegiance to the United
States government, an oath stating that the signer had
always supported the government and never given
1339
�PART FOUR
aid and comfort to its enemies. One hundred and fifty
thousand dollars! That much money for that small a
lie! Well, she couldn’t blame Suellen. Good heavens!
Was that what Alex meant by wanting to rawhide
her? What the County meant by intending to cut her?
Fools, every one of them. What couldn’t she do with
that much money! What couldn’t any of the folks in
the County do with it! And what did so small a lie
matter? After all, anything you could get out of the
Yankees was fair money, no matter how you got it.
“Yesterday, about noon when Ashley and me were
splittin’ rails, Suellen got this wagon and got your pa
in it and off they went to town without a word to anybody. Miss Melly had a notion what it was all about
but she was prayin’ somethin’ would change Suellen,
so she didn’t say nothin’ to the rest of us. She just
didn’t see how Suellen could do such a thing.
“Today I heard all about what happened. That pusillanimous fellow, Hilton, had some influence with
the other Scallawags and Republicans in town and
Suellen had agreed to give them some of the money–
I don’t know how much–if they’d kind of wink their
eye about Mr. O’Hara bein’ a loyal Union man and
play on how he was an Irishman and didn’t fight in
the army and so on, and sign recommendations. All
1340
�PART FOUR
your pa had to do was take the oath and sign the paper and off it would go to Washington.
“They rattled off the oath real fast and he didn’t say
nothin’ and it went right well till she got him up to the
signin’ of it. And then the old gentleman kind of come
to himself for a minute and shook his head. I don’t
think he knew what it was all about but he didn’t like
it and Suellen always did rub him the wrong way.
Well, that just about gave her the nervous fits after
all the trouble she’d gone to. She took him out of the
office and rode him up and down the road and talked
to him about your ma cryin’ out of her grave at him
for lettin’ her children suffer when he could provide
for them. They tell me your pa sat there in the wagon
and cried like a baby, like he always does when he
hears her name. Everybody in town saw them and
Alex Fontaine went over to see what was the matter,
but Suellen gave him the rough side of her tongue
and told him to mind his own business, so he went
off mad.
“I don’t know where she got the notion but some
time in the afternoon she got a bottle of brandy and
took Mr. O’Hara back to the office and begun pourin’
it for him. Scarlett, we haven’t had no spirits ‘round
Tara for a year, just a little blackberry wine and scup1341
�PART FOUR
pernong wine Dilcey makes, and Mr. O’Hara warn’t
used to it. He got real drunk, and after Suellen had
argued and nagged a couple of hours he gave in and
said Yes, he’d sign anything she wanted. They got the
oath out again and just as he was about to put pen
to paper, Suellen made her mistake. She said: ‘Well,
now. I guess the Slatterys and the MacIntoshes won’t
be givin’ themselves airs over us!’ You see, Scarlett,
the Slatterys had put in a claim for a big amount for
that little shack of theirs that the Yankees burned and
Emmie’s husband had got it through Washington for
them.
“They tell me that when Suellen said those names,
your pa kind of straightened up and squared his
shoulders and looked at her, sharp- like. He warn’t
vague no more and he said: ‘Have the Slatterys
and the MacIntoshes signed somethin’ like this?’
and Suellen got nervous and said Yes and No and
stuttered and he shouted right loud: ‘Tell me, did
that God-damned Orangeman and that God-damned
poor white sign somethin’ like this?’ And that feller
Hilton spoke up smooth-like and said: ‘Yes sir, they
did and they got a pile of money like you’ll get.’
“And then the old gentleman let out a roar like a
bull. Alex Fontaine said he heard him from down
1342
�PART FOUR
the street at the saloon. And he said with a brogue
you could cut with a butterknife: ‘And were ye afther thinkin’ an O’Hara of Tara would be follyin’ the
dirthy thracks of a Goddamned Orangeman and a
God-damned poor white?’ And he tore the paper in
two and threw it in Suellen’s face and he bellowed:
‘Ye’re no daughter of mine!’ and he was out of the
office before you could say Jack Robinson.
“Alex said he saw him come out on the street, chargin’ like a bull. He said the old gentleman looked
like his old self for the first time since your ma died.
Said he was reelin’ drunk and cussin’ at the top of
his lungs. Alex said he never heard such fine cussin’.
Alex’s horse was standin’ there and your pa climbed
on it without a by-your-leave and off he went in a
cloud of dust so thick it choked you, cussin’ every
breath he drew.
“Well, about sundown Ashley and me were sittin’
on the front step, lookin’ down the road and mighty
worried. Miss Melly was upstairs cryin’ on her bed
and wouldn’t tell us nothin’. Terrectly, we heard a
poundin’ down the road and somebody yellin’ like
they was fox huntin’ and Ashley said: ‘That’s queer!
That sounds like Mr. O’Hara when he used to ride
over to see us before the war.”
1343
�PART FOUR
“And then we seen him way down at the end of the
pasture. He must have jumped the fence right over
there. And he come ridin’ hell- for-leather up the hill,
singin’ at the top of his voice like he didn’t have a
care in the world. I didn’t know your pa had such a
voice. He was singin’ ‘Peg in a Low-backed Car’ and
beatin’ the horse with his hat and the horse was goin’
like mad. He didn’t draw rein when he come near
the top and we seen he was goin’ to jump the pasture
fence and we hopped up, scared to death, and then he
yelled: ‘Look, Ellen! Watch me take this one!’ But the
horse stopped right on his haunches at the fence and
wouldn’t take the jump and your pa went right over
his head. He didn’t suffer none. He was dead time
we got to him. I guess it broke his neck.”
Will waited a minute for her to speak and when she
did not he picked up the reins. “Giddap, Sherman,”
he said, and the horse started on toward home.
1344
�CHAPTER XL
that night. When the dawn had
come and the sun was creeping over the black pines
on the hills to the east, she rose from her tumbled
bed and, seating herself on a stool by the window,
laid her tired head on her arm and looked out over
the barn yard and orchard of Tara toward the cotton fields. Everything was fresh and dewy and silent
and green and the sight of the cotton fields brought
a measure of balm and comfort to her sore heart.
Tara, at sunrise, looked loved, well tended and at
peace, for all that its master lay dead. The squatty log
chicken house was clay daubed against rats, weasels
and clean with whitewash, and so was the log stable. The garden with its rows of corn, bright-yellow
squash, butter beans and turnips was well weeded
and neatly fenced with split-oak rails. The orchard
was cleared of underbrush and only daisies grew beneath the long rows of trees. The sun picked out
with faint glistening the apples and the furred pink
peaches half hidden in the green leaves. Beyond lay
the curving rows of cotton, still and green under the
gold of the new sky. The ducks and chickens were
waddling and strutting off toward the fields, for under the bushes in the soft plowed earth were found
S CARLETT
SLEPT LITTLE
�PART FOUR
the choicest worms and slugs.
Scarlett’s heart swelled with affection and gratitude
to Will who had done all of this. Even her loyalty
to Ashley could not make her believe he had been
responsible for much of this well-being, for Tara’s
bloom was not the work of a planter-aristocrat, but of
the plodding, tireless “small farmer” who loved his
land. It was a “two-horse” farm, not the lordly plantation of other days with pastures full of mules and
fine horses and cotton and corn stretching as far as
eye could see. But what there was of it was good and
the acres that were lying fallow could be reclaimed
when times grew better, and they would be the more
fertile for their rest.
Will had done more than merely farm a few acres.
He had kept sternly at bay those two enemies of
Georgia planters, the seedling pine and the blackberry brambles. They had not stealthily taken garden and pasture and cotton field and lawn and reared
themselves insolently by the porches of Tara, as they
were doing on numberless plantations throughout
the state.
Scarlett’s heart failed a beat when she thought how
close Tara had come to going back to wilderness. Between herself and Will, they had done a good job.
1346
�PART FOUR
They had held off the Yankees, the Carpetbaggers
and the encroachments of Nature. And, best of all,
Will had told her that after the cotton came in in the
fall, she need send no more money–unless some other
Carpetbagger coveted Tara and skyrocketed the taxes.
Scarlett knew Will would have a hard pull without
her help but she admired and respected his independence. As long as he was in the position of hired help
he would take her money, but now that he was to become her brother-in- law and the man of the house,
he intended to stand on his own efforts. Yes, Will was
something the Lord had provided.
Pork had dug the grave the night before, close by
Ellen’s grave, and he stood, spade in hand, behind the
moist red clay he was soon to shovel back in place.
Scarlett stood behind him in the patchy shade of a
gnarled low-limbed cedar, the hot sun of the June
morning dappling her, and tried to keep her eyes
away from the red trench in front of her. Jim Tarleton, little Hugh Munroe, Alex Fontaine and old man
McRae’s youngest grandson came slowly and awkwardly down the path from the house bearing Gerald’s coffin on two lengths of split oak. Behind them,
at a respectful distance, followed a large straggling
crowd of neighbors and friends, shabbily dressed,
silent. As they came down the sunny path through
1347
�PART FOUR
the garden, Pork bowed his head upon the top of the
spade handle and cried; and Scarlett saw with incurious surprise that the kinks on his head, so jettily black
when she went to Atlanta a few months before, were
now grizzled.
She thanked God tiredly that she had cried all her
tears the night before, so now she could stand erect
and dry eyed. The sound of Suellen’s tears, just back
of her shoulder, irritated her unbearably and she had
to clench her fists to keep from turning and slapping
the swollen face. Sue had been the cause of her father’s death, whether she intended it or not, and she
should have the decency to control herself in front of
the hostile neighbors. Not a single person had spoken to her that morning or given her one look of sympathy. They had kissed Scarlett quietly, shaken her
hand, murmured kind words to Carreen and even to
Pork but had looked through Suellen as if she were
not there.
To them she had done worse than murder her father. She had tried to betray him into disloyalty to the
South. And to that grim and close-knit community it
was as if she had tried to betray the honor of them all.
She had broken the solid front the County presented
to the world. By her attempt to get money from the
1348
�PART FOUR
Yankee government she had aligned herself with Carpetbaggers and Scallawags, more hated enemies than
the Yankee soldiers had ever been. She, a member of
an old and staunchly Confederate family, a planter’s
family, had gone over to the enemy and by so doing
had brought shame on every family in the County.
The mourners were seething with indignation and
downcast with sorrow, especially three of them–old
man McRae, who had been Gerald’s crony since he
came to the up-country from Savannah so many years
before, Grandma Fontaine who loved him because
he was Ellen’s husband, and Mrs. Tarleton who had
been closer to him than to any of her neighbors because, as she often said, he was the only man in the
County who knew a stallion from a gelding.
The sight of the stormy faces of these three in the
dim parlor where Gerald lay before the funeral had
caused Ashley and Will some uneasiness and they
had retired to Ellen’s office for a consultation.
“Some of them are goin’ to say somethin’ about
Suellen,” said Will abruptly, biting his straw in half.
“They think they got just cause to say somethin’.
Maybe they have. It ain’t for me to say. But, Ashley,
whether they’re right or not, we’ll have to resent it,
bein’ the men of the family, and then there’ll be trou1349
�PART FOUR
ble. Can’t nobody do nothin’ with old man McRae
because he’s deaf as a post and can’t hear folks tryin’
to shut him up. And you know there ain’t nobody
in God’s world ever stopped Grandma Fontaine from
speakin’ her mind. And as for Mrs. Tarleton–did you
see her roll them russet eyes of hers every time she
looked at Sue? She’s got her ears laid back and can’t
hardly wait. If they say somethin’, we got to take it up
and we got enough trouble at Tara now without bein’
at outs with our neighbors.”
Ashley sighed worriedly. He knew the tempers of
his neighbors better than Will did and he remembered that fully half of the quarrels and some of the
shootings of the days before the war had risen from
the County custom of saying a few words over the
coffins of departed neighbors. Generally the words
were eulogistic in the extreme but occasionally they
were not. Sometimes, words meant in the utmost respect were misconstrued by overstrung relatives of
the dead and scarcely were the last shovels of earth
mounded above the coffin before trouble began.
In the absence of a priest Ashley was to conduct the
services with the aid of Carreen’s Book of Devotions,
the assistance of the Methodist and Baptist preachers of Jonesboro and Fayetteville having been tact1350
�PART FOUR
fully refused. Carreen, more devoutly Catholic than
her sisters, had been very upset that Scarlett had neglected to bring a priest from Atlanta with her and
had only been a little eased by the reminder that when
the priest came down to marry Will and Suellen, he
could read the services over Gerald. It was she who
objected to the neighboring Protestant preachers and
gave the matter into Ashley’s hands, marking passages in her book for him to read. Ashley, leaning
against the old secretary, knew that the responsibility
for preventing trouble lay with him and, knowing the
hair-trigger tempers of the County, was at a loss as to
how to proceed.
“There’s no help for it, Will,” he said, rumpling his
bright hair. “I can’t knock Grandma Fontaine down
or old man McRae either, and I can’t hold my hand
over Mrs. Tarleton’s mouth. And the mildest thing
they’ll say is that Suellen is a murderess and a traitor
and but for her Mr. O’Hara would still be alive.
Damn this custom of speaking over the dead. It’s barbarous.”
“Look, Ash,” said Will slowly. “I ain’t aimin’ to have
nobody say nothin’ against Suellen, no matter what
they think. You leave it to me. When you’ve finished
with the readin’ and the prayin’ and you say: ‘If any1351
�PART FOUR
one would like to say a few words,’ you look right at
me, so I can speak first.”
But Scarlett, watching the pallbearers’ difficulty in
getting the coffin through the narrow entrance into
the burying ground, had no thought of trouble to
come after the funeral. She was thinking with a
leaden heart that in burying Gerald she was burying
one of the last links that joined her to the old days of
happiness and irresponsibility.
Finally the pallbearers set the coffin down near
the grave and stood clenching and unclenching their
aching fingers. Ashley, Melanie and Will filed into
the inclosure and stood behind the O’Hara girls. All
the closer neighbors who could crowd in were behind them and the others stood outside the brick wall.
Scarlett, really seeing them for the first time, was surprised and touched by the size of the crowd. With
transportation so limited it was kind of so many to
come. There were fifty or sixty people there, some
of them from so far away she wondered how they
had heard in time to come. There were whole families from Jonesboro and Fayetteville and Lovejoy and
with them a few negro servants. Many small farmers from far across the river were present and Crackers from the backwoods and a scattering of swamp
1352
�PART FOUR
folk. The swamp men were lean bearded giants in
homespun, coon-skin caps on their heads, their rifles easy in the crooks of their arms, their wads of tobacco stilled in their cheeks. Their women were with
them, their bare feet sunk in the soft red earth, their
lower lips full of snuff. Their faces beneath their sunbonnets were sallow and malarial- looking but shining clean and their freshly ironed calicoes glistened
with starch.
The near neighbors were there in full force.
Grandma Fontaine, withered, wrinkled and yellow as
an old molted bird, was leaning on her cane, and behind her were Sally Munroe Fontaine and Young Miss
Fontaine. They were trying vainly by whispered pleas
and jerks at her skirt to make the old lady sit down on
the brick wall. Grandma’s husband, the Old Doctor,
was not there. He had died two months before and
much of the bright malicious joy of life had gone from
her old eyes. Cathleen Calvert Hilton stood alone as
befitted one whose husband had helped bring about
the present tragedy, her faded sunbonnet hiding her
bowed face. Scarlett saw with amazement that her
percale dress had grease spots on it and her hands
were freckled and unclean. There were even black
crescents under her fingernails. There was nothing
of quality folks about Cathleen now. She looked
1353
�PART FOUR
Cracker, even worse. She looked poor white, shiftless,
slovenly, trifling.
“She’ll be dipping snuff soon, if she isn’t doing it already,” thought Scarlett in horror. “Good Lord! What
a comedown!”
She shuddered, turning her eyes from Cathleen as
she realized how narrow was the chasm between
quality folk and poor whites.
“There but for a lot of gumption am I,” she thought,
and pride surged through her as she realized that she
and Cathleen had started with the same equipment
after the surrender–empty hands and what they had
in their heads.
“I haven’t done so bad,” she thought, lifting her chin
and smiling.
But she stopped in mid-smile as she saw the scandalized eyes of Mrs. Tarleton upon her. Her eyes were
red-rimmed from tears and, after giving Scarlett a reproving look, she turned her gaze back to Suellen, a
fierce angry gaze that boded ill for her. Behind her
and her husband were the four Tarleton girls, their
red locks indecorous notes in the solemn occasion,
their russet eyes still looking like the eyes of vital
young animals, spirited and dangerous.
Feet were stilled, hats were removed, hands folded
1354
�PART FOUR
and skirts rustled into quietness as Ashley stepped
forward with Carreen’s worn Book of Devotions in
his hand. He stood for a moment looking down, the
sun glittering on his golden head. A deep silence
fell on the crowd, so deep that the harsh whisper of
the wind in the magnolia leaves came clear to their
ears and the far-off repetitious note of a mockingbird
sounded unendurably loud and sad. Ashley began to
read the prayers and all heads bowed as his resonant,
beautifully modulated voice rolled out the brief and
dignified words.
“Oh!” thought Scarlett, her throat constricting.
“How beautiful his voice is! If anyone has to do this
for Pa, I’m glad it’s Ashley. I’d rather have him than
a priest. I’d rather have Pa buried by one of his own
folks than a stranger.”
When Ashley came to the part of the prayers concerning the souls in Purgatory, which Carreen had
marked for him to read, he abruptly closed the book.
Only Carreen noticed the omission and looked up
puzzled, as he began the Lord’s Prayer. Ashley knew
that half the people present had never heard of Purgatory and those who had would take it as a personal
affront, if he insinuated, even in prayer, that so fine a
man as Mr. O’Hara had not gone straight to Heaven.
1355
�PART FOUR
So, in deference to public opinion, he skipped all mention of Purgatory. The gathering joined heartily in the
Lord’s Prayer but their voices trailed off into embarrassed silence when he began the Hail Mary. They
had never heard that prayer and they looked furtively
at each other as the O’Hara girls, Melanie and the Tara
servants gave the response: “Pray for us, now and at
the hour of our death. Amen.”
Then Ashley raised his head and stood for a moment, uncertain. The eyes of the neighbors were expectantly upon him as they settled themselves in easier positions for a long harangue. They were waiting for him to go on with the service, for it did not
occur to any of them that he was at the end of the
Catholic prayers. County funerals were always long.
The Baptist and Methodist ministers who performed
them had no set prayers but extemporized as the circumstances demanded and seldom stopped before all
mourners were in tears and the bereaved feminine
relatives screaming with grief. The neighbors would
have been shocked, aggrieved and indignant, had
these brief prayers been all the service over the body
of their loved friend, and no one knew this better than
Ashley. The matter would be discussed at dinner tables for weeks and the opinion of the County would
be that the O’Hara girls had not shown proper respect
1356
�PART FOUR
for their father.
So he threw a quick apologetic glance at Carreen
and, bowing his head again, began reciting from
memory the Episcopal burial service which he had often read over slaves buried at Twelve Oaks.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life . . . and whosoever . . . believeth in Me shall never die.”
It did not come back to him readily and he spoke
slowly, occasionally falling silent for a space as he
waited for phrases to rise from his memory. But this
measured delivery made his words more impressive,
and mourners who had been dry-eyed before began
now to reach for handkerchiefs. Sturdy Baptists and
Methodists all, they thought it the Catholic ceremony
and immediately rearranged their first opinion that
the Catholic services were cold and Popish. Scarlett
and Suellen were equally ignorant and thought the
words comforting and beautiful. Only Melanie and
Carreen realized that a devoutly Catholic Irishman
was being laid to rest by the Church of England’s service. And Carreen was too stunned by grief and her
hurt at Ashley’s treachery to interfere.
When he had finished, Ashley opened wide his sad
gray eyes and looked about the crowd. After a pause,
his eyes caught those of Will and he said: “Is there
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anyone present who would like to say a word?”
Mrs. Tarleton twitched nervously but before she
could act, Will stumped forward and standing at the
head of the coffin began to speak.
“Friends,” he began in his flat voice, “maybe you
think I’m gettin’ above myself, speakin’ first–me who
never knew Mr. O’Hara till ‘bout a year ago when
you all have known him twenty years or more. But
this here is my excuse. If he’d lived a month or so
longer, I’d have had the right to call him Pa.”
A startled ripple went over the crowd. They were
too well bred to whisper but they shifted on their
feet and stared at Carreen’s bowed head. Everyone
knew his dumb devotion to her. Seeing the direction
in which all eyes were cast, Will went on as if he had
taken no note.
“So bein’ as how I’m to marry Miss Suellen as soon
as the priest comes down from Atlanta, I thought
maybe that gives me the right to speak first.”
The last part of his speech was lost in a faint sibilant buzz that went through the gathering, an angry
beelike buzz. There were indignation and disappointment in the sound. Everyone liked Will, everyone respected him for what he had done for Tara. Everyone knew his affections lay with Carreen, so the news
1358
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that he was to marry the neighborhood pariah instead
sat ill upon them. Good old Will marrying that nasty,
sneaking little Suellen O’Hara!
For a moment the air was tense. Mrs. Tarleton’s
eyes began to snap and her lips to shape soundless
words. In the silence, old man McRae’s high voice
could be heard imploring his grandson to tell him
what had been said. Will faced them all, still mild
of face, but there was something in his pale blue eyes
which dared them to say one word about his future
wife. For a moment the balance hung between the
honest affection everyone had for Will and their contempt for Suellen. And Will won. He continued as if
his pause had been a natural one.
“I never knew Mr. O’Hara in his prime like you all
done. All I knew personally was a fine old gentleman who was a mite addled. But I’ve heard tell from
you all ‘bout what he used to be like. And I want to
say this. He was a fightin’ Irishman and a Southern
gentleman and as loyal a Confederate as ever lived.
You can’t get no better combination than that. And
we ain’t likely to see many more like him, because
the times that bred men like him are as dead as he is.
He was born in a furrin country but the man we’re
buryin’ here today was more of a Georgian than any
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of us mournin’ him. He lived our life, he loved our
land and, when you come right down to it, he died
for our Cause, same as the soldiers did. He was one
of us and he had our good points and our bad points
and he had our strength and he had our failin’s. He
had our good points in that couldn’t nothin’ stop him
when his mind was made up and he warn’t scared
of nothin’ that walked in shoe leather. There warn’t
nothin’ that come to him FROM THE OUTSIDE that
could lick him.
“He warn’t scared of the English government when
they wanted to hang him. He just lit out and left
home. And when he come to this country and was
pore, that didn’t scare him a mite neither. He went
to work and he made his money. And he warn’t
scared to tackle this section when it was part wild
and the Injuns had just been run out of it. He made
a big plantation out of a wilderness. And when the
war come on and his money begun to go, he warn’t
scared to be pore again. And when the Yankees come
through Tara and might of burnt him out or killed
him, he warn’t fazed a bit and he warn’t licked neither. He just planted his front feet and stood his
ground. That’s why I say he had our good points.
There ain’t nothin’ FROM THE OUTSIDE can lick any
of us.
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“But he had our failin’s too, ‘cause he could be
licked from the inside. I mean to say that what the
whole world couldn’t do, his own heart could. When
Mrs. O’Hara died, his heart died too and he was
licked. And what we seen walking ‘round here warn’t
him.”
Will paused and his eyes went quietly around the
circle of faces. The crowd stood in the hot sun as if
enchanted to the ground and whatever wrath they
had felt for Suellen was forgotten. Will’s eyes rested
for a moment on Scarlett and they crinkled slightly at
the corners as if he were inwardly smiling comfort to
her. Scarlett, who had been fighting back rising tears,
did feel comforted. Will was talking common sense
instead of a lot of tootle about reunions in another
and better world and submitting her will to God’s.
And Scarlett had always found strength and comfort
in common sense.
“And I don’t want none of you to think the less of
him for breakin’ like he done. All you all and me, too,
are like him. We got the same weakness and failin’.
There ain’t nothin’ that walks can lick us, any more
than it could lick him, not Yankees nor Carpetbaggers
nor hard times nor high taxes nor even downright
starvation. But that weakness that’s in our hearts can
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�PART FOUR
lick us in the time it takes to bat your eye. It ain’t
always losin’ someone you love that does it, like it
done Mr. O’Hara. Everybody’s mainspring is different. And I want to say this–folks whose main-springs
are busted are better dead. There ain’t no place for
them in the world these days, and they’re happier
bein’ dead. . . . That’s why I’m sayin’ you all ain’t
got no cause to grieve for Mr. O’Hara now. The time
to grieve was back when Sherman come through and
he lost Mrs. O’Hara. Now that his body’s gone to
join his heart, I don’t see that we got reason to mourn,
unless we’re pretty damned selfish, and I’m sayin’ it
who loved him like he was my own pa. . . . There
won’t be no more words said, if you folks don’t mind.
The family is too cut up to listen and it wouldn’t be no
kindness to them.”
Will stopped and, turning to Mrs. Tarleton, he said
in a lower voice: “I wonder couldn’t you take Scarlett
in the house, Ma’m? It ain’t right for her to be standin’
in the sun so long. And Grandma Fontaine don’t look
any too peart neither, meanin’ no disrespect.”
Startled at the abrupt switching from the eulogy
to herself, Scarlett went red with embarrassment as
all eyes turned toward her. Why should Will advertise her already obvious pregnancy? She gave him a
1362
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shamed indignant look, but Will’s placid gaze bore
her down.
“Please,” his look said. “I know what I’m doin’.”
Already he was the man of the house and, not wishing to make a scene, Scarlett turned helplessly to Mrs.
Tarleton. That lady, suddenly diverted, as Will had
intended, from thoughts of Suellen to the always fascinating matter of breeding, be it animal or human,
took Scarlett’s arm.
“Come in the house, honey.”
Her face took on a look of kind, absorbed interest
and Scarlett suffered herself to be led through the
crowd that gave way and made a narrow path for her.
There was a sympathetic murmuring as she passed
and several hands went out to pat her comfortingly.
When she came abreast Grandma Fontaine, the old
lady put out a skinny claw and said: “Give me your
arm, child,” and added with a fierce glance at Sally
and Young Miss: “No, don’t you come. I don’t want
you.”
They passed slowly through the crowd which closed
behind them and went up the shady path toward the
house, Mrs. Tarleton’s eager helping hand so strong
under Scarlett’s elbow that she was almost lifted from
the ground at each step.
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�PART FOUR
“Now, why did Will do that?” cried Scarlett heatedly, when they were out of earshot. “He practically
said: ‘Look at her! She’s going to have a baby!”’
“Well, sake’s alive, you are, aren’t you?” said Mrs.
Tarleton. “Will did right. It was foolish of you to
stand in the hot sun when you might have fainted and
had a miscarriage.”
“Will wasn’t bothered about her miscarrying,” said
Grandma, a little breathless as she labored across the
front yard toward the steps. There was a grim, knowing smile on her face. “Will’s smart. He didn’t want
either you or me, Beetrice, at the graveside. He was
scared of what we’d say and he knew this was the
only way to get rid of us. . . . And it was more than
that. He didn’t want Scarlett to hear the clods dropping on the coffin. And he’s right. Just remember,
Scarlett, as long as you don’t hear that sound, folks
aren’t actually dead to you. But once you hear it .
. . Well, it’s the most dreadfully final sound in the
world. . . . Help me up the steps, child, and give me
a hand, Beetrice. Scarlett don’t any more need your
arm than she needs crutches and I’m not so peart, as
Will observed. . . . Will knew you were your father’s
pet and he didn’t want to make it worse for you than
it already was. He figured it wouldn’t be so bad for
1364
�PART FOUR
your sisters. Suellen has her shame to sustain her and
Carreen her God. But you’ve got nothing to sustain
you, have you, child?”
“No,” answered Scarlett, helping the old lady up the
steps, faintly surprised at the truth that sounded in
the reedy old voice. “I’ve never had anything to sustain me–except Mother.”
“But when you lost her, you found you could stand
alone, didn’t you? Well, some folks can’t. Your pa
was one. Will’s right. Don’t you grieve. He couldn’t
get along without Ellen and he’s happier where he is.
Just like I’ll be happier when I join the Old Doctor.”
She spoke without any desire for sympathy and the
two gave her none. She spoke as briskly and naturally as if her husband were alive and in Jonesboro
and a short buggy ride would bring them together.
Grandma was too old and had seen too much to fear
death.
“But–you can stand alone too,” said Scarlett.
“Yes, but it’s powerful uncomfortable at times.”
“Look here, Grandma,” interrupted Mrs. Tarleton,
“you ought not to talk to Scarlett like that. She’s upset
enough already. What with her trip down here and
that tight dress and her grief and the heat, she’s got
enough to make her miscarry without your adding to
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�PART FOUR
it, talking grief and sorrow.”
“God’s nightgown!” cried Scarlett in irritation. “I’m
not upset! And I’m not one of those sickly miscarrying fools!”
“You never can tell,” said Mrs. Tarleton omnisciently. “I lost my first when I saw a bull gore one
of our darkies and–you remember my red mare, Nellie? Now, there was the healthiest-looking mare you
ever saw but she was nervous and high strung and if
I didn’t watch her, she’d–”
“Beetrice, hush,” said Grandma. “Scarlett wouldn’t
miscarry on a bet. Let’s us sit here in the hall where
it’s cool. There’s a nice draft through here. Now, you
go fetch us a glass of buttermilk, Beetrice, if there’s
any in the kitchen. Or look in the pantry and see if
there’s any wine. I could do with a glass. We’ll sit
here till the folks come up to say goodby.”
“Scarlett ought to be in bed,” insisted Mrs. Tarleton,
running her eyes over her with the expert air of one
who calculated a pregnancy to the last minute of its
length.
“Get going,” said Grandma, giving her a prod with
her cane, and Mrs. Tarleton went toward the kitchen,
throwing her hat carelessly on the sideboard and running her hands through her damp red hair.
1366
�PART FOUR
Scarlett lay back in her chair and unbuttoned the
two top buttons of her tight basque. It was cool and
dim in the high-ceilinged hall and the vagrant draft
that went from back to front of the house was refreshing after the heat of the sun. She looked across the hall
into the parlor where Gerald had lain and, wrenching
her thoughts from him, looked up at the portrait of
Grandma Robillard hanging above the fireplace. The
bayonet-scarred portrait with its high-piled hair, hallexposed breasts and cool insolence had, as always, a
tonic effect upon her.
“I don’t know which hit Beetrice Tarleton worse, losing her boys or her horses,” said Grandma Fontaine.
“She never did pay much mind to Jim or her girls,
you know. She’s one of those folks Will was talking
about. Her mainspring’s busted. Sometimes I wonder if she won’t go the way your pa went. She wasn’t
ever happy unless horses or humans were breeding
right in her face and none of her girls are married or
got any prospects of catching husbands in this county,
so she’s got nothing to occupy her mind. If she wasn’t
such lady at heart, she’d be downright common. . . .
Was Will telling the truth about marrying Suellen?”
“Yes,” said Scarlett, looking the old lady full in the
eye. Goodness, she could remember the time when
1367
�PART FOUR
she was scared to death of Grandma Fontaine! Well,
she’d grown up since then and she’d just as soon as
not tell her to go to the devil if she meddled in affairs
at Tara.
“He could do better,” said Grandma candidly.
“Indeed?” said Scarlett haughtily.
“Come off your high horse, Miss,” said the old lady
tartly. “I shan’t attack your precious sister, though I
might have if I’d stayed at the burying ground. What
I mean is with the scarcity of men in the neighborhood, Will could marry most any of the girls. There’s
Beetrice’s four wild cats and the Munroe girls and the
McRae–”
“He’s going to marry Sue and that’s that.”
“She’s lucky to get him.”
“Tara is lucky to get him.”
“You love this place, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So much that you don’t mind your sister marrying
out of her class as long as you have a man around to
care for Tara?”
“Class?” said Scarlett, startled at the idea. “Class?
What does class matter now, so long as a girl gets a
husband who can take care of her?”
1368
�PART FOUR
“That’s a debatable question,” said Old Miss. “Some
folks would say you were talking common sense.
Others would say you were letting down bars that
ought never be lowered one inch. Will’s certainly not
quality folks and some of your people were.”
Her sharp old eyes went to the portrait of Grandma
Robillard.
Scarlett thought of Will, lank, unimpressive, mild,
eternally chewing a straw, his whole appearance deceptively devoid of energy, like that of most Crackers.
He did not have behind him a long line of ancestors of
wealth, prominence and blood. The first of Will’s family to set foot on Georgia soil might even have been
one of Oglethorpe’s debtors or a bond servant. Will
had not been to college. In fact, four years in a backwoods school was all the education he had ever had.
He was honest and he was loyal, he was patient and
he was hard working, but certainly he was not quality. Undoubtedly by Robillard standards, Suellen was
coming down in the world.
“So you approve of Will coming into your family?”
“Yes,” answered Scarlett fiercely, ready to pounce
upon the old lady at the first words of condemnation.
“You may kiss me,” said Grandma surprisingly, and
she smiled in her most approving manner. “I never
1369
�PART FOUR
liked you much till now, Scarlett. You were always
hard as a hickory nut, even as a child, and I don’t
like hard females, barring myself. But I do like the
way you meet things. You don’t make a fuss about
things that can’t be helped, even if they are disagreeable. You take your fences cleanly like a good hunter.”
Scarlett smiled uncertainly and pecked obediently
at the withered cheek presented to her. It was pleasant to hear approving words again, even if she had
little idea what they meant.
“There’s plenty of folks hereabouts who’ll have
something to say about you letting Sue marry a
Cracker–for all that everybody likes Will. They’ll say
in one breath what a fine man he is and how terrible it
is for an O’Hara girl to marry beneath her. But don’t
you let it bother you.”
“I’ve never bothered about what people said.”
“So I’ve heard.” There was a hint of acid in the old
voice. “Well, don’t bother about what folks say. It’ll
probably be a very successful marriage. Of course,
Will’s always going to look like a Cracker and marriage won’t improve his grammar any. And, even if
he makes a mint of money, he’ll never lend any shine
and sparkle to Tara, like your father did. Crackers are
short on sparkle. But Will’s a gentleman at heart. He’s
1370
�PART FOUR
got the right instincts. Nobody but a born gentleman
could have put his finger on what is wrong with us as
accurately as he just did, down there at the burying.
The whole world can’t lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven’t got
any more–and by remembering too much. Yes, Will
will do well by Suellen and by Tara.”
“Then you approve of me letting him marry her?”
“God, no!” The old voice was tired and bitter but
vigorous. “Approve of Crackers marrying into old
families? Bah! Would I approve of breeding scrub
stock to thoroughbreds? Oh, Crackers are good and
solid and honest but–”
“But you said you thought it would be a successful
match!” cried Scarlett bewildered.
“Oh, I think it’s good for Suellen to marry Will–to
marry anybody for that matter, because she needs a
husband bad. And where else could she get one? And
where else could you get as good a manager for Tara?
But that doesn’t mean I like the situation any better
than you do.”
But I do like it, thought Scarlett trying to grasp the
old lady’s meaning. I’m glad Will is going to marry
her. Why should she think I minded? She’s taking it
for granted that I do mind, just like her.
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�PART FOUR
She felt puzzled and a little ashamed, as always
when people attributed to her emotions and motives
they possessed and thought she shared.
Grandma fanned herself with her palmetto leaf and
went on briskly: “I don’t approve of the match any
more than you do but I’m practical and so are you.
And when it comes to something that’s unpleasant
but can’t be helped, I don’t see any sense in screaming
and kicking about it. That’s no way to meet the ups
and downs of life. I know because my family and the
Old Doctor’s family have had more than our share of
ups and downs. And if we folks have a motto, it’s
this: ‘Don’t holler–smile and bide your time.’ We’ve
survived a passel of things that way, smiling and biding our time, and we’ve gotten to be experts at surviving. We had to be. We’ve always bet on the wrong
horses. Run out of France with the Huguenots, run
out of England with the Cavaliers, run out of Scotland with Bonnie Prince Charlie, run out of Haiti by
the niggers and now licked by the Yankees. But we always turn up on top in a few years. You know why?”
She cocked her head and Scarlett thought she looked
like nothing so much as an old, knowing parrot.
“No, I don’t know, I’m sure,” she answered politely.
But she was heartily bored, even as she had been the
1372
�PART FOUR
day when Grandma launched on her memories of the
Creek uprising.
“Well, this is the reason. We bow to the inevitable.
We’re not wheat, we’re buckwheat! When a storm
comes along it flattens ripe wheat because it’s dry and
can’t bend with the wind. But ripe buckwheat’s got
sap in it and it bends. And when the wind has passed,
it springs up almost as straight and strong as before.
We aren’t a stiff-necked tribe. We’re mighty limber
when a hard wind’s blowing, because we know it
pays to be limber. When trouble comes we bow to
the inevitable without any mouthing, and we work
and we smile and we bide our time. And we play
along with lesser folks and we take what we can get
from them. And when we’re strong enough, we kick
the folks whose necks we’ve climbed over. That, my
child, is the secret of the survival.” And after a pause,
she added: “I pass it on to you.”
The old lady cackled, as if she were amused by her
words, despite the venom in them. She looked as
if she expected some comment from Scarlett but the
words had made little sense to her and she could
think of nothing to say.
“No, sir,” Old Miss went on, “our folks get flattened
out but they rise up again, and that’s more than I can
1373
�PART FOUR
say for plenty of people not so far away from here.
Look at Cathleen Calvert. You can see what she’s
come to. Poor white! And a heap lower than the man
she married. Look at the McRae family. Flat to the
ground, helpless, don’t know what to do, don’t know
how to do anything. Won’t even try. They spend their
time whining about the good old days. And look at–
well, look at nearly anybody in this County except
my Alex and my Sally and you and Jim Tarleton and
his girls and some others. The rest have gone under because they didn’t have any sap in them, because they didn’t have the gumption to rise up again.
There never was anything to those folks but money
and darkies, and now that the money and darkies are
gone, those folks will be Cracker in another generation.”
“You forgot the Wilkes.”
“No, I didn’t forget them. I just thought I’d be polite
and not mention them, seeing that Ashley’s a guest
under this roof. But seeing as how you’ve brought up
their names–look at them! There’s India who from all
I hear is a dried-up old maid already, giving herself
all kinds of widowed airs because Stu Tarleton was
killed and not making any effort to forget him and try
to catch another man. Of course, she’s old but she
1374
�PART FOUR
could catch some widower with a big family if she
tried. And poor Honey was always a man-crazy fool
with no more sense than a guinea hen. And as for
Ashley, look at him!”
“Ashley is a very fine man,” began Scarlett hotly.
“I never said he wasn’t but he’s as helpless as a turtle
on his back. If the Wilkes family pulls through these
hard times, it’ll be Melly who pulls them through.
Not Ashley.”
“Melly! Lord, Grandma! What are you talking
about? I’ve lived with Melly long enough to know
she’s sickly and scared and hasn’t the gumption to say
Boo to a goose.”
“Now why on earth should anyone want to say Boo
to a goose? It always sounded like a waste of time
to me. She might not say Boo to a goose but she’d
say Boo to the world or the Yankee government or
anything else that threatened her precious Ashley or
her boy or her notions of gentility. Her way isn’t your
way, Scarlett, or my way. It’s the way your mother
would have acted if she’d lived. Melly puts me in
mind of your mother when she was young. . . . And
maybe she’ll pull the Wilkes family through.”
“Oh, Melly’s a well-meaning little ninny. But you
are very unjust to Ashley. He’s–”
1375
�PART FOUR
“Oh, foot! Ashley was bred to read books and nothing else. That doesn’t help a man pull himself out of
a tough fix, like we’re all in now. From what I hear,
he’s the worst plow hand in the County! Now you
just compare him with my Alex! Before the war, Alex
was the most worthless dandy in the world and he
never had a thought beyond a new cravat and getting
drunk and shooting somebody and chasing girls who
were no better than they should be. But look at him
now! He learned farming because he had to learn.
He’d have starved and so would all of us. Now he
raises the best cotton in the County–yes, Miss! It’s a
heap better than Tara cotton!–and he knows what to
do with hogs and chickens. Ha! He’s a fine boy for all
his bad temper. He knows how to bide his time and
change with changing ways and when all this Reconstruction misery is over, you’re going to see my Alex
as rich a man as his father and his grandfather were.
But Ashley–”
Scarlett was smarting at the slight to Ashley.
“It all sounds like tootle to me,” she said coldly.
“Well, it shouldn’t,” said Grandma, fastening a
sharp eye upon her. “For it’s just exactly the course
you’ve been following since you went to Atlanta. Oh,
yes! We hear of your didoes, even if we are buried
1376
�PART FOUR
down here in the country. You’ve changed with the
changing times too. We hear how you suck up to the
Yankees and the white trash and the new-rich Carpetbaggers to get money out of them. Butter doesn’t melt
in your mouth from all I can hear. Well, go to it, I say.
And get every cent out of them you can, but when
you’ve got enough money, kick them in the face, because they can’t serve you any longer. Be sure you do
that and do it properly, for trash hanging onto your
coat tails can ruin you.”
Scarlett looked at her, her brow wrinkling with the
effort to digest the words. They still didn’t make
much sense and she was still angry at Ashley being
called a turtle on his back.
“I think you’re wrong about Ashley,” she said
abruptly.
“Scarlett, you just aren’t smart.”
“That’s your opinion,” said Scarlett rudely, wishing
it were permissible to smack old ladies’ jaws.
“Oh, you’re smart enough about dollars and cents.
That’s a man’s way of being smart. But you aren’t
smart at all like a woman. You aren’t a speck smart
about folks.”
Scarlett’s eyes began to snap fire and her hands to
clench and unclench.
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�PART FOUR
“I’ve made you good and mad, haven’t I?” asked the
old lady, smiling. “Well, I aimed to do just that.”
“Oh, you did, did you? And why, pray?”
“I had good and plenty reasons.”
Grandma sank back in her chair and Scarlett suddenly realized that she looked very tired and incredibly old. The tiny clawlike hands folded over the fan
were yellow and waxy as a dead person’s. The anger
went out of Scarlett’s heart as a thought came to her.
She leaned over and took one of the hands in hers.
“You’re a mighty sweet old liar,” she said. “You
didn’t mean a word of all this rigmarole. You’ve just
been talking to keep my mind off Pa, haven’t you?”
“Don’t fiddle with me!” said Old Miss grumpily,
jerking away her hand. “Partly for that reason, partly
because what I’ve been telling you is the truth and
you’re just too stupid to realize it.”
But she smiled a little and took the sting from her
words. Scarlett’s heart emptied itself of wrath about
Ashley. It was nice to know Grandma hadn’t meant
any of it.
“Thank you, just the same. It was nice of you to talk
to me–and I’m glad to know you’re with me about
Will and Suellen, even if– even if a lot of other people
do disapprove.”
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�PART FOUR
Mrs. Tarleton came down the hall, carrying two
glasses of buttermilk. She did all domestic things
badly and the glasses were slopping over.
“I had to go clear to the spring house to get it,” she
said. “Drink it quick because the folks are coming up
from the burying ground. Scarlett, are you really going to let Suellen marry Will? Not that he isn’t a sight
too good for her but you know he is a Cracker and–”
Scarlett’s eyes met those of Grandma. There was a
wicked sparkle in the old eyes that found an answer
in her own.
1379
�CHAPTER XLI
good-by had been said and the last
sound of wheels and hooves died away, Scarlett went
into Ellen’s office and removed a gleaming object
from where she had hidden it the night before between the yellowed papers in the pigeon-holes of the
secretary. Hearing Pork sniffling in the dining room
as he went about laying the table for dinner she called
to him. He came to her, his black face as forlorn as a
lost and masterless hound.
“Pork,” she said sternly, “you cry just once more and
I’ll–I’ll cry, too. You’ve got to stop.”
“Yas’m. Ah try but eve’y time Ah try Ah thinks of
Mist’ Gerald an’–”
“Well, don’t think. I can stand everybody else’s tears
but not yours. There,” she broke off gently, “don’t
you see? I can’t stand yours because I know how you
loved him. Blow your nose, Pork. I’ve got a present
for you.”
A little interest flickered in Pork’s eyes as he blew
his nose loudly but it was more politeness than interest.
“You remember that night you got shot robbing
somebody’s hen house?”
W HEN
THE LAST
�PART FOUR
“Lawd Gawd, Miss Scarlett! Ah ain’ never–”
“Well, you did, so don’t lie to me about it at this late
date. You remember I said I was going to give you a
watch for being so faithful?”
“Yas’m, Ah ‘members. Ah figgered you’d done fergot.”
“No, I didn’t forget and here it is.”
She held out for him a massive gold watch, heavily embossed, from which dangled a chain with many
fobs and seals.
“Fo’ Gawd, Miss Scarlett!” cried Pork. “Dat’s Mist’
Gerald’s watch! Ah done seen him look at dat watch
a milyun times!”
“Yes, it’s Pa’s watch, Pork, and I’m giving it to you.
Take it.”
“Oh, no’m!” Pork retreated in horror. “Dat’s a w’ite
gempmum’s watch an’ Mist’ Gerald’s ter boot. Huccome you talk ‘bout givin’ it ter me, Miss Scnrlett?
Dat watch belong by rights ter lil Wade Hampton.”
“It belongs to you. What did Wade Hampton ever
do for Pa? Did he look after him when he was sick
and feeble? Did he bathe him and dress him and
shave him? Did he stick by him when the Yankees
came? Did he steal for him? Don’t be a fool, Pork. If
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ever anyone deserved a watch, you do, and I know Pa
would approve. Here.”
She picked up the black hand and laid the watch in
the palm. Pork gazed at it reverently and slowly delight spread over his face.
“Fer me, truly, Miss Scarlett?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Well’m–thankee, Ma’m.”
“Would you like for me to take it to Atlanta and have
it engraved?”
“Whut’s dis engrabed mean?” Pork’s voice was suspicious.
“It means to put writing on the back of it, like–like
‘To Pork from the O’Haras–Well done good and faithful servant.”’
“No’m–thankee. Ma’m. Never mind de engrabin’.”
Pork retreated a step, clutching the watch firmly.
A little smile twitched her lips.
“What’s the matter, Pork? Don’t you trust me to
bring it back?”
“Yas’m, Ah trus’es you–only, well’m, you mout
change yo’ mind.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
1382
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“Well’m, you mout sell it. Ah spec it’s wuth a heap.”
“Do you think I’d sell Pa’s watch?”
“Yas’m–ef you needed de money.”
“You ought to be beat for that, Pork. I’ve a mind to
take the watch back.”
“No’m, you ain’!” The first faint smile of the day
showed on Pork’s grief-worn face. “Ah knows you–
An’ Miss Scarlett–”
“Yes, Pork?”
“Ef you wuz jes’ half as nice ter w’ite folks as you is
ter niggers, Ah spec de worl’ would treat you better.”
“It treats me well enough,” she said. “Now, go find
Mr. Ashley and tell him I want to see him here, right
away.”
Ashley sat on Ellen’s little writing chair, his long
body dwarfing the frail bit of furniture while Scarlett
offered him a half- interest in the mill. Not once did
his eyes meet hers and he spoke no word of interruption. He sat looking down at his hands, turning them
over slowly, inspecting first palms and then backs, as
though he had never seen them before. Despite hard
work, they were still slender and sensitive looking
and remarkably well tended for a farmer’s hands.
His bowed head and silence disturbed her a little
1383
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and she redoubled her efforts to make the mill sound
attractive. She brought to bear, too, all the charm of
smile and glance she possessed but they were wasted,
for he did not raise his eyes. If he would only look at
her! She made no mention of the information Will had
given her of Ashley’s determination to go North and
spoke with the outward assumption that no obstacle
stood in the way of his agreement with her plan. Still
he did not speak and finally, her words trailed into
silence. There was a determined squareness about
his slender shoulders that alarmed her. Surely he
wouldn’t refuse! What earthly reason could he have
for refusing?
“Ashley,” she began again and paused. She had not
intended using her pregnancy as an argument, had
shrunk from the thought of Ashley even seeing her so
bloated and ugly, but as her other persuasions seemed
to have made no impression, she decided to use it and
her helplessness as a last card.
“You must come to Atlanta. I do need your help
so badly now, because I can’t look after the mills. It
may be months before I can because–you see–well,
because . . .”
“Please!” he said roughly. “Good God, Scarlett!”
He rose and went abruptly to the window and stood
1384
�PART FOUR
with his back to her, watching the solemn single file
of ducks parade across the barnyard.
“Is that–is that why you won’t look at me?” she
questioned forlornly. “I know I look–”
He swung around in a flash and his gray eyes met
hers with an intensity that made her hands go to her
throat.
“Damn your looks!” he said with a swift violence.
“You know you always look beautiful to me.”
Happiness flooded her until her eyes were liquid
with tears.
“How sweet of you to say that! For I was so
ashamed to let you see me–”
“You ashamed? Why should you be ashamed? I’m
the one to feel shame and I do. If it hadn’t been for
my stupidity you wouldn’t be in this fix. You’d never
have married Frank. I should never have let you leave
Tara last winter. Oh, fool that I was! I should have
known you–known you were desperate, so desperate
that you’d– I should have–I should have–” His face
went haggard.
Scarlett’s heart beat wildly. He was regretting that
he had not run away with her!
“The least I could have done was go out and com1385
�PART FOUR
mit highway robbery or murder to get the tax money
for you when you had taken us in as beggars. Oh, I
messed it up all the way around!”
Her heart contracted with disappointment and
some of the happiness went from her, for these were
not the words she hoped to hear.
“I would have gone anyway,” she said tiredly. “I
couldn’t have let you do anything like that. And anyway, it’s done now.”
“Yes, it’s done now,” he said with slow bitterness.
“You wouldn’t have let me do anything dishonorable
but you would sell yourself to a man you didn’t love–
and bear his child, so that my family and I wouldn’t
starve. It was kind of you to shelter my helplessness.”
The edge in his voice spoke of a raw, unhealed
wound that ached within him and his words brought
shame to her eyes. He was swift to see it and his face
changed to gentleness.
“You didn’t think I was blaming you? Dear God,
Scarlett! No. You are the bravest woman I’ve ever
known. It’s myself I’m blaming.”
He turned and looked out of the window again
and the shoulders presented to her gaze did not look
quite so square. Scarlett waited a long moment in silence, hoping that Ashley would return to the mood
1386
�PART FOUR
in which he spoke of her beauty, hoping he would
say more words that she could treasure. It had been
so long since she had seen him and she had lived on
memories until they were worn thin. She knew he still
loved her. That fact was evident, in every line of him,
in every bitter, self-condemnatory word, in his resentment at her bearing Frank’s child. She so longed to
hear him say it in words, longed to speak words herself that would provoke a confession, but she dared
not. She remembered her promise given last winter
in the orchard, that she would never again throw herself at his head. Sadly she knew that promise must be
kept if Ashley were to remain near her. One cry from
her of love and longing, one look that pleaded for his
arms, and the matter would be settled forever. Ashley would surely go to New York. And he must not
go away.
“Oh, Ashley, don’t blame yourself! How could it be
your fault? You will come to Atlanta and help me,
won’t you?”
“No.”
“But, Ashley,” her voice was beginning to break
with anguish and disappointment, “But I’d counted
on you. I do need you so. Frank can’t help me. He’s
so busy with the store and if you don’t come I don’t
1387
�PART FOUR
know where I can get a man! Everybody in Atlanta
who is smart is busy with his own affairs and the others are so incompetent and–”
“It’s no use, Scarlett.”
“You mean you’d rather go to New York and live
among Yankees than come to Atlanta?”
“Who told you that?” He turned and faced her, faint
annoyance wrinkling his forehead.
“Will.”
“Yes, I’ve decided to go North. An old friend who
made the Grand Tour with me before the war has offered me a position in his father’s bank. It’s better so,
Scarlett. I’d be no good to you. I know nothing of the
lumber business.”
“But you know less about banking and it’s much
harder! And I know I’d make far more allowances
for your inexperience than Yankees would!”
He winced and she knew she had said the wrong
thing. He turned and looked out of the window
again.
“I don’t want allowances made for me. I want to
stand on my own feet for what I’m worth. What have
I done with my life, up till now? It’s time I made
something of myself–or went down through my own
1388
�PART FOUR
fault. I’ve been your pensioner too long already.”
“But I’m offering you a half-interest in the mill,
Ashley! You would be standing on your own feet
because–you see, it would be your own business.”
“It would amount to the same thing. I’d not be buying the half- interest. I’d be taking it as a gift. And I’ve
taken too many gifts from you already, Scarlett–food
and shelter and even clothes for myself and Melanie
and the baby. And I’ve given you nothing in return.”
“Oh, but you have! Will couldn’t have–”
“I can split kindling very nicely now.”
“Oh, Ashley!” she cried despairingly, tears in her
eyes at the jeering note in his voice. “What has happened to you since I’ve been gone? You sound so hard
and bitter! You didn’t used to be this way.”
“What’s happened? A very remarkable thing, Scarlett. I’ve been thinking. I don’t believe I really thought
from the time of the surrender until you went away
from here. I was in a state of suspended animation
and it was enough that I had something to eat and a
bed to lie on. But when you went to Atlanta, shouldering a man’s burden, I saw myself as much less
than a man–much less, indeed, than a woman. Such
thoughts aren’t pleasant to live with and I do not intend to live with them any longer. Other men came
1389
�PART FOUR
out of the war with less than I had, and look at them
now. So I’m going to New York.”
“But–I don’t understand! If it’s work you want, why
won’t Atlanta do as well as New York? And my mill–
”
“No, Scarlett. This is my last chance. I’ll go North.
If I go to Atlanta and work for you, I’m lost forever.”
The word “lost–lost–lost” dinged frighteningly in
her heart like a death bell sounding. Her eyes went
quickly to his but they were wide and crystal gray
and they were looking through her and beyond her
at some fate she could not see, could not understand.
“Lost? Do you mean–have you done something the
Atlanta Yankees can get you for? I mean, about helping Tony get away or–or– Oh, Ashley, you aren’t in
the Ku Klux, are you?”
His remote eyes came back to her swiftly and he
smiled a brief smile that never reached his eyes.
“I had forgotten you were so literal. No, it’s not the
Yankees I’m afraid of. I mean if I go to Atlanta and
take help from you again, I bury forever any hope of
ever standing alone.”
“Oh,” she sighed in quick relief, “if it’s only that!”
“Yes,” and he smiled again, the smile more wintry
1390
�PART FOUR
than before. “Only that. Only my masculine pride,
my self-respect and, if you choose to so call it, my immortal soul.”
“But,” she swung around on another tack, “you
could gradually buy the mill from me and it would
be your own and then–”
“Scarlett,” he interrupted fiercely, “I tell you, no!
There are other reasons.”
“What reasons?”
“You know my reasons better than anyone in the
world.”
“Oh–that? But–that’ll be all right,” she assured
swiftly. “I promised, you know, out in the orchard,
last winter and I’ll keep my promise and–”
“Then you are surer of yourself than I am. I could
not count on myself to keep such a promise. I should
not have said that but I had to make you understand.
Scarlett, I will not talk of this any more. It’s finished.
When Will and Suellen marry, I am going to New
York.”
His eyes, wide and stormy, met hers for an instant
and then he went swiftly across the room. His hand
was on the door knob. Scarlett stared at him in agony.
The interview was ended and she had lost. Suddenly weak from the strain and sorrow of the last day
1391
�PART FOUR
and the present disappointment, her nerves broke
abruptly and she screamed: “Oh, Ashley!” And,
flinging herself down on the sagging sofa, she burst
into wild crying.
She heard his uncertain footsteps leaving the door
and his helpless voice saying her name over and over
above her head. There was a swift pattering of feet
racing up the hall from the kitchen and Melanie burst
into the room, her eyes wide with alarm.
“Scarlett . . . the baby isn’t . . . ?”
Scarlett burrowed her head in the dusty upholstery
and screamed again.
“Ashley–he’s so mean! So doggoned mean–so hateful!”
“Oh, Ashley, what have you done to her?” Melanie
threw herself on the floor beside the sofa and gathered Scarlett into her arms. “What have you said?
How could you! You might bring on the baby! There,
my darling, put your head on Melanie’s shoulder!
What is wrong?”
“Ashley–he’s so–so bullheaded and hateful!”
“Ashley, I’m surprised at you! Upsetting her so
much and in her condition and Mr. O’Hara hardly
in his grave!”
1392
�PART FOUR
“Don’t you fuss at him!” cried Scarlett illogically,
raising her head abruptly from Melanie’s shoulder,
her coarse black hair tumbling out from its net and
her face streaked with tears. “He’s got a right to do as
he pleases!”
“Melanie,” said Ashley, his face white, “let me explain. Scarlett was kind enough to offer me a position
in Atlanta as manager of one of her mills–”
“Manager!” cried Scarlett indignantly. “I offered
him a half- interest and he–”
“And I told her I had already made arrangements
for us to go North and she–”
“Oh,” cried Scarlett, beginning to sob again, “I told
him and told him how much I needed him–how I
couldn’t get anybody to manage the mill–how I was
going to have this baby–and he refused to come! And
now–now, I’ll have to sell the mill and I know I can’t
get anything like a good price for it and I’ll lose
money and I guess maybe we’ll starve, but he won’t
care. He’s so mean!”
She burrowed her head back into Melanie’s thin
shoulder and some of the real anguish went from her
as a flicker of hope woke in her. She could sense
that in Melanie’s devoted heart she had an ally, feel
Melanie’s indignation that anyone, even her beloved
1393
�PART FOUR
husband, should make Scarlett cry. Melanie flew at
Ashley like a small determined dove and pecked him
for the first time in her life.
“Ashley, how could you refuse her? And after all
she’s done for us! How ungrateful you make us appear! And she so helpless now with the bab– How
unchivalrous of you! She helped us when we needed
help and now you deny her when she needs you!”
Scarlett peeped slyly at Ashley and saw surprise
and uncertainty plain in his face as he looked into
Melanie’s dark indignant eyes. Scarlett was surprised, too, at the vigor of Melanie’s attack, for she
knew Melanie considered her husband beyond wifely
reproaches and thought his decisions second only to
God’s.
“Melanie . . .” he began and then threw out his
hands helplessly.
“Ashley, how can you hesitate? Think what she’s
done for us–for me! I’d have died in Atlanta when
Beau came if it hadn’t been for her! And she–yes, she
killed a Yankee, defending us. Did you know that?
She killed a man for us. And she worked and slaved
before you and Will came home, just to keep food in
our mouths. And when I think of her plowing and
picking cotton, I could just– Oh, my darling!” And
1394
�PART FOUR
she swooped her head and kissed Scarlett’s tumbled
hair in fierce loyalty. “And now the first time she asks
us to do something for her–”
“You don’t need to tell me what she has done for
us.”
“And Ashley, just think! Besides helping her, just
think what it’ll mean for us to live in Atlanta among
our own people and not have to live with Yankees!
There’ll be Auntie and Uncle Henry and all our
friends, and Beau can have lots of playmates and go
to school. If we went North, we couldn’t let him go to
school and associate with Yankee children and have
pickaninnies in his class! We’d have to have a governess and I don’t see how we’d afford–”
“Melanie,” said Ashley and his voice was deadly
quiet, “do you really want to go to Atlanta so badly?
You never said so when we talked about going to
New York. You never intimated–”
“Oh, but when we talked about going to New York,
I thought there was nothing for you in Atlanta and,
besides, it wasn’t my place to say anything. It’s a
wife’s duty to go where her husband goes. But now
that Scarlett needs us so and has a position that only
you can fill we can go home! Home!” Her voice was
rapturous as she squeezed Scarlett. “And I’ll see Five
1395
�PART FOUR
Points again and Peachtree road and–and– Oh, how
I’ve missed them all! And maybe we could have a little home of our own! I wouldn’t care how little and
tacky it was but–a home of our own!”
Her eyes blazed with enthusiasm and happiness
and the two stared at her, Ashley with a queer
stunned look, Scarlett with surprise mingled with
shame. It had never occurred to her that Melanie
missed Atlanta so much and longed to be back,
longed for a home of her own. She had seemed so
contented at Tara it came to Scarlett as a shock that
she was homesick.
“Oh Scarlett, how good of you to plan all this for us!
You knew how I longed for home!”
As usual when confronted by Melanie’s habit of attributing worthy motives where no worth existed,
Scarlett was ashamed and irritated, and suddenly she
could not meet either Ashley’s or Melanie’s eyes.
“We could get a little house of our own. Do you
realize that we’ve been married five years and never
had a home?”
“You can stay with us at Aunt Pitty’s. That’s your
home,” mumbled Scarlett, toying with a pillow and
keeping her eyes down to hide dawning triumph in
them as she felt the tide turning her way.
1396
�PART FOUR
“No, but thank you just the same, darling. That
would crowd us so. We’ll get a house– Oh, Ashley,
do say Yes!”
“Scarlett,” said Ashley and his voice was toneless,
“look at me.”
Startled, she looked up and met gray eyes that were
bitter and full of tired futility.
“Scarlett, I will come to Atlanta. . . . I cannot fight
you both.”
He turned and walked out of the room. Some of the
triumph in her heart was dulled by a nagging fear.
The look in his eyes when he spoke had been the same
as when he said he would be lost forever if he came
to Atlanta.
After Suellen and Will married and Carreen went
off to Charleston to the convent, Ashley, Melanie and
Beau came to Atlanta, bringing Dilcey with them to
cook and nurse. Prissy and Pork were left at Tara until
such a time as Will could get other darkies to help him
in the fields and then they, too, would come to town.
The little brick house that Ashley took for his family
was on Ivy Street directly behind Aunt Pitty’s house
and the two back yards ran together, divided only by
a ragged overgrown privet hedge. Melanie had chosen it especially for this reason. She said, on the first
1397
�PART FOUR
morning of her return to Atlanta as she laughed and
cried and embraced Scarlett and Aunt Pitty, she had
been separated from her loved ones for so long that
she could never be close enough to them again.
The house had originally been two stories high but
the upper floor had been destroyed by shells during
the siege and the owner, returning after the surrender,
had lacked the money to replace it. He had contented
himself with putting a flat roof on the remaining first
floor which gave the building the squat, disproportionate look of a child’s playhouse built of shoe boxes.
The house was high from the ground, built over a
large cellar, and the long sweeping flight of stairs
which reached it made it look slightly ridiculous. But
the flat, squashed look of the place was partly redeemed by the two fine old oaks which shaded it and
a dusty- leaved magnolia, splotched with white blossoms, standing beside the front steps. The lawn was
wide and green with thick clover and bordering it was
a straggling, unkempt privet hedge, interlaced with
sweet-smelling honeysuckle vines. Here and there in
the grass, roses threw out sprangles from crushed old
stems and pink and white crepe myrtle bloomed as
valiantly as if war had not passed over their heads
and Yankee horses gnawed their boughs.
1398
�PART FOUR
Scarlett thought it quite the ugliest dwelling she
had ever seen but, to Melanie, Twelve Oaks in all its
grandeur had not been more beautiful. It was home
and she and Ashley and Beau were at last together
under their own roof.
India Wilkes came back from Macon, where she and
Honey had lived since 1864, and took up her residence with her brother, crowding the occupants of
the little house. But Ashley and Melanie welcomed
her. Times had changed, money was scarce, but nothing had altered the rule of Southern life that families
always made room gladly for indigent or unmarried
female relatives.
Honey had married and, so India said, married beneath her, a coarse Westerner from Mississippi who
had settled in Macon. He had a red face and a loud
voice and jolly ways. India had not approved of the
match and, not approving, had not been happy in her
brother-in- law’s home. She welcomed the news that
Ashley now had a home of his own, so she could
remove herself from uncongenial surroundings and
also from the distressing sight of her sister so fatuously happy with a man unworthy of her.
The rest of the family privately thought that the giggling and simple-minded Honey had done far bet1399
�PART FOUR
ter than could be expected and they marveled that
she had caught any man. Her husband was a gentleman and a man of some means; but to India, born
in Georgia and reared in Virginia traditions, anyone
not from the eastern seaboard was a boor and a barbarian. Probably Honey’s husband was as happy to
be relieved of her company as she was to leave him,
for India was not easy to live with these days.
The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely on her
shoulders now. She was twenty-five and looked it,
and so there was no longer any need for her to try to
be attractive. Her pale lashless eyes looked directly
and uncompromisingly upon the world and her thin
lips were ever set in haughty tightness. There was
an air of dignity and pride about her now that, oddly
enough, became her better than the determined girlish sweetness of her days at Twelve Oaks. The position she held was almost that of a widow. Everyone knew that Stuart Tarleton would have married
her had he not been killed at Gettysburg, and so she
was accorded the respect due a woman who had been
wanted if not wed.
The six rooms of the little house on Ivy Street were
soon scantily furnished with the cheapest pine and
oak furniture in Frank’s store for, as Ashley was pen1400
�PART FOUR
niless and forced to buy on credit, he refused anything except the least expensive and bought only the
barest necessities. This embarrassed Frank who was
fond of Ashley and it distressed Scarlett. Both she
and Frank would willingly have given, without any
charge, the finest mahogany and carved rosewood in
the store, but the Wilkeses obstinately refused. Their
house was painfully ugly and bare and Scarlett hated
to see Ashley living in the uncarpeted, uncurtained
rooms. But he did not seem to notice his surroundings and Melanie, having her own home for the first
time since her marriage, was so happy she was actually proud of the place. Scarlett would have suffered agonies of humiliation at having friends find her
without draperies and carpets and cushions and the
proper number of chairs and teacups and spoons. But
Melanie did the honors of her house as though plush
curtains and brocade sofas were hers.
For all her obvious happiness, Melanie was not well.
Little Beau had cost her her health, and the hard work
she had done at Tara since his birth had taken further toll of her strength. She was so thin that her
small bones seemed ready to come through her white
skin. Seen from a distance, romping about the back
yard with her child, she looked like a little girl, for
her waist was unbelievably tiny and she had practi1401
�PART FOUR
cally no figure. She had no bust and her hips were as
flat as little Beau’s and as she had neither the pride
nor the good sense (so Scarlett thought) to sew ruffles in the bosom of her basque or pads on the back
of her corsets, her thinness was very obvious. Like
her body, her face was too thin and too pale and her
silky brows, arched and delicate as a butterfly’s feelers, stood out too blackly against her colorless skin.
In her small face, her eyes were too large for beauty,
the dark smudges under them making them appear
enormous, but the expression in them had not altered since the days of her unworried girlhood. War
and constant pain and hard work had been powerless
against their sweet tranquillity. They were the eyes
of a happy woman, a woman around whom storms
might blow without ever ruffling the serene core of
her being.
How did she keep her eyes that way, thought Scarlett, looking at her enviously. She knew her own eyes
sometimes had the look of a hungry cat. What was
it Rhett had said once about Melanie’s eyes– some
foolishness about them being like candles? Oh, yes,
like two good deeds in a naughty world. Yes, they
were like candles, candles shielded from every wind,
two soft lights glowing with happiness at being home
again among her friends.
1402
�PART FOUR
The little house was always full of company.
Melanie had been a favorite even as a child and the
town flocked to welcome her home again. Everyone
brought presents for the house, bric-a-brac, pictures,
a silver spoon or two, linen pillow cases, napkins, rag
rugs, small articles which they had saved from Sherman and treasured but which they now swore were
of no earthly use to them.
Old men who had campaigned in Mexico with her
father came to see her, bringing visitors to meet “old
Colonel Hamilton’s sweet daughter.” Her mother’s
old friends clustered about her, for Melanie had a respectful deference to her elders that was very soothing to dowagers in these wild days when young people seemed to have forgotten all their manners. Her
contemporaries, the young wives, mothers and widows, loved her because she had suffered what they
had suffered, had not become embittered and always
lent them a sympathetic ear. The young people came,
as young people always come, simply because they
had a good time at her home and met there the friends
they wanted to meet.
Around Melanie’s tactful and self-effacing person,
there rapidly grew up a clique of young and old who
represented what was left of the best of Atlanta’s ante1403
�PART FOUR
bellum society, all poor in purse, all proud in family,
die-hards of the stoutest variety. It was as if Atlanta
society, scattered and wrecked by war, depleted by
death, bewildered by change, had found in her an unyielding nucleus about which it could re-form.
Melanie was young but she had in her all the qualities this embattled remnant prized, poverty and pride
in poverty, uncomplaining courage, gaiety, hospitality, kindness and, above all, loyalty to all the old traditions. Melanie refused to change, refused even to admit that there was any reason to change in a changing
world. Under her roof the old days seemed to come
back again and people took heart and felt even more
contemptuous of the tide of wild life and high living
that was sweeping the Carpetbaggers and newly rich
Republicans along.
When they looked into her young face and saw there
the inflexible loyalty to the old days, they could forget, for a moment, the traitors within their own class
who were causing fury, fear and heartbreak. And
there were many such. There were men of good
family, driven to desperation by poverty, who had
gone over to the enemy, become Republicans and accepted positions from the conquerors, so their families would not be on charity. There were young ex1404
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soldiers who lacked the courage to face the long years
necessary to build up fortunes. These youngsters, following the lead of Rhett Butler, went hand in hand
with the Carpetbaggers in money-making schemes of
unsavory kinds.
Worst of all the traitors were the daughters of some
of Atlanta’s most prominent families. These girls who
had come to maturity since the surrender had only
childish memories of the war and lacked the bitterness that animated their elders. They had lost no husbands, no lovers. They had few recollections of past
wealth and splendor–and the Yankee officers were so
handsome and finely dressed and so carefree. And
they gave such splendid balls and drove such fine
horses and simply worshiped Southern girls! They
treated them like queens and were so careful not to
injure their touchy pride and, after all–why not associate with them?
They were so much more attractive than the town
swains who dressed so shabbily and were so serious
and worked so hard that they had little time to play.
So there had been a number of elopements with Yankee officers which broke the hearts of Atlanta families. There were brothers who passed sisters on the
streets and did not speak and mothers and fathers
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who never mentioned daughters’ names. Remembering these tragedies, a cold dread ran in the veins
of those whose motto was “No surrender”–a dread
which the very sight of Melanie’s soft but unyielding
face dispelled. She was, as the dowagers said, such an
excellent and wholesome example to the young girls
of the town. And, because she made no parade of her
virtues the young girls did not resent her.
It never occurred to Melanie that she was becoming
the leader of a new society. She only thought the people were nice to come to see her and to want her in
their little sewing circles, cotillion clubs and musical
societies. Atlanta had always been musical and loved
good music, despite the sneering comments of sister
cities of the South concerning the town’s lack of culture, and there was now an enthusiastic resurrection
of interest that grew stronger as the times grew harder
and more tense. It was easier to forget the impudent
black faces in the streets and the blue uniforms of the
garrison while they were listening to music.
Melanie was a little embarrassed to find herself at
the head of the newly formed Saturday Night Musical
Circle. She could not account for her elevation to this
position except by the fact that she could accompany
anyone on the piano, even the Misses McLure who
1406
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were tone deaf but who would sing duets.
The truth of the matter was that Melanie had diplomatically managed to amalgamate the Lady Harpists,
the Gentlemen’s Glee Club and the Young Ladies
Mandolin and Guitar Society with the Saturday Night
Musical Circle, so that now Atlanta had music worth
listening to. In fact, the Circle’s rendition of The Bohemian Girl was said by many to be far superior to
professional performances heard in New York and
New Orleans. It was after she had maneuvered the
Lady Harpists into the fold that Mrs. Merriwether
said to Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Whiting that they must
have Melanie at the head of the Circle. If she could get
on with the Harpists, she could get on with anyone,
Mrs. Merriwether declared. That lady herself played
the organ for the choir at the Methodist Church and,
as an organist, had scant respect for harps or harpists.
Melanie had also been made secretary for both the
Association for the Beautification of the Graves of Our
Glorious Dead and the Sewing Circle for the Widows
and Orphans of the Confederacy. This new honor
came to her after an exciting joint meeting of those
societies which threatened to end in violence and the
severance of lifelong ties of friendship. The question
had arisen at the meeting as to whether or not weeds
1407
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should be removed from the graves of the Union soldiers near those of Confederate soldiers. The appearance of the scraggly Yankee mounds defeated all the
efforts of the ladies to beautify those of their own
dead. Immediately the fires which smoldered beneath tight basques flamed wildly and the two organizations split up and glared hostilely. The Sewing
Circle was in favor of the removal of the weeds, the
Ladies of the Beautification were violently opposed.
Mrs. Meade expressed the views of the latter group
when she said: “Dig up the weeds off Yankee graves?
For two cents, I’d dig up all the Yankees and throw
them in the city dump!”
At these ringing words the two associations arose
and every lady spoke her mind and no one listened.
The meeting was being held in Mrs. Merriwether’s
parlor and Grandpa Merriwether, who had been banished to the kitchen, reported afterwards that the
noise sounded just like the opening guns of the battle of Franklin. And, he added, be guessed it was
a dinged sight safer to be present at the battle of
Franklin than at the ladies’ meeting.
Somehow Melanie made her way to the center of the
excited throng and somehow made her usually soft
voice heard above the tumult. Her heart was in her
1408
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throat with fright at daring to address the indignant
gathering and her voice shook but she kept crying:
“Ladies! Please!” till the din died down.
“I want to say–I mean, I’ve thought for a long time
that–that not only should we pull up the weeds but
we should plant flowers on– I–I don’t care what you
think but every time I go to take flowers to dear Charlie’s grave, I always put some on the grave of an unknown Yankee which is near by. It–it looks so forlorn!”
The excitement broke out again in louder words and
this time the two organizations merged and spoke as
one.
“On Yankee graves! Oh, Melly, how could you!”
“And they killed Charlie!” “They almost killed you!”
“Why, the Yankees might have killed Beau when he
was born!” “They tried to burn you out of Tara!”
Melanie held onto the back of her chair for support, almost crumpling beneath the weight of a disapproval she had never known before.
“Oh, ladies!” she cried, pleading. “Please, let me
finish! I know I haven’t the right to speak on this
matter, for none of my loved ones were killed except Charlie, and I know where he lies, thank God!
But there are so many among us today who do not
1409
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know where their sons and husbands and brothers
are buried and–”
She choked and there was a dead silence in the
room.
Mrs. Meade’s flaming eyes went somber. She had
made the long trip to Gettysburg after the battle to
bring back Darcy’s body but no one had been able to
tell her where he was buried. Somewhere in some
hastily dug trench in the enemy’s country. And Mrs.
Allan’s mouth quivered. Her husband and brother
had been on that ill- starred raid Morgan made into
Ohio and the last information she had of them was
that they fell on the banks of the river, just as the Yankee cavalry stormed up. She did not know where they
lay. Mrs. Allison’s son had died in a Northern prison
camp and she, the poorest of the poor, was unable
to bring his body home. There were others who had
read on casualty lists: “Missing–believed dead,” and
in those words had learned the last news they were
ever to learn of men they had seen march away.
They turned to Melanie with eyes that said: “Why
do you open these wounds again? These are the
wounds that never heal–the wounds of not knowing
where they lie.”
Melanie’s voice gathered strength in the stillness of
1410
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the room.
“Their graves are somewhere up in the Yankees’
country, just like the Yankee graves are here, and oh,
how awful it would be to know that some Yankee
woman said to dig them up and–”
Mrs. Meade made a small, dreadful sound.
“But how nice it would be to know that some good
Yankee woman– And there must be SOME good Yankee women. I don’t care what people say, they can’t
all be bad! How nice it would be to know that they
pulled weeds off our men’s graves and brought flowers to them, even if they were enemies. If Charlie were
dead in the North it would comfort me to know that
someone– And I don’t care what you ladies think of
me,” her voice broke again, “I will withdraw from
both clubs and I’ll–I’ll pull up every weed off every
Yankee’s grave I can find and I’ll plant flowers, too–
and–I just dare anyone to stop me!”
With this final defiance Melanie burst into tears and
tried to make her stumbling way to the door.
Grandpa Merriwether, safe in the masculine confines of the Girl of the Period Saloon an hour later,
reported to Uncle Henry Hamilton that after these
words, everybody cried and embraced Melanie and
it all ended up in a love feast and Melanie was made
1411
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secretary of both organizations.
“And they are going to pull up the weeds. The hell
of it is Dolly said I’d be only too pleased to help do it,
‘cause I didn’t have anything much else to do. I got
nothing against the Yankees and I think Miss Melly
was right and the rest of those lady wild cats wrong.
But the idea of me pulling weeds at my time of life
and with my lumbago!”
Melanie was on the board of lady managers of
the Orphans’ Home and assisted in the collection of
books for the newly formed Young Men’s Library
Association. Even the Thespians who gave amateur
plays once a month clamored for her. She was too
timid to appear behind the kerosene-lamp footlights,
but she could make costumes out of croker sacks if
they were the only material available. It was she who
cast the deciding vote at the Shakespeare Reading Circle that the bard’s works should be varied with those
of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Bulwer-Lytton and not the
poems of Lord Byron, as had been suggested by a
young and, Melanie privately feared, very fast bachelor member of the Circle.
In the nights of the late summer her small, feebly
lighted house was always full of guests. There were
never enough chairs to go around and frequently
1412
�PART FOUR
ladies sat on the steps of the front porch with men
grouped about them on the banisters, on packing
boxes or on the lawn below. Sometimes when Scarlett saw guests sitting on the grass, sipping tea, the
only refreshment the Wilkeses could afford, she wondered how Melanie could bring herself to expose her
poverty so shamelessly. Until Scarlett was able to furnish Aunt Pitty’s house as it had been before the war
and serve her guests good wine and juleps and baked
ham and cold haunches of venison, she had no intention of having guests in her house–especially prominent guests, such as Melanie had.
General John B. Gordon, Georgia’s great hero, was
frequently there with his family. Father Ryan, the
poet-priest of the Confederacy, never failed to call
when passing through Atlanta. He charmed gatherings there with his wit and seldom needed much
urging to recite his “Sword of Lee” or his deathless
“Conquered Banner,” which never failed to make the
ladies cry. Alex Stephens, late Vice-President of the
Confederacy, visited whenever in town and, when the
word went about that he was at Melanie’s, the house
was filled and people sat for hours under the spell
of the frail invalid with the ringing voice. Usually
there were a dozen children present, nodding sleepily in their parents’ arms, up hours after their normal
1413
�PART FOUR
bedtime. No family wanted its children to miss being
able to say in after years that they had been kissed by
the great Vice-President or had shaken the hand that
helped to guide the Cause. Every person of importance who came to town found his way to the Wilkes
home and often they spent the night there. It crowded
the little flat-topped house, forced India to sleep on
a pallet in the cubbyhole that was Beau’s nursery
and sent Dilcey speeding through the back hedge to
borrow breakfast eggs from Aunt Pitty’s Cookie, but
Melanie entertained them as graciously as if hers was
a mansion.
No, it did not occur to Melanie that people rallied
round her as round a worn and loved standard. And
so she was both astounded and embarrassed when
Dr. Meade, after a pleasant evening at her house
where he acquitted himself nobly in reading the part
of Macbeth, kissed her hand and made observations
in the voice he once used in speaking of Our Glorious
Cause.
“My dear Miss Melly, it is always a privilege and a
pleasure to be in your home, for you–and ladies like
you–are the hearts of all of us, all that we have left.
They have taken the flower of our manhood and the
laughter of our young women. They have broken our
1414
�PART FOUR
health, uprooted our lives and unsettled our habits.
They have ruined our prosperity, set us back fifty
years and placed too heavy a burden on the shoulders of our boys who should be in school and our old
men who should be sleeping in the sun. But we will
build back, because we have hearts like yours to build
upon. And as long as we have them, the Yankees can
have the rest!”
Until Scarlett’s figure reached such proportions that
even Aunt Pitty’s big black shawl did not conceal her
condition, she and Frank frequently slipped through
the back hedge to join the summer- night gatherings
on Melanie’s porch. Scarlett always sat well out of
the light, hidden in the protecting shadows where she
was not only inconspicuous but could, unobserved,
watch Ashley’s face to her heart’s content.
It was only Ashley who drew her to the house, for
the conversations bored and saddened her. They always followed a set pattern–first, hard times; next,
the political situation; and then, inevitably, the war.
The ladies bewailed the high prices of everything
and asked the gentlemen if they thought good times
would ever come back. And the omniscient gentlemen always said, indeed they would. Merely a matter
of time. Hard times were just temporary. The ladies
1415
�PART FOUR
knew the gentlemen were lying and the gentlemen
knew the ladies knew they were lying. But they lied
cheerfully just the same and the ladies pretended to
believe them. Everyone knew hard times were here
to stay.
Once the hard times were disposed of, the ladies
spoke of the increasing impudence of the negroes and
the outrages of the Carpetbaggers and the humiliation of having the Yankee soldiers loafing on every
corner. Did the gentlemen think the Yankees would
ever get through with reconstructing Georgia? The reassuring gentlemen thought Reconstruction would be
over in no time–that is, just as soon as the Democrats
could vote again. The ladies were considerate enough
not to ask when this would be. And having finished
with politics, the talk about the war began.
Whenever two former Confederates met anywhere,
there was never but one topic of conversation, and
where a dozen or more gathered together, it was a
foregone conclusion that the war would be spiritedly
refought. And always the word “if” had the most
prominent part in the talk.
“If England had recognized us–” “If Jeff Davis had
commandeered all the cotton and gotten it to England
before the blockade tightened–” “If Longstreet had
1416
�PART FOUR
obeyed orders at Gettysburg–” “If Jeb Stuart hadn’t
been away on that raid when Marse Bob needed him–
” “If we hadn’t lost Stonewall Jackson–” “If Vicksburg
hadn’t fallen–” “If we could have held on another
year–” And always: “If they hadn’t replaced Johnston
with Hood–” or “If they’d put Hood in command at
Dalton instead of Johnston–”
If! If! The soft drawling voices quickened with an
old excitement as they talked in the quiet darkness–
infantryman, cavalryman, cannoneer, evoking memories of the days when life was ever at high tide, recalling the fierce heat of their midsummer in this forlorn
sunset of their winter.
“They don’t talk of anything else,” thought Scarlett.
“Nothing but the war. Always the war. And they’ll
never talk of anything but the war. No, not until they
die.”
She looked about, seeing little boys lying in the
crooks of their fathers’ arms, breath coming fast, eyes
glowing, as they heard of midnight stories and wild
cavalry dashes and flags planted on enemy breastworks. They were hearing drums and bugles and the
Rebel yell, seeing footsore men going by in the rain
with torn flags slanting.
“And these children will never talk of anything else
1417
�PART FOUR
either. They’ll think it was wonderful and glorious to
fight the Yankees and come home blind and crippled–
or not come home at all. They all like to remember the
war, to talk about it. But I don’t. I don’t even like to
think about it. I’d forget it all if I could– oh, if I only
could!”
She listened with flesh crawling as Melanie told
tales of Tara, making Scarlett a heroine as she faced
the invaders and saved Charles’ sword, bragging how
Scarlett had put out the fire. Scarlett took no pleasure
or pride in the memory of these things. She did not
want to think of them at all.
“Oh, why can’t they forget? Why can’t they look
forward and not back? We were fools to fight that
war. And the sooner we forget it, the better we’ll be.”
But no one wanted to forget, no one, it seemed,
except herself, so Scarlett was glad when she could
truthfully tell Melanie that she was embarrassed at
appearing, even in the darkness. This explanation
was readily understood by Melanie who was hypersensitive about all matters relating to childbirth.
Melanie wanted another baby badly, but both Dr.
Meade and Dr. Fontaine had said another child
would cost her her life. So, only half resigned to her
fate, she spent most of her time with Scarlett, vicari1418
�PART FOUR
ously enjoying a pregnancy not her own. To Scarlett,
scarcely wanting her coming child and irritated at its
untimeliness, this attitude seemed the height of sentimental stupidity. But she had a guilty sense of pleasure that the doctors’ edict had made impossible any
real intimacy between Ashley and his wife.
Scarlett saw Ashley frequently now but she never
saw him alone. He came by the house every night
on his way home from the mill to report on the
day’s work, but Frank and Pitty were usually present
or, worse still, Melanie and India. She could only
ask businesslike questions and make suggestions and
then say: “It was nice of you to come by. Good night.”
If only she wasn’t having a baby! Here was a Godgiven opportunity to ride out to the mill with him every morning, through the lonely woods, far from prying eyes, where they could imagine themselves back
in the County again in the unhurried days before the
war.
No, she wouldn’t try to make him say one word of
love! She wouldn’t refer to love in any way. She’d
sworn an oath to herself that she would never do that
again. But, perhaps if she were alone with him once
more, he might drop that mask of impersonal courtesy he had worn since coming to Atlanta. Perhaps
1419
�PART FOUR
he might be his old self again, be the Ashley she had
known before the barbecue, before any word of love
had been spoken between them. If they could not
be lovers, they could be friends again and she could
warm her cold and lonely heart in the glow of his
friendship.
“If only I could get this baby over and done with,”
she thought impatiently, “then I could ride with him
every day and we could talk–”
It was not only the desire to be with him that made
her writhe with helpless impatience at her confinement. The mills needed her. The mills had been losing
money ever since she retired from active supervision,
leaving Hugh and Ashley in charge.
Hugh was so incompetent, for all that he tried so
hard. He was a poor trader and a poorer boss of labor. Anyone could Jew him down on prices. If any
slick contractor chose to say that the lumber was of an
inferior grade and not worth the price asked, Hugh
felt that all a gentleman could do was to apologize
and take a lower price. When she heard of the price
he received for a thousand feet of flooring, she burst
into angry tears. The best grade of flooring the mill
had ever turned out and he had practically given it
away! And he couldn’t manage his labor crews. The
1420
�PART FOUR
negroes insisted on being paid every day and they frequently got drunk on their wages and did not turn up
for work the next morning. On these occasions Hugh
was forced to hunt up new workmen and the mill was
late in starting. With these difficulties Hugh didn’t get
into town to sell the lumber for days on end.
Seeing the profits slip from Hugh’s fingers, Scarlett
became frenzied at her impotence and his stupidity.
Just as soon as the baby was born and she could go
back to work, she would get rid of Hugh and hire
some one else. Anyone would do better. And she
would never fool with free niggers again. How could
anyone get any work done with free niggers quitting
all the time?
“Frank,” she said, after a stormy interview with
Hugh over his missing workmen, “I’ve about made
up my mind that I’ll lease convicts to work the mills.
A while back I was talking to Johnnie Gallegher,
Tommy Wellburn’s foreman, about the trouble we
were having getting any work out of the darkies and
he asked me why I didn’t get convicts. It sounds like
a good idea to me. He said I could sublease them for
next to nothing and feed them dirt cheap. And he said
I could get work out of them in any way I liked, without having the Freedman’s Bureau swarming down
1421
�PART FOUR
on me like hornets, sticking their bills into things that
aren’t any of their business. And just as soon as Johnnie Gallegher’s contract with Tommy is up, I’m going
to hire him to run Hugh’s mill. Any man who can
get work out of that bunch of wild Irish he bosses can
certainly get plenty of work out of convicts.”
Convicts! Frank was speechless. Leasing convicts
was the very worst of all the wild schemes Scarlett
had ever suggested, worse even than her notion of
building a saloon.
At least, it seemed worse to Frank and the conservative circles in which he moved. This new system
of leasing convicts had come into being because of
the poverty of the state after the war. Unable to support the convicts, the State was hiring them out to
those needing large labor crews in the building of railroads, in turpentine forests and lumber camps. While
Frank and his quiet churchgoing friends realized the
necessity of the system, they deplored it just the same.
Many of them had not even believed in slavery and
they thought this was far worse than slavery had ever
been.
And Scarlett wanted to lease convicts! Frank knew
that if she did he could never hold up his head again.
This was far worse than owning and operating the
1422
�PART FOUR
mills herself, or anything else she had done. His past
objections had always been coupled with the question: “What will people say?” But this–this went
deeper than fear of public opinion. He felt that it was
a traffic in human bodies on a par with prostitution, a
sin that would be on his soul if he permitted her to do
it.
From this conviction of wrongness, Frank gathered
courage to forbid Scarlett to do such a thing, and so
strong were his remarks that she, startled, relapsed
into silence. Finally to quiet him, she said meekly
she hadn’t really meant it. She was just so outdone
with Hugh and the free niggers she had lost her temper. Secretly, she still thought about it and with some
longing. Convict labor would settle one of her hardest
problems, but if Frank was going to take on so about
it–
She sighed. If even one of the mills were making
money, she could stand it. But Ashley was faring little
better with his mill than Hugh.
At first Scarlett was shocked and disappointed that
Ashley did not immediately take hold and make the
mill pay double what it had paid under her management. He was so smart and he had read so many
books and there was no reason at all why he should
1423
�PART FOUR
not make a brilliant success and lots of money. But
he was no more successful than Hugh. His inexperience, his errors, his utter lack of business judgment
and his scruples about close dealing were the same as
Hugh’s.
Scarlett’s love hastily found excuses for him and
she did not consider the two men in the same light.
Hugh was just hopelessly stupid, while Ashley was
merely new at the business. Still, unbidden, came the
thought that Ashley could never make a quick estimate in his head and give a price that was correct, as
she could. And she sometimes wondered if he’d ever
learn to distinguish between planking and sills. And
because he was a gentleman and himself trustworthy,
he trusted every scoundrel who came along and several times would have lost money for her if she had
not tactfully intervened. And if he liked a person–
and he seemed to like so many people!–he sold them
lumber on credit without ever thinking to find out if
they had money in the bank or property. He was as
bad as Frank in that respect.
But surely he would learn! And while he was learning she had a fond and maternal indulgence and patience for his errors. Every evening when he called
at her house, weary and discouraged, she was tireless
1424
�PART FOUR
in her tactful, helpful suggestions. But for all her encouragement and cheer, there was a queer dead look
in his eyes. She could not understand it and it frightened her. He was different, so different from the man
he used to be. If only she could see him alone, perhaps she could discover the reason.
The situation gave her many sleepless nights. She
worried about Ashley, both because she knew he
was unhappy and because she knew his unhappiness wasn’t helping him to become a good lumber
dealer. It was a torture to have her mills in the hands
of two men with no more business sense than Hugh
and Ashley, heartbreaking to see her competitors taking her best customers away when she had worked
so hard and planned so carefully for these helpless
months. Oh, if she could only get back to work again!
She would take Ashley in hand and then he would
certainly learn. And Johnnie Gallegher could run the
other mill, and she could handle the selling, and then
everything would be fine. As for Hugh, he could
drive a delivery wagon if he still wanted to work for
her. That was all he was good for.
Of course, Gallegher looked like an unscrupulous
man, for all of his smartness, but–who else could she
get? Why had the other men who were both smart
1425
�PART FOUR
and honest been so perverse about working for her?
If she only had one of them working for her now in
place of Hugh, she wouldn’t have to worry so much,
but–
Tommy Wellburn, in spite of his crippled back, was
the busiest contractor in town and coining money,
so people said. Mrs. Merriwether and Rene were
prospering and now had opened a bakery downtown. Rene was managing it with true French thrift
and Grandpa Merriwether, glad to escape from his
chimney corner, was driving Rene’s pie wagon. The
Simmons boys were so busy they were operating
their brick kiln with three shifts of labor a day.
And Kells Whiting was cleaning up money with his
hair straightener, because he told the negroes they
wouldn’t ever be permitted to vote the Republican
ticket if they had kinky hair.
It was the same with all the smart young men she
knew, the doctors, the lawyers, the storekeepers. The
apathy which had clutched them immediately after
the war had completely disappeared and they were
too busy building their own fortunes to help her build
hers. The ones who were not busy were the men of
Hugh’s type–or Ashley’s.
What a mess it was to try to run a business and have
1426
�PART FOUR
a baby too!
“I’ll never have another one,” she decided firmly.
“I’m not going to be like other women and have a
baby every year. Good Lord, that would mean six
months out of the year when I’d have to be away from
the mills! And I see now I can’t afford to be away
from them even one day. I shall simply tell Frank that
I won’t have any more children.”
Frank wanted a big family, but she could manage
Frank somehow. Her mind was made up. This was
her last child. The mills were far more important.
1427
�CHAPTER XLII
a girl, a small bald-headed mite,
ugly as a hairless monkey and absurdly like Frank.
No one except the doting father could see anything
beautiful about her, but the neighbors were charitable
enough to say that all ugly babies turned out pretty,
eventually. She was named Ella Lorena, Ella for her
grandmother Ellen, and Lorena because it was the
most fashionable name of the day for girls, even as
Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were popular for
boys and Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation for negro children.
She was born in the middle of a week when frenzied
excitement gripped Atlanta and the air was tense with
expectation of disaster. A negro who had boasted of
rape had actually been arrested, but before he could
be brought to trial the jail had been raided by the Ku
Klux Klan and he had been quietly hanged. The Klan
had acted to save the as yet unnamed victim from
having to testify in open court. Rather than have
her appear and advertise her shame, her father and
brother would have shot her, so lynching the negro
seemed a sensible solution to the townspeople, in fact,
the only decent solution possible. But the military authorities were in a fury. They saw no reason why the
S CARLETT ’ S
CHILD WAS
�PART FOUR
girl should mind testifying publicly.
The soldiers made arrests right and left, swearing
to wipe out the Klan if they had to put every white
man in Atlanta in jail. The negroes, frightened and
sullen, muttered of retaliatory house burnings. The
air was thick with rumors of wholesale hangings by
the Yankees should the guilty parties be found and
of a concerted uprising against the whites by the negroes. The people of the town stayed at home behind
locked doors and shuttered windows, the men fearing to go to their businesses and leave their women
and children unprotected.
Scarlett, lying exhausted in bed, feebly and silently
thanked God that Ashley had too much sense to belong to the Klan and Frank was too old and poor
spirited. How dreadful it would be to know that the
Yankees might swoop down and arrest them at any
minute! Why didn’t the crack-brained young fools in
the Klan leave bad enough alone and not stir up the
Yankees like this? Probably the girl hadn’t been raped
after all. Probably she’d just been frightened silly and,
because of her, a lot of men might lose their lives.
In this atmosphere, as nerve straining as watching a
slow fuse burn toward a barrel of gunpowder, Scarlett came rapidly back to strength. The healthy vigor
1429
�PART FOUR
which had carried her through the hard days at Tara
stood her in good stead now, and within two weeks
of Ella Lorena’s birth she was strong enough to sit up
and chafe at her inactivity. In three weeks she was
up, declaring she had to see to the mills. They were
standing idle because both Hugh and Ashley feared
to leave their families alone all day.
Then the blow fell.
Frank, full of the pride of new fatherhood, summoned up courage enough to forbid Scarlett leaving
the house while conditions were so dangerous. His
commands would not have worried her at all and she
would have gone about her business in spite of them,
if he had not put her horse and buggy in the livery stable and ordered that they should not be surrendered
to anyone except himself. To make matters worse, he
and Mammy had patiently searched the house while
she was ill and unearthed her hidden store of money.
And Frank had deposited it in the bank in his own
name, so now she could not even hire a rig.
Scarlett raged at both Frank and Mammy, then was
reduced to begging and finally cried all one morning
like a furious thwarted child. But for all her pains
she heard only: “There, Sugar! You’re just a sick little
girl.” And: “Miss Scarlett, ef you doan quit cahyin’
1430
�PART FOUR
on so, you gwine sour yo’ milk an’ de baby have colic,
sho as gun’s iron.”
In a furious temper, Scarlett charged through her
back yard to Melanie’s house and there unburdened
herself at the top of her voice, declaring she would
walk to the mills, she would go about Atlanta telling
everyone what a varmint she had married, she would
not be treated like a naughty simple-minded child.
She would carry a pistol and shoot anyone who
threatened her. She had shot one man and she would
love, yes, love to shoot another. She would–
Melanie who feared to venture onto her own front
porch was appalled by such threats.
“Oh, you must not risk yourself! I should die if anything happened to you! Oh, please–”
“I will! I will! I will walk–”
Melanie looked at her and saw that this was not the
hysteria of a woman still weak from childbirth. There
was the same breakneck, headlong determination in
Scarlett’s face that Melanie had often seen in Gerald
O’Hara’s face when his mind was made up. She put
her arms around Scarlett’s waist and held her tightly.
“It’s all my fault for not being brave like you and for
keeping Ashley at home with me all this time when
he should have been at the mill. Oh, dear! I’m such a
1431
�PART FOUR
ninny! Darling, I’ll tell Ashley I’m not a bit frightened
and I’ll come over and stay with you and Aunt Pitty
and he can go back to work and–”
Not even to herself would Scarlett admit that she
did not think Ashley could cope with the situation
alone and she shouted: “You’ll do nothing of the kind!
What earthly good would Ashley do at work if he was
worried about you every minute? Everybody is just
so hateful! Even Uncle Peter refuses to go out with
me! But I don’t care! I’ll go alone. I’ll walk every step
of the way and pick up a crew of darkies somewhere–
”
“Oh, no! You mustn’t do that! Something dreadful
might happen to you. They say that Shantytown settlement on the Decatur road is just full of mean darkies and you’d have to pass right by it. Let me think–
Darling, promise me you won’t do anything today
and I’ll think of something. Promise me you’ll go
home and lie down. You look right peaked. Promise
me.”
Because she was too exhausted by her anger to do
otherwise, Scarlett sulkily promised and went home,
haughtily refusing any overtures of peace from her
household.
That afternoon a strange figure stumped through
1432
�PART FOUR
Melanie’s hedge and across Pitty’s back yard. Obviously, he was one of those men whom Mammy and
Dilcey referred to as “de riff-raff whut Miss Melly
pick up off de streets an’ let sleep in her cellar.”
There were three rooms in the basement of
Melanie’s house which formerly had been servants’
quarters and a wine room. Now Dilcey occupied one,
and the other two were in constant use by a stream of
miserable and ragged transients. No one but Melanie
knew whence they came or where they were going
and no one but she knew where she collected them.
Perhaps the negroes were right and she did pick them
up from the streets. But even as the great and the near
great gravitated to her small parlor, so unfortunates
found their way to her cellar where they were fed,
bedded and sent on their way with packages of food.
Usually the occupants of the rooms were former Confederate soldiers of the rougher, illiterate type, homeless men, men without families, beating their way
about the country in hope of finding work.
Frequently, brown and withered country women
with broods of tow- haired silent children spent the
night there, women widowed by the war, dispossessed of their farms, seeking relatives who were scattered and lost. Sometimes the neighborhood was
1433
�PART FOUR
scandalized by the presence of foreigners, speaking
little or no English, who had been drawn South by
glowing tales of fortunes easily made. Once a Republican had slept there. At least, Mammy insisted
he was a Republican, saying she could smell a Republican, same as a horse could smell a rattlesnake;
but no one believed Mammy’s story, for there must
be some limit even to Melanie’s charity. At least everyone hoped so.
Yes, thought Scarlett, sitting on the side porch in the
pale November sunshine with the baby on her lap, he
is one of Melanie’s lame dogs. And he’s really lame,
at that!
The man who was making his way across the back
yard stumped, like Will Benteen, on a wooden leg. He
was a tall, thin old man with a bald head, which shone
pinkishly dirty, and a grizzled beard so long he could
tuck it in his belt. He was over sixty, to judge by his
hard, seamed face, but there was no sag of age to his
body. He was lank and ungainly but, even with his
wooden peg, he moved as swiftly as a snake.
He mounted the steps and came toward her and,
even before he spoke, revealing in his tones a twang
and a burring of “r s” unusual in the lowlands, Scarlett knew that he was mountain born. For all his dirty,
1434
�PART FOUR
ragged clothes there was about him, as about most
mountaineers, an air of fierce silent pride that permitted no liberties and tolerated no foolishness. His
beard was stained with tobacco juice and a large wad
in his jaw made his face look deformed. His nose was
thin and craggy, his eyebrows bushy and twisted into
witches’ locks and a lush growth of hair sprang from
his ears, giving them the tufted look of a lynx’s ears.
Beneath his brow was one hollow socket from which
a scar ran down his cheek, carving a diagonal line
through his beard. The other eye was small, pale and
cold, an unwinking and remorseless eye. There was a
heavy pistol openly in his trouser band and from the
top of his tattered boot protruded the hilt of a bowie
knife.
He returned Scarlett’s stare coldly and spat across
the rail of the banister before he spoke. There was
contempt in his one eye, not a personal contempt for
her, but for her whole sex.
“Miz Wilkes sont me to work for you,” he said
shortly. He spoke rustily, as one unaccustomed to
speaking, the words coming slowly and almost with
difficulty. “M’ name’s Archie.”
“I’m sorry but I have no work for you, Mr. Archie.”
“Archie’s m’fuss name.”
1435
�PART FOUR
“I beg your pardon. What is your last name?”
He spat again. “I reckon that’s my bizness,” he said.
“Archie’ll do.”
“I don’t care what your last name is! I have nothing
for you to do.”
“I reckon you have. Miz Wilkes was upsot about
yore wantin’ to run aroun’ like a fool by yoreself and
she sont me over here to drive aroun’ with you.”
“Indeed?” cried Scarlett, indignant both at the
man’s rudeness and Melly’s meddling.
His one eye met hers with an impersonal animosity.
“Yes. A woman’s got no bizness botherin’ her men
folks when they’re tryin’ to take keer of her. If you’re
bound to gad about, I’ll drive you. I hates niggers–
Yankees too.”
He shifted his wad of tobacco to the other cheek and,
without waiting for an invitation, sat down on the top
step. “I ain’t sayin’ I like drivin’ women aroun’, but
Miz Wilkes been good to me, lettin’ me sleep in her
cellar, and she sont me to drive you.”
“But–” began Scarlett helplessly and then she
stopped and looked at him. After a moment she began to smile. She didn’t like the looks of this elderly
desperado but his presence would simplify matters.
With him beside her, she could go to town, drive to
1436
�PART FOUR
the mills, call on customers. No one could doubt her
safety with him and his very appearance was enough
to keep from giving rise to scandal.
“It’s a bargain,” she said. “That is, if my husband
agrees.”
After a private conversation with Archie, Frank
gave his reluctant approval and sent word to the livery stable to release the horse and buggy. He was hurt
and disappointed that motherhood had not changed
Scarlett as he had hoped it would but, if she was
determined to go back to her damnable mills, then
Archie was a godsend.
So began the relationship that at first startled Atlanta. Archie and Scarlett were a queerly assorted
pair, the truculent dirty old man with his wooden peg
sticking stiffly out over the dashboard and the pretty,
neatly dressed young woman with forehead puckered in an abstracted frown. They could be seen at
all hours and at all places in and near Atlanta, seldom
speaking to each other, obviously disliking each other,
but bound together by mutual need, he of money, she
of protection. At least, said the ladies of the town, it’s
better than riding around so brazenly with that Butler man. They wondered curiously where Rhett was
these days, for he had abruptly left town three months
1437
�PART FOUR
before and no one, not even Scarlett, knew where he
was.
Archie was a silent man, never speaking unless spoken to and usually answering with grunts. Every
morning he came from Melanie’s cellar and sat on
the front steps of Pitty’s house, chewing and spitting
until Scarlett came out and Peter brought the buggy
from the stable. Uncle Peter feared him only a little
less than the devil or the Ku Klux and even Mammy
walked silently and timorously around him. He hated
negroes and they knew it and feared him. He reinforced his pistol and knife with another pistol, and
his fame spread far among the black population. He
never once had to draw a pistol or even lay his hand
on his belt. The moral effect was sufficient. No negro
dared even laugh while Archie was in hearing.
Once Scarlett asked him curiously why he hated negroes and was surprised when he answered, for generally all questions were answered by “I reckon that’s
my bizness.”
“I hates them, like all mountain folks hates them.
We never liked them and we never owned none. It
was them niggers that started the war. I hates them
for that, too.”
“But you fought in the war.”
1438
�PART FOUR
“I reckon that’s a man’s privilege. I hates Yankees
too, more’n I hates niggers. Most as much as I hates
talkative women.”
It was such outspoken rudeness as this that threw
Scarlett into silent furies and made her long to be rid
of him. But how could she do without him? In what
other way could she obtain such freedom? He was
rude and dirty and, occasionally, very odorous but
he served his purpose. He drove her to and from
the mills and on her round of customers, spitting and
staring off into space while she talked and gave orders. If she climbed down from the buggy, he climbed
after her and dogged her footsteps. When she was
among rough laborers, negroes or Yankee soldiers, he
was seldom more than a pace from her elbow.
Soon Atlanta became accustomed to seeing Scarlett
and her bodyguard and, from being accustomed, the
ladies grew to envy her her freedom of movement.
Since the Ku Klux lynching, the ladies had been practically immured, not even going to town to shop unless there were half a dozen in their group. Naturally
social minded, they became restless and, putting their
pride in their pockets, they began to beg the loan of
Archie from Scarlett. And whenever she did not need
him, she was gracious enough to spare him for the use
1439
�PART FOUR
of other ladies.
Soon Archie became an Atlanta institution and the
ladies competed for his free time. There was seldom
a morning when a child or a negro servant did not
arrive at breakfast time with a note saying: “If you
aren’t using Archie this afternoon, do let me have
him. I want to drive to the cemetery with flowers.”
“I must go to the milliners.” “I should like Archie to
drive Aunt Nelly for an airing.” “I must go calling on
Peters Street and Grandpa is not feeling well enough
to take me. Could Archie–”
He drove them all, maids, matrons and widows, and
toward all he evidenced the same uncompromising
contempt. It was obvious that he did not like women,
Melanie excepted, any better than he liked negroes
and Yankees. Shocked at first by his rudeness, the
ladies finally became accustomed to him and, as he
was so silent, except for intermittent explosions of
tobacco juice, they took him as much for granted as
the horses he drove and forgot his very existence. In
fact, Mrs. Merriwether related to Mrs. Meade the
complete details of her niece’s confinement before she
even remembered Archie’s presence on the front seat
of the carriage.
At no other time than this could such a situation
1440
�PART FOUR
have been possible. Before the war, he would not
have been permitted even in the ladies’ kitchens.
They would have handed him food through the back
door and sent him about his business. But now they
welcomed his reassuring presence. Rude, illiterate,
dirty, he was a bulwark between the ladies and the
terrors of Reconstruction. He was neither friend nor
servant. He was a hired bodyguard, protecting the
women while their men worked by day or were absent from home at night.
It seemed to Scarlett that after Archie came to work
for her Frank was away at night very frequently. He
said the books at the store had to be balanced and
business was brisk enough now to give him little time
to attend to this in working hours. And there were
sick friends with whom he had to sit. Then there
was the organization of Democrats who forgathered
every Wednesday night to devise ways of regaining
the ballot and Frank never missed a meeting. Scarlett
thought this organization did little else except argue
the merits of General John B. Gordon over every other
general, except General Lee, and refight the war. Certainly she could observe no progress in the direction
of the recovery of the ballot. But Frank evidently enjoyed the meetings for he stayed out until all hours on
those nights.
1441
�PART FOUR
Ashley also sat up with the sick and he, too, attended the Democratic meetings and he was usually away on the same nights as Frank. On these
nights, Archie escorted Pitty, Scarlett, Wade and little
Ella though the back yard to Melanie’s house and the
two families spent the evenings together. The ladies
sewed while Archie lay full length on the parlor sofa
snoring, his gray whiskers fluttering at each rumble.
No one had invited him to dispose himself on the sofa
and as it was the finest piece of furniture in the house,
the ladies secretly moaned every time he lay down
on it, planting his boot on the pretty upholstery. But
none of them had the courage to remonstrate with
him. Especially after he remarked that it was lucky he
went to sleep easy, for otherwise the sound of women
clattering like a flock of guinea hens would certainly
drive him crazy.
Scarlett sometimes wondered where Archie had
come from and what his life had been before he came
to live in Melly’s cellar but she asked no questions.
There was that about his grim one-eyed face which
discouraged curiosity. All she knew was that his voice
bespoke the mountains to the north and that he had
been in the army and had lost both leg and eye shortly
before the surrender. It was words spoken in a fit
of anger against Hugh Elsing which brought out the
1442
�PART FOUR
truth of Archie’s past.
One morning, the old man had driven her to Hugh’s
mill and she had found it idle, the negroes gone and
Hugh sitting despondently under a tree. His crew
had not made their appearance that morning and he
was at a loss as to what to do. Scarlett was in a furious
temper and did not scruple to expend it on Hugh, for
she had just received an order for a large amount of
lumber–a rush order at that. She had used energy and
charm and bargaining to get that order and now the
mill was quiet.
“Drive me out to the other mill,” she directed
Archie. “Yes, I know it’ll take a long time and we
won’t get any dinner but what am I paying you for?
I’ll have to make Mr. Wilkes stop what he’s doing and
run me off this lumber. Like as not, his crew won’t be
working either. Great balls of fire! I never saw such a
nincompoop as Hugh Elsing! I’m going to get rid of
him just as soon as that Johnnie Gallegher finishes the
stores he’s building. What do I care if Gallegher was
in the Yankee Army? He’ll work. I never saw a lazy
Irishman yet. And I’m through with free issue darkies. You just can’t depend on them. I’m going to get
Johnnie Gallegher and lease me some convicts. He’ll
get work out of them. He’ll–”
1443
�PART FOUR
Archie turned to her, his eye malevolent, and when
he spoke there was cold anger in his rusty voice.
“The day you gits convicts is the day I quits you,”
he said.
Scarlett was startled. “Good heavens! Why?”
“I knows about convict leasin’. I calls it convict murderin’. Buyin’ men like they was mules. Treatin’ them
worse than mules ever was treated. Beatin’ them,
starvin’ them, killin’ them. And who cares? The State
don’t care. It’s got the lease money. The folks that gits
the convicts, they don’t care. All they want is to feed
them cheap and git all the work they can out of them.
Hell, Ma’m. I never thought much of women and I
think less of them now.”
“Is it any of your business?”
“I reckon,” said Archie laconically and, after a
pause, “I was a convict for nigh on to forty years.”
Scarlett gasped, and, for a moment, shrank back
against the cushions. This then was the answer to
the riddle of Archie, his unwillingness to tell his last
name or the place of his birth or any scrap of his
past life, the answer to the difficulty with which he
spoke and his cold hatred of the world. Forty years!
He must have gone into prison a young man. Forty
years! Why–he must have been a life prisoner and
1444
�PART FOUR
lifers were–
“Was it–murder?”
“Yes,” answered Archie briefly, as he flapped the
reins. “M’ wife.”
Scarlett’s eyelids batted rapidly with fright.
The mouth beneath the beard seemed to move, as if
he were smiling grimly at her fear. “I ain’t goin’ to kill
you, Ma’m, if that’s what’s frettin’ you. Thar ain’t but
one reason for killin’ a woman.”
“You killed your wife!”
“She was layin’ with my brother. He got away. I
ain’t sorry none that I kilt her. Loose women ought to
be kilt. The law ain’t got no right to put a man in jail
for that but I was sont.”
“But–how did you get out? Did you escape? Were
you pardoned?”
“You might call it a pardon.” His thick gray brows
writhed together as though the effort of stringing
words together was difficult.
“‘Long in ‘sixty-four when Sherman come through,
I was at Milledgeville jail, like I had been for forty
years. And the warden he called all us prisoners together and he says the Yankees are a-comin’ a-burnin’
and a-killin’. Now if thar’s one thing I hates worse
1445
�PART FOUR
than a nigger or a woman, it’s a Yankee.”
“Why? Had you– Did you ever know any Yankees?”
“No’m. But I’d hearn tell of them. I’d hearn tell
they couldn’t never mind their own bizness. I hates
folks who can’t mind their own bizness. What was
they doin’ in Georgia, freein’ our niggers and burnin’
our houses and killin’ our stock? Well, the warden
he said the army needed more soldiers bad, and any
of us who’d jine up would be free at the end of the
war–if we come out alive. But us lifers–us murderers,
the warden he said the army didn’t want us. We was
to be sont somewheres else to another jail. But I said
to the warden I ain’t like most lifers. I’m just in for
killin’ my wife and she needed killin’. And I wants to
fight the Yankees. And the warden he saw my side of
it and he slipped me out with the other prisoners.”
He paused and grunted.
“Huh. That was right funny. They put me in jail for
killin’ and they let me out with a gun in my hand and
a free pardon to do more killin’. It shore was good to
be a free man with a rifle in my hand again. Us men
from Milledgeville did good fightin’ and killin’–and a
lot of us was kilt. I never knowed one who deserted.
And when the surrender come, we was free. I lost this
here leg and this here eye. But I ain’t sorry.”
1446
�PART FOUR
“Oh,” said Scarlett, weakly.
She tried to remember what she had heard about
the releasing of the Milledgeville convicts in that last
desperate effort to stem the tide of Sherman’s army.
Frank had mentioned it that Christmas of 1864. What
had he said? But her memories of that time were too
chaotic. Again she felt the wild terror of those days,
heard the siege guns, saw the line of wagons dripping blood into the red roads, saw the Home Guard
marching off, the little cadets and the children like
Phil Meade and the old men like Uncle Henry and
Grandpa Merriwether. And the convicts had marched
out too, to die in the twilight of the Confederacy, to
freeze in the snow and sleet of that last campaign in
Tennessee.
For a brief moment she thought what a fool this old
man was, to fight for a state which had taken forty
years from his life. Georgia had taken his youth and
his middle years for a crime that was no crime to him,
yet he had freely given a leg and an eye to Georgia.
The bitter words Rhett had spoken in the early days
of the war came back to her, and she remembered
him saying he would never fight for a society that
had made him an outcast. But when the emergency
had arisen he had gone off to fight for that same so1447
�PART FOUR
ciety, even as Archie had done. It seemed to her that
all Southern men, high or low, were sentimental fools
and cared less for their hides than for words which
had no meaning.
She looked at Archie’s gnarled old hands, his two
pistols and his knife, and fear pricked her again. Were
there other ex-convicts at large, like Archie, murderers, desperadoes, thieves, pardoned for their crimes,
in the name of the Confederacy? Why, any stranger
on the street might be a murderer! If Frank ever
learned the truth about Archie, there would be the
devil to pay. Or if Aunt Pitty– but the shock would
kill Pitty. And as for Melanie–Scarlett almost wished
she could tell Melanie the truth about Archie. It
would serve her right for picking up trash and foisting it off on her friends and relatives.
“I’m–I’m glad you told me, Archie. I–I won’t tell
anyone. It would be a great shock to Mrs. Wilkes and
the other ladies if they knew.”
“Huh. Miz Wilkes knows. I told her the night she
fuss let me sleep in her cellar. You don’t think I’d
let a nice lady like her take me into her house not
knowin’?”
“Saints preserve us!” cried Scarlet, aghast.
Melanie knew this man was a murderer and a
1448
�PART FOUR
woman murderer at that and she hadn’t ejected him
from her house. She had trusted her son with him and
her aunt and sister-in-law and all her friends. And
she, the most timid of females, had not been frightened to be alone with him in her house.
“Miz Wilkes is right sensible, for a woman. She
‘lowed that I was all right. She ‘lowed that a liar allus kept on lyin’ and a thief kept on stealin’ but folks
don’t do more’n one murder in a lifetime. And she
reckoned as how anybody who’d fought for the Confederacy had wiped out anything bad they’d done.
Though I don’t hold that I done nothin’ bad, killin’
my wife. . . . Yes, Miz Wilkes is right sensible, for a
woman. . . . And I’m tellin’ you, the day you leases
convicts is the day I quits you.”
Scarlett made no reply but she thought,
“The sooner you quit me the better it will suit me. A
murderer!”
How could Melly have been so–so– Well, there was
no word for Melanie’s action in taking in this old ruffian and not telling her friends he was a jailbird. So
service in the army wiped out past sins! Melanie had
that mixed up with baptism! But then Melly was utterly silly about the Confederacy, its veterans, and
anything pertaining to them. Scarlett silently damned
1449
�PART FOUR
the Yankees and added another mark on her score
against them. They were responsible for a situation
that forced a woman to keep a murderer at her side to
protect her.
Driving home with Archie in the chill twilight, Scarlett saw a clutter of saddle horses, buggies and wagons outside the Girl of the Period Saloon. Ashley was
sitting on his horse, a strained alert look on his face;
the Simmons boys were leaning from their buggy,
making emphatic gestures; Hugh Elsing, his lock of
brown hair falling in his eyes, was waving his hands.
Grandpa Merriwether’s pie wagon was in the center
of the tangle and, as she came closer, Scarlett saw that
Tommy Wellburn and Uncle Henry Hamilton were
crowded on the seat with him.
“I wish,” thought Scarlett irritably, “that Uncle
Henry wouldn’t ride home in that contraption. He
ought to be ashamed to be seen in it. It isn’t as though
he didn’t have a horse of his own. He just does it so
he and Grandpa can go to the saloon together every
night.”
As she came abreast the crowd something of their
tenseness reached her, insensitive though she was,
and made fear clutch at her heart.
“Oh!” she thought. “I hope no one else has been
1450
�PART FOUR
raped! If the Ku Klux lynch just one more darky the
Yankees will wipe us out!” And she spoke to Archie.
“Pull up. Something’s wrong.”
“You ain’t goin’ to stop outside a saloon,” said
Archie.
“You heard me. Pull up. Good evening, everybody.
Ashley–Uncle Henry–is something wrong? You all
look so–”
The crowd turned to her, tipping their hats and smiling, but there was a driving excitement in their eyes.
“Something’s right and something’s wrong,”
barked Uncle Henry. “Depends on how you look at
it. The way I figure is the legislature couldn’t have
done different.”
The legislature? thought Scarlett in relief. She had
little interest in the legislature, feeling that its doings
could hardly affect her. It was the prospect of the Yankee soldiers on a rampage again that frightened her.
“What’s the legislature been up to now?”
“They’ve flatly refused to ratify the amendment,”
said Grandpa Merriwether and there was pride in his
voice. “That’ll show the Yankees.”
“And there’ll be hell to pay for it–I beg your pardon,
Scarlett,” said Ashley.
1451
�PART FOUR
“Oh, the amendment?” questioned Scarlett, trying
to look intelligent.
Politics were beyond her and she seldom wasted
time thinking about them.
There had been a
Thirteenth Amendment ratified sometime before or
maybe it had been the Sixteenth Amendment but
what ratification meant she had no idea. Men were
always getting excited about such things. Something
of her lack of comprehension showed in her face and
Ashley smiled.
“It’s the amendment letting the darkies vote, you
know,” he explained. “It was submitted to the legislature and they refused to ratify it.”
“How silly of them! You know the Yankees are going to force it down our throats!”
“That’s what I meant by saying there’d be hell to
pay,” said Ashley.
“I’m proud of the legislature, proud of their gumption!” shouted Uncle Henry. “The Yankees can’t force
it down our throats if we won’t have it.”
“They can and they will.” Ashley’s voice was calm
but there was worry in his eyes. “And it’ll make
things just that much harder for us.”
“Oh, Ashley, surely not! Things couldn’t be any
harder than they are now!”
1452
�PART FOUR
“Yes, things can get worse, even worse than they
are now. Suppose we have a darky legislature? A
darky governor? Suppose we have a worse military
rule than we now have?”
Scarlett’s eyes grew large with fear as some understanding entered her mind.
“I’ve been trying to think what would be best for
Georgia, best for all of us.” Ashley’s face was drawn.
“Whether it’s wisest to fight this thing like the legislature has done, rouse the North against us and bring
the whole Yankee Army on us to cram the darky vote
down us, whether we want it or not. Or–swallow our
pride as best we can, submit gracefully and get the
whole matter over with as easily as possible. It will
amount to the same thing in the end. We’re helpless.
We’ve got to take the dose they’re determined to give
us. Maybe it would be better for us to take it without
kicking.”
Scarlett hardly heard his words, certainly their full
import went over her head. She knew that Ashley, as
usual, was seeing both sides of a question. She was
seeing only one side–how this slap in the Yankees’
faces might affect her.
“Going to turn Radical and vote the Republican
ticket, Ashley?” jeered Grandpa Merriwether harshly.
1453
�PART FOUR
There was a tense silence. Scarlett saw Archie’s
hand make a swift move toward his pistol and then
stop. Archie thought, and frequently said, that
Grandpa was an old bag of wind and Archie had
no intention of letting him insult Miss Melanie’s husband, even if Miss Melanie’s husband was talking like
a fool.
The perplexity vanished suddenly from Ashley’s
eyes and hot anger flared. But before he could speak,
Uncle Henry charged Grandpa.
“You God–you blast–I beg your pardon, Scarlett–
Grandpa, you jackass, don’t you say that to Ashley!”
“Ashley can take care of himself without you defending him,” said Grandpa coldly. “And he is talking like a Scallawag. Submit, hell! I beg your pardon,
Scarlett.”
“I didn’t believe in secession,” said Ashley and his
voice shook with anger. “But when Georgia seceded,
I went with her. And I didn’t believe in war but I
fought in the war. And I don’t believe in making the
Yankees madder than they already are. But if the legislature has decided to do it, I’ll stand by the legislature. I–”
“Archie,” said Uncle Henry abruptly, “drive Miss
Scarlett on home. This isn’t any place for her. Poli1454
�PART FOUR
tics aren’t for women folks anyway, and there’s going
to be cussing in a minute. Go on, Archie. Good night,
Scarlett.”
As they drove off down Peachtree Street, Scarlett’s
heart was beating fast with fear. Would this foolish
action of the legislature have any effect on her safety?
Would it so enrage the Yankees that she might lose
her mills?
“Well, sir,” rumbled Archie, “I’ve hearn tell of rabbits spittin’ in bulldogs’ faces but I ain’t never seen
it till now. Them legislatures might just as well have
hollered ‘Hurray for Jeff Davis and the Southern Confederacy’ for all the good it’ll do them– and us. Them
nigger-lovin’ Yankees have made up their mind to
make the niggers our bosses. But you got to admire
them legislatures’ sperrit!”
“Admire them? Great balls of fire! Admire them?
They ought to be shot! It’ll bring the Yankees down
on us like a duck on a June bug. Why couldn’t they
have rati–radi–whatever they were supposed to do to
it and smoothed the Yankees down instead of stirring
them up again? They’re going to make us knuckle
under and we may as well knuckle now as later.”
Archie fixed her with a cold eye.
“Knuckle under without a fight? Women ain’t got
1455
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no more pride than goats.”
When Scarlett leased ten convicts, five for each of
her mills, Archie made good his threat and refused
to have anything further to do with her. Not all
Melanie’s pleading or Frank’s promises of higher pay
would induce him to take up the reins again. He willingly escorted Melanie and Pitty and India and their
friends about the town but not Scarlett. He would
not even drive for the other ladies if Scarlett was in
the carriage. It was an embarrassing situation, having the old desperado sitting in judgment upon her,
and it was still more embarrassing to know that her
family and friends agreed with the old man.
Frank pleaded with her against taking the step. Ashley at first refused to work convicts and was persuaded, against his will, only after tears and supplications and promises that when times were better she
would hire free darkies. Neighbors were so outspoken in their disapproval that Frank, Pitty and Melanie
found it hard to hold up their heads. Even Peter and
Mammy declared that it was bad luck to work convicts and no good would come of it. Everyone said
it was wrong to take advantage of the miseries and
misfortunes of others.
“You didn’t have any objections to working slaves!”
1456
�PART FOUR
Scarlett cried indignantly.
Ah, but that was different. Slaves were neither miserable nor unfortunate. The negroes were far better
off under slavery than they were now under freedom,
and if she didn’t believe it, just look about her! But,
as usual, opposition had the effect of making Scarlett
more determined on her course. She removed Hugh
from the management of the mill, put him to driving
a lumber wagon and closed the final details of hiring
Johnnie Gallegher.
He seemed to be the only person she knew who approved of the convicts. He nodded his bullet head
briefly and said it was a smart move. Scarlett, looking at the little ex-jockey, planted firmly on his short
bowed legs, his gnomish face hard and businesslike,
thought: “Whoever let him ride their horses didn’t
care much for horse flesh. I wouldn’t let him get
within ten feet of any horse of mine.”
But she had no qualms in trusting him with a convict gang.
“And I’m to have a free hand with the gang?” he
questioned, his eyes as cold as gray agates.
“A free hand. All I ask is that you keep that mill
running and deliver my lumber when I want it and as
much as I want.”
1457
�PART FOUR
“I’m your man,” said Johnnie shortly. “I’ll tell Mr.
Wellburn I’m leaving him.”
As he rolled off through the crowd of masons and
carpenters and hod carriers Scarlett felt relieved and
her spirits rose. Johnnie was indeed her man. He
was tough and hard and there was no nonsense about
him. “Shanty Irish on the make,” Frank had contemptuously called him, but for that very reason Scarlett
valued him. She knew that an Irishman with a determination to get somewhere was a valuable man to
have, regardless of what his personal characteristics
might be. And she felt a closer kinship with him than
with many men of her own class, for Johnnie knew
the value of money.
The first week he took over the mill he justified all
her hopes, for he accomplished more with five convicts than Hugh had ever done with his crew of ten
free negroes. More than that, he gave Scarlett greater
leisure than she had had since she came to Atlanta the
year before, because he had no liking for her presence
at the mill and said so frankly.
“You tend to your end of selling and let me tend to
my end of lumbering,” he said shortly. “A convict
camp ain’t any place for a lady and if nobody else’ll
tell you so, Johnnie Gallegher’s telling you now. I’m
1458
�PART FOUR
delivering your lumber, ain’t I? Well, I’ve got no notion to be pestered every day like Mr. Wilkes. He
needs pestering. I don’t.”
So Scarlett reluctantly stayed away from Johnnie’s
mill, fearing that if she came too often he might quit
and that would be ruinous. His remark that Ashley
needed pestering stung her, for there was more truth
in it than she liked to admit. Ashley was doing little
better with convicts than he had done with free labor,
although why, he was unable to tell. Moreover, he
looked as if he were ashamed to be working convicts
and he had little to say to her these days.
Scarlett was worried by the change that was coming
over him. There were gray hairs in his bright head
now and a tired slump in his shoulders. And he seldom smiled. He no longer looked the debonaire Ashley who had caught her fancy so many years before.
He looked like a man secretly gnawed by a scarcely
endurable pain and there was a grim tight look about
his mouth that baffled and hurt her. She wanted to
drag his head fiercely down on her shoulder, stroke
the graying hair and cry: “Tell me what’s worrying
you! I’ll fix it! I’ll make it right for you!”
But his formal, remote air kept her at arm’s length.
1459
�CHAPTER XLIII
of those rare December days when the
sun was almost as warm as Indian summer. Dry red
leaves still clung to the oak in Aunt Pitty’s yard and
a faint yellow green still persisted in the dying grass.
Scarlett, with the baby in her arms, stepped out onto
the side porch and sat down in a rocking chair in a
patch of sunshine. She was wearing a new green challis dress trimmed with yards and yards of black rickrack braid and a new lace house cap which Aunt Pitty
had made for her. Both were very becoming to her
and she knew it and took great pleasure in them. How
good it was to look pretty again after the long months
of looking so dreadful!
As she sat rocking the baby and humming to herself, she heard the sound of hooves coming up the
side street and, peering curiously through the tangle
of dead vines on the porch, she saw Rhett Butler riding toward the house.
He had been away from Atlanta for months, since
just after Gerald died, since long before Ella Lorena
was born. She had missed him but she now wished
ardently that there was some way to avoid seeing
him. In fact, the sight of his dark face brought a feeling of guilty panic to her breast. A matter in which
IT
WAS ONE
�PART FOUR
Ashley was concerned lay on her conscience and she
did not wish to discuss it with Rhett, but she knew
he would force the discussion, no matter how disinclined she might be.
He drew up at the gate and swung lightly to the
ground and she thought, staring nervously at him,
that he looked just like an illustration in a book Wade
was always pestering her to read aloud.
“All he needs is earrings and a cutlass between his
teeth,” she thought. “Well, pirate or no, he’s not going
to cut my throat today if I can help it.”
As he came up the walk she called a greeting to
him, summoning her sweetest smile. How lucky that
she had on her new dress and the becoming cap and
looked so pretty! As his eyes went swiftly over her,
she knew he thought her pretty, too.
“A new baby! Why, Scarlett, this is a surprise!”
he laughed, leaning down to push the blanket away
from Ella Lorena’s small ugly face.
“Don’t be silly,” she said, blushing. “How are you,
Rhett? You’ve been away a long time.”
“So I have. Let me hold the baby, Scarlett. Oh, I
know how to hold babies. I have many strange accomplishments. Well, he certainly looks like Frank.
All except the whiskers, but give him time.”
1461
�PART FOUR
“I hope not. It’s a girl.”
“A girl? That’s better still. Boys are such nuisances.
Don’t ever have any more boys, Scarlett.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to reply tartly that
she never intended to have any more babies, boys or
girls, but she caught herself in time and smiled, casting about quickly in her mind for some topic of conversation that would put off the bad moment when
the subject she feared would come up for discussion.
“Did you have a nice trip, Rhett? Where did you go
this time?”
“Oh–Cuba–New Orleans–other places. Here, Scarlett, take the baby. She’s beginning to slobber and I
can’t get to my handkerchief. She’s a fine baby, I’m
sure, but she’s wetting my shirt bosom.”
She took the child back into her lap and Rhett settled
himself lazily on the banister and took a cigar from a
silver case.
“You are always going to New Orleans,” she said
and pouted a little. “And you never will tell me what
you do there.”
“I am a hard-working man, Scarlett, and perhaps
my business takes me there.”
“Hard-working! You!” she laughed impertinently.
1462
�PART FOUR
“You never worked in your life. You’re too lazy. All
you ever do is finance Carpetbaggers in their thieving
and take half the profits and bribe Yankee officials to
let you in on schemes to rob us taxpayers.”
He threw back his head and laughed.
“And how you would love to have money enough
to bribe officials, so you could do likewise!”
“The very idea–” She began to ruffle.
“But perhaps you will make enough money to get
into bribery on a large scale some day. Maybe you’ll
get rich off those convicts you leased.”
“Oh,” she said, a little disconcerted, “how did you
find out about my gang so soon?”
“I arrived last night and spent the evening in the
Girl of the Period Saloon, where one hears all the
news of the town. It’s a clearing house for gossip.
Better than a ladies’ sewing circle. Everyone told me
that you’d leased a gang and put that little plug- ugly,
Gallegher, in charge to work them to death.”
“That’s a lie,” she said angrily. “He won’t work
them to death. I’ll see to that.”
“Will you?”
“Of course I will! How can you even insinuate such
things?”
1463
�PART FOUR
“Oh, I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Kennedy! I know
your motives are always above reproach. However,
Johnnie Gallegher is a cold little bully if I ever saw
one. Better watch him or you’ll be having trouble
when the inspector comes around.”
“You tend to your business and I’ll tend to mine,”
she said indignantly. “And I don’t want to talk about
convicts any more. Everybody’s been hateful about
them. My gang is my own business– And you haven’t
told me yet what you do in New Orleans. You go
there so often that everybody says–” She paused. She
had not intended to say so much.
“What do they say?”
“Well–that you have a sweetheart there. That you
are going to get married. Are you, Rhett?”
She had been curious about this for so long that she
could not refrain from asking the point-blank question. A queer little pang of jealousy jabbed at her at
the thought of Rhett getting married, although why
that should be she did not know.
His bland eyes grew suddenly alert and he caught
her gaze and held it until a little blush crept up into
her cheeks.
“Would it matter much to you?”
“Well, I should hate to lose your friendship,” she
1464
�PART FOUR
said primly and, with an attempt at disinterestedness, bent down to pull the blanket closer about Ella
Lorena’s head.
He laughed suddenly, shortly, and said: “Look at
me, Scarlett.”
She looked up unwillingly, her blush deepening.
“You can tell your curious friends that when I marry
it will be because I couldn’t get the woman I wanted
in any other way. And I’ve never yet wanted a
woman bad enough to marry her.”
Now she was indeed confused and embarrassed, for
she remembered the night on this very porch during the siege when he had said: “I am not a marrying man” and casually suggested that she become his
mistress–remembered, too, the terrible day when he
was in jail and was shamed by the memory. A slow
malicious smile went over his face as he read her eyes.
“But I will satisfy your vulgar curiosity since you
ask such pointed questions. It isn’t a sweetheart that
takes me to New Orleans. It’s a child, a little boy.”
“A little boy!” The shock of this unexpected information wiped out her confusion.
“Yes, he is my legal ward and I am responsible for
him. He’s in school in New Orleans. I go there frequently to see him.”
1465
�PART FOUR
“And take him presents?” So, she thought, that’s
how he always knows what kind of presents Wade
likes!
“Yes,” he said shortly, unwillingly.
“Well, I never! Is he handsome?”
“Too handsome for his own good.”
“Is he a nice little boy?”
“No. He’s a perfect hellion. I wish he had never
been born. Boys are troublesome creatures. Is there
anything else you’d like to know?”
He looked suddenly angry and his brow was dark,
as though he already regretted speaking of the matter
at all.
“Well, not if you don’t want to tell me any more,”
she said loftily, though she was burning for further
information. “But I just can’t see you in the role of
a guardian,” and she laughed, hoping to disconcert
him.
“No, I don’t suppose you can. Your vision is pretty
limited.”
He said no more and smoked his cigar in silence for
a while. She cast about for some remark as rude as his
but could think of none.
“I would appreciate it if you’d say nothing of this
1466
�PART FOUR
to anyone,” he said finally. “Though I suppose that
asking a woman to keep her mouth shut is asking the
impossible.”
“I can keep a secret,” she said with injured dignity.
“Can you? It’s nice to learn unsuspected things
about friends. Now, stop pouting, Scarlett. I’m sorry
I was rude but you deserved it for prying. Give me a
smile and let’s be pleasant for a minute or two before
I take up an unpleasant subject.”
Oh, dear! she thought. Now, he’s going to talk about
Ashley and the mill! and she hastened to smile and
show her dimple to divert him. “Where else did you
go, Rhett? You haven’t been in New Orleans all this
time, have you?”
“No, for the last month I’ve been in Charleston. My
father died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m sure he wasn’t sorry to die, and I’m
sure I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
“Rhett, what a dreadful thing to say!”
“It would be much more dreadful if I pretended to
be sorry, when I wasn’t, wouldn’t it? There was never
any love lost between us. I cannot remember when
the old gentleman did not disapprove of me. I was too
1467
�PART FOUR
much like his own father and he disapproved heartily
of his father. And as I grew older his disapproval of
me became downright dislike, which, I admit, I did
little to change. All the things Father wanted me to
do and be were such boring things. And finally he
threw me out into the world without a cent and no
training whatsoever to be anything but a Charleston
gentleman, a good pistol shot and an excellent poker
player. And he seemed to take it as a personal affront that I did not starve but put my poker playing to
excellent advantage and supported myself royally by
gambling. He was so affronted at a Butler becoming
a gambler that when I came home for the first time,
he forbade my mother to see me. And all during the
war when I was blockading out of Charleston, Mother
had to lie and slip off to see me. Naturally that didn’t
increase my love for him.”
“Oh, I didn’t know all that!”
“He was what is pointed out as a fine old gentleman
of the old school which means that he was ignorant,
thick headed, intolerant and incapable of thinking
along any lines except what other gentlemen of the
old school thought. Everyone admired him tremendously for having cut me off and counted me as dead.
‘If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.’ I was his
1468
�PART FOUR
right eye, his oldest son, and he plucked me out with
a vengeance.”
He smiled a little, his eyes hard with amused memory.
“Well, I could forgive all that but I can’t forgive
what he’s done to Mother and my sister since the war
ended. They’ve been practically destitute. The plantation house was burned and the rice fields have gone
back to marsh lands. And the town house went for
taxes and they’ve been living in two rooms that aren’t
fit for darkies. I’ve sent money to Mother, but Father
has sent it back– tainted money, you see!–and several
times I’ve gone to Charleston and given money, on
the sly, to my sister. But Father always found out and
raised merry hell with her, till her life wasn’t worth
living, poor girl. And back the money came to me.
I don’t know how they’ve lived. . . . Yes, I do
know. My brother’s given what he could, though he
hasn’t much to give and he won’t take anything from
me either–speculator’s money is unlucky money, you
see! And the charity of their friends. Your Aunt Eulalie, she’s been very kind. She’s one of Mother’s best
friends, you know. She’s given them clothes and–
Good God! My mother on charity!”
It was one of the few times she had ever seen him
1469
�PART FOUR
with his mask off, his face hard with honest hatred
for his father and distress for his mother.
“Aunt ‘Lalie! But, good Heavens, Rhett, she hasn’t
got anything much above what I send her!”
“Ah, so that’s where it comes from! How ill bred of
you, my dear, to brag of such a thing in the face of my
humiliation. You must let me reimburse you!”
“With pleasure,” said Scarlett, her mouth suddenly
twisting into a grin, and he smiled back.
“Ah, Scarlett, how the thought of a dollar does make
your eyes sparkle! Are you sure you haven’t some
Scotch or perhaps Jewish blood as well as Irish?”
“Don’t be hateful! I didn’t mean to throw it in your
face about Aunt ‘Lalie. But honestly, she thinks I’m
made of money. She’s always writing me for more
and, God knows, I’ve got enough on my hands without supporting all of Charleston. What did your father die of?”
“Genteel starvation, I think–and hope. It served
him right. He was willing to let Mother and Rosemary starve with him. Now that he’s dead, I can help
them. I’ve bought them a house on the Battery and
they’ve servants to look after them. But of course,
they couldn’t let it be known that the money came
from me.”
1470
�PART FOUR
“Why not?”
“My dear, surely you know Charleston! You’ve visited there. My family may be poor but they have
a position to uphold. And they couldn’t uphold it
if it were known that gambling money and speculator’s money and Carpetbag money was behind it.
No, they gave it out that Father left an enormous
life insurance–that he’d beggared himself and starved
himself to death to keep up the payments, so that after he died, they’d be provided for. So he is looked
upon as an even greater gentleman of the old school
than before. . . . In fact, a martyr to his family. I
hope he’s turning in his grave at the knowledge that
Mother and Rosemary are comfortable now, in spite
of his efforts. . . . In a way, I’m sorry he’s dead because he wanted to die–was so glad to die.”
“Why?”
“Oh, he really died when Lee surrendered. You
know the type. He never could adjust himself to the
new times and spent his time talking about the good
old days.”
“Rhett, are all old folks like that?” She was thinking
of Gerald and what Will had said about him.
“Heavens, no! Just look at your Uncle Henry and
that old wild cat, Mr. Merriwether, just to name two.
1471
�PART FOUR
They took a new lease on life when they marched out
with the Home Guard and it seems to me that they’ve
gotten younger and more peppery ever since. I met
old man Merriwether this morning driving Rene’s pie
wagon and cursing the horse like an army mule skinner. He told me he felt ten years younger since he escaped from the house and his daughter-in-law’s coddling and took to driving the wagon. And your Uncle Henry enjoys fighting the Yankees in court and
out and defending the widow and the orphan–free
of charge, I fear–against the Carpetbaggers. If there
hadn’t been a war, he’d have retired long ago and
nursed his rheumatism. They’re young again because
they are of use again and feel that they are needed.
And they like this new day that gives old men another chance. But there are plenty of people, young
people, who feel like my father and your father. They
can’t and won’t adjust and that brings me to the unpleasant subject I want to discuss with you, Scarlett.”
His sudden shift so disconcerted her that she stammered: “What– what–” and inwardly groaned: “Oh,
Lord! Now, it’s coming. I wonder if I can butter him
down?”
“I shouldn’t have expected either truth or honor or
fair dealing from you, knowing you as I do. But fool1472
�PART FOUR
ishly, I trusted you.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do. At any rate, you look very guilty.
As I was riding along Ivy Street a while ago, on my
way to call on you, who should hail me from behind
a hedge but Mrs. Ashley Wilkes! Of course, I stopped
and chatted with her.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes, we had an enjoyable talk. She told me she had
always wanted to let me know how brave she thought
I was to have struck a blow for the Confederacy, even
at the eleventh hour.”
“Oh, fiddle-dee-dee! Melly’s a fool. She might have
died that night because you acted so heroic.”
“I imagine she would have thought her life given in
a good cause. And when I asked her what she was doing in Atlanta she looked quite surprised at my ignorance and told me that they were living here now and
that you had been kind enough to make Mr. Wilkes a
partner in your mill.”
“Well, what of it?” questioned Scarlett, shortly.
“When I lent you the money to buy that mill I made
one stipulation, to which you agreed, and that was
that it should not go to the support of Ashley Wilkes.”
1473
�PART FOUR
“You are being very offensive. I’ve paid you back
your money and I own the mill and what I do with it
is my own business.”
“Would you mind telling me how you made the
money to pay back my loan?”
“I made it selling lumber, of course.”
“You made it with the money I lent you to give you
your start. That’s what you mean. My money is being
used to support Ashley. You are a woman quite without honor and if you hadn’t repaid my loan, I’d take
great pleasure in calling it in now and selling you out
at public auction if you couldn’t pay.”
He spoke lightly but there was anger flickering in
his eyes.
Scarlett hastily carried the warfare into the enemy’s
territory.
“Why do you hate Ashley so much? I believe you’re
jealous of him.”
After she had spoken she could have bitten her
tongue, for he threw back his head and laughed until
she went red with mortification.
“Add conceit to dishonor,” he said. “You’ll never get
over being the belle of the County, will you? You’ll always think you’re the cutest little trick in shoe leather
1474
�PART FOUR
and that every man you meet is expiring for love of
you.”
“I don’t either!” she cried hotly. “But I just can’t
see why you hate Ashley so much and that’s the only
explanation I can think of.”
“Well, think something else, pretty charmer, for
that’s the wrong explanation. And as for hating
Ashley–I don’t hate him any more than I like him.
In fact, my only emotion toward him and his kind is
pity.”
“Pity?”
“Yes, and a little contempt. Now, swell up like a
gobbler and tell me that he is worth a thousand blackguards like me and that I shouldn’t dare to be so presumptuous as to feel either pity or contempt for him.
And when you have finished swelling, I’ll tell you
what I mean, if you’re interested.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“I shall tell you, just the same, for I can’t bear for
you to go on nursing your pleasant delusion of my
jealousy. I pity him because he ought to be dead and
he isn’t. And I have a contempt for him because he
doesn’t know what to do with himself now that his
world is gone.”
There was something familiar in the idea he ex1475
�PART FOUR
pressed. She had a confused memory of having heard
similar words but she could not remember when and
where. She did not think very hard about it for her
anger was hot.
“If you had your way all the decent men in the South
would be dead!”
“And if they had their way, I think Ashley’s kind
would prefer to be dead. Dead with neat stones above
them, saying: ‘Here lies a soldier of the Confederacy,
dead for the Southland’ or ‘Dulce et decorum est–’ or
any of the other popular epitaphs.”
“I don’t see why!”
“You never see anything that isn’t written in letters a foot high and then shoved under your nose, do
you? If they were dead, their troubles would be over,
there’d be no problems to face, problems that have no
solutions. Moreover, their families would be proud of
them through countless generations. And I’ve heard
the dead are happy. Do you suppose Ashley Wilkes is
happy?”
“Why, of course–” she began and then she remembered the look in Ashley’s eyes recently and stopped.
“Is he happy or Hugh Elsing or Dr. Meade? Any
more than my father and your father were happy?”
“Well, perhaps not as happy as they might be, be1476
�PART FOUR
cause they’ve all lost their money.”
He laughed.
“It isn’t losing their money, my pet. I tell you it’s
losing their world–the world they were raised in.
They’re like fish out of water or cats with wings. They
were raised to be certain persons, to do certain things,
to occupy certain niches. And those persons and
things and niches disappeared forever when General
Lee arrived at Appomattox. Oh, Scarlett, don’t look
so stupid! What is there for Ashley Wilkes to do,
now that his home is gone and his plantation taken
up for taxes and fine gentlemen are going twenty for
a penny? Can he work with his head or his hands?
I’ll bet you’ve lost money hand over fist since he took
over that mill.”
“I have not!”
“How nice. May I look over your books some Sunday evening when you are at leisure?”
“You can go to the devil and not at your leisure. You
can go now, for all I care.”
“My pet, I’ve been to the devil and he’s a very dull
fellow. I won’t go there again, even for you. . . . You
took my money when you needed it desperately and
you used it. We had an agreement as to how it should
be used and you have broken that agreement. Just
1477
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remember, my precious little cheat, the time will come
when you will want to borrow more money from me.
You’ll want me to bank you, at some incredibly low
interest, so you can buy more mills and more mules
and build more saloons. And you can whistle for the
money.”
“When I need money I’ll borrow it from the bank,
thank you,” she said coldly, but her breast was heaving with rage.
“Will you? Try to do it. I own plenty of stock in the
bank.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I am interested in some honest enterprises.”
“There are other banks–”
“Plenty of them. And if I can manage it, you’ll play
hell getting a cent from any of them. You can go to the
Carpetbag usurers if you want money.”
“I’ll go to them with pleasure.”
“You’ll go but with little pleasure when you learn
their rates of interest. My pretty, there are penalties in
the business world for crooked dealing. You should
have played straight with me.”
“You’re a fine man, aren’t you? So rich and powerful
yet picking on people who are down, like Ashley and
1478
�PART FOUR
me!”
“Don’t put yourself in his class. You aren’t down.
Nothing will down you. But he is down and he’ll
stay there unless there’s some energetic person behind him, guiding and protecting him as long as he
lives. I’m of no mind to have my money used for the
benefit of such a person.”
“You didn’t mind helping me and I was down and–”
“You were a good risk, my dear, an interesting risk.
Why? Because you didn’t plump yourself down on
your male relatives and sob for the old days. You
got out and hustled and now your fortunes are firmly
planted on money stolen from a dead man’s wallet and money stolen from the Confederacy. You’ve
got murder to your credit, and husband stealing, attempted fornication, lying and sharp dealing and any
amount of chicanery that won’t bear close inspection.
Admirable things, all of them. They show you to
be a person of energy and determination and a good
money risk. It’s entertaining, helping people who
help themselves. I’d lend ten thousand dollars without even a note to that old Roman matron, Mrs. Merriwether. She started with a basket of pies and look
at her now! A bakery employing half a dozen people,
old Grandpa happy with his delivery wagon and that
1479
�PART FOUR
lazy little Creole, Rene, working hard and liking it. . .
. Or that poor devil, Tommy Wellburn, who does two
men’s work with half a man’s body and does it well
or–well, I won’t go on and bore you.”
“You do bore me. You bore me to distraction,” said
Scarlett coldly, hoping to annoy him and divert him
from the ever- unfortunate subject of Ashley. But
he only laughed shortly and refused to take up the
gauntlet.
“People like them are worth helping. But Ashley
Wilkes–bah! His breed is of no use or value in an
upside-down world like ours. Whenever the world
up-ends, his kind is the first to perish. And why not?
They don’t deserve to survive because they won’t
fight– don’t know how to fight. This isn’t the first
time the world’s been upside down and it won’t be
the last. It’s happened before and it’ll happen again.
And when it does happen, everyone loses everything
and everyone is equal. And then they all start again
at taw, with nothing at all. That is, nothing except the
cunning of their brains and strength of their hands.
But some people, like Ashley, have neither cunning
nor strength or, having them, scruple to use them.
And so they go under and they should go under. It’s a
natural law and the world is better off without them.
1480
�PART FOUR
But there are always a hardy few who come through
and given time, they are right back where they were
before the world turned over.”
“You’ve been poor! You just said that your father
turned you out without a penny!” said Scarlett, furious. “I should think you’d understand and sympathize with Ashley!”
“I do understand,” said Rhett, “but I’m damned if
I sympathize. After the surrender Ashley had much
more than I had when I was thrown out. At least, he
had friends who took him in, whereas I was Ishmael.
But what has Ashley done with himself?”
“If you are comparing him with yourself, you conceited thing, why– He’s not like you, thank God! He
wouldn’t soil his hands as you do, making money
with Carpetbaggers and Scallawags and Yankees.
He’s scrupulous and honorable!”
“But not too scrupulous and honorable to take aid
and money from a woman.”
“What else could he have done?”
“Who am I to say? I only know what I did, both
when I was thrown out and nowadays. I only know
what other men have done. We saw opportunity in
the ruin of a civilization and we made the most of our
opportunity, some honestly, some shadily, and we are
1481
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still making the most of it. But the Ashleys of this
world have the same chances and don’t take them.
They just aren’t smart, Scarlett, and only the smart
deserve to survive.”
She hardly heard what he was saying, for now there
was coming back to her the exact memory which had
teased her a few minutes before when he first began
speaking. She remembered the cold wind that swept
the orchard of Tara and Ashley standing by a pile of
rails, his eyes looking beyond her. And he had said–
what? Some funny foreign name that sounded like
profanity and had talked of the end of the world. She
had not known what he meant then but now bewildered comprehension was coming to her and with it
a sick, weary feeling.
“Why, Ashley said–”
“Yes?”
“Once at Tara he said something about the–a–dusk
of the gods and about the end of the world and some
such foolishness.”
“Ah, the Gotterdammerung!” Rhett’s eyes were
sharp with interest. “And what else?”
“Oh, I don’t remember exactly. I wasn’t paying
much mind. But– yes–something about the strong
coming through and the weak being winnowed out.”
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“Ah, so he knows. Then that makes it harder for
him. Most of them don’t know and will never know.
They’ll wonder all their lives where the lost enchantment has vanished. They’ll simply suffer in proud
and incompetent silence. But he understands. He
knows he’s winnowed out.”
“Oh, he isn’t! Not while I’ve got breath in my body.”
He looked at her quietly and his brown face was
smooth.
“Scarlett, how did you manage to get his consent
to come to Atlanta and take over the mill? Did he
struggle very hard against you?”
She had a quick memory of the scene with Ashley
after Gerald’s funeral and put it from her.
“Why, of course not,” she replied indignantly.
“When I explained to him that I needed his help because I didn’t trust that scamp who was running the
mill and Frank was too busy to help me and I was going to–well, there was Ella Lorena, you see. He was
very glad to help me out.”
“Sweet are the uses of motherhood! So that’s how
you got around him. Well, you’ve got him where you
want him now, poor devil, as shackled to you by obligations as any of your convicts are by their chains.
And I wish you both joy. But, as I said at the begin1483
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ning of this discussion, you’ll never get another cent
out of me for any of your little unladylike schemes,
my double-dealing lady.”
She was smarting with anger and with disappointment as well. For some time she had been planning
to borrow more money from Rhett to buy a lot downtown and start a lumber yard there.
“I can do without your money,” she cried. “I’m
making money out of Johnnie Gallegher’s mill, plenty
of it, now that I don’t use free darkies and I have some
money out on mortgages and we are coining cash at
the store from the darky trade.”
“Yes, so I heard. How clever of you to rook the helpless and the widow and the orphan and the ignorant!
But if you must steal, Scarlett, why not steal from the
rich and strong instead of the poor and weak? From
Robin Hood on down to now, that’s been considered
highly moral.”
“Because,” said Scarlett shortly, “it’s a sight easier
and safer to steal–as you call it–from the poor.”
He laughed silently, his shoulders shaking.
“You’re a fine honest rogue, Scarlett!”
A rogue! Queer that that term should hurt. She
wasn’t a rogue, she told herself vehemently. At least,
that wasn’t what she wanted to be. She wanted to
1484
�PART FOUR
be a great lady. For a moment her mind went swiftly
down the years and she saw her mother, moving with
a sweet swish of skirts and a faint fragrance of sachet,
her small busy hands tireless in the service of others,
loved, respected, cherished. And suddenly her heart
was sick.
“If you are trying to devil me,” she said tiredly, “it’s
no use. I know I’m not as–scrupulous as I should
be these days. Not as kind and as pleasant as I was
brought up to be. But I can’t help it, Rhett. Truly, I
can’t. What else could I have done? What would have
happened to me, to Wade, to Tara and all of us if I’d
been– gentle when that Yankee came to Tara? I should
have been–but I don’t even want to think of that. And
when Jonas Wilkerson was going to take the home
place, suppose I’d been–kind and scrupulous? Where
would we all be now? And if I’d been sweet and simple minded and not nagged Frank about bad debts
we’d–oh, well. Maybe I am a rogue, but I won’t be a
rogue forever, Rhett. But during these past years–and
even now–what else could I have done? How else
could I have acted? I’ve felt that I was trying to row a
heavily loaded boat in a storm. I’ve had so much trouble just trying to keep afloat that I couldn’t be bothered about things that didn’t matter, things I could
part with easily and not miss, like good manners and–
1485
�PART FOUR
well, things like that. I’ve been too afraid my boat
would be swamped and so I’ve dumped overboard
the things that seemed least important.”
“Pride and honor and truth and virtue and kindliness,” he enumerated silkily. “You are right, Scarlett. They aren’t important when a boat is sinking.
But look around you at your friends. Either they are
bringing their boats ashore safely with cargoes intact
or they are content to go down with all flags flying.”
“They are a passel of fools,” she said shortly.
“There’s a time for all things. When I’ve got plenty
of money, I’ll be nice as you please, too. Butter won’t
melt in my mouth. I can afford to be then.”
“You can afford to be–but you won’t. It’s hard to salvage jettisoned cargo and, if it is retrieved, it’s usually
irreparably damaged. And I fear that when you can
afford to fish up the honor and virtue and kindness
you’ve thrown overboard, you’ll find they have suffered a sea change and not, I fear, into something rich
and strange. . . .”
He rose suddenly and picked up his hat.
“You are going?”
“Yes. Aren’t you relieved? I leave you to what remains of your conscience.”
He paused and looked down at the baby, putting out
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�PART FOUR
a finger for the child to grip.
“I suppose Frank is bursting with pride?”
“Oh, of course.”
“Has a lot of plans for this baby, I suppose?”
“Oh, well, you know how silly men are about their
babies.”
“Then, tell him,” said Rhett and stopped short, an
odd look on his face, “tell him if he wants to see his
plans for his child work out, he’d better stay home at
night more often than he’s doing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. Tell him to stay home.”
“Oh, you vile creature! To insinuate that poor Frank
would–”
“Oh, good Lord!” Rhett broke into a roar of laughter. “I didn’t mean he was running around with
women! Frank! Oh, good Lord!”
He went down the steps still laughing.
1487
�CHAPTER XLIV
was windy and cold, and Scarlett pulled the lap robe high under her arms as she
drove out the Decatur road toward Johnnie Gallegher’s mill. Driving alone was hazardous these
days and she knew it, more hazardous than ever before, for now the negroes were completely out of
hand. As Ashley had prophesied, there had been
hell to pay since the legislature refused to ratify the
amendment. The stout refusal had been like a slap in
the face of the furious North and retaliation had come
swiftly. The North was determined to force the negro
vote on the state and, to this end, Georgia had been
declared in rebellion and put under the strictest martial law. Georgia’s very existence as a state had been
wiped out and it had become, with Florida and Alabama, “Military District Number Three,” under the
command of a Federal general.
If life had been insecure and frightening before this,
it was doubly so now. The military regulations which
had seemed so stringent the year before were now
mild by comparison with the ones issued by General
Pope. Confronted with the prospect of negro rule,
the future seemed dark and hopeless, and the embittered state smarted and writhed helplessly. As for the
T HE
MARCH AFTERNOON
�PART FOUR
negroes, their new importance went to their heads,
and, realizing that they had the Yankee Army behind
them, their outrages increased. No one was safe from
them.
In this wild and fearful time, Scarlett was
frightened–frightened but determined, and she still
made her rounds alone, with Frank’s pistol tucked in
the upholstery of the buggy. She silently cursed the
legislature for bringing this worse disaster upon them
all. What good had it done, this fine brave stand,
this gesture which everyone called gallant? It had just
made matters so much worse.
As she drew near the path that led down through
the bare trees into the creek bottom where the Shantytown settlement was, she clucked to the horse to
quicken his speed. She always felt uneasy driving
past this dirty, sordid cluster of discarded army tents
and slave cabins. It had the worst reputation of any
spot in or near Atlanta, for here lived in filth outcast negroes, black prostitutes and a scattering of poor
whites of the lowest order. It was rumored to be the
refuge of negro and white criminals and was the first
place the Yankee soldiers searched when they wanted
a man. Shootings and cuttings went on here with such
regularity that the authorities seldom troubled to in1489
�PART FOUR
vestigate and generally left the Shantytowners to settle their own dark affairs. Back in the woods there
was a still that manufactured a cheap quality of corn
whisky and, by night, the cabins in the creek bottoms
resounded with drunken yells and curses.
Even the Yankees admitted that it was a plague spot
and should be wiped out, but they took no steps in
this direction. Indignation was loud among the inhabitants of Atlanta and Decatur who were forced to
use the road for travel between the two towns. Men
went by Shantytown with their pistols loosened in
their holsters and nice women never willingly passed
it, even under the protection of their men, for usually
there were drunken negro slatterns sitting along the
road, hurling insults and shouting coarse words.
As long as she had Archie beside her, Scarlett had
not given Shantytown a thought, because not even
the most impudent negro woman dared laugh in her
presence. But since she had been forced to drive
alone, there had been any number of annoying, maddening incidents. The negro sluts seemed to try themselves whenever she drove by. There was nothing she
could do except ignore them and boil with rage. She
could not even take comfort in airing her troubles to
her neighbors or family because the neighbors would
1490
�PART FOUR
say triumphantly: “Well, what else did you expect?”
And her family would take on dreadfully again and
try to stop her. And she had no intention of stopping
her trips.
Thank Heaven, there were no ragged women along
the roadside today! As she passed the trail leading
down to the settlement she looked with distaste at the
group of shacks squatting in the hollow in the dreary
slant of the afternoon sun. There was a chill wind
blowing, and as she passed there came to her nose
the mingled smells of wood smoke, frying pork and
untended privies. Averting her nose, she flapped the
reins smartly across the horse’s back and hurried him
past and around the bend of the road.
Just as she was beginning to draw a breath of relief,
her heart rose in her throat with sudden fright, for a
huge negro slipped silently from behind a large oak
tree. She was frightened but not enough to lose her
wits and, in an instant, the horse was pulled up and
she had Frank’s pistol in her hand.
“What do you want?” she cried with all the sternness she could muster. The big negro ducked back behind the oak, and the voice that answered was frightened.
“Lawd, Miss Scarlett, doan shoot Big Sam!”
1491
�PART FOUR
Big Sam! For a moment she could not take in his
words. Big Sam, the foreman of Tara whom she had
seen last in the days of the siege. What on earth . . .
“Come out of there and let me see if you are really
Sam!”
Reluctantly he slid out of his hiding place, a giant
ragged figure, bare-footed, clad in denim breeches
and a blue Union uniform jacket that was far too short
and tight for his big frame. When she saw it was really Big Sam, she shoved the pistol down into the upholstery and smiled with pleasure.
“Oh, Sam! How nice to see you!”
Sam galloped over to the buggy, his eyes rolling
with joy and his white teeth flashing, and clutched
her outstretched hand with two black hands as big as
hams. His watermelon-pink tongue lapped out, his
whole body wiggled and his joyful contortions were
as ludicrous as the gambolings of a mastiff.
“Mah Lawd, it sho is good ter see some of de fambly
agin!” he cried, scrunching her hand until she felt that
the bones would crack. “Hucoome you got so mean
lak, totin’ a gun, Miss Scarlett?”
“So many mean folks these days, Sam, that I have to
tote it. What on earth are you doing in a nasty place
like Shantytown, you, a respectable darky? And why
1492
�PART FOUR
haven’t you been into town to see me?”
“Law’m, Miss Scarlett, ah doan lib in Shantytown.
Ah jes’ bidin’ hyah fer a spell. Ah wouldn’ lib in dat
place for nuthin’. Ah nebber in mah life seed sech
trashy niggers. An’ Ah din’ know you wuz in ‘Lanta.
Ah thought you wuz at Tara. Ah wuz aimin’ ter come
home ter Tara soon as Ah got de chance.”
“Have you been living in Atlanta ever since the
siege?”
“No, Ma’m! Ah been trabelin’!” He released her
hand and she painfully flexed it to see if the bones
were intact. “‘Member w’en you seed me las’?”
Scarlett remembered the hot day before the siege began when she and Rhett had sat in the carriage and
the gang of negroes with Big Sam at their head had
marched down the dusty street toward the entrenchments singing “Go Down, Moses.” She nodded.
“Wel, Ah wuked lak a dawg diggin’ bresswuks an’
fillin’ San’ bags, tell de Confedruts lef’ ‘Lanta. De
cap’n gempmum whut had me in charge, he wuz kilt
an’ dar warn’t nobody ter tell Big Sam whut ter do, so
Ah jes’ lay low in de bushes. Ah thought Ah’d try ter
git home ter Tara, but den Ah hear dat all de country
roun’ Tara done buhnt up. ‘Sides, Ah din’ hab no way
ter git back an’ Ah wuz sceered de patterollers pick
1493
�PART FOUR
me up, kase Ah din’ hab no pass. Den de Yankees
come in an’ a Yankee gempmum, he wuz a cunnel, he
tek a shine ter me an’ he keep me te ten’ ter his hawse
an’ his boots.
“Yas, Ma’m! Ah sho did feel bigitty, bein’ a body serbant lak Poke, w’en Ah ain’ nuthin’ but a fe’el han’.
Ah ain’ tell de Cunnel Ah wuz a fe’el han’ an’ he–
Well, Miss Scarlett, Yankees is iggerunt folks! He din’
know de diffunce! So Ah stayed wid him an’ Ah went
ter Sabannah wid him w’en Gin’ul Sherman went dar,
an’ fo’ Gawd, Miss Scarlett, Ah nebber seed sech awful goin’-ons as Ah seed on de way ter Sabannah! Astealin’ an’ a-buhnin’–did dey buhn Tara, Miss Scarlett?”
“They set fire to it, but we put it out.”
“Well’m, Ah sho glad ter hear dat. Tara mah home
an’ Ah is aimin’ ter go back dar. An’ w’en de wah
ober, de Cunnel he say ter me: ‘You Sam! You
come on back Nawth wid me. Ah pay you good
wages.’ Well’m, lak all de niggers, Ah wuz honin’
ter try disyere freedom fo’ Ah went home, so Ah goes
Nawth wid de Cunnel. Yas’m, us went ter Washington an’ Noo Yawk an’ den ter Bawston whar de Cunnel lib. Yas, Ma’am, Ah’s a trabeled nigger! Miss Scarlett, dar’s mo’ hawses and cah’iges on dem Yankee
1494
�PART FOUR
streets dan you kin shake a stick at! Ah wuz sceered
all de time Ah wuz gwine git runned ober!”
“Did you like it up North, Sam?”
Sam scratched his woolly head.
“Ah did–an’ Ah din’t. De Cunnel, he a mighty fine
man an’ he unnerstan’ niggers. But his wife, she
sumpin’ else. His wife, she call me ‘Mister’ fust time
she seed me. Yas’m, she do dat an’ Ah lak ter drap
in mah tracks w’en she do it. De Cunnel, he tell her
ter call me ‘Sam’ an’ den she do it. But all dem Yankee folks, fust time dey meet me, dey call me ‘Mist’
O’Hara.’ An’ dey ast me ter set down wid dem, lak
Ah wuz jes’ as good as dey wuz. Well, Ah ain’ nebber
set down wid w’ite folks an’ Ah is too ole ter learn.
Dey treat me lak Ah jes’ as good as dey wuz, Miss
Scarlett, but in dere hearts, dey din’ lak me–dey din’
lak no niggers. An’ dey wuz sceered of me, kase Ah’s
so big. An’ dey wuz allus astin’ me ‘bout de blood
houn’s dat chase me an’ de beatin’s Ah got. An’,
Lawd, Miss Scarlett, Ah ain’ nebber got no beatin’s!
You know Mist’ Gerald ain’ gwine let nobody beat a
‘spensive nigger lak me!
“W’en Ah tell dem dat an’ tell dem how good Miss
Ellen ter de niggers, an’ how she set up a whole week
wid me w’en Ah had de pneumony, dey doan b’lieve
1495
�PART FOUR
me. An’, Miss Scarlett, Ah got ter honin’ fer Miss
Ellen an’ Tara, tell it look lak Ah kain stan’ it no
longer, an’ one night Ah lit out fer home, an’ Ah rid
de freight cabs all de way down ter ‘Lanta. Ef you buy
me a ticket ter Tara, Ah sho be glad ter git home. Ah
sho be glad ter see Miss Ellen and Mist’ Gerald agin.
An done had nuff freedom. Ah wants somebody ter
feed me good vittles reg’lar, and tell me whut ter do
an’ whut not ter do, an’ look affer me w’en Ah gits
sick. S’pose Ah gits de pneumony agin? Is dat Yankee
lady gwine tek keer of me? No, Ma’m! She gwine call
me ‘Mist’ O’Hara’ but she ain’ gwine nuss me. But
Miss Ellen, she gwine nuss me, do Ah git sick an’–
whut’s de mattuh, Miss Scarlett?”
“Pa and Mother are both dead, Sam.”
“Daid? Is you funnin’ wid me, Miss Scarlett? Dat
ain’ no way ter treat me!”
“I’m not funning. It’s true. Mother died when Sherman men came through Tara and Pa–he went last
June. Oh, Sam, don’t cry. Please don’t! If you do, I’ll
cry too. Sam, don’t! I just can’t stand it. Let’s don’t
talk about it now. I’ll tell you all about it some other
time. . . . Miss Suellen is at Tara and she’s married
to a mighty fine man, Mr. Will Benteen. And Miss
Carreen, she’s in a–” Scarlett paused. She could never
1496
�PART FOUR
make plain to the weeping giant what a convent was.
“She’s living in Charleston now. But Pork and Prissy
are at Tara. . . . There, Sam, wipe your nose. Do you
really want to go home?”
“Yas’m but it ain’ gwine be lak Ah thought wid Miss
Ellen an’–”
“Sam, how’d you like to stay here in Atlanta and
work for me? I need a driver and I need one bad with
so many mean folks around these days.”
“Yas’m. You sho do. Ah been aimin’ ter say you ain’
got no bizness drivin’ ‘round by yo’seff, Miss Scarlett.
You ain’ got no notion how mean some niggers is dese
days, specially dem whut live hyah in Shantytown. It
ain’ safe fer you. Ah ain’ been in Shantytown but two
days, but Ah hear dem talk ‘bout you. An’ yesterday w’en you druv by an’ dem trashy black wenches
holler at you, Ah recernize you but you went by so
fas’ Ah couldn’ ketch you. But Ah sho tan de hides
of dem niggers! Ah sho did. Ain’ you notice dar ain’
none of dem roun’ hyah terday?”
“I did notice and I certainly thank you, Sam. Well,
how would you like to be my carriage man?”
“Miss Scarlett, thankee, Ma’m, but Ah specs Ah better go ter Tara.”
Big Sam looked down and his bare toe traced aim1497
�PART FOUR
less marks in the road. There was a furtive uneasiness
about him.
“Now, why? I’ll pay you good wages. You must
stay with me.”
The big black face, stupid and as easily read as a
child’s, looked up at her and there was fear in it. He
came closer and, leaning over the side of the buggy,
whispered:
“Miss Scarlett, Ah got ter git outer ‘Lanta. Ah got
ter git ter Tara whar dey woan fine me. Ah–Ah done
kilt a man.”
“A darky?”
“No’m. A w’ite man. A Yankee sojer and dey’s
lookin’ fer me. Dat de reason Ah’m hyah at Shantytown.”
“How did it happen?”
“He wuz drunk an’ he said sumpin’ Ah couldn’ tek
noways an’ Ah got mah han’s on his neck–an’ Ah
din’ mean ter kill him, Miss Scarlett, but mah han’s
is pow’ful strong, an’ fo’ Ah knowed it, he wuz kilt.
An’ Ah wuz so sceered Ah din’ know whut ter do! So
Ah come out hyah ter hide an’ w’en Ah seed you go
by yestiddy, Ah says ‘Bress Gawd! Dar Miss Scarlett!
She tek keer of me. She ain’ gwine let de Yankees git
me. She sen’ me back ter Tara.”
1498
�PART FOUR
“You say they’re after you? They know you did it?”
“Yas’m, Ah’s so big dar ain’ no mistakin’ me. Ah
spec Ah’s de bigges’ nigger in ‘Lanta. Dey done been
out hyah already affer me las’ night but a nigger gal,
she hid me in a cabe ober in de woods, tell dey wuz
gone.”
Scarlett sat frowning for a moment. She was not in
the least alarmed or distressed that Sam had committed murder, but she was disappointed that she could
not have him as a driver. A big negro like Sam would
be as good a bodyguard as Archie. Well, she must get
him safe to Tara somehow, for of course the authorities must not get him. He was too valuable a darky
to be hanged. Why, he was the best foreman Tara had
ever had! It did not enter Scarlett’s mind that he was
free. He still belonged to her, like Pork and Mammy
and Peter and Cookie and Prissy. He was still “one of
our family” and, as such, must be protected.
“I’ll send you to Tara tonight,” she said finally.
“Now Sam, I’ve got to drive out the road a piece, but
I ought to be back here before sundown. You be waiting here for me when I come back. Don’t tell anyone
where you are going and if you’ve got a hat, bring it
along to hide your face.”
“Ah ain’ got no hat.”
1499
�PART FOUR
“Well, here’s a quarter. You buy a hat from one of
those shanty darkies and meet me here.”
“Yas’m.” His face glowed with relief at once more
having someone to tell him what to do.
Scarlett drove on thoughtfully. Will would certainly
welcome a good field hand at Tara. Pork had never
been any good in the fields and never would be any
good. With Sam on the place, Pork could come to Atlanta and join Dilcey as she had promised him when
Gerald died.
When she reached the mill the sun was setting and
it was later than she cared to be out. Johnnie Gallegher was standing in the doorway of the miserable
shack that served as cook room for the little lumber camp. Sitting on a log in front of the slab-sided
shack that was their sleeping quarters were four of
the five convicts Scarlett had apportioned to Johnnie’s
mill. Their convict uniforms were dirty and foul with
sweat, shackles clanked between their ankles when
they moved tiredly, and there was an air of apathy
and despair about them. They were a thin, unwholesome lot, Scarlett thought, peering sharply at them,
and when she had leased them, so short a time before,
they were an upstanding crew. They did not even
raise their eyes as she dismounted from the buggy but
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�PART FOUR
Johnnie turned toward her, carelessly dragging off his
hat. His little brown face was as hard as a nut as he
greeted her.
“I don’t like the look of the men,” she said abruptly.
“They don’t look well. Where’s the other one?”
“Says he’s sick,” said Johnnie laconically. “He’s in
the bunk house.”
“What ails him?”
“Laziness, mostly.”
“I’ll go see him.”
“Don’t do that. He’s probably nekkid. I’ll tend to
him. He’ll be back at work tomorrow.”
Scarlett hesitated and saw one of the convicts raise a
weary head and give Johnnie a stare of intense hatred
before he looked at the ground again.
“Have you been whipping these men?”
“Now, Mrs. Kennedy, begging your pardon, who’s
running this mill? You put me in charge and told me
to run it. You said I’d have a free hand. You ain’t
got no complaints to make of me, have you? Ain’t I
making twice as much for you as Mr. Elsing did?”
“Yes, you are,” said Scarlett, but a shiver went over
her, like a goose walking across her grave.
There was something sinister about this camp with
1501
�PART FOUR
its ugly shacks, something which had not been here
when Hugh Elsing had it. There was a loneliness,
an isolation, about it that chilled her. These convicts
were so far away from everything, so completely at
the mercy of Johnnie Gallegher, and if he chose to
whip them or otherwise mistreat them, she would
probably never know about it. The convicts would
be afraid to complain to her for fear of worse punishment after she was gone.
“The men look thin. Are you giving them enough to
eat? God knows, I spend enough money on their food
to make them fat as hogs. The flour and pork alone
cost thirty dollars last month. What are you giving
them for supper?”
She stepped over to the cook shack and looked in. A
fat mulatto woman, who was leaning over a rusty old
stove, dropped a half curtsy as she saw Scarlett and
went on stirring a pot in which black-eyed peas were
cooking. Scarlett knew Johnnie Gallegher lived with
her but thought it best to ignore the fact. She saw that
except for the peas and a pan of corn pone there was
no other food being prepared.
“Haven’t you got anything else for these men?”
“No’m.”
“Haven’t you got any side meat in these peas?”
1502
�PART FOUR
“No’m.”
“No boiling bacon in the peas? But black-eyed peas
are no good without bacon. There’s no strength to
them. Why isn’t there any bacon?”
“Mist’ Johnnie, he say dar ain’ no use puttin’ in no
side meat.”
“You’ll put bacon in. Where do you keep your supplies?”
The negro woman rolled frightened eyes toward the
small closet that served as a pantry and Scarlett threw
the door open. There was an open barrel of cornmeal
on the floor, a small sack of flour, a pound of coffee,
a little sugar, a gallon jug of sorghum and two hams.
One of the hams sitting on the shelf had been recently
cooked and only one or two slices had been cut from
it. Scarlett turned in a fury on Johnnie Gallegher and
met his coldly angry gaze.
“Where are the five sacks of white flour I sent out
last week? And the sugar sack and the coffee? And
I had five hams sent and ten pounds of side meat
and God knows how many bushels of yams and Irish
potatoes. Well, where are they? You can’t have used
them all in a week if you fed the men five meals a
day. You’ve sold them! That’s what you’ve done, you
thief! Sold my good supplies and put the money in
1503
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your pocket and fed these men on dried peas and corn
pone. No wonder they look so thin. Get out of the
way.”
She stormed past him to the doorway.
“You, man, there on the end–yes, you! Come here!”
The man rose and walked awkwardly toward her,
his shackles clanking, and she saw that his bare ankles
were red and raw from the chafing of the iron.
“When did you last have ham?”
The man looked down at the ground.
“Speak up.”
Still the man stood silent and abject. Finally he
raised his eyes, looked Scarlett in the face imploringly
and dropped his gaze again.
“Scared to talk, eh? Well, go in the pantry and get
that ham off the shelf. Rebecca, give him your knife.
Take it out to those men and divide it up. Rebecca,
make some biscuits and coffee for the men. And serve
plenty of sorghum. Start now, so I can see you do it.”
“Dat’s Mist’ Johnnie’s privut flour an’ coffee,” Rebecca muttered frightenedly.
“Mr. Johnnie’s, my foot! I suppose it’s his private
ham too. You do what I say. Get busy. Johnnie Gallegher, come out to the buggy with me.”
1504
�PART FOUR
She stalked across the littered yard and climbed
into the buggy, noticing with grim satisfaction that
the men were tearing at the ham and cramming bits
into their mouths voraciously. They looked as if they
feared it would be taken from them at any minute.
“You are a rare scoundrel!” she cried furiously to
Johnnie as he stood at the wheel, his hat pushed back
from his lowering brow. “And you can just hand over
to me the price of my supplies. In the future, I’ll bring
you provisions every day instead of ordering them by
the month. Then you can’t cheat me.”
“In the future I won’t be here,” said Johnnie Gallegher.
“You mean you are quitting!”
For a moment it was on Scarlett’s hot tongue to cry:
“Go and good riddance!” but the cool hand of caution stopped her. If Johnnie should quit, what would
she do? He had been doubling the amount of lumber
Hugh turned out. And just now she had a big order,
the biggest she had ever had and a rush order at that.
She had to get that lumber into Atlanta. If Johnnie
quit, whom would she get to take over the mill?
“Yes, I’m quitting. You put me in complete charge
here and you told me that all you expected of me
was as much lumber as I could possibly get out. You
1505
�PART FOUR
didn’t tell me how to run my business then and I’m
not aiming to have you start now. How I get the lumber out is no affair of yours. You can’t complain that
I’ve fallen down on my bargain. I’ve made money for
you and I’ve earned my salary–and what I could pick
up on the side, too. And here you come out here, interfering, asking questions and breaking my authority in front of the men. How can you expect me to
keep discipline after this? What if the men do get an
occasional lick? The lazy scum deserve worse. What
if they ain’t fed up and pampered? They don’t deserve nothing better. Either you tend to your business
and let me tend to mine or I quit tonight.”
His hard little face looked flintier than ever and
Scarlett was in a quandary. If he quit tonight, what
would she do? She couldn’t stay here all night guarding the convicts!
Something of her dilemma showed in her eyes for
Johnnie’s expression changed subtly and some of the
hardness went out of his face. There was an easy
agreeable note in his voice when he spoke.
“It’s getting late, Mrs. Kennedy, and you’d better be
getting on home. We ain’t going to fall out over a little
thing like this, are we? S’pose you take ten dollars out
of my next month’s wages and let’s call it square.”
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�PART FOUR
Scarlett’s eyes went unwillingly to the miserable
group gnawing on the ham and she thought of the
sick man lying in the windy shack. She ought to get
rid of Johnnie Gallegher. He was a thief and a brutal
man. There was no telling what he did to the convicts
when she wasn’t there. But, on the other hand, he
was smart and, God knows, she needed a smart man.
Well, she couldn’t part with him now. He was making money for her. She’d just have to see to it that the
convicts got their proper rations in the future.
“I’ll take twenty dollars out of your wages,” she said
shortly, “and I’ll be back and discuss the matter further in the morning.”
She picked up the reins. But she knew there would
be no further discussion. She knew that the matter
had ended there and she knew Johnnie knew it.
As she drove off down the path to the Decatur road
her conscience battled with her desire for money. She
knew she had no business exposing human lives to
the hard little man’s mercies. If he should cause the
death of one of them she would be as guilty as he was,
for she had kept him in charge after learning of his
brutalities. But, on the other hand–well, on the other
hand, men had no business getting to be convicts. If
they broke laws and got caught, then they deserved
1507
�PART FOUR
what they got. This partly salved her conscience but
as she drove down the road the dull thin faces of the
convicts would keep coming back into her mind.
“Oh, I’ll think of them later,” she decided, and
pushed the thought into the lumber room of her mind
and shut the door upon it.
The sun had completely gone when she reached the
bend in the road above Shantytown and the woods
about her were dark. With the disappearance of the
sun, a bitter chill had fallen on the twilight world and
a cold wind blew through the dark woods, making
the bare boughs crack and the dead leaves rustle. She
had never been out this late by herself and she was
uneasy and wished herself home.
Big Sam was nowhere to be seen and, as she drew
rein to wait for him, she worried about his absence,
fearing the Yankees might have already picked him
up. Then she heard footsteps coming up the path
from the settlement and a sigh of relief went through
her lips. She’d certainly dress Sam down for keeping
her waiting.
But it wasn’t Sam who came round the bend.
It was a big ragged white man and a squat black negro with shoulders and chest like a gorilla. Swiftly she
flapped the reins on the horse’s back and clutched the
1508
�PART FOUR
pistol. The horse started to trot and suddenly shied as
the white man threw up his hand.
“Lady,” he said, “can you give me a quarter? I’m
sure hungry.”
“Get out of the way,” she answered, keeping her
voice as steady as she could. “I haven’t got any
money. Giddap.”
With a sudden swift movement the man’s hand was
on the horse’s bridle.
“Grab her!” he shouted to the negro. “She’s probably got her money in her bosom!”
What happened next was like a nightmare to Scarlett, and it all happened so quickly. She brought up
her pistol swiftly and some instinct told her not to fire
at the white man for fear of shooting the horse. As
the negro came running to the buggy, his black face
twisted in a leering grin, she fired point-blank at him.
Whether or not she hit him, she never knew, but the
next minute the pistol was wrenched from her hand
by a grasp that almost broke her wrist. The negro
was beside her, so close that she could smell the rank
odor of him as he tried to drag her over the buggy
side. With her one free hand she fought madly, clawing at his face, and then she felt his big hand at her
throat and, with a ripping noise, her basque was torn
1509
�PART FOUR
open from neck to waist. Then the black hand fumbled between her breasts, and terror and revulsion
such as she had never known came over her and she
screamed like an insane woman.
“Shut her up! Drag her out!” cried the white man,
and the black hand fumbled across Scarlett’s face to
her mouth. She bit as savagely as she could and then
screamed again, and through her screaming she heard
the white man swear and realized that there was a
third man in the dark road. The black hand dropped
from her mouth and the negro leaped away as Big
Sam charged at him.
“Run, Miss Scarlett!” yelled Sam, grappling with
the negro; and Scarlett, shaking and screaming,
clutched up the reins and whip and laid them both
over the horse. It went off at a jump and she felt the
wheels pass over something soft, something resistant.
It was the white man who lay in the road where Sam
had knocked him down.
Maddened by terror, she lashed the horse again
and again and it struck a gait that made the buggy
rock and sway. Through her terror she was conscious of the sound of feet running behind her and
she screamed at the horse to go faster. If that black
ape got her again, she would die before he even got
1510
�PART FOUR
his hands upon her.
A voice yelled behind her: “Miss Scarlett! Stop!”
Without slacking, she looked trembling over her
shoulder and saw Big Sam racing down the road behind her, his long legs working like hard-driven pistons. She drew rein as he came up and he flung himself into the buggy, his big body crowding her to one
side. Sweat and blood were streaming down his face
as he panted:
“Is you hu’t? Did dey hu’t you?”
She could not speak, but seeing the direction of his
eyes and their quick averting, she realized that her
basque was open to the waist and her bare bosom and
corset cover were showing. With a shaking hand she
clutched the two edges together and bowing her head
began to cry in terrified sobs.
“Gimme dem lines,” said Sam, snatching the reins
from her. “Hawse, mek tracks!”
The whip cracked and the startled horse went off at
a wild gallop that threatened to throw the buggy into
the ditch.
“Ah hope Ah done kill dat black baboon. But Ah
din’ wait ter fine out,” he panted. “But ef he hahmed
you, Miss Scarlett, Ah’ll go back an’ mek sho of it.”
1511
�PART FOUR
“No–no–drive on quickly,” she sobbed.
1512
�CHAPTER XLV
Frank deposited her and Aunt Pitty
and the children at Melanie’s and rode off down the
street with Ashley, Scarlett could have burst with rage
and hurt. How could he go off to a political meeting
on this of all nights in the world? A political meeting! And on the same night when she had been attacked, when anything might have happened to her!
It was unfeeling and selfish of him. But then, he had
taken the whole affair with maddening calm, ever
since Sam had carried her sobbing into the house, her
basque gaping to the waist. He hadn’t clawed his
beard even once when she cried out her story. He had
just questioned gently: “Sugar, are you hurt–or just
scared?”
Wrath mingling with her tears she had been unable
to answer and Sam had volunteered that she was just
scared.
“Ah got dar fo’ dey done mo’n t’ar her dress.”
“You’re a good boy, Sam, and I won’t forget what
you’ve done. If there’s anything I can do for you–”
“Yassah, you kin sen’ me ter Tara, quick as you kin.
De Yankees is affer me.”
Frank had listened to this statement calmly too, and
T HAT
NIGHT WHEN
�PART FOUR
had asked no questions. He had looked very much as
he did the night Tony came beating on their door, as
though this was an exclusively masculine affair and
one to be handled with a minimum of words and
emotions.
“You go get in the buggy. I’ll have Peter drive you
as far as Rough and Ready tonight and you can hide
in the woods till morning and then catch the train to
Jonesboro. It’ll be safer. . . . Now, Sugar, stop crying.
It’s all over now and you aren’t really hurt. Miss Pitty,
could I have your smelling salts? And Mammy, fetch
Miss Scarlett a glass of wine.”
Scarlett had burst into renewed tears, this time tears
of rage. She wanted comforting, indignation, threats
of vengeance. She would even have preferred him
storming at her, saying that this was just what he had
warned her would happen–anything rather than have
him take it all so casually and treat her danger as a
matter of small moment. He was nice and gentle, of
course, but in an absent way as if he had something
far more important on his mind.
And that important thing had turned out to be a
small political meeting!
She could hardly believe her ears when he told her
to change her dress and get ready for him to escort her
1514
�PART FOUR
over to Melanie’s for the evening. He must know how
harrowing her experience had been, must know she
did not want to spend an evening at Melanie’s when
her tired body and jangled nerves cried out for the
warm relaxation of bed and blankets–with a hot brick
to make her toes tingle and a hot toddy to soothe her
fears. If he really loved her, nothing could have forced
him from her side on this of all nights. He would have
stayed home and held her hand and told her over and
over that he would have died if anything had happened to her. And when he came home tonight and
she had him alone, she would certainly tell him so.
Melanie’s small parlor looked as serene as it usually
did on nights when Frank and Ashley were away and
the women gathered together to sew. The room was
warm and cheerful in the firelight. The lamp on the
table shed a quiet yellow glow on the four smooth
heads bent to their needlework. Four skirts billowed
modestly, eight small feet were daintily placed on low
hassocks. The quiet breathing of Wade, Ella and Beau
came through the open door of the nursery. Archie
sat on a stool by the hearth, his back against the fireplace, his cheek distended with tobacco, whittling industriously on a bit of wood. The contrast between
the dirty, hairy old man and the four neat, fastidious
ladies was as great as though he were a grizzled, vi1515
�PART FOUR
cious old watchdog and they four small kittens.
Melanie’s soft voice, tinged with indignation, went
on and on as she told of the recent outburst of temperament on the part of the Lady Harpists. Unable to
agree with the Gentlemen’s Glee Club as to the program for their next recital, the ladies had waited on
Melanie that afternoon and announced their intention
of withdrawing completely from the Musical Circle.
It had taken all of Melanie’s diplomacy to persuade
them to defer their decision.
Scarlett, overwrought, could have screamed: “Oh,
damn the Lady Harpists!” She wanted to talk about
her dreadful experience. She was bursting to relate it
in detail, so she could ease her own fright by frightening the others. She wanted to tell how brave she
had been, just to assure herself by the sound of her
own words that she had, indeed, been brave. But every time she brought up the subject, Melanie deftly
steered the conversation into other and innocuous
channels. This irritated Scarlett almost beyond endurance. They were as mean as Frank.
How could they be so calm and placid when she had
just escaped so terrible a fate? They weren’t even displaying common courtesy in denying her the relief of
talking about it.
1516
�PART FOUR
The events of the afternoon had shaken her more
than she cared to admit, even to herself. Every time
she thought of that malignant black face peering at
her from the shadows of the twilight forest road, she
fell to trembling. When she thought of the black hand
at her bosom and what would have happened if Big
Sam had not appeared, she bent her head lower and
squeezed her eyes tightly shut. The longer she sat
silent in the peaceful room, trying to sew, listening to
Melanie’s voice, the tighter her nerves stretched. She
felt that at any moment she would actually hear them
break with the same pinging sound a banjo string
makes when it snaps.
Archie’s whittling annoyed her and she frowned at
him. Suddenly it seemed odd that he should be sitting
there occupying himself with a piece of wood. Usually he lay flat on the sofa, during the evenings when
he was on guard, and slept and snored so violently
that his long beard leaped into the air with each rumbling breath. It was odder still that neither Melanie
nor India hinted to him that he should spread a paper
on the floor to catch his litter of shavings. He had already made a perfect mess on the hearth rug but they
did not seem to have noticed it.
While she watched him, Archie turned suddenly to1517
�PART FOUR
ward the fire and spat a stream of tobacco juice on
it with such vehemence that India, Melanie and Pitty
leaped as though a bomb had exploded.
“NEED you expectorate so loudly?” cried India in a
voice that cracked with nervous annoyance. Scarlett
looked at her in surprise for India was always so selfcontained.
Archie gave her look for look.
“I reckon I do,” he answered coldly and spat again.
Melanie gave a little frowning glance at India.
“I was always so glad dear Papa didn’t chew,” began Pitty, and Melanie, her frown creasing deeper,
swung on her and spoke sharper words than Scarlett
had ever heard her speak.
“Oh, do hush, Auntie! You’re so tactless.”
“Oh, dear!” Pitty dropped her sewing in her lap and
her mouth pressed up in hurt. “I declare, I don’t know
what ails you all tonight. You and India are just as
jumpy and cross as two old sticks.”
No one answered her. Melanie did not even apologize for her crossness but went back to her sewing
with small violence.
“You’re taking stitches an inch long,” declared Pitty
with some satisfaction. “You’ll have to take every one
1518
�PART FOUR
of them out. What’s the matter with you?”
But Melanie still did not answer.
Was there anything the matter with them, Scarlett
wondered? Had she been too absorbed with her own
fears to notice? Yes, despite Melanie’s attempts to
make the evening appear like any one of fifty they
had all spent together, there was a difference due to
their alarm and shock at what had happened that afternoon. Scarlett stole glances at her companions and
intercepted a look from India. It discomforted her because it was a long, measuring glance that carried in
its cold depths something stronger than hate, something more insulting than contempt.
“As though she thought I was to blame for what
happened,” Scarlett thought indignantly.
India turned from her to Archie and, all annoyance
at him gone from her face, gave him a look of veiled
anxious inquiry. But he did not meet her eyes. He did
however look at Scarlett, staring at her in the same
cold hard way India had done.
Silence fell dully in the room as Melanie did not take
up the conversation again and, in the silence, Scarlett
heard the rising wind outside. It suddenly began to
be a most unpleasant evening. Now she began to feel
the tension in the air and she wondered if it had been
1519
�PART FOUR
present all during the evening–and she too upset to
notice it. About Archie’s face there was an alert waiting look and his tufted, hairy old ears seemed pricked
up like a lynx’s. There was a severely repressed uneasiness about Melanie and India that made them
raise their heads from their sewing at each sound of
hooves in the road, at each groan of bare branches under the wailing wind, at each scuffing sound of dry
leaves tumbling across the lawn. They started at each
soft snap of burning logs on the hearth as if they were
stealthy footsteps.
Something was wrong and Scarlett wondered what
it was. Something was afoot and she did not know
about it. A glance at Aunt Pitty’s plump guileless
face, screwed up in a pout, told her that the old lady
was as ignorant as she. But Archie and Melanie and
India knew. In the silence she could almost feel the
thoughts of India and Melanie whirling as madly as
squirrels in a cage. They knew something, were waiting for something, despite their efforts to make things
appear as usual. And their inner unease communicated itself to Scarlett, making her more nervous than
before. Handling her needle awkwardly, she jabbed
it into her thumb and with a little scream of pain and
annoyance that made them all jump, she squeezed it
until a bright red drop appeared.
1520
�PART FOUR
“I’m just too nervous to sew,” she declared, throwing her mending to the floor. “I’m nervous enough to
scream. I want to go home and go to bed. And Frank
knew it and he oughtn’t to have gone out. He talks,
talks, talks about protecting women against darkies
and Carpetbaggers and when the time comes for him
to do some protecting, where is he? At home, taking care of me? No, indeed, he’s gallivanting around
with a lot of other men who don’t do anything but
talk and–”
Her snapping eyes came to rest on India’s face and
she paused. India was breathing fast and her pale
lashless eyes were fastened on Scarlett’s face with a
deadly coldness.
“If it won’t pain you too much, India,” she broke
off sarcastically, “I’d be much obliged if you’d tell me
why you’ve been staring at me all evening. Has my
face turned green or something?”
“It won’t pain me to tell you. I’ll do it with pleasure,” said India and her eyes glittered. “I hate to see
you underrate a fine man like Mr. Kennedy when, if
you knew–”
“India!” said Melanie warningly, her hands clenching on her sewing.
“I think I know my husband better than you do,”
1521
�PART FOUR
said Scarlett, the prospect of a quarrel, the first open
quarrel she had ever had with India, making her spirits rise and her nervousness depart. Melanie’s eyes
caught India’s and reluctantly India closed her lips.
But almost instantly she spoke again and her voice
was cold with hate.
“You make me sick, Scarlett O’Hara, talking about
being protected! You don’t care about being protected! If you did you’d never have exposed yourself as you have done all these months, prissing yourself about this town, showing yourself off to strange
men, hoping they’ll admire you! What happened to
you this afternoon was just what you deserved and if
there was any justice you’d have gotten worse.”
“Oh, India, hush!” cried Melanie.
“Let her talk,” cried Scarlett. “I’m enjoying it. I always knew she hated me and she was too much of a
hypocrite to admit it. If she thought anyone would
admire her, she’d be walking the streets naked from
dawn till dark.”
India was on her feet, her lean body quivering with
insult.
“I do hate you,” she said in a clear but trembling
voice. “But it hasn’t been hypocrisy that’s kept me
quiet. It’s something you can’t understand, not pos1522
�PART FOUR
sessing any–any common courtesy, common good
breeding. It’s the realization that if all of us don’t
hang together and submerge our own small hates, we
can’t expect to beat the Yankees. But you–you–you’ve
done all you could to lower the prestige of decent
people–working and bringing shame on a good husband, giving Yankees and riffraff the right to laugh at
us and make insulting remarks about our lack of gentility. Yankees don’t know that you aren’t one of us
and have never been. Yankees haven’t sense enough
to know that you haven’t any gentility. And when
you’ve ridden about the woods exposing yourself to
attack, you’ve exposed every well-behaved woman in
town to attack by putting temptation in the ways of
darkies and mean white trash. And you’ve put our
men folks’ lives in danger because they’ve got to–”
“My God, India!” cried Melanie and even in her
wrath, Scarlett was stunned to hear Melanie take the
Lord’s name in vain. “You must hush! She doesn’t
know and she–you must hush! You promised–”
“Oh, girls!” pleaded Miss Pittypat, her lips trembling.
“What don’t I know?” Scarlett was on her feet, furious, facing the coldly blazing India and the imploring
Melanie.
1523
�PART FOUR
“Guinea hens,” said Archie suddenly and his voice
was contemptuous. Before anyone could rebuke him,
his grizzled head went up sharply and he rose swiftly.
“Somebody comin’ up the walk. ‘Tain’t Mr. Wilkes
neither. Cease your cackle.”
There was male authority in his voice and the
women stood suddenly silent, anger fading swiftly
from their faces as he stumped across the room to the
door.
“Who’s thar?” he questioned before the caller even
knocked.
“Captain Butler. Let me in.”
Melanie was across the floor so swiftly that her
hoops swayed up violently, revealing her pantalets to
the knees, and before Archie could put his hand on
the knob she flung the door open. Rhett Butler stood
in the doorway, his black slouch hat low over his eyes,
the wild wind whipping his cape about him in snapping folds. For once his good manners had deserted
him. He neither took off his hat nor spoke to the others in the room. He had eyes for no one but Melanie
and he spoke abruptly without greeting.
“Where have they gone? Tell me quickly. It’s life or
death.”
Scarlett and Pitty, startled and bewildered, looked
1524
�PART FOUR
at each other in wonderment and, like a lean old cat,
India streaked across the room to Melanie’s side.
“Don’t tell him anything,” she cried swiftly. “He’s a
spy, a Scallawag!”
Rhett did not even favor her with a glance.
“Quickly, Mrs. Wilkes! There may still be time.”
Melanie seemed in a paralysis of terror and only
stared into his face.
“What on earth–” began Scarlett.
“Shet yore mouth,” directed Archie briefly. “You
too, Miss Melly. Git the hell out of here, you damned
Scallawag.”
“No, Archie, no!” cried Melanie and she put a shaking hand on Rhett’s arm as though to protect him
from Archie. “What has happened? How did–how
did you know?”
On Rhett’s dark face impatience fought with courtesy.
“Good God, Mrs. Wilkes, they’ve all been under
suspicion since the beginning–only they’ve been too
clever–until tonight! How do I know? I was playing
poker tonight with two drunken Yankee captains and
they let it out. The Yankees knew there’d be trouble
tonight and they’ve prepared for it. The fools have
1525
�PART FOUR
walked into a trap.”
For a moment it was as though Melanie swayed under the impact of a heavy blow and Rhett’s arm went
around her waist to steady her.
“Don’t tell him! He’s trying to trap you!” cried India, glaring at Rhett. “Didn’t you hear him say he’d
been with Yankee officers tonight?”
Still Rhett did not look at her. His eyes were bent
insistently on Melanie’s white face.
“Tell me. Where did they go? Have they a meeting
place?”
Despite her fear and incomprehension, Scarlett
thought she had never seen a blanker, more expressionless face than Rhett’s but evidently Melanie saw
something else, something that made her give her
trust. She straightened her small body away from the
steadying arm and said quietly but with a voice that
shook:
“Out the Decatur road near Shantytown. They meet
in the cellar of the old Sullivan plantation–the one
that’s half-burned.”
“Thank you. I’ll ride fast. When the Yankees come
here, none of you know anything.”
He was gone so swiftly, his black cape melting into
1526
�PART FOUR
the night, that they could hardly realize he had been
there at all until they heard the spattering of gravel
and the mad pounding of a horse going off at full gallop.
“The Yankees coming here?” cried Pitty and, her
small feet turning under her, she collapsed on the
sofa, too frightened for tears.
“What’s it all about? What did he mean? If you
don’t tell me I’ll go crazy!” Scarlett laid hands on
Melanie and shook her violently as if by force she
could shake an answer from her.
“Mean? It means you’ve probably been the cause of
Ashley’s and Mr. Kennedy’s death!” In spite of the
agony of fear there was a note of triumph in India’s
voice. “Stop shaking Melly. She’s going to faint.”
“No, I’m not,” whispered Melanie, clutching the
back of a chair.
“My God, my God! I don’t understand! Kill Ashley?
Please, somebody tell me–”
Archie’s voice, like a rusty hinge, cut through Scarlett’s words.
“Set down,” he ordered briefly. “Pick up yore
sewin’. Sew like nothin’ had happened. For all we
know, the Yankees might have been spyin’ on this
house since sundown. Set down, I say, and sew.”
1527
�PART FOUR
Trembling they obeyed, even Pitty picking up a sock
and holding it in shaking fingers while her eyes, wide
as a frightened child’s went around the circle for an
explanation.
“Where is Ashley? What has happened to him,
Melly?” cried Scarlett.
“Where’s your husband? Aren’t you interested in
him?” India’s pale eyes blazed with insane malice as
she crumpled and straightened the torn towel she had
been mending.
“India, please!” Melanie had mastered her voice
but her white, shaken face and tortured eyes showed
the strain under which she was laboring. “Scarlett,
perhaps we should have told you but–but–you had
been through so much this afternoon that we–that
Frank didn’t think–and you were always so outspoken against the Klan–”
“The Klan–”
At first, Scarlett spoke the word as if she had never
heard it before and had no comprehension of its
meaning and then:
“The Klan!” she almost screamed it. “Ashley isn’t in
the Klan! Frank can’t be! Oh, he promised me!”
“Of course, Mr. Kennedy is in the Klan and Ashley,
too, and all the men we know,” cried India. “They
1528
�PART FOUR
are men, aren’t they? And white men and Southerners. You should have been proud of him instead of
making him sneak out as though it were something
shameful and–”
“You all have known all along and I didn’t–”
“We were afraid it would upset you,” said Melanie
sorrowfully.
“Then that’s where they go when they’re supposed
to be at the political meetings? Oh, he promised me!
Now, the Yankees will come and take my mills and
the store and put him in jail–oh, what did Rhett Butler
mean?”
India’s eyes met Melanie’s in wild fear. Scarlett rose,
flinging her sewing down.
“If you don’t tell me, I’m going downtown and find
out. I’ll ask everybody I see until I find–”
“Set,” said Archie, fixing her with his eye. “I’ll tell
you. Because you went gallivantin’ this afternoon and
got yoreself into trouble through yore own fault, Mr.
Wilkes and Mr. Kennedy and the other men are out
tonight to kill that thar nigger and that thar white
man, if they can catch them, and wipe out that whole
Shantytown settlement. And if what that Scallawag
said is true, the Yankees suspected sumpin’ or got
wind somehow and they’ve sont out troops to lay for
1529
�PART FOUR
them. And our men have walked into a trap. And if
what Butler said warn’t true, then he’s a spy and he
is goin’ to turn them up to the Yankees and they’ll git
kilt just the same. And if he does turn them up, then
I’ll kill him, if it’s the last deed of m’ life. And if they
ain’t kilt, then they’ll all have to light out of here for
Texas and lay low and maybe never come back. It’s
all yore fault and thar’s blood on yore hands.”
Anger wiped out the fear from Melanie’s face as she
saw comprehension come slowly across Scarlett’s face
and then horror follow swiftly. She rose and put her
hand on Scarlett’s shoulder.
“Another such word and you go out of this house,
Archie,” she said sternly. “It’s not her fault. She only
did–did what she felt she had to do. And our men
did what they felt they had to do. People must do
what they must do. We don’t all think alike or act
alike and it’s wrong to–to judge others by ourselves.
How can you and India say such cruel things when
her husband as well as mine may be–may be–”
“Hark!” interrupted Archie softly.
Thar’s horses.”
“Set, Ma’m.
Melanie sank into a chair, picked up one of Ashley’s
shirts and, bowing her head over it, unconsciously began to tear the frills into small ribbons.
1530
�PART FOUR
The sound of hooves grew louder as horses trotted up to the house. There was the jangling of bits
and the strain of leather and the sound of voices. As
the hooves stopped in front of the house, one voice
rose above the others in a command and the listeners heard feet going through the side yard toward the
back porch. They felt that a thousand inimical eyes
looked at them through the unshaded front window
and the four women, with fear in their hearts, bent
their heads and plied their needles. Scarlett’s heart
screamed in her breast: “I’ve killed Ashley! I’ve killed
him!” And in that wild moment she did not even
think that she might have killed Frank too. She had
no room in her mind for any picture save that of Ashley, lying at the feet of Yankee cavalrymen, his fair
hair dappled with blood.
As the harsh rapid knocking sounded at the door,
she looked at Melanie and saw come over the small,
strained face a new expression, an expression as blank
as she had just seen on Rhett Butler’s face, the bland
blank look of a poker player bluffing a game with
only two deuces.
“Archie, open the door,” she said quietly.
Slipping his knife into his boot top and loosening
the pistol in his trouser band, Archie stumped over to
1531
�PART FOUR
the door and flung it open. Pitty gave a little squeak,
like a mouse who feels the trap snap down, as she saw
massed in the doorway, a Yankee captain and a squad
of bluecoats. But the others said nothing. Scarlett saw
with the faintest feeling of relief that she knew this
officer. He was Captain Tom Jaffery, one of Rhett’s
friends. She had sold him lumber to build his house.
She knew him to be a gentleman. Perhaps, as he was
a gentleman, he wouldn’t drag them away to prison.
He recognized her instantly and, taking off his hat,
bowed, somewhat embarrassed.
“Good evening, Mrs. Kennedy. And which of you
ladies is Mrs. Wilkes?”
“I am Mrs. Wilkes,” answered Melanie, rising and
for all her smallness, dignity flowed from her. “And
to what do I owe this intrusion?”
The eyes of the captain flickered quickly about the
room, resting for an instant on each face, passing
quickly from their faces to the table and the hat rack
as though looking for signs of male occupancy.
“I should like to speak to Mr. Wilkes and Mr.
Kennedy, if you please.”
“They are not here,” said Melanie, a chill in her soft
voice.
“Are you sure?”
1532
�PART FOUR
“Don’t you question Miz Wilkes’ word,” said
Archie, his beard bristling.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Wilkes. I meant no disrespect. If you give me your word, I will not search the
house.”
“You have my word. But search if you like. They are
at a meeting downtown at Mr. Kennedy’s store.”
“They are not at the store. There was no meeting
tonight,” answered the captain grimly. “We will wait
outside until they return.”
He bowed briefly and went out, closing the door behind him. Those in the house heard a sharp order,
muffled by the wind: “Surround the house. A man
at each window and door.” There was a tramping of
feet. Scarlett checked a start of terror as she dimly
saw bearded faces peering in the windows at them.
Melanie sat down and with a hand that did not tremble reached for a book on the table. It was a ragged
copy of Les Miserables, that book which caught the
fancy of the Confederate soldiers. They had read it by
camp-fire light and took some grim pleasure in calling it “Lee’s Miserables.” She opened it at the middle
and began to read in a clear monotonous voice.
“Sew,” commanded Archie in a hoarse whisper and
the three women, nerved by Melanie’s cool voice,
1533
�PART FOUR
picked up their sewing and bowed their heads.
How long Melanie read beneath that circle of watching eyes, Scarlett never knew but it seemed hours. She
did not even hear a word that Melanie read. Now
she was beginning to think of Frank as well as Ashley.
So this was the explanation of his apparent calm this
evening! He had promised her he would have nothing to do with the Klan. Oh, this was just the kind of
trouble she had feared would come upon them! All
the work of this last year would go for nothing. All
her struggles and fears and labors in rain and cold
had been wasted. And who would have thought that
spiritless old Frank would get himself mixed up in the
hot-headed doings of the Klan? Even at this minute,
he might be dead. And if he wasn’t dead and the Yankees caught him, he’d be hanged. And Ashley, too!
Her nails dug into her palms until four bright-red
crescents showed. How could Melanie read on and
on so calmly when Ashley was in danger of being
hanged? When he might be dead? But something in
the cool soft voice reading the sorrows of Jean Valjean steadied her, kept her from leaping to her feet
and screaming.
Her mind fled back to the night Tony Fontaine had
come to them, hunted, exhausted, without money. If
1534
�PART FOUR
he had not reached their house and received money
and a fresh horse, he would have been hanged long
since. If Frank and Ashley were not dead at this very
minute, they were in Tony’s position, only worse.
With the house surrounded by soldiers they couldn’t
come home and get money and clothes without being
captured. And probably every house up and down
the street had a similar guard of Yankees, so they
could not apply to friends for aid. Even now they
might be riding wildly through the night, bound for
Texas.
But Rhett–perhaps Rhett had reached them in time.
Rhett always had plenty of cash in his pocket.
Perhaps he would lend them enough to see them
through. But that was queer. Why should Rhett
bother himself about Ashley’s safety? Certainly he
disliked him, certainly he professed a contempt for
him. Then why– But this riddle was swallowed up in
a renewed fear for the safety of Ashley and Frank.
“Oh, it’s all my fault!” she wailed to herself. “India and Archie spoke the truth. It’s all my fault. But
I never thought either of them was foolish enough to
join the Klan! And I never thought anything would
really happen to me! But I couldn’t have done otherwise. Melly spoke the truth. People have to do what
1535
�PART FOUR
they have to do. And I had to keep the mills going! I
had to have money! And now I’ll probably lose it all
and somehow it’s all my fault!”
After a long time Melanie’s voice faltered, trailed off
and was silent. She turned her head toward the window and stared as though no Yankee soldier stared
back from behind the glass. The others raised their
heads, caught by her listening pose, and they too listened.
There was a sound of horses’ feet and of singing,
deadened by the closed windows and doors, borne
away by the wind but still recognizable. It was
the most hated and hateful of all songs, the song
about Sherman’s men “Marching through Georgia”
and Rhett Butler was singing it.
Hardly had he finished the first lines when two
other voices, drunken voices, assailed him, enraged
foolish voices that stumbled over words and blurred
them together. There was a quick command from
Captain Jaffery on the front porch and the rapid
tramp of feet. But even before these sounds arose,
the ladies looked at one another stunned. For the
drunken voices expostulating with Rhett were those
of Ashley and Hugh Elsing.
Voices rose louder on the front walk, Captain Jaf1536
�PART FOUR
fery’s curt and questioning, Hugh’s shrill with foolish laughter, Rhett’s deep and reckless and Ashley’s
queer, unreal, shouting: “What the hell! What the
hell!”
“That can’t be Ashley!” thought Scarlett wildly.
“He never gets drunk! And Rhett–why, when Rhett’s
drunk he gets quieter and quieter–never loud like
that!”
Melanie rose and, with her, Archie rose. They heard
the captain’s sharp voice: “These two men are under
arrest.” And Archie’s hand closed over his pistol butt.
“No,” whispered Melanie firmly. “No. Leave it to
me.” There was in her face the same look Scarlett had
seen that day at Tara when Melanie had stood at the
top of the steps looking down at the dead Yankee, her
weak wrist weighed down by the heavy saber–a gentle and timid soul nerved by circumstances to the caution and fury of a tigress. She threw the front door
open.
“Bring him in, Captain Butler,” she called in a clear
tone that bit with venom. “I suppose you’ve gotten
him intoxicated again. Bring him in.”
From the dark windy walk, the Yankee captain
spoke: “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wilkes, but your husband and
Mr. Elsing are under arrest.”
1537
�PART FOUR
“Arrest? For what? For drunkenness? If everyone in
Atlanta was arrested for drunkenness, the whole Yankee garrison would be in jail continually. Well, bring
him in, Captain Butler–that is, if you can walk yourself.”
Scarlett’s mind was not working quickly and for a
brief moment nothing made sense. She knew neither
Rhett nor Ashley was drunk and she knew Melanie
knew they were not drunk. Yet here was Melanie,
usually so gentle and refined, screaming like a shrew
and in front of Yankees too, that both of them were
too drunk to walk.
There was a short mumbled argument, punctuated
with curses, and uncertain feet ascended the stairs. In
the doorway appeared Ashley, white faced, his head
lolling, his bright hair tousled, his long body wrapped
from neck to knees in Rhett’s black cape. Hugh Elsing
and Rhett, none too steady on their feet, supported
him on either side and it was obvious he would have
fallen to the floor but for their aid. Behind them came
the Yankee captain, his face a study of mingled suspicion and amusement. He stood in the open doorway with his men peering curiously over his shoulders and the cold wind swept the house.
Scarlett, frightened, puzzled, glanced at Melanie
1538
�PART FOUR
and back to the sagging Ashley and then halfcomprehension came to her. She started to cry out:
“But he can’t be drunk!” and bit back the words. She
realized she was witnessing a play, a desperate play
on which lives hinged. She knew she was not part
of it nor was Aunt Pitty but the others were and they
were tossing cues to one another like actors in an oftrehearsed drama. She understood only half but she
understood enough to keep silent.
“Put him in the chair,” cried Melanie indignantly.
“And you, Captain Butler, leave this house immediately! How dare you show your face here after getting
him in this condition again!”
The two men eased Ashley into a rocker and Rhett,
swaying, caught hold of the back of the chair to steady
himself and addressed the captain with pain in his
voice.
“That’s fine thanks I get, isn’t it? For keeping the
police from getting him and bringing him home and
him yelling and trying to claw me!”
“And you, Hugh Elsing, I’m ashamed of you! What
will your poor mother say? Drunk and out with a–
a Yankee-loving Scallawag like Captain Butler! And,
oh, Mr. Wilkes, how could you do such a thing?”
“Melly, I ain’t so very drunk,” mumbled Ashley, and
1539
�PART FOUR
with the words fell forward and lay face down on the
table, his head buried in his arms.
“Archie, take him to his room and put him to bed–as
usual,” ordered Melanie. “Aunt Pitty, please run and
fix the bed and oo- oh,” she suddenly burst into tears.
“Oh, how could he? After he promised!”
Archie already had his arm under Ashley’s shoulder
and Pitty, frightened and uncertain, was on her feet
when the captain interposed.
“Don’t touch him. He’s under arrest. Sergeant!”
As the sergeant stepped into the room, his rifle at
trail, Rhett, evidently trying to steady himself, put
a hand on the captain’s arm and, with difficulty, focused his eyes.
“Tom, what you arresting him for? He ain’t so very
drunk. I’ve seen him drunker.”
“Drunk be damned,” cried the captain. “He can lie
in the gutter for all I care. I’m no policeman. He and
Mr. Elsing are under arrest for complicity in a Klan
raid at Shantytown tonight. A nigger and a white
man were killed. Mr. Wilkes was the ringleader in
it.”
“Tonight?” Rhett began to laugh. He laughed so
hard that he sat down on the sofa and put his head
in his hands. “Not tonight, Tom,” he said when he
1540
�PART FOUR
could speak. “These two have been with me tonight–
ever since eight o’clock when they were supposed to
be at the meeting.”
“With you, Rhett? But–” A frown came over the captain’s forehead and he looked uncertainly at the snoring Ashley and his weeping wife. “But–where were
you?”
“I don’t like to say,” and Rhett shot a look of
drunken cunning at Melanie.
“You’d better say!”
“Le’s go out on the porch and I’ll tell you where we
were.”
“You’ll tell me now.”
“Hate to say it in front of ladies. If you ladies’ll step
out of the room–”
“I won’t go,” cried Melanie, dabbing angrily at her
eyes with her handkerchief. “I have a right to know.
Where was my husband?”
“At Belle Watling’s sporting house,” said Rhett,
looking abashed. “He was there and Hugh and Frank
Kennedy and Dr. Meade and–and a whole lot of
them. Had a party. Big party. Champagne. Girls–”
“At–at Belle Watling’s?”
Melanie’s voice rose until it cracked with such pain
1541
�PART FOUR
that all eyes turned frightenedly to her. Her hand
went clutching at her bosom and, before Archie could
catch her, she had fainted. Then a hubbub ensued,
Archie picking her up, India running to the kitchen
for water, Pitty and Scarlett fanning her and slapping
her wrists, while Hugh Elsing shouted over and over:
“Now you’ve done it! Now you’ve done it!”
“Now it’ll be all over town,” said Rhett savagely. “I
hope you’re satisfied, Tom. There won’t be a wife in
Atlanta who’ll speak to her husband tomorrow.”
“Rhett, I had no idea–” Though the chill wind was
blowing through the open door on his back, the captain was perspiring. “Look here! You take an oath
they were at–er–at Belle’s?”
“Hell, yes,” growled Rhett. “Go ask Belle herself if
you don’t believe me. Now, let me carry Mrs. Wilkes
to her room. Give her to me, Archie. Yes, I can carry
her. Miss Pitty, go ahead with a lamp.”
He took Melanie’s limp body from Archie’s arms
with ease.
“You get Mr. Wilkes to bed, Archie. I don’t want to
ever lay eyes or hands on him again after this night.”
Pitty’s hand trembled so that the lamp was a menace to the safety of the house but she held it and trotted ahead toward the dark bedroom. Archie, with a
1542
�PART FOUR
grunt, got an arm under Ashley and raised him.
“But–I’ve got to arrest these men!”
Rhett turned in the dim hallway.
“Arrest them in the morning then. They can’t run
away in this condition–and I never knew before that
it was illegal to get drunk in a sporting house. Good
God, Tom, there are fifty witnesses to prove they were
at Belle’s.”
“There are always fifty witnesses to prove a Southerner was somewhere he wasn’t,” said the captain
morosely. “You come with me, Mr. Elsing. I’ll parole
Mr. Wilkes on the word of–”
“I am Mr. Wilkes’ sister. I will answer for his appearance,” said India coldly. “Now, will you please
go? You’ve caused enough trouble for one night.”
“I regret it exceedingly.” The captain bowed awkwardly. “I only hope they can prove their presence at
the–er–Miss–Mrs. Watling’s house. Will you tell your
brother that he must appear before the provost marshal tomorrow morning for questioning?”
India bowed coldly and, putting her hand upon
the door knob, intimated silently that his speedy retirement would be welcome. The captain and the
sergeant backed out, Hugh Elsing with them, and she
slammed the door behind them. Without even look1543
�PART FOUR
ing at Scarlett, she went swiftly to each window and
drew down the shade. Scarlett, her knees shaking,
caught hold of the chair in which Ashley had been
sitting to steady herself. Looking down at it, she saw
that there was a dark moist spot, larger than her hand,
on the cushion in the back of the chair. Puzzled, her
hand went over it and, to her horror, a sticky red wetness appeared on her palm.
“India,” she whispered, “India, Ashley’s–he’s hurt.”
“You fool! Did you think he was really drunk?”
India snapped down the last shade and started on
flying feet for the bedroom, with Scarlett close behind her, her heart in her throat. Rhett’s big body
barred the doorway but, past his shoulder, Scarlett
saw Ashley lying white and still on the bed. Melanie,
strangely quick for one so recently in a faint, was
rapidly cutting off his blood-soaked shirt with embroidery scissors. Archie held the lamp low over the
bed to give light and one of his gnarled fingers was
on Ashley’s wrist.
“Is he dead?” cried both girls together.
“No, just fainted from loss of blood. It’s through his
shoulder,” said Rhett.
“Why did you bring him here, you fool?” cried India. “Let me get to him! Let me pass! Why did you
1544
�PART FOUR
bring him here to be arrested?”
“He was too weak to travel. There was nowhere
else to bring him, Miss Wilkes. Besides–do you want
him to be an exile like Tony Fontaine? Do you want
a dozen of your neighbors to live in Texas under assumed names for the rest of their lives? There’s a
chance that we may get them all off if Belle–”
“Let me pass!”
“No, Miss Wilkes. There’s work for you. You must
go for a doctor– Not Dr. Meade. He’s implicated in
this and is probably explaining to the Yankees at this
very minute. Get some other doctor. Are you afraid
to go out alone at night?”
“No,” said India, her pale eyes glittering. “I’m not
afraid.” She caught up Melanie’s hooded cape which
was hanging on a hook in the hall. “I’ll go for old Dr.
Dean.” The excitement went out of her voice as, with
an effort, she forced calmness. “I’m sorry I called you
a spy and a fool. I did not understand. I’m deeply
grateful for what you’ve done for Ashley–but I despise you just the same.”
“I appreciate frankness–and I thank you for it.”
Rhett bowed and his lip curled down in an amused
smile. “Now, go quickly and by back ways and when
you return do not come in this house if you see signs
1545
�PART FOUR
of soldiers about.”
India shot one more quick anguished look at Ashley,
and, wrapping her cape about her, ran lightly down
the hall to the back door and let herself out quietly
into the night.
Scarlett, straining her eyes past Rhett, felt her heart
beat again as she saw Ashley’s eyes open. Melanie
snatched a folded towel from the washstand rack
and pressed it against his streaming shoulder and he
smiled up weakly, reassuringly into her face. Scarlett felt Rhett’s hard penetrating eyes upon her, knew
that her heart was plain upon her face, but she did
not care. Ashley was bleeding, perhaps dying and she
who loved him had torn that hole through his shoulder. She wanted to run to the bed, sink down beside
it and clasp him to her but her knees trembled so that
she could not enter the room. Hand at her mouth, she
stared while Melanie packed a fresh towel against his
shoulder, pressing it hard as though she could force
back the blood into his body. But the towel reddened
as though by magic.
How could a man bleed so much and still live? But,
thank God, there was no bubble of blood at his lips–
oh, those frothy red bubbles, forerunners of death that
she knew so well from the dreadful day of the battle
1546
�PART FOUR
at Peachtree Creek when the wounded had died on
Aunt Pitty’s lawn with bloody mouths.
“Brace up,” said Rhett, and there was a hard, faintly
jeering note in his voice. “He won’t die. Now, go take
the lamp and hold it for Mrs. Wilkes. I need Archie to
run errands.”
Archie looked across the lamp at Rhett.
“I ain’t takin’ no orders from you,” he said briefly,
shifting his wad of tobacco to the other cheek.
“You do what he says,” said Melanie sternly, “and
do it quickly. Do everything Captain Butler says.
Scarlett, take the lamp.”
Scarlett went forward and took the lamp, holding
it in both hands to keep from dropping it. Ashley’s
eyes had closed again. His bare chest heaved up
slowly and sank quickly and the red stream seeped
from between Melanie’s small frantic fingers. Dimly
she heard Archie stump across the room to Rhett and
heard Rhett’s low rapid words. Her mind was so
fixed upon Ashley that of the first half-whispered
words of Rhett, she only heard: “Take my horse . .
. tied outside . . . ride like hell.”
Archie mumbled some question and Scarlett heard
Rhett reply: “The old Sullivan plantation. You’ll
find the robes pushed up the biggest chimney. Burn
1547
�PART FOUR
them.”
“Um,” grunted Archie.
“And there’s two–men in the cellar. Pack them over
the horse as best you can and take them to that vacant
lot behind Belle’s–the one between her house and the
railroad tracks. Be careful. If anyone sees you, you’ll
hang as well as the rest of us. Put them in that lot
and put pistols near them–in their hands. Here–take
mine.”
Scarlett, looking across the room, saw Rhett reach
under his coat tails and produce two revolvers which
Archie took and shoved into his waist band.
“Fire one shot from each. It’s got to appear like a
plain case of shooting. You understand?”
Archie nodded as if he understood perfectly and an
unwilling gleam of respect shone in his cold eye. But
understanding was far from Scarlett. The last halfhour had been so nightmarish that she felt nothing
would ever be plain and clear again. However, Rhett
seemed in perfect command of the bewildering situation and that was a small comfort.
Archie turned to go and then swung about and his
one eye went questioningly to Rhett’s face.
“Him?”
1548
�PART FOUR
“Yes.”
Archie grunted and spat on the floor.
“Hell to pay,” he said as he stumped down the hall
to the back door.
Something in the last low interchange of words
made a new fear and suspicion rise up in Scarlett’s
breast like a chill ever-swelling bubble. When that
bubble broke–
“Where’s Frank?” she cried.
Rhett came swiftly across the room to the bed, his
big body swinging as lightly and noiselessly as a cat’s.
“All in good time,” he said and smiled briefly.
“Steady that lamp, Scarlett. You don’t want to burn
Mr. Wilkes up. Miss Melly–”
Melanie looked up like a good little soldier awaiting
a command and so tense was the situation it did not
occur to her that for the first time Rhett was calling
her familiarly by the name which only family and old
friends used.
“I beg your pardon, I mean, Mrs. Wilkes. . . .”
“Oh, Captain Butler, do not ask my pardon! I should
feel honored if you called me ‘Melly’ without the
Miss! I feel as though you were my–my brother or–or
my cousin. How kind you are and how clever! How
1549
�PART FOUR
can I ever thank you enough?”
“Thank you,” said Rhett and for a moment he
looked almost embarrassed. “I should never presume
so far, but Miss Melly,” and his voice was apologetic,
“I’m sorry I had to say that Mr. Wilkes was in Belle
Watling’s house. I’m sorry to have involved him and
the others in such a–a– But I had to think fast when I
rode away from here and that was the only plan that
occurred to me. I knew my word would be accepted
because I have so many friends among the Yankee
officers. They do me the dubious honor of thinking
me almost one of them because they know my–shall
we call it my ‘unpopularity’?–among my townsmen.
And you see, I was playing poker in Belle’s bar earlier in the evening. There are a dozen Yankee soldiers who can testify to that. And Belle and her girls
will gladly lie themselves black in the face and say
Mr. Wilkes and the others were–upstairs all evening.
And the Yankees will believe them. Yankees are queer
that way. It won’t occur to them that women of–their
profession are capable of intense loyalty or patriotism. The Yankees wouldn’t take the word of a single
nice Atlanta lady as to the whereabouts of the men
who were supposed to be at the meeting tonight but
they will take the word of–fancy ladies. And I think
that between the word of honor of a Scallawag and a
1550
�PART FOUR
dozen fancy ladies, we may have a chance of getting
the men off.”
There was a sardonic grin on his face at the last
words but it faded as Melanie turned up to him a face
that blazed with gratitude.
“Captain Butler, you are so smart! I wouldn’t have
cared if you’d said they were in hell itself tonight, if it
saves them! For I know and every one else who matters knows that my husband was never in a dreadful
place like that!”
“Well–” began Rhett awkwardly, “as a matter of fact,
he was at Belle’s tonight.”
Melanie drew herself up coldly.
“You can never make me believe such a lie!”
“Please, Miss Melly! Let me explain! When I got out
to the old Sullivan place tonight, I found Mr. Wilkes
wounded and with him were Hugh Elsing and Dr.
Meade and old man Merriwether–”
“Not the old gentleman!” cried Scarlett.
“Men are never too old to be fools. And your Uncle
Henry–”
“Oh, mercy!” cried Aunt Pitty.
“The others had scattered after the brush with the
troops and the crowd that stuck together had come
1551
�PART FOUR
to the Sullivan place to hide their robes in the chimney and to see how badly Mr. Wilkes was hurt. But
for his wound, they’d be headed for Texas by now–all
of them–but he couldn’t ride far and they wouldn’t
leave him. It was necessary to prove that they had
been somewhere instead of where they had been, and
so I took them by back ways to Belle Watling’s.”
“Oh–I see. I do beg your pardon for my rudeness,
Captain Butler. I see now it was necessary to take
them there but– Oh, Captain Butler, people must have
seen you going in!”
“No one saw us. We went in through a private back
entrance that opens on the railroad tracks. It’s always
dark and locked.”
“Then how–?”
“I have a key,” said Rhett laconically, and his eyes
met Melanie’s evenly.
As the full impact of the meaning smote her,
Melanie became so embarrassed that she fumbled
with the bandage until it slid off the wound entirely.
“I did not mean to pry–” she said in a muffled voice,
her white face reddening, as she hastily pressed the
towel back into place.
“I regret having to tell a lady such a thing.”
1552
�PART FOUR
“Then it’s true!” thought Scarlett with an odd pang.
“Then he does live with that dreadful Watling creature! He does own her house!”
“I saw Belle and explained to her. We gave her a list
of the men who were out tonight and she and her girls
will testify that they were all in her house tonight.
Then to make our exit more conspicuous, she called
the two desperadoes who keep order at her place and
had us dragged downstairs, fighting, and through the
barroom and thrown out into the street as brawling
drunks who were disturbing the place.”
He grinned reminiscently. “Dr. Meade did not make
a very convincing drunk. It hurt his dignity to even
be in such a place. But your Uncle Henry and old
man Merriwether were excellent. The stage lost two
great actors when they did not take up the drama.
They seemed to enjoy the affair. I’m afraid your Uncle
Henry has a black eye due to Mr. Merriwether’s zeal
for his part. He–”
The back door swung open and India entered, followed by old Dr. Dean, his long white hair tumbled,
his worn leather bag bulging under his cape. He nodded briefly but without words to those present and
quickly lifted the bandage from Ashley’s shoulder.
“Too high for the lung,” he said. “If it hasn’t splin1553
�PART FOUR
tered his collar bone it’s not so serious. Get me plenty
of towels, ladies, and cotton if you have it, and some
brandy.”
Rhett took the lamp from Scarlett and set it on the
table as Melanie and India sped about, obeying the
doctor’s orders.
“You can’t do anything here. Come into the parlor by the fire.” He took her arm and propelled her
from the room. There was a gentleness foreign to him
in both hand and voice. “You’ve had a rotten day,
haven’t you?”
She allowed herself to be led into the front room and
though she stood on the hearth rug in front of the fire
she began to shiver. The bubble of suspicion in her
breast was swelling larger now. It was more than a
suspicion. It was almost a certainty and a terrible certainty. She looked up into Rhett’s immobile face and
for a moment she could not speak. Then:
“Was Frank at–Belle Watling’s?”
“No.”
Rhett’s voice was blunt.
“Archie’s carrying him to the vacant lot near Belle’s.
He’s dead. Shot through the head.”
1554
�CHAPTER XLVI
the north end of town slept that
night for the news of the disaster to the Klan, and
Rhett’s stratagem spread swiftly on silent feet as the
shadowy form of India Wilkes slipped through back
yards, whispered urgently through kitchen doors and
slipped away into the windy darkness. And in her
path, she left fear and desperate hope.
From without, houses looked black and silent and
wrapped in sleep but, within, voices whispered vehemently into the dawn. Not only those involved in the
night’s raid but every member of the Klan was ready
for flight and in almost every stable along Peachtree
Street, horses stood saddled in the darkness, pistols
in holsters and food in saddlebags. All that prevented a wholesale exodus was India’s whispered
message: “Captain Butler says not to run. The roads
will be watched. He has arranged with that Watling
creature–” In dark rooms men whispered: “But why
should I trust that damned Scallawag Butler? It may
be a trap!” And women’s voices implored: “Don’t
go! If he saved Ashley and Hugh, he may save everybody. If India and Melanie trust him–” And they half
trusted and stayed because there was no other course
open to them.
F EW
FAMILIES IN
�PART FOUR
Earlier in the night, the soldiers had knocked at a
dozen doors and those who could not or would not
tell where they had been that night were marched off
under arrest. Rene Picard and one of Mrs. Merriwether’s nephews and the Simmons boys and Andy
Bonnell were among those who spent the night in
jail. They had been in the ill- starred foray but had
separated from the others after the shooting. Riding hard for home they were arrested before they
learned of Rhett’s plan. Fortunately they all replied,
to questions, that where they had been that night was
their own business and not that of any damned Yankees. They had been locked up for further questioning in the morning. Old man Merriwether and Uncle
Henry Hamilton declared shamelessly that they had
spent the evening at Belle Watling’s sporting house
and when Captain Jaffery remarked irritably that they
were too old for such goings on, they wanted to fight
him.
Belle Watling herself answered Captain Jaffery’s
summons, and before he could make known his mission she shouted that the house was closed for the
night. A passel of quarrelsome drunks had called
in the early part of the evening and had fought one
another, torn the place up, broken her finest mirrors
and so alarmed the young ladies that all business had
1556
�PART FOUR
been suspended for the night. But if Captain Jaffery
wanted a drink; the bar was still open–
Captain Jaffery, acutely conscious of the grins of his
men and feeling helplessly that he was fighting a mist,
declared angrily that he wanted neither the young
ladies nor a drink and demanded if Belle knew the
names of her destructive customers. Oh, yes, Belle
knew them. They were her regulars. They came every
Wednesday night and called themselves the Wednesday Democrats, though what they meant by that she
neither knew or cared. And if they didn’t pay for the
damage to the mirrors in the upper hall, she was going to have the law on them. She kept a respectable
house and– Oh, their names? Belle unhesitatingly
reeled off the names of twelve under suspicion, Captain Jaffery smiled sourly.
“These damned Rebels are as efficiently organized
as our Secret Service,” he said. “You and your girls
will have to appear before the provost marshal tomorrow.”
“Will the provost make them pay for my mirrors?”
“To hell with your mirrors! Make Rhett Butler pay
for them. He owns the place, doesn’t he?”
Before dawn, every ex-Confederate family in town
knew everything. And their negroes, who had been
1557
�PART FOUR
told nothing, knew everything too, by that black
grapevine telegraph system which defies white understanding. Everyone knew the details of the raid,
the killing of Frank Kennedy and crippled Tommy
Wellburn and how Ashley was wounded in carrying
Frank’s body away.
Some of the feeling of bitter hatred the women bore
Scarlett for her share in the tragedy was mitigated by
the knowledge that her husband was dead and she
knew it and could not admit it and have the poor
comfort of claiming his body. Until morning light
disclosed the bodies and the authorities notified her,
she must know nothing. Frank and Tommy, pistols
in cold hands, lay stiffening among the dead weeds
in a vacant lot. And the Yankees would say they
killed each other in a common drunken brawl over
a girl in Belle’s house. Sympathy ran high for Fanny,
Tommy’s wife, who had just had a baby, but no one
could slip through the darkness to see her and comfort her because a squad of Yankees surrounded the
house, waiting for Tommy to return. And there was
another squad about Aunt Pitty’s house, waiting for
Frank.
Before dawn the news had trickled about that the
military inquiry would take place that day. The
1558
�PART FOUR
townspeople, heavy eyed from sleeplessness and anxious waiting, knew that the safety of some of their
most prominent citizens rested on three things–the
ability of Ashley Wilkes to stand on his feet and appear before the military board, as though he suffered
nothing more serious than a morning-after headache,
the word of Belle Watling that these men had been in
her house all evening and the word of Rhett Butler
that he had been with them.
The town writhed at these last two! Belle Watling!
To owe their men’s lives to her! It was intolerable! Women who had ostentatiously crossed the street
when they saw Belle coming, wondered if she remembered and trembled for fear she did. The men
felt less humiliation at taking their lives from Belle
than the women did, for many of them thought her
a good sort. But they were stung that they must owe
lives and freedom to Rhett Butler, a speculator and
a Scallawag. Belle and Rhett, the town’s best-known
fancy woman and the town’s most hated man. And
they must be under obligation to them.
Another thought that stung them to impotent wrath
was the knowledge that the Yankees and Carpetbaggers would laugh. Oh, how they would laugh!
Twelve of the town’s most prominent citizens re1559
�PART FOUR
vealed as habitual frequenters of Belle Watling’s
sporting house! Two of them killed in a fight over
a cheap little girl, others ejected from the place as too
drunk to be tolerated even by Belle and some under
arrest, refusing to admit they were there when everyone knew they were there!
Atlanta was right in fearing that the Yankees would
laugh. They had squirmed too long beneath Southern coldness and contempt and now they exploded
with hilarity. Officers woke comrades and retailed the
news. Husbands roused wives at dawn and told them
as much as could be decently told to women. And
the women, dressing hastily, knocked on their neighbors’ doors and spread the story. The Yankee ladies
were charmed with it all and laughed until tears ran
down their faces. This was Southern chivalry and
gallantry for you! Maybe those women who carried their heads so high and snubbed all attempts at
friendliness wouldn’t be so uppity, now that everyone
knew where their husbands spent their time when
they were supposed to be at political meetings. Political meetings! Well, that was funny!
But even as they laughed, they expressed regret for
Scarlett and her tragedy. After all, Scarlett was a
lady and one of the few ladies in Atlanta who were
1560
�PART FOUR
nice to Yankees. She had already won their sympathy by the fact that she had to work because her
husband couldn’t or wouldn’t support her properly.
Even though her husband was a sorry one, it was
dreadful that the poor thing should discover he had
been untrue to her. And it was doubly dreadful that
his death should occur simultaneously with the discovery of his infidelity. After all, a poor husband was
better than no husband at all, and the Yankee ladies
decided they’d be extra nice to Scarlett. But the others, Mrs. Meade, Mrs. Merriwether, Mrs. Elsing,
Tommy Wellburn’s widow and most of all, Mrs. Ashley Wilkes, they’d laugh in their faces every time they
saw them. That would teach them a little courtesy.
Much of the whispering that went on in the dark
rooms on the north side of town that night was on this
same subject. Atlanta ladies vehemently told their
husbands that they did not care a rap what the Yankees thought. But inwardly they felt that running an
Indian gantlet would be infinitely preferable to suffering the ordeal of Yankee grins and not being able
to tell the truth about their husbands.
Dr. Meade, beside himself with outraged dignity at
the position into which Rhett had jockeyed him and
the others, told Mrs. Meade that, but for the fact that
1561
�PART FOUR
it would implicate the others, he would rather confess
and be hanged than say he had been at Belle’s house.
“It is an insult to you, Mrs. Meade,” he fumed.
“But everyone will know you weren’t there for–for–
”
“The Yankees won’t know. They’ll have to believe
it if we save our necks. And they’ll laugh. The very
thought that anyone will believe it and laugh infuriates me. And it insults you because–my dear, I have
always been faithful to you.”
“I know that,” and in the darkness Mrs. Meade
smiled and slipped a thin hand into the doctor’s. “But
I’d rather it were really true than have one hair of
your head in danger.”
“Mrs. Meade, do you know what you are saying?”
cried the doctor, aghast at the unsuspected realism of
his wife.
“Yes, I know. I’ve lost Darcy and I’ve lost Phil and
you are all I have and, rather than lose you, I’d have
you take up your permanent abode at that place.”
“You are distrait! You cannot know what you are
saying.”
“You old fool,” said Mrs. Meade tenderly and laid
her head against his sleeve.
1562
�PART FOUR
Dr. Meade fumed into silence and stroked her cheek
and then exploded again. “And to be under obligation to that Butler man! Hanging would be easy compared to that. No, not even if I owe him my life, can I
be polite to him. His insolence is monumental and his
shamelessness about his profiteering makes me boil.
To owe my life to a man who never went in the army–
”
“Melly said he enlisted after Atlanta fell.”
“It’s a lie. Miss Melly will believe any plausible
scoundrel. And what I can’t understand is why he
is doing all this–going to all this trouble. I hate to say
it but–well, there’s always been talk about him and
Mrs. Kennedy. I’ve seen them coming in from rides
together too often this last year. He must have done it
because of her.”
“If it was because of Scarlett, he wouldn’t have lifted
his hand. He’d have been glad to see Frank Kennedy
hanged. I think it’s because of Melly–”
“Mrs. Meade, you can’t be insinuating that there’s
ever been anything between those two!”
“Oh, don’t be silly! But she’s always been unaccountably fond of him ever since he tried to get Ashley exchanged during the war. And I must say this for
him, he never smiles in that nasty-nice way when he’s
1563
�PART FOUR
with her. He’s just as pleasant and thoughtful as can
be–really a different man. You can tell by the way he
acts with Melly that he could be decent if he wanted
to. Now, my idea of why he’s doing all this is–” She
paused. “Doctor, you won’t like my idea.”
“I don’t like anything about this whole affair!”
“Well, I think he did it partly for Melly’s sake but
mostly because he thought it would be a huge joke
on us all. We’ve hated him so much and showed
it so plainly and now he’s got us in a fix where all
of you have your choice of saying you were at that
Watling woman’s house and shaming yourself and
wives before the Yankees–or telling the truth and getting hanged. And he knows we’ll all be under obligation to him and his–mistress and that we’d almost
rather be hanged than be obliged to them. Oh, I’ll wager he’s enjoying it.”
The doctor groaned. “He did look amused when he
took us upstairs in that place.”
“Doctor,” Mrs. Meade hesitated, “what did it look
like?”
“What are you saying, Mrs. Meade?”
“Her house. What did it look like? Are there cutglass chandeliers? And red plush curtains and dozens
of full-length gilt mirrors? And were the girls–were
1564
�PART FOUR
they unclothed?”
“Good God!” cried the doctor, thunderstruck, for
it had never occurred to him that the curiosity of a
chaste woman concerning her unchaste sisters was so
devouring. “How can you ask such immodest questions? You are not yourself. I will mix you a sedative.”
“I don’t want a sedative. I want to know. Oh, dear,
this is my only chance to know what a bad house
looks like and now you are mean enough not to tell
me!”
“I noticed nothing. I assure you I was too embarrassed at finding myself in such a place to take note
of my surroundings,” said the doctor formally, more
upset at this unsuspected revelation of his wife’s character than he had been by all the previous events of
the evening. “If you will excuse me now, I will try to
get some sleep.”
“Well, go to sleep then,” she answered, disappointment in her tones. Then as the doctor leaned over to
remove his boots, her voice spoke from the darkness
with renewed cheerfulness. “I imagine Dolly has gotten it all out of old man Merriwether and she can tell
me about it.”
“Good Heavens, Mrs. Meade! Do you mean to tell
me that nice women talk about such things among
1565
�PART FOUR
them–”
“Oh, go to bed,” said Mrs. Meade.
It sleeted the next day, but as the wintry twilight
drew on the icy particles stopped falling and a cold
wind blew. Wrapped in her cloak, Melanie went bewilderedly down her front walk behind a strange negro coachman who had summoned her mysteriously
to a closed carriage waiting in front of the house. As
she came up to the carriage the door was opened and
she saw a woman in the dim interior.
Leaning closer, peering inside, Melanie questioned:
“Who is it? Won’t you come in the house? It’s so cold–
”
“Please come in here and set with me a minute,
Miz Wilkes,” came a faintly familiar voice, an embarrassed voice from the depths of the carriage.
“Oh, you’re Miss–Mrs.–Watling!” cried Melanie. “I
did so want to see you! You must come in the house.”
“I can’t do that, Miz Wilkes.” Belle Watling’s voice
sounded scandalized. “You come in here and set a
minute with me.”
Melanie entered the carriage and the coachman
closed the door behind her. She sat down beside Belle
and reached for her hand.
1566
�PART FOUR
“How can I ever thank you enough for what you did
today! How can any of us thank you enough!”
“Miz Wilkes, you hadn’t ought of sent me that note
this mornin’. Not that I wasn’t proud to have a note
from you but the Yankees might of got it. And as for
sayin’ you was goin’ to call on me to thank me–why,
Miz Wilkes, you must of lost your mind! The very
idea! I come up here as soon as ‘twas dark to tell
you you mustn’t think of any sech thing. Why, I–why,
you–it wouldn’t be fittin’ at all.”
“It wouldn’t be fitting for me to call and thank a
kind woman who saved my husband’s life?”
“Oh, shucks, Miz Wilkes! You know what I mean!”
Melanie was silent for a moment, embarrassed by
the implication. Somehow this handsome, sedately
dressed woman sitting in the darkness of the carriage
didn’t look and talk as she imagined a bad woman,
the Madam of a House, should look and talk. She
sounded like–well, a little common and countrified
but nice and warm hearted.
“You were wonderful before the provost marshal today, Mrs. Watling! You and the other–your–the young
ladies certainly saved our men’s lives.”
“Mr. Wilkes was the wonderful one. I don’t know
how he even stood up and told his story, much less
1567
�PART FOUR
look as cool as he done. He was sure bleedin’ like a
pig when I seen him last night. Is he goin’ to be all
right, Miz Wilkes?”
“Yes, thank you. The doctor says it’s just a flesh
wound, though he did lose a tremendous lot of blood.
This morning he was–well, he was pretty well laced
with brandy or he’d never have had the strength to
go through with it all so well. But it was you, Mrs.
Watling, who saved them. When you got mad and
talked about the broken mirrors you sounded so–so
convincing.”
“Thank you, Ma’m. But I–I thought Captain Butler done mighty fine too,” said Belle, shy pride in her
voice.
“Oh, he was wonderful!” cried Melanie warmly.
“The Yankees couldn’t help but believe his testimony.
He was so smart about the whole affair. I can never
thank him enough–or you either! How good and kind
you are!”
“Thank you kindly, Miz Wilkes. It was a pleasure to
do it. I–I hope it ain’t goin’ to embarrass you none,
me sayin’ Mr. Wilkes come regular to my place. He
never, you know–”
“Yes, I know. No, it doesn’t embarrass me at all. I’m
just so grateful to you.”
1568
�PART FOUR
“I’ll bet the other ladies ain’t grateful to me,” said
Belle with sudden venom. “And I’ll bet they ain’t
grateful to Captain Butler neither. I’ll bet they’ll hate
him just this much more. I’ll bet you’ll be the only
lady who even says thanks to me. I’ll bet they won’t
even look me in the eye when they see me on the
street. But I don’t care. I wouldn’t of minded if all
their husbands got hung. But I did mind about Mr.
Wilkes. You see I ain’t forgot how nice you was to
me durin’ the war, about the money for the hospital. There ain’t never been a lady in this town nice
to me like you was and I don’t forget a kindness. And
I thought about you bein’ left a widder with a little
boy if Mr. Wilkes got hung and–he’s a nice little boy,
your boy is, Miz Wilkes. I got a boy myself and so I–”
“Oh, you have? Does he live–er–”
“Oh, no’m! He ain’t here in Atlanta. He ain’t never
been here. He’s off at school. I ain’t seen him since
he was little. I– well, anyway, when Captain Butler
wanted me to lie for those men I wanted to know who
the men was and when I heard Mr. Wilkes was one I
never hesitated. I said to my girls, I said, ‘I’ll whale
the livin’ daylights out of you all if you don’t make
a special point of sayin’ you was with Mr. Wilkes all
evenin’.”
1569
�PART FOUR
“Oh!” said Melanie, still more embarrassed by
Belle’s offhand reference to her “girls.” “Oh, that
was–er–kind of you and–of them, too.”
“No more’n you deserve,” said Belle warmly. “But
I wouldn’t of did it for just anybody. If it had been
that Miz Kennedy’s husband by hisself, I wouldn’t of
lifted a finger, no matter what Captain Butler said.”
“Why?”
“Well, Miz Wilkes, people in my business knows a
heap of things. It’d surprise and shock a heap of fine
ladies if they had any notion how much we knows
about them. And she ain’t no good, Miz Wilkes. She
kilt her husband and that nice Wellburn boy, same as
if she shot them. She caused it all, prancin’ about Atlanta by herself, enticin’ niggers and trash. Why, not
one of my girls–”
“You must not say unkind things about my sisterin-law.” Melanie stiffened coldly.
Belle put an eager placating hand on Melanie’s arm
and then hastily withdrew it.
“Don’t freeze me, please, Miz Wilkes. I couldn’t
stand it after you been so kind and sweet to me. I
forgot how you liked her and I’m sorry for what I
said. I’m sorry about poor Mr. Kennedy bein’ dead
too. He was a nice man. I used to buy some of the
1570
�PART FOUR
stuff for my house from him and he always treated
me pleasant. But Miz Kennedy–well, she just ain’t in
the same class with you, Miz Wilkes. She’s a mighty
cold woman and I can’t help it if I think so. . . . When
are they goin’ to bury Mr. Kennedy?”
“Tomorrow morning. And you are wrong about
Mrs. Kennedy. Why, this very minute she’s prostrated with grief.”
“Maybe so,” said Belle with evident disbelief. “Well,
I got to be goin’. I’m afraid somebody might recognize this carriage if I stayed here longer and that
wouldn’t do you no good. And, Miz Wilkes, if you
ever see me on the street, you–you don’t have to
speak to me. I’ll understand.”
“I shall be proud to speak to you. Proud to be under
obligation to you. I hope–I hope we meet again.”
“No,” said Belle. “That wouldn’t be fittin’. Good
night.”
1571
�CHAPTER XLVII
her bedroom, picking at the supper
tray Mammy had brought her, listening to the wind
hurling itself out of the night. The house was frighteningly still, quieter even than when Frank had lain
in the parlor just a few hours before. Then there
had been tiptoeing feet and hushed voices, muffled
knocks on the door, neighbors rustling in to whisper sympathy and occasional sobs from Frank’s sister
who had come up from Jonesboro for the funeral.
But now the house was cloaked in silence. Although
her door was open she could hear no sounds from below stairs. Wade and the baby had been at Melanie’s
since Frank’s body was brought home and she missed
the sound of the boy’s feet and Ella’s gurgling. There
was a truce in the kitchen and no sound of quarreling from Peter, Mammy and Cookie floated up to her.
Even Aunt Pitty, downstairs in the library, was not
rocking her creaking chair in deference to Scarlett’s
sorrow.
No one intruded upon her, believing that she
wished to be left alone with her grief, but to be left
alone was the last thing Scarlett desired. Had it
only been grief that companioned her, she could have
borne it as she had borne other griefs. But, added to
S CARLETT
SAT IN
�PART FOUR
her stunned sense of loss at Frank’s death, were fear
and remorse and the torment of a suddenly awakened
conscience. For the first time in her life she was regretting things she had done, regretting them with a
sweeping superstitious fear that made her cast sidelong glances at the bed upon which she had lain with
Frank.
She had killed Frank. She had killed him just as
surely as if it had been her finger that pulled the trigger. He had begged her not to go about alone but
she had not listened to him. And now he was dead
because of her obstinacy. God would punish her for
that. But there lay upon her conscience another matter that was heavier and more frightening even than
causing his death–a matter which had never troubled
her until she looked upon his coffined face. There
had been something helpless and pathetic in that still
face which had accused her. God would punish her
for marrying him when he really loved Suellen. She
would have to cower at the seat of judgment and answer for that lie she told him coming back from the
Yankee camp in his buggy.
Useless for her to argue now that the end justified
the means, that she was driven into trapping him, that
the fate of too many people hung on her for her to
1573
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consider either his or Suellen’s rights and happiness.
The truth stood out boldly and she cowered away
from it. She had married him coldly and used him
coldly. And she had made him unhappy during the
last six months when she could have made him very
happy. God would punish her for not being nicer to
him–punish her for all her bullyings and proddings
and storms of temper and cutting remarks, for alienating his friends and shaming him by operating the
mills and building the saloon and leasing convicts.
She had made him very unhappy and she knew it,
but he had borne it all like a gentleman. The only
thing she had ever done that gave him any real happiness was to present him with Ella. And she knew
if she could have kept from having Ella, Ella would
never have been born.
She shivered, frightened, wishing Frank were alive,
so she could be nice to him, so very nice to him to
make up for it all. Oh, if only God did not seem so
furious and vengeful! Oh, if only the minutes did not
go by so slowly and the house were not so still! If only
she were not so alone!
If only Melanie were with her, Melanie could calm
her fears. But Melanie was at home, nursing Ashley.
For a moment Scarlett thought of summoning Pitty1574
�PART FOUR
pat to stand between her and her conscience but she
hesitated. Pitty would probably make matters worse,
for she honestly mourned Frank. He had been more
her contemporary than Scarlett’s and she had been
devoted to him. He had filled to perfection Pitty’s
need for “a man in the house,” for he brought her
little presents and harmless gossip, jokes and stories,
read the paper to her at night and explained topics of
the day to her while she mended his socks. She had
fussed over him and planned special dishes for him
and coddled him during his innumerable colds. Now
she missed him acutely and repeated over and over as
she dabbed at her red swollen eyes: “If only he hadn’t
gone out with the Klan!”
If there were only someone who could comfort her,
quiet her fears, explain to her just what were these
confused fears which made her heart sink with such
cold sickness! If only Ashley–but she shrank from the
thought. She had almost killed Ashley, just as she had
killed Frank. And if Ashley ever knew the real truth
about how she lied to Frank to get him, knew how
mean she had been to Frank, he could never love her
any more. Ashley was so honorable, so truthful, so
kind and he saw so straightly, so clearly. If he knew
the whole truth, he would understand. Oh, yes, he
would understand only too well! But he would never
1575
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love her any more. So he must never know the truth
because he must keep on loving her. How could she
live if that secret source of her strength, his love, were
taken from her? But what a relief it would be to put
her head on his shoulder and cry and unburden her
guilty heart!
The still house with the sense of death heavy upon
it pressed about her loneliness until she felt she could
not bear it unaided any longer. She arose cautiously,
pushed her door half-closed and then dug about in
the bottom bureau drawer beneath her underwear.
She produced Aunt Pitty’s “swoon bottle” of brandy
which she had hidden there and held it up to the
lamp. It was nearly half-empty. Surely she hadn’t
drunk that much since last night! She poured a generous amount into her water glass and gulped it down.
She would have to put the bottle back in the cellaret
before morning, filled to the top with water. Mammy
had hunted for it, just before the funeral when the
pallbearers wanted a drink, and already the air in the
kitchen was electric with suspicion between Mammy,
Cookie and Peter.
The brandy burned with fiery pleasantness. There
was nothing like it when you needed it. In fact,
brandy was good almost any time, so much better
1576
�PART FOUR
than insipid wine. Why on earth should it be proper
for a woman to drink wine and not spirits? Mrs.
Merriwether and Mrs. Meade had sniffed her breath
most obviously at the funeral and she had seen the
triumphant look they had exchanged. The old cats!
She poured another drink. It wouldn’t matter if she
did get a little tipsy tonight for she was going to bed
soon and she could gargle cologne before Mammy
came up to unlace her. She wished she could get as
completely and thoughtlessly drunk as Gerald used
to get on Court Day. Then perhaps she could forget
Frank’s sunken face accusing her of ruining his life
and then killing him.
She wondered if everyone in town thought she had
killed him. Certainly the people at the funeral had
been cold to her. The only people who had put any
warmth into their expressions of sympathy were the
wives of the Yankee officers with whom she did business. Well, she didn’t care what the town said about
her. How unimportant that seemed beside what she
would have to answer for to God!
She took another drink at the thought, shuddering
as the hot brandy went down her throat. She felt
very warm now but still she couldn’t get the thought
of Frank out of her mind. What fools men were
1577
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when they said liquor made people forget! Unless she
drank herself into insensibility, she’d still see Frank’s
face as it had looked the last time he begged her not
to drive alone, timid, reproachful, apologetic.
The knocker on the front door hammered with a dull
sound that made the still house echo and she heard
Aunt Pitty’s waddling steps crossing the hall and the
door opening. There was the sound of greeting and
an indistinguishable murmur. Some neighbor calling to discuss the funeral or to bring a blanc mange.
Pitty would like that. She had taken an important
and melancholy pleasure in talking to the condolence
callers.
She wondered incuriously who it was and, when
a man’s voice, resonant and drawling, rose above
Pitty’s funereal whispering, she knew. Gladness and
relief flooded her. It was Rhett. She had not seen him
since he broke the news of Frank’s death to her, and
now she knew, deep in her heart, that he was the one
person who could help her tonight.
“I think she’ll see me,” Rhett’s voice floated up to
her.
“But she is lying down now, Captain Butler, and
won’t see anyone. Poor child, she is quite prostrated.
She–”
1578
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“I think she will see me. Please tell her I am going
away tomorrow and may be gone some time. It’s very
important.”
“But–” fluttered Aunt Pittypat.
Scarlett ran out into the hall, observing with some
astonishment that her knees were a little unsteady,
and leaned over the banisters.
“I’ll be down terrectly, Rhett,” she called.
She had a glimpse of Aunt Pittypat’s plump upturned face, her eyes owlish with surprise and disapproval. Now it’ll be all over town that I conducted
myself most improperly on the day of my husband’s
funeral, thought Scarlett, as she hurried back to her
room and began smoothing her hair. She buttoned
her black basque up to the chin and pinned down the
collar with Pittypat’s mourning brooch. I don’t look
very pretty she thought, leaning toward the mirror,
too white and scared. For a moment her hand went
toward the lock box where she kept her rouge hidden but she decided against it. Poor Pittypat would
be upset in earnest if she came downstairs pink and
blooming. She picked up the cologne bottle and took
a large mouthful, carefully rinsed her mouth and then
spit into the slop jar.
She rustled down the stairs toward the two who still
1579
�PART FOUR
stood in the hall, for Pittypat had been too upset by
Scarlett’s action to ask Rhett to sit down. He was
decorously clad in black, his linen frilly and starched,
and his manner was all that custom demanded from
an old friend paying a call of sympathy on one bereaved. In fact, it was so perfect that it verged on
the burlesque, though Pittypat did not see it. He was
properly apologetic for disturbing Scarlett and regretted that in his rush of closing up business before leaving town he had been unable to be present at the funeral.
“Whatever possessed him to come?” wondered
Scarlett. “He doesn’t mean a word he’s saying.”
“I hate to intrude on you at this time but I have a
matter of business to discuss that will not wait. Something that Mr. Kennedy and I were planning–”
“I didn’t know you and Mr. Kennedy had business
dealings,” said Aunt Pittypat, almost indignant that
some of Frank’s activities were unknown to her.
“Mr. Kennedy was a man of wide interests,” said
Rhett respectfully. “Shall we go into the parlor?”
“No!” cried Scarlett. glancing at the closed folding
doors. She could still see the coffin in that room. She
hoped she never had to enter it again. Pitty, for once,
took a hint, although with none too good grace.
1580
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“Do use the library. I must–I must go upstairs and
get out the mending. Dear me, I’ve neglected it so this
last week. I declare–”
She went up the stairs with a backward look of
reproach which was noticed by neither Scarlett nor
Rhett. He stood aside to let her pass before him into
the library.
“What business did you and Frank have?” she questioned abruptly.
He came closer and whispered. “None at all. I just
wanted to get Miss Pitty out of the way.” He paused
as he leaned over her. “It’s no good, Scarlett.”
“What?”
“The cologne.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m sure you do. You’ve been drinking pretty heavily.”
“Well, what if I have? Is it any of your business?”
“The soul of courtesy, even in the depths of sorrow. Don’t drink alone, Scarlett. People always find
it out and it ruins the reputation. And besides, it’s a
bad business, this drinking alone. What’s the matter,
honey?”
He led her to the rosewood sofa and she sat down in
1581
�PART FOUR
silence.
“May I close the doors?”
She knew if Mammy saw the closed doors she
would be scandalized and would lecture and grumble about it for days, but it would be still worse if
Mammy should overhear this discussion of drinking,
especially in light of the missing brandy bottle. She
nodded and Rhett drew the sliding doors together.
When he came back and sat down beside her, his dark
eyes alertly searching her face, the pall of death receded before the vitality he radiated and the room
seemed pleasant and homelike again, the lamps rosy
and warm.
“What’s the matter, honey?”
No one in the world could say that foolish word
of endearment as caressingly as Rhett, even when he
was joking, but he did not look as if he were joking
now. She raised tormented eyes to his face and somehow found comfort in the blank inscrutability she saw
there. She did not know why this should be, for he
was such an unpredictable, callous person. Perhaps
it was because, as he often said, they were so much
alike. Sometimes she thought that all the people she
had ever known were strangers except Rhett.
“Can’t you tell me?” he took her hand, oddly gentle.
1582
�PART FOUR
“It’s more than old Frank leaving you? Do you need
money?”
“Money? God, no! Oh, Rhett, I’m so afraid.”
“Don’t be a goose, Scarlett, you’ve never been afraid
in your life.”
“Oh, Rhett, I am afraid!”
The words bubbled up faster than she could speak
them. She could tell him. She could tell Rhett anything. He’d been so bad himself that he wouldn’t
sit in judgment on her. How wonderful to know
someone who was bad and dishonorable and a cheat
and a liar, when all the world was filled with people
who would not lie to save their souls and who would
rather starve than do a dishonorable deed!
“I’m afraid I’ll die and go to hell.”
If he laughed at her she would die, right then. But
he did not laugh.
“You are pretty healthy–and maybe there isn’t any
hell after all.”
“Oh, but there is, Rhett! You know there is!”
“I know there is but it’s right here on earth. Not after
we die. There’s nothing after we die, Scarlett. You are
having your hell now.”
“Oh, Rhett, that’s blasphemous!”
1583
�PART FOUR
“But singularly comforting. Tell me, why are you
going to hell?”
He was teasing now, she could see the glint in his
eyes but she did not mind. His hands felt so warm
and strong, so comforting to cling to.
“Rhett, I oughtn’t to have married Frank. It was
wrong. He was Suellen’s beau and he loved her, not
me. But I lied to him and told him she was going to
marry Tony Fontaine. Oh, how could I have done it?”
“Ah, so that was how it came about! I always wondered.”
“And then I made him so miserable. I made him do
all sorts of things he didn’t want to do, like making
people pay their bills when they really couldn’t afford
to pay them. And it hurt him so when I ran the mills
and built the saloon and leased convicts. He could
hardly hold up his head for shame. And Rhett, I killed
him. Yes, I did! I didn’t know he was in the Klan.
I never dreamed he had that much gumption. But I
ought to have known. And I killed him.”
“‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
clean from my hand?”’
“What?”
“No matter. Go on.”
1584
�PART FOUR
“Go on? That’s all. Isn’t it enough? I married him,
I made him unhappy and I killed him. Oh, my God!
I don’t see how I could have done it! I lied to him
and I married him. It all seemed so right when I did
it but now I see how wrong it was. Rhett, it doesn’t
seem like it was me who did all these things. I was so
mean to him but I’m not really mean. I wasn’t raised
that way. Mother–” She stopped and swallowed. She
had avoided thinking of Ellen all day but she could
no longer blot out her image.
“I often wondered what she was like. You seemed
to me so like your father.”
“Mother was– Oh, Rhett, for the first time I’m glad
she’s dead, so she can’t see me. She didn’t raise me
to be mean. She was so kind to everybody, so good.
She’d rather I’d have starved than done this. And I so
wanted to be just like her in every way and I’m not
like her one bit. I hadn’t thought of that–there’s been
so much else to think about–but I wanted to be like
her. I didn’t want to be like Pa. I loved him but he
was–so–so thoughtless. Rhett, sometimes I did try so
hard to be nice to people and kind to Frank, but then
the nightmare would come back and scare me so bad
I’d want to rush out and just grab money away from
people, whether it was mine or not.”
1585
�PART FOUR
Tears were streaming unheeded down her face and
she clutched his hand so hard that her nails dug into
his flesh.
“What nightmare?” His voice was calm and soothing.
“Oh–I forgot you didn’t know. Well, just when I
would try to be nice to folks and tell myself that
money wasn’t everything, I’d go to bed and dream
that I was back at Tara right after Mother died, right
after the Yankees went through. Rhett, you can’t
imagine–I get cold when I think about it. I can see
how everything is burned and so still and there’s
nothing to eat. Oh, Rhett, in my dream I’m hungry
again.”
“Go on.”
“I’m hungry and everybody, Pa and the girls and
the darkies, are starving and they keep saying over
and over: ‘We’re hungry’ and I’m so empty it hurts,
and so frightened. My mind keeps saying: ‘If I ever
get out of this, I’ll never, never be hungry again’ and
then the dream goes off into a gray mist and I’m running, running in the mist, running so hard my heart’s
about to burst and something is chasing me, and I
can’t breathe but I keep thinking that if I can just get
there, I’ll be safe. But I don’t know where I’m trying
1586
�PART FOUR
to get to. And then I’d wake up and I’d be cold with
fright and so afraid that I’d be hungry again. When
I wake up from that dream, it seems like there’s not
enough money in the world to keep me from being
afraid of being hungry again. And then Frank would
be so mealy mouthed and slow poky that he would
make me mad and I’d lose my temper. He didn’t
understand, I guess, and I couldn’t make him understand. I kept thinking that I’d make it up to him some
day when we had money and I wasn’t so afraid of
being hungry. And now he’s dead and it’s too late.
Oh, it seemed so right when I did it but it was all so
wrong. If I had it to do over again, I’d do it so differently.”
“Hush,” he said, disentangling her frantic grip and
pulling a clean handkerchief from his pocket. “Wipe
your face. There is no sense in your tearing yourself
to pieces this way.”
She took the handkerchief and wiped her damp
cheeks, a little relief stealing over her as if she had
shifted some of her burden to his broad shoulders. He
looked so capable and calm and even the slight twist
of his mouth was comforting as though it proved her
agony and confusion unwarranted.
“Feel better now? Then let’s get to the bottom of
1587
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this. You say if you had it to do over again, you’d do
it differently. But would you? Think, now. Would
you?”
“Well–”
“No, you’d do the same things again. Did you have
any other choice?”
“No.”
“Then what are you sorry about?”
“I was so mean and now he’s dead.”
“And if he wasn’t dead, you’d still be mean. As I
understand it, you are not really sorry for marrying
Frank and bullying him and inadvertently causing his
death. You are only sorry because you are afraid of
going to hell. Is that right?”
“Well–that sounds so mixed up.”
“Your ethics are considerably mixed up too. You are
in the exact position of a thief who’s been caught red
handed and isn’t sorry he stole but is terribly, terribly
sorry he’s going to jail.”
“A thief–”
“Oh, don’t be so literal! In other words if you didn’t
have this silly idea that you were damned to hell fire
eternal, you’d think you were well rid of Frank.”
“Oh, Rhett!”
1588
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“Oh, come! You are confessing and you might as
well confess the truth as a decorous lie. Did your–
er–conscience bother you much when you offered to–
shall we say–part with that jewel which is dearer than
life for three hundred dollars?”
The brandy was spinning in her head now and she
felt giddy and a little reckless. What was the use in
lying to him? He always seemed to read her mind.
“I really didn’t think about God much then–or hell.
And when I did think–well, I just reckoned God
would understand.”
“But you don’t credit God with understanding why
you married Frank?”
“Rhett, how can you talk so about God when you
know you don’t believe there is one?”
“But you believe in a God of Wrath and that’s what’s
important at present. Why shouldn’t the Lord understand? Are you sorry you still own Tara and there
aren’t Carpetbaggers living there? Are you sorry you
aren’t hungry and ragged?”
“Oh, no!”
“Well, did you have any alternative except marrying
Frank?”
“No.”
1589
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“He didn’t have to marry you, did he? Men are free
agents. And he didn’t have to let you bully him into
doing things he didn’t want to, did he?”
“Well–”
“Scarlett, why worry about it? If you had it to do
over again you would be driven to the lie and he to
marrying you. You would still have run yourself into
danger and he would have had to avenge you. If he
had married Sister Sue, she might not have caused
his death but she’d probably have made him twice
as unhappy as you did. It couldn’t have happened
differently.”
“But I could have been nicer to him.”
“You could have been–if you’d been somebody else.
But you were born to bully anyone who’ll let you do
it. The strong were made to bully and the weak to
knuckle under. It’s all Frank’s fault for not beating
you with a buggy whip. . . . I’m surprised at you,
Scarlett, for sprouting a conscience this late in life.
Opportunists like you shouldn’t have them.”
“What is an oppor–what did you call it?”
“A person who takes advantage of opportunities.”
“Is that wrong?”
“It has always been held in disrepute–especially by
1590
�PART FOUR
those who had the same opportunities and didn’t take
them.”
“Oh, Rhett, you are joking and I thought you were
going to be nice!”
“I am being nice–for me. Scarlett, darling, you are
tipsy. That’s what’s the matter with you.”
“You dare–”
“Yes, I dare. You are on the verge of what is vulgarly called a ‘crying jag’ and so I shall change the
subject and cheer you up by telling you some news
that will amuse you. In fact, that’s why I came here
this evening, to tell you my news before I went away.”
“Where are you going?”
“To England and I may be gone for months. Forget your conscience, Scarlett. I have no intention of
discussing your soul’s welfare any further. Don’t you
want to hear my news?”
“But–” she began feebly and paused. Between the
brandy which was smoothing out the harsh contours of remorse and Rhett’s mocking but comforting words, the pale specter of Frank was receding into
shadows. Perhaps Rhett was right. Perhaps God did
understand. She recovered enough to push the idea
from the top of her mind and decide: “I’ll think about
it all tomorrow.”
1591
�PART FOUR
“What’s your news?” she said with an effort, blowing her nose on his handkerchief and pushing back
the hair that had begun to straggle.
“My news is this,” he answered, grinning down at
her. “I still want you more than any woman I’ve ever
seen and now that Frank’s gone, I thought you’d be
interested to know it.”
Scarlett jerked her hands away from his grasp and
sprang to her feet.
“I–you are the most ill-bred man in the world, coming here at this time of all times with your filthy–I
should have known you’d never change. And Frank
hardly cold! If you had any decency– Will you leave
this–”
“Do be quiet or you’ll have Miss Pittypat down here
in a minute,” he said, not rising but reaching up and
taking both her fists. “I’m afraid you miss my point.”
“Miss your point? I don’t miss anything.” She
pulled against his grip. “Turn me loose and get out
of here. I never heard of such bad taste. I–”
“Hush,” he said. “I am asking you to marry me.
Would you be convinced if I knelt down?”
She said “Oh” breathlessly and sat down hard on
the sofa.
1592
�PART FOUR
She stared at him, her mouth open, wondering if the
brandy were playing tricks on her mind, remembering senselessly his jibing: “My dear, I’m not a marrying man.” She was drunk or he was crazy. But he did
not look crazy. He looked as calm as though he were
discussing the weather, and his smooth drawl fell on
her ears with no particular emphasis.
“I always intended having you, Scarlett, since that
first day I saw you at Twelve Oaks when you threw
that vase and swore and proved that you weren’t a
lady. I always intended having you, one way or another. But as you and Frank have made a little money,
I know you’ll never be driven to me again with any
interesting propositions of loans and collaterals. So I
see I’ll have to marry you.”
“Rhett Butler, is this one of your vile jokes?”
“I bare my soul and you are suspicious! No, Scarlett,
this is a bona fide honorable declaration. I admit that
it’s not in the best of taste, coming at this time, but I
have a very good excuse for my lack of breeding. I’m
going away tomorrow for a long time and I fear that
if I wait till I return you’ll have married some one else
with a little money. So I thought, why not me and my
money? Really, Scarlett, I can’t go all my life, waiting
to catch you between husbands.”
1593
�PART FOUR
He meant it. There was no doubt about it. Her
mouth was dry as she assimilated this knowledge and
she swallowed and looked into his eyes, trying to find
some clue. They were full of laughter but there was
something else, deep in them, which she had never
seen before, a gleam that defied analysis. He sat easily, carelessly but she felt that he was watching her
as alertly as a cat watches a mouse hole. There was
a sense of leashed power straining beneath his calm
that made her draw back, a little frightened.
He was actually asking her to marry him; he was
committing the incredible. Once she had planned
how she would torment him should he ever propose.
Once she had thought that if he ever spoke those
words she would humble him and make him feel her
power and take a malicious pleasure in doing it. Now,
he had spoken and the plans did not even occur to
her, for he was no more in her power than he had ever
been. In fact, he held the whip hand of the situation
so completely that she was as flustered as a girl at her
first proposal and she could only blush and stammer.
“I–I shall never marry again.”
“Oh, yes, you will. You were born to be married.
Why not me?”
“But Rhett, I–I don’t love you.”
1594
�PART FOUR
“That should be no drawback. I don’t recall that
love was prominent in your other two ventures.”
“Oh, how can you? You know I was fond of Frank!”
He said nothing.
“I was! I was!”
“Well, we won’t argue that. Will you think over my
proposition while I’m gone?”
“Rhett, I don’t like for things to drag on. I’d rather
tell you now. I’m going home to Tara soon and India Wilkes will stay with Aunt Pittypat. I want to go
home for a long spell and–I–I don’t ever want to get
married again.”
“Nonsense. Why?”
“Oh, well–never mind why. I just don’t like being
married.”
“But, my poor child, you’ve never really been married. How can you know? I’ll admit you’ve had bad
luck–once for spite and once for money. Did you ever
think of marrying–just for the fun of it?”
“Fun! Don’t talk like a fool. There’s no fun being
married.”
“No? Why not?”
A measure of calm had returned and with it all the
natural bluntness which brandy brought to the sur1595
�PART FOUR
face.
“It’s fun for men–though God knows why. I never
could understand it. But all a woman gets out of it is
something to eat and a lot of work and having to put
up with a man’s foolishness–and a baby every year.”
He laughed so loudly that the sound echoed in the
stillness and Scarlett heard the kitchen door open.
“Hush! Mammy has ears like a lynx and it isn’t decent to laugh so soon after–hush laughing. You know
it’s true. Fun! Fiddle-dee- dee!”
“I said you’d had bad luck and what you’ve just said
proves it. You’ve been married to a boy and to an old
man. And into the bargain I’ll bet your mother told
you that women must bear ‘these things’ because of
the compensating joys of motherhood. Well, that’s all
wrong. Why not try marrying a fine young man who
has a bad reputation and a way with women? It’ll be
fun.”
“You are coarse and conceited and I think this conversation has gone far enough. It’s–it’s quite vulgar.”
“And quite enjoyable, too, isn’t it? I’ll wager you
never discussed the marital relation with a man before, even Charles or Frank.”
She scowled at him. Rhett knew too much. She
wondered where he had learned all he knew about
1596
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women. It wasn’t decent.
“Don’t frown. Name the day, Scarlett. I’m not urging instant matrimony because of your reputation.
We’ll wait the decent interval. By the way, just how
long is a ‘decent interval’?”
“I haven’t said I’d marry you. It isn’t decent to even
talk of such things at such a time.”
“I’ve told you why I’m talking of them. I’m going
away tomorrow and I’m too ardent a lover to restrain
my passion any longer. But perhaps I’ve been too precipitate in my wooing.”
With a suddenness that startled her, he slid off the
sofa onto his knees and with one hand placed delicately over his heart, he recited rapidly:
“Forgive me for startling you with the impetuosity
of my sentiments, my dear Scarlett–I mean, my dear
Mrs. Kennedy. It cannot have escaped your notice
that for some time past the friendship I have had in
my heart for you has ripened into a deeper feeling, a
feeling more beautiful, more pure, more sacred. Dare
I name it you? Ah! It is love which makes me so
bold!”
“Do get up,” she entreated. “You look such a fool
and suppose Mammy should come in and see you?”
“She would be stunned and incredulous at the first
1597
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signs of my gentility,” said Rhett, arising lightly.
“Come, Scarlett, you are no child, no schoolgirl to
put me off with foolish excuses about decency and so
forth. Say you’ll marry me when I come back or, before God, I won’t go. I’ll stay around here and play a
guitar under your window every night and sing at the
top of my voice and compromise you, so you’ll have
to marry me to save your reputation.”
“Rhett, do be sensible. I don’t want to marry anybody.”
“No? You aren’t telling me the real reason. It can’t
be girlish timidity. What is it?”
Suddenly she thought of Ashley, saw him as vividly
as though he stood beside her, sunny haired, drowsy
eyed, full of dignity, so utterly different from Rhett.
He was the real reason she did not want to marry
again, although she had no objections to Rhett and
at times was genuinely fond of him. She belonged
to Ashley, forever and ever. She had never belonged
to Charles or Frank, could never really belong to
Rhett. Every part of her, almost everything she had
ever done, striven after, attained, belonged to Ashley, were done because she loved him. Ashley and
Tara, she belonged to them. The smiles, the laughter,
the kisses she had given Charles and Frank were Ash1598
�PART FOUR
ley’s, even though he had never claimed them, would
never claim them. Somewhere deep in her was the
desire to keep herself for him, although she knew he
would never take her.
She did not know that her face had changed, that
reverie had brought a softness to her face which Rhett
had never seen before. He looked at the slanting
green eyes, wide and misty, and the tender curve of
her lips and for a moment his breath stopped. Then
his mouth went down violently at one corner and he
swore with passionate impatience.
“Scarlett O’Hara, you’re a fool!”
Before she could withdraw her mind from its far
places, his arms were around her, as sure and hard
as on the dark road to Tara, so long ago. She felt
again the rush of helplessness, the sinking yielding,
the surging tide of warmth that left her limp. And the
quiet face of Ashley Wilkes was blurred and drowned
to nothingness. He bent back her head across his arm
and kissed her, softly at first, and then with a swift
gradation of intensity that made her cling to him as
the only solid thing in a dizzy swaying world. His
insistent mouth was parting her shaking lips, sending wild tremors along her nerves, evoking from her
sensations she had never known she was capable of
1599
�PART FOUR
feeling. And before a swimming giddiness spun her
round and round, she knew that she was kissing him
back.
“Stop–please, I’m faint!” she whispered, trying to
turn her head weakly from him. He pressed her head
back hard against his shoulder and she had a dizzy
glimpse of his face. His eyes were wide and blazing
queerly and the tremor in his arms frightened her.
“I want to make you faint. I will make you faint.
You’ve had this coming to you for years. None of the
fools you’ve known have kissed you like this–have
they? Your precious Charles or Frank or your stupid
Ashley–”
“Please–”
“I said your stupid Ashley. Gentlemen all–what do
they know about women? What did they know about
you? I know you.”
His mouth was on hers again and she surrendered
without a struggle, too weak even to turn her head,
without even the desire to turn it, her heart shaking
her with its poundings, fear of his strength and her
nerveless weakness sweeping her. What was he going
to do? She would faint if he did not stop. If he would
only stop–if he would never stop.
“Say Yes!” His mouth was poised above hers and
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�PART FOUR
his eyes were so close that they seemed enormous,
filling the world. “Say Yes, damn you, or–”
She whispered “Yes” before she even thought. It
was almost as if he had willed the word and she had
spoken it without her own volition. But even as she
spoke it, a sudden calm fell on her spirit, her head began to stop spinning and even the giddiness of the
brandy was lessened. She had promised to marry
him when she had had no intention of promising. She
hardly knew how it had all come about but she was
not sorry. It now seemed very natural that she had
said Yes–almost as if by divine intervention, a hand
stronger than hers was about her affairs, settling her
problems for her.
He drew a quick breath as she spoke and bent as if
to kiss her again and her eyes closed and her head fell
back. But he drew back and she was faintly disappointed. It made her feel so strange to be kissed like
this and yet there was something exciting about it.
He sat very still for a while holding her head against
his shoulder and, as if by effort, the trembling of
his arms ceased. He moved away from her a little
and looked down at her. She opened her eyes and
saw that the frightening glow had gone from his face.
But somehow she could not meet his gaze and she
1601
�PART FOUR
dropped her eyes in a rush of tingling confusion.
When he spoke his voice was very calm.
“You meant it? You don’t want to take it back?”
“No.”
“It’s not just because I’ve–what is the phrase?–
‘swept you off your feet’ by my–er–ardor?”
She could not answer for she did not know what to
say, nor could she meet his eyes. He put a hand under
her chin and lifted her face.
“I told you once that I could stand anything from
you except a lie. And now I want the truth. Just why
did you say Yes?”
Still the words would not come, but, a measure of
poise returning, she kept her eyes demurely down
and tucked the corners of her mouth into a little smile.
“Look at me. Is it my money?”
“Why, Rhett! What a question!”
“Look up and don’t try to sweet talk me. I’m not
Charles or Frank or any of the County boys to be
taken in by your fluttering lids. Is it my money?”
“Well–yes, a part.”
“A part?”
He did not seem annoyed. He drew a swift breath
and with an effort wiped from his eyes the eagerness
1602
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her words had brought, an eagerness which she was
too confused to see.
“Well,” she floundered helplessly, “money does
help, you know, Rhett, and God knows Frank didn’t
leave any too much. But then– well, Rhett, we do
get on, you know. And you are the only man I ever
saw who could stand the truth from a woman, and it
would be nice having a husband who didn’t think me
a silly fool and expect me to tell lies–and–well, I am
fond of you.”
“Fond of me?”
“Well,” she said fretfully, “if I said I was madly in
love with you, I’d be lying and what’s more, you’d
know it.”
“Sometimes I think you carry your truth telling too
far, my pet. Don’t you think, even if it was a lie, that
it would be appropriate for you to say ‘I love you,
Rhett,’ even if you didn’t mean it?”
What was he driving at, she wondered, becoming
more confused. He looked so queer, eager, hurt,
mocking. He took his hands from her and shoved
them deep in his trousers pockets and she saw him
ball his fists.
“If it costs me a husband, I’ll tell the truth,” she
thought grimly, her blood up as always when he
1603
�PART FOUR
baited her.
“Rhett, it would be a lie, and why should we go
through all that foolishness? I’m fond of you, like I
said. You know how it is. You told me once that you
didn’t love me but that we had a lot in common. Both
rascals, was the way you–”
“Oh, God!” he whispered rapidly, turning his head
away. “To be taken in my own trap!”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” and he looked at her and laughed, but it
was not a pleasant laugh. “Name the day, my dear,”
and he laughed again and bent and kissed her hands.
She was relieved to see his mood pass and good humor apparently return, so she smiled too.
He played with her hand for a moment and grinned
up at her.
“Did you ever in your novel reading come across the
old situation of the disinterested wife falling in love
with her own husband?”
“You know I don’t read novels,” she said and, trying to equal his jesting mood, went on: “Besides, you
once said it was the height of bad form for husbands
and wives to love each other.”
“I once said too God damn many things,” he re1604
�PART FOUR
torted abruptly and rose to his feet.
“Don’t swear.”
“You’ll have to get used to it and learn to swear too.
You’ll have to get used to all my bad habits. That’ll be
part of the price of being–fond of me and getting your
pretty paws on my money.”
“Well, don’t fly off the handle so, because I didn’t lie
and make you feel conceited. You aren’t in love with
me, are you? Why should I be in love with you?”
“No, my dear, I’m not in love with you, no more
than you are with me, and if I were, you would be the
last person I’d ever tell. God help the man who ever
really loves you. You’d break his heart, my darling,
cruel, destructive little cat who is so careless and confident she doesn’t even trouble to sheathe her claws.”
He jerked her to her feet and kissed her again, but
this time his lips were different for he seemed not to
care if he hurt her– seemed to want to hurt her, to
insult her. His lips slid down to her throat and finally
he pressed them against the taffeta over her breast, so
hard and so long that his breath burnt to her skin. Her
hands struggled up, pushing him away in outraged
modesty.
“You mustn’t! How dare you!”
“Your heart’s going like a rabbit’s,” he said mock1605
�PART FOUR
ingly. “All too fast for mere fondness I would think, if
I were conceited. Smooth your ruffled feathers. You
are just putting on these virginal airs. Tell me what
I shall bring you from England. A ring? What kind
would you like?”
She wavered momentarily between interest in his
last words and a feminine desire to prolong the scene
with anger and indignation.
“Oh–a diamond ring–and Rhett, do buy a great big
one.”
“So you can flaunt it before your poverty-stricken
friends and say ‘See what I caught!’ Very well,
you shall have a big one, one so big that your lessfortunate friends can comfort themselves by whispering that it’s really vulgar to wear such large stones.”
He abruptly started off across the room and she followed him, bewildered, to the closed doors.
“What is the matter? Where are you going?”
“To my rooms to finish packing.”
“Oh, but–”
“But, what?”
“Nothing. I hope you have a nice trip.”
“Thank you.”
He opened the door and walked into the hall. Scar1606
�PART FOUR
lett trailed after him, somewhat at a loss, a trifle disappointed as at an unexpected anticlimax. He slipped
on his coat and picked up his gloves and hat.
“I’ll write you. Let me know if you change your
mind.”
“Aren’t you–”
“Well?” He seemed impatient to be off.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me good-by?” she whispered, mindful of the ears of the house.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough kissing for one
evening?” he retorted and grinned down at her. “To
think of a modest, well- brought-up young woman–
Well, I told you it would be fun, didn’t I?”
“Oh, you are impossible!” she cried in wrath, not
caring if Mammy did hear. “And I don’t care if you
never come back.”
She turned and flounced toward the stairs, expecting to feel his warm hand on her arm, stopping her.
But he only pulled open the front door and a cold
draft swept in.
“But I will come back,” he said and went out, leaving her on the bottom step looking at the closed door.
The ring Rhett brought back from England was large
indeed, so large it embarrassed Scarlett to wear it. She
1607
�PART FOUR
loved gaudy and expensive jewelry but she had an
uneasy feeling that everyone was saying, with perfect truth, that this ring was vulgar. The central stone
was a four-carat diamond and, surrounding it, were
a number of emeralds. It reached to the knuckle of
her finger and gave her hand the appearance of being
weighted down. Scarlett had a suspicion that Rhett
had gone to great pains to have the ring made up and,
for pure meanness, had ordered it made as ostentatious as possible.
Until Rhett was back in Atlanta and the ring on her
finger she told no one, not even her family, of her intentions, and when she did announce her engagement
a storm of bitter gossip broke out. Since the Klan affair Rhett and Scarlett had been, with the exception
of the Yankees and Carpetbaggers, the town’s most
unpopular citizens. Everyone had disapproved of
Scarlett since the far-away day when she abandoned
the weeds worn for Charlie Hamilton. Their disapproval had grown stronger because of her unwomanly conduct in the matter of the mills, her immodesty in showing herself when she was pregnant and
so many other things. But when she brought about
the death of Frank and Tommy and jeopardized the
lives of a dozen other men, their dislike flamed into
public condemnation.
1608
�PART FOUR
As for Rhett, he had enjoyed the town’s hatred since
his speculations during the war and he had not further endeared himself to his fellow citizens by his alliances with the Republicans since then. But, oddly
enough, the fact that he had saved the lives of some
of Atlanta’s most prominent men was what aroused
the hottest hate of Atlanta’s ladies.
It was not that they regretted their men were still
alive. It was that they bitterly resented owing the
men’s lives to such a man as Rhett and to such an embarrassing trick. For months they had writhed under Yankee laughter and scorn, and the ladies felt
and said that if Rhett really had the good of the
Klan at heart he would have managed the affair in
a more seemly fashion. They said he had deliberately
dragged in Belle Watling to put the nice people of the
town in a disgraceful position. And so he deserved
neither thanks for rescuing the men nor forgiveness
for his past sins.
These women, so swift to kindness, so tender to the
sorrowing, so untiring in times of stress, could be as
implacable as furies to any renegade who broke one
small law of their unwritten code. This code was simple. Reverence for the Confederacy, honor to the veterans, loyalty to old forms, pride in poverty, open
1609
�PART FOUR
hands to friends and undying hatred to Yankees. Between them, Scarlett and Rhett had outraged every
tenet of this code.
The men whose lives Rhett had saved attempted,
out of decency and a sense of gratitude, to keep their
women silent but they had little success. Before the
announcement of their coming marriage, the two had
been unpopular enough but people could still be polite to them in a formal way. Now even that cold
courtesy was no longer possible. The news of their
engagement came like an explosion, unexpected and
shattering, rocking the town, and even the mildestmannered women spoke their minds heatedly. Marrying barely a year after Frank’s death and she had
killed him! And marrying that Butler man who
owned a brothel and who was in with the Yankees
and Carpetbaggers in all kinds of thieving schemes!
Separately the two of them could be endured, but
the brazen combination of Scarlett and Rhett was too
much to be borne. Common and vile, both of them!
They ought to be run out of town!
Atlanta might perhaps have been more tolerant toward the two if the news of their engagement had
not come at a time when Rhett’s Carpetbagger and
Scallawag cronies were more odious in the sight of
1610
�PART FOUR
respectable citizens than they had ever been before.
Public feeling against the Yankees and all their allies was at fever heat at the very time when the
town learned of the engagement, for the last citadel
of Georgia’s resistance to Yankee rule had just fallen.
The long campaign which had begun when Sherman
moved southward from above Dalton, four years before, had finally reached its climax, and the state’s humiliation was complete.
Three years of Reconstruction had passed and they
had been three years of terrorism. Everyone had
thought that conditions were already as bad as they
could ever be. But now Georgia was discovering that
Reconstruction at its worst had just begun.
For three years the Federal government had been
trying to impose alien ideas and an alien rule upon
Georgia and, with an army to enforce its commands,
it had largely succeeded. But only the power of the
military upheld the new regime. The state was under
the Yankee rule but not by the state’s consent. Georgia’s leaders had kept on battling for the state’s right
to govern itself according to its own ideas. They had
continued resisting all efforts to force them to bow
down and accept the dictates of Washington as their
own state law.
1611
�PART FOUR
Officially, Georgia’s government had never capitulated but it had been a futile fight, an ever-losing fight.
It was a fight that could not win but it had, at least,
postponed the inevitable. Already many other Southern states had illiterate negroes in high public office
and legislatures dominated by negroes and Carpetbaggers. But Georgia, by its stubborn resistance, had
so far escaped this final degradation. For the greater
part of three years, the state’s capitol had remained in
the control of white men and Democrats. With Yankee soldiers everywhere, the state officials could do
little but protest and resist. Their power was nominal
but they had at least been able to keep the state government in the hands of native Georgians. Now even
that last stronghold had fallen.
Just as Johnston and his men had been driven back
step by step from Dalton to Atlanta, four years before, so had the Georgia Democrats been driven back
little by little, from 1865 on. The power of the Federal government over the state’s affairs and the lives
of its citizens had been steadily made greater and
greater. Force had been piled on top of force and
military edicts in increasing numbers had rendered
the civil authority more and more impotent. Finally,
with Georgia in the status of a military province, the
polls had been ordered thrown open to the negroes,
1612
�PART FOUR
whether the state’s laws permitted it or not.
A week before Scarlett and Rhett announced their
engagement, an election for governor had been held.
The Southern Democrats had General John B. Gordon, one of Georgia’s best loved and most honored
citizens, as their candidate. Opposing him was a
Republican named Bullock. The election had lasted
three days instead of one. Trainloads of negroes
had been rushed from town to town, voting at every
precinct along the way. Of course, Bullock had won.
If the capture of Georgia by Sherman had caused bitterness, the final capture of the state’s capitol by the
Carpetbaggers, Yankees and negroes caused an intensity of bitterness such as the state had never known
before. Atlanta and Georgia seethed and raged.
And Rhett Butler was a friend of the hated Bullock!
Scarlett, with her usual disregard of all matters not
directly under her nose, had scarcely known an election was being held. Rhett had taken no part in the
election and his relations with the Yankees were no
different from what they had always been. But the
fact remained that Rhett was a Scallawag and a friend
of Bullock. And, if the marriage went through, Scarlett also would be turning Scallawag. Atlanta was in
no mood to be tolerant or charitable toward anyone
1613
�PART FOUR
in the enemy camp and, the news of the engagement
coming when it did, the town remembered all of the
evil things about the pair and none of the good.
Scarlett knew the town was rocking but she did not
realize the extent of public feeling until Mrs. Merriwether, urged on by her church circle, took it upon
herself to speak to her for her own good.
“Because your own dear mother is dead and Miss
Pitty, not being a matron, is not qualified to–er, well,
to talk to you upon such a subject, I feel that I must
warn you, Scarlett, Captain Butler is not the kind of
a man for any woman of good family to marry. He is
a–”
“He managed to save Grandpa Merriwether’s neck
and your nephew’s, too.”
Mrs. Merriwether swelled. Hardly an hour before
she had had an irritating talk with Grandpa. The
old man had remarked that she must not value his
hide very much if she did not feel some gratitude to
Rhett Butler, even if the man was a Scallawag and a
scoundrel.
“He only did that as a dirty trick on us all, Scarlett,
to embarrass us in front of the Yankees,” Mrs. Merriwether continued. “You know as well as I do that
the man is a rogue. He always has been and now he’s
1614
�PART FOUR
unspeakable. He is simply not the kind of man decent
people receive.”
“No? That’s strange, Mrs. Merriwether. He was
in your parlor often enough during the war. And he
gave Maybelle her white satin wedding dress, didn’t
he? Or is my memory wrong?”
“Things are so different during the war and nice
people associated with many men who were not
quite– It was all for the Cause and very proper, too.
Surely you can’t be thinking of marrying a man who
wasn’t in the army, who jeered at men who did enlist?”
“He was, too, in the army. He was in the army eight
months. He was in the last campaign and fought at
Franklin and was with General Johnston when he surrendered.”
“I had not heard that,” said Mrs. Merriwether and
she looked as if she did not believe it either. “But he
wasn’t wounded,” she added, triumphantly.
“Lots of men weren’t.”
“Everybody who was anybody got wounded. I
know no one who wasn’t wounded.”
Scarlett was goaded.
“Then I guess all the men you knew were such fools
1615
�PART FOUR
they didn’t know when to come in out of a shower of
rain–or of minie balls. Now, let me tell you this, Mrs.
Merriwether, and you can take it back to your busybody friends. I’m going to marry Captain Butler and
I wouldn’t care if he’d fought on the Yankee side.”
When that worthy matron went out of the house
with her bonnet jerking with rage, Scarlett knew she
had an open enemy now instead of a disapproving
friend. But she did not care. Nothing Mrs. Merriwether could say or do could hurt her. She did not
care what anyone said–anyone except Mammy.
Scarlett had borne with Pitty’s swooning at the news
and had steeled herself to see Ashley look suddenly
old and avoid her eyes as he wished her happiness.
She had been amused and irritated at the letters from
Aunt Pauline and Aunt Eulalie in Charleston, horror
struck at the news, forbidding the marriage, telling
her it would not only ruin her social position but endanger theirs. She had even laughed when Melanie
with a worried pucker in her brows said loyally: “Of
course, Captain Butler is much nicer than most people realize and he was so kind and clever, the way he
saved Ashley. And after all, he did fight for the Confederacy. But, Scarlett, don’t you think you’d better
not decide so hastily?”
1616
�PART FOUR
No, she didn’t mind what anybody said, except
Mammy. Mammy’s words were the ones that made
her most angry and brought the greatest hurt.
“Ah has seed you do a heap of things dat would hu’t
Miss Ellen, did she know. An’ it has done sorrered me
a plen’y. But disyere is de wust yit. Mahyin’ trash!
Yas’m, Ah said trash! Doan go tellin’ me he come
frum fine folkses. Dat doan mek no diffunce. Trash
come outer de high places, same as de low, and he
trash! Yas’m, Miss Scarlett, Ah’s seed you tek Mist’
Charles ‘way frum Miss Honey w’en you din’ keer
nuthin’ ‘bout him. An’ Ah’s seed you rob yo own sister of Mist’ Frank. An’ Ah’s heshed mah mouf ‘bout
a heap of things you is done, lak sellin’ po’ lumber fer
good, an’ lyin’ ‘bout de other lumber gempmums, an’
ridin’ roun’ by yo’seff, exposin’ yo’seff ter free issue
niggers an’ gettin’ Mist’ Frank shot, an’ not feedin’
dem po’ convicts nuff ter keep dey souls in dey bodies. Ah’s done heshed mah mouf, even ef Miss Ellen
in de Promise Lan’ wuz sayin’ ‘Mammy, Mammy!
You ain’ look affer mah chile right!’ Yas’m. Ah’s stood
fer all dat but Ah ain’ gwine stand fer dis, Miss Scarlett. You kain mahy wid trash. Not w’ile Ah got breaf
in mah body.”
“I shall marry whom I please,” said Scarlett coldly.
1617
�PART FOUR
“I think you are forgetting your place, Mammy.”
“An’ high time, too! Ef Ah doan say dese wuds ter
you, who gwine ter do it?”
“I’ve been thinking the matter over, Mammy, and
I’ve decided that the best thing for you to do is to go
back to Tara. I’ll give you some money and–”
Mammy drew herself up with all her dignity.
“Ah is free, Miss Scarlett. You kain sen’ me nowhar
Ah doan wanter go. An’ w’en Ah goes back ter Tara,
it’s gwine be w’en you goes wid me. Ah ain’ gwine
leave Miss Ellen’s chile, an’ dar ain’ no way in de
worl’ ter mek me go. An’ Ah ain’ gwine leave Miss
Ellen’s gran’chillun fer no trashy step-pa ter bring up,
needer. Hyah Ah is and hyah Ah stays!”
“I will not have you staying in my house and being
rude to Captain Butler. I am going to marry him and
there’s no more to be said.”
“Dar is plen’y mo’ ter be said,” retorted Mammy
slowly and into her blurred old eyes there came the
light of battle.
“But Ah ain’ never thought ter say it ter none of Miss
Ellen’s blood. But, Miss Scarlett, lissen ter me. You
ain’ nuthin’ but a mule in hawse harness. You kin
polish a mule’s feet an’ shine his hide an’ put brass all
over his harness an’ hitch him ter a fine cah’ige. But
1618
�PART FOUR
he a mule jes’ de same. He doan fool nobody. An’
you is jes’ de same. You got silk dresses an’ de mills
an’ de sto’ an’ de money, an’ you give yo’seff airs lak a
fine hawse, but you a mule jes’ de same. An’ you ain’
foolin’ nobody, needer. An’ dat Butler man, he come
of good stock and he all slicked up lak a race hawse,
but he a mule in hawse harness, jes’ lak you.”
Mammy bent a piercing look on her mistress. Scarlett was speechless and quivering with insult.
“Ef you say you gwine mahy him, you gwine do it,
‘cause you is bullhaided lak yo’ pa. But ‘member dis,
Miss Scarlett, Ah ain’ leavin’ you. Ah gwine stay right
hyah an’ see dis ting thoo.”
Without waiting for a reply, Mammy turned and left
Scarlett and if she had said: “Thou shalt see me at
Philippi!” her tones would not have been more ominous.
While they were honeymooning in New Orleans
Scarlett told Rhett of Mammy’s words. To her surprise and indignation he laughed at Mammy’s statement about mules in horse harness.
“I have never heard a profound truth expressed so
succinctly,” he said. “Mammy’s a smart old soul and
one of the few people I know whose respect and good
will I’d like to have. But, being a mule, I suppose I’ll
1619
�PART FOUR
never get either from her. She even refused the tendollar gold piece which I, in my groomlike fervor,
wished to present her after the wedding. I’ve seen
so few people who did not melt at the sight of cash.
But she looked me in the eye and thanked me and
said she wasn’t a free issue nigger and didn’t need
my money.”
“Why should she take on so? Why should everybody gabble about me like a bunch of guinea hens?
It’s my own affair whom I marry and how often I
marry. I’ve always minded my own business. Why
don’t other people mind theirs?”
“My pet, the world can forgive practically anything
except people who mind their own business. But why
should you squall like a scalded cat? You’ve said often enough that you didn’t mind what people said
about you. Why not prove it? You know you’ve laid
yourself open to criticism so often in small matters,
you can’t expect to escape gossip in this large matter. You knew there’d be talk if you married a villain
like me. If I were a low-bred poverty-stricken villain,
people wouldn’t be so mad. But a rich, flourishing
villain–of course, that’s unforgivable.”
“I wish you’d be serious sometimes!”
“I am serious. It’s always annoying to the godly
1620
�PART FOUR
when the ungodly flourish like the green bay tree.
Cheer up, Scarlett, didn’t you tell me once that the
main reason you wanted a lot of money was so you
could tell everybody to go to hell? Now’s your
chance.”
“But you were the main one I wanted to tell to go to
hell,” said Scarlett, and laughed.
“Do you still want to tell me to go to hell?”
“Well, not as often as I used to.”
“Do it whenever you like, if it makes you happy.”
“It doesn’t make me especially happy,” said Scarlett
and, bending, she kissed him carelessly. His dark eyes
flickered quickly over her face, hunting for something
in her eyes which he did not find, and he laughed
shortly.
“Forget about Atlanta. Forget about the old cats. I
brought you to New Orleans to have fun and I intend
that you shall have it.”
1621
�PART FIVE
1622
�CHAPTER XLVIII
fun, more fun than she had had since
the spring before the war. New Orleans was such
a strange, glamorous place and Scarlett enjoyed it
with the headlong pleasure of a pardoned life prisoner. The Carpetbaggers were looting the town, many
honest folk were driven from their homes and did
not know where to look for their next meal, and
a negro sat in the lieutenant governor’s chair. But
the New Orleans Rhett showed her was the gayest
place she had ever seen. The people she met seemed
to have all the money they wanted and no cares at
all. Rhett introduced her to dozens of women, pretty
women in bright gowns, women who had soft hands
that showed no signs of hard work, women who
laughed at everything and never talked of stupid serious things or hard times. And the men she met–
how thrilling they were! And how different from Atlanta men–and how they fought to dance with her,
and paid her the most extravagant compliments as
though she were a young belle.
These men had the same hard reckless look Rhett
wore. Their eyes were always alert, like men who
have lived too long with danger to be ever quite careless. They seemed to have no pasts or futures, and
S HE
DID HAVE
�PART FIVE
they politely discouraged Scarlett when, to make conversation, she asked what or where they were before they came to New Orleans. That, in itself, was
strange, for in Atlanta every respectable newcomer
hastened to present his credentials, to tell proudly of
his home and family, to trace the tortuous mazes of
relationship that stretched over the entire South.
But these men were a taciturn lot, picking their
words carefully. Sometimes when Rhett was alone
with them and Scarlett in the next room, she heard
laughter and caught fragments of conversation that
meant nothing to her, scraps of words, puzzling
names–Cuba and Nassau in the blockade days, the
gold rush and claim jumping, gun running and filibustering, Nicaragua and William Walker and how he
died against a wall at Truxillo. Once her sudden entrance abruptly terminated a conversation about what
had happened to the members of Quantrill’s band
of guerillas, and she caught the names of Frank and
Jesse James.
But they were all well mannered, beautifully tailored, and they evidently admired her, so it mattered
little to Scarlett that they chose to live utterly in the
present. What really mattered was that they were
Rhett’s friends and had large houses and fine car1624
�PART FIVE
riages, and they took her and Rhett driving, invited
them to suppers, gave parties in their honor. And
Scarlett like them very well. Rhett was amused when
she told him so.
“I thought you would,” he said and laughed.
“Why not?” her suspicions aroused as always by his
laughter.
“They’re all second-raters, black sheep, rascals.
They’re all adventurers or Carpetbag aristocrats.
They all made their money speculating in food like
your loving husband or out of dubious government
contracts or in shady ways that won’t bear investigation.”
“I don’t believe it. You’re teasing. They’re the nicest
people . . .”
“The nicest people in town are starving,” said Rhett.
“And living politely in hovels, and I doubt if I’d be
received in those hovels. You see, my dear, I was engaged in some of my nefarious schemes here during
the war and these people have devilish long memories! Scarlett, you are a constant joy to me. You
unerringly manage to pick the wrong people and the
wrong things.”
“But they are your friends!”
“Oh, but I like rascals. My early youth was spent as
1625
�PART FIVE
a gambler on a river boat and I can understand people
like that. But I’m not blind to what they are. Whereas
you”–he laughed again–“you have no instinct about
people, no discrimination between the cheap and the
great. Sometimes, I think that the only great ladies
you’ve ever associated with were your mother and
Miss Melly and neither seems to have made any impression on you.”
“Melly! Why she’s as plain as an old shoe and
her clothes always look tacky and she never has two
words to say for herself!”
“Spare me your jealousy, Madam. Beauty doesn’t
make a lady, nor clothes a great lady!”
“Oh, don’t they! Just you wait, Rhett Butler, and I’ll
show you. Now that I’ve–we’ve got money, I’m going
to be the greatest lady you ever saw!”
“I shall wait with interest,” he said.
More exciting than the people she met were the
frocks Rhett bought her, superintending the choice of
colors, materials and designs himself. Hoops were
out now, and the new styles were charming with the
skirts pulled back from the front and draped over
bustles, and on the bustles were wreaths of flowers
and bows and cascades of lace. She thought of the
modest hoops of the war years and she felt a little em1626
�PART FIVE
barrassed at these new skirts which undeniably outlined her abdomen. And the darling little bonnets
that were not really bonnets at all, but flat little affairs
worn over one eye and laden with fruits and flowers,
dancing plumes and fluttering ribbons! (If only Rhett
had not been so silly and burned the false curls she
bought to augment her knot of Indian-straight hair
that peeked from the rear of these little hats!) And
the delicate convent-made underwear! How lovely
it was and how many sets she had! Chemises and
nightgowns and petticoats of the finest linen trimmed
with dainty embroidery and infinitesimal tucks. And
the satin slippers Rhett bought her! They had heels
three inches high and huge glittering paste buckles
on them. And silk stockings, a dozen pairs and not a
one had cotton tops! What riches!
She recklessly bought gifts for the family. A furry St.
Bernard puppy for Wade, who had always longed for
one, a Persian kitten for Beau, a coral bracelet for little
Ella, a heavy necklace with moonstone pendants for
Aunt Pitty, a complete set of Shakespeare for Melanie
and Ashley, an elaborate livery for Uncle Peter, including a high silk coachman’s hat with a brush upon
it, dress lengths for Dilcey and Cookie, expensive gifts
for everyone at Tara.
1627
�PART FIVE
“But what have you bought for Mammy?” questioned Rhett, looking over the pile of gifts spread out
on the bed in their hotel room, and removing the
puppy and kitten to the dressing room.
“Not a thing. She was hateful. Why should I bring
her a present when she called us mules?”
“Why should you so resent hearing the truth, my
pet? You must bring Mammy a present. It would
break her heart if you didn’t–and hearts like hers are
too valuable to be broken.”
“I won’t take her a thing. She doesn’t deserve it.”
“Then I’ll buy her one. I remember my mammy always said that when she went to Heaven she wanted
a taffeta petticoat so stiff that it would stand by itself
and so rustly that the Lord God would think it was
made of angels’ wings. I’ll buy Mammy some red
taffeta and have an elegant petticoat made.”
“She won’t take it from you. She’d die rather than
wear it.”
“I don’t doubt it. But I’ll make the gesture just the
same.”
The shops of New Orleans were so rich and exciting and shopping with Rhett was an adventure.
Dining with him was an adventure too, and one
more thrilling than shopping, for he knew what to
1628
�PART FIVE
order and how it should be cooked. The wines
and liqueurs and champagnes of New Orleans were
new and exhilarating to her, acquainted with only
homemade blackberry and scuppernong vintages
and Aunt Pitty’s “swoon” brandy; but oh, the food
Rhett ordered! Best of all things in New Orleans was
the food. Remembering the bitter hungry days at
Tara and her more recent penury, Scarlett felt that she
could never eat enough of these rich dishes. Gumboes and shrimp Creole, doves in wine and oysters
in crumbly patties full of creamy sauce, mushrooms
and sweetbreads and turkey livers, fish baked cunningly in oiled paper and limes. Her appetite never
dulled, for whenever she remembered the everlasting
goobers and dried peas and sweet potatoes at Tara,
she felt an urge to gorge herself anew of Creole dishes.
“You eat as though each meal were your last,” said
Rhett. “Don’t scrape the plate, Scarlett. I’m sure
there’s more in the kitchen. You have only to ask the
waiter. If you don’t stop being such a glutton, you’ll
be as fat as the Cuban ladies and then I shall divorce
you.”
But she only put out her tongue at him and ordered
another pastry, thick with chocolate and stuffed with
meringue.
1629
�PART FIVE
What fun it was to be able to spend as much money
as you liked and not count pennies and feel that you
should save them to pay taxes or buy mules. What
fun to be with people who were gay and rich and not
genteelly poor like Atlanta people. What fun to wear
rustling brocade dresses that showed your waist and
all your neck and arms and more than a little of your
breast and know that men were admiring you. And
what fun to eat all you wanted without having censorious people say you weren’t ladylike. And what
fun to drink all the champagne you pleased. The first
time she drank too much, she was embarrassed when
she awoke the next morning with a splitting headache
and an awful memory of singing “Bonnie Blue Flag”
all the way back to the hotel, through the streets of
New Orleans, in an open carriage. She had never
seen a lady even tipsy, and the only drunken woman
she had ever seen had been that Watling creature on
the day when Atlanta fell. She hardly knew how to
face Rhett, so great was her humiliation, but the affair seemed only to amuse him. Everything she did
seemed to amuse him, as though she were a gamboling kitten.
It was exciting to go out with him for he was so
handsome. Somehow she had never given his looks a
thought before, and in Atlanta everyone had been too
1630
�PART FIVE
preoccupied with his shortcomings ever to talk about
his appearance. But here in New Orleans she could
see how the eyes of other women followed him and
how they fluttered when he bent over their hands.
The realization that other women were attracted by
her husband, and perhaps envied her, made her suddenly proud to be seen by his side.
“Why, we’re a handsome people,” thought Scarlett
with pleasure.
Yes, as Rhett had prophesied, marriage could be a
lot of fun. Not only was it fun but she was learning
many things. That was odd in itself, because Scarlett
had thought life could teach her no more. Now she
felt like a child, every day on the brink of a new discovery.
First, she learned that marriage with Rhett was a far
different matter from marriage with either Charles or
Frank. They had respected her and been afraid of her
temper. They had begged for favors and if it pleased
her, she had bestowed them. Rhett did not fear her
and, she often thought, did not respect her very much
either. What he wanted to do, he did, and if she did
not like it, he laughed at her. She did not love him but
he was undoubtedly an exciting person to live with.
The most exciting thing about him was that even in
1631
�PART FIVE
his outbursts of passion which were flavored sometimes with cruelty, sometimes with irritating amusement, he seemed always to be holding himself under
restraint, always riding his emotions with a curb bit.
“I guess that’s because he isn’t really in love with
me,” she thought and was content enough with the
state of affairs. “I should hate for him to ever turn
completely loose in any way.” But still the thought of
the possibility teased her curiosity in an exciting way.
Living with Rhett, she learned many new things
about him, and she had thought she knew him so
well. She learned that his voice could be as silky as
a cat’s fur one moment and crisp and crackling with
oaths the next. He could tell, with apparent sincerity and approval, stories of courage and honor and
virtue and love in the odd places he had been, and follow them with ribald stories of coldest cynicism. She
knew no man should tell such stories to his wife but
they were entertaining and they appealed to something coarse and earthy in her. He could be an ardent, almost a tender, lover for a brief while, and almost immediately a mocking devil who ripped the lid
from her gunpowder temper, fired it and enjoyed the
explosion. She learned that his compliments were always two edged and his tenderest expressions open
1632
�PART FIVE
to suspicion. In fact, in those two weeks in New Orleans, she learned everything about him except what
he really was.
Some mornings he dismissed the maid and brought
her the breakfast tray himself and fed her as though
she were a child, took the hairbrush from her hand
and brushed her long dark hair until it snapped and
crackled. Yet other mornings she was torn rudely out
of deep slumber when he snatched all the bed covers from her and tickled her bare feet. Sometimes he
listened with dignified interest to details of her businesses, nodding approval at her sagacity, and at other
times he called her somewhat dubious tradings scavenging, highway robbery and extortion. He took her
to plays and annoyed her by whispering that God
probably didn’t approve of such amusements, and to
churches and, sotto voce, retailed funny obscenities
and then reproved her for laughing. He encouraged
her to speak her mind, to be flippant and daring. She
picked up from him the gift of stinging words and
sardonic phrases and learned to relish using them for
the power they gave her over other people. But she
did not possess his sense of humor which tempered
his malice, nor his smile that jeered at himself even
while he was jeering others.
1633
�PART FIVE
He made her play and she had almost forgotten
how. Life had been so serious and so bitter. He knew
how to play and swept her along with him. But he
never played like a boy; he was a man and no matter what he did, she could never forget it. She could
not look down on him from the heights of womanly
superiority, smiling as women have always smiled at
the antics of men who are boys at heart.
This annoyed her a little, whenever she thought of
it. It would be pleasant to feel superior to Rhett. All
the other men she had known she could dismiss with
a half-contemptuous “What a child!” Her father, the
Tarleton twins with their love of teasing and their
elaborate practical jokes, the hairy little Fontaines
with their childish rages, Charles, Frank, all the men
who had paid court to her during the war–everyone,
in fact, except Ashley. Only Ashley and Rhett eluded
her understanding and her control for they were both
adults, and the elements of boyishness were lacking
in them.
She did not understand Rhett, nor did she trouble to
understand him, though there were things about him
which occasionally puzzled her. There was the way
he looked at her sometimes, when he thought she was
unaware. Turning quickly she frequently caught him
1634
�PART FIVE
watching her, an alert, eager, waiting look in his eyes.
“Why do you look at me like that?” she once asked
irritably. “Like a cat at a mouse hole!”
But his face had changed swiftly and he only
laughed. Soon she forgot it and did not puzzle her
head about it any more, or about anything concerning Rhett. He was too unpredictable to bother about
and life was very pleasant–except when she thought
of Ashley.
Rhett kept her too busy to think of Ashley often.
Ashley was hardly ever in her thoughts during the
day but at night when she was tired from dancing or
her head was spinning from too much champagne–
then she thought of Ashley. Frequently when she lay
drowsily in Rhett’s arms with the moonlight streaming over the bed, she thought how perfect life would
be if it were only Ashley’s arms which held her so
closely, if it were only Ashley who drew her black hair
across his face and wrapped it about his throat.
Once when she was thinking this, she sighed and
turned her head toward the window, and after a moment she felt the heavy arm beneath her neck become like iron, and Rhett’s voice spoke in the stillness: “May God damn your cheating little soul to hell
for all eternity!”
1635
�PART FIVE
And, getting up, he put on his clothes and left the
room despite her startled protests and questions. He
reappeared the next morning as she was breakfasting
in her room, disheveled, quite drunk and in his worst
sarcastic mood, and neither made excuses nor gave
an account of his absence.
Scarlett asked no questions and was quite cool to
him, as became an injured wife, and when she had finished the meal, she dressed under his bloodshot gaze
and went shopping. He was gone when she returned
and did not appear again until time for supper.
It was a silent meal and Scarlett’s temper was straining because it was her last supper in New Orleans
and she wanted to do justice to the crawfish. And she
could not enjoy it under his gaze. Nevertheless she
ate a large one, and drank a quantity of champagne.
Perhaps it was this combination that brought back her
old nightmare that evening, for she awoke, cold with
sweat, sobbing brokenly. She was back at Tara again
and Tara was desolate. Mother was dead and with her
all the strength and wisdom of the world. Nowhere
in the world was there anyone to turn to, anyone to
rely upon. And something terrifying was pursuing
her and she was running, running till her heart was
bursting, running in a thick swimming fog, crying
1636
�PART FIVE
out, blindly seeking that nameless, unknown haven
of safety that was somewhere in the mist about her.
Rhett was leaning over her when she woke, and
without a word he picked her up in his arms like a
child and held her close, his hard muscles comforting,
his wordless murmuring soothing, until her sobbing
ceased.
“Oh, Rhett. I was so cold and so hungry and so tired
and I couldn’t find it. I ran through the mist and I ran
but I couldn’t find it.”
“Find what, honey?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did know.”
“Is it your old dream?”
“Oh, yes!”
He gently placed her on the bed, fumbled in the
darkness and lit a candle. In the light his face with
bloodshot eyes and harsh lines was as unreadable as
stone. His shirt, opened to the waist, showed a brown
chest covered with thick black hair. Scarlett, still shaking with fright, thought how strong and unyielding
that chest was, and she whispered: “Hold me, Rhett.”
“Darling!” he said swiftly, and picking her up he sat
down in a large chair, cradling her body against him.
“Oh, Rhett, it’s awful to be hungry.”
1637
�PART FIVE
“It must be awful to dream of starvation after a
seven-course dinner including that enormous crawfish.” He smiled but his eyes were kind.
“Oh, Rhett, I just run and run and hunt and I can’t
ever find what it is I’m hunting for. It’s always hidden
in the mist. I know if I could find it, I’d be safe forever
and ever and never be cold or hungry again.”
“Is it a person or a thing you’re hunting?”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it. Rhett, do
you think I’ll ever dream that I get there to safety?”
“No,” he said, smoothing her tumbled hair, “I don’t.
Dreams aren’t like that. But I do think that if you get
used to being safe and warm and well fed in your everyday life, you’ll stop dreaming that dream. And,
Scarlett, I’m going to see that you are safe.”
“Rhett, you are so nice.”
“Thanks for the crumbs from your table, Mrs. Dives.
Scarlett, I want you to say to yourself every morning
when you wake up: ‘I can’t ever be hungry again and
nothing can ever touch me so long as Rhett is here and
the United States government holds out.”’
“The United States government?” she questioned,
sitting up, startled, tears still on her cheeks.
“The ex-Confederate money has now become an
1638
�PART FIVE
honest woman. I invested most of it in government
bonds.”
“God’s nightgown!” cried Scarlett, sitting up in his
lap, forgetful of her recent terror. “Do you mean to
tell me you’ve loaned your money to the Yankees?”
“At a fair per cent.”
“I don’t care if it’s a hundred percent! You must sell
them immediately. The idea of letting the Yankees
have the use of your money!”
“And what must I do with it?” he questioned with a
smile, noting that her eyes were no longer wide with
fright.
“Why–why buy property at Five Points. I’ll bet
you could buy all of Five Points with the money you
have.”
“Thank you, but I wouldn’t have Five Points. Now
that the Carpetbagger government has really gotten
control of Georgia, there’s no telling what may happen. I wouldn’t put anything beyond the swarm
of buzzards that’s swooping down on Georgia now
from north, east, south and west. I’m playing along
with them, you understand, as a good Scallawag
should do, but I don’t trust them. And I’m not putting
my money in real estate. I prefer bonds. You can hide
them. You can’t hide real estate very easily.”
1639
�PART FIVE
“Do you think–” she began, paling as she thought of
the mills and store.
“I don’t know. But don’t look so frightened, Scarlett.
Our charming new governor is a good friend of mine.
It’s just that times are too uncertain now and I don’t
want much of my money tied up in real estate.”
He shifted her to one knee and, leaning back,
reached for a cigar and lit it. She sat with her bare feet
dangling, watching the play of muscles on his brown
chest, her terrors forgotten.
“And while we are on the subject of real estate, Scarlett,” he said, “I am going to build a house. You might
have bullied Frank into living in Miss Pitty’s house,
but not me. I don’t believe I could bear her vaporings
three times a day and, moreover, I believe Uncle Peter
would assassinate me before he would let me live under the sacred Hamilton roof. Miss Pitty can get Miss
India Wilkes to stay with her and keep the bogyman
away. When we get back to Atlanta we are going to
stay in the bridal suite of the National Hotel until our
house is finished. Before we left Atlanta I was dickering for that big lot on Peachtree, the one near the
Leyden house. You know the one I mean?”
“Oh, Rhett, how lovely! I do so want a house of my
own. A great big one!”
1640
�PART FIVE
“Then at last we are agreed on something. What
about a white stucco with wrought-iron work like
these Creole houses here?”
“Oh, no, Rhett. Not anything old fashioned like
these New Orleans houses. I know just what I want.
It’s the newest thing because I saw a picture of it in–let
me see–it was in that Harper’s Weekly I was looking
at. It was modeled after a Swiss chalet.”
“A Swiss what?”
“A chalet.”
“Spell it.”
She complied.
“Oh,” he said and stroked his mustache.
“It was lovely. It had a high mansard roof with a
picket fence on top and a tower made of fancy shingles at each end. And the towers had windows with
red and blue glass in them. It was so stylish looking.”
“I suppose it had jigsaw work on the porch banisters?”
“Yes.”
“And a fringe of wooden scrollwork hanging from
the roof of the porch?”
“Yes. You must have seen one like it.”
1641
�PART FIVE
“I have–but not in Switzerland. The Swiss are a
very intelligent race and keenly alive to architectural
beauty. Do you really want a house like that?”
“Oh, yes!”
“I had hoped that association with me might improve your taste. Why not a Creole house or a Colonial with six white columns?”
“I tell you I don’t want anything tacky and oldfashioned looking. And inside let’s have red wall paper and red velvet portieres over all the folding doors
and oh, lots of expensive walnut furniture and grand
thick carpets and–oh, Rhett, everybody will be pea
green when they see our house!”
“It is very necessary that everyone shall be envious?
Well, if you like they shall be green. But, Scarlett, has
it occurred to you that it’s hardly in good taste to furnish the house on so lavish a scale when everyone is
so poor?”
“I want it that way,” she said obstinately. “I want
to make everybody who’s been mean to me feel bad.
And we’ll give big receptions that’ll make the whole
town wish they hadn’t said such nasty things.”
“But who will come to our receptions?”
“Why, everybody, of course.”
1642
�PART FIVE
“I doubt it. The Old Guard dies but it never surrenders.”
“Oh, Rhett, how you run on! If you’ve got money,
people always like you.”
“Not Southerners.
It’s harder for speculators’
money to get into the best parlors than for the
camel to go through the needle’s eye. And as for
Scallawags–that’s you and me, my pet–we’ll be lucky
if we aren’t spit upon. But if you’d like to try, I’ll back
you, my dear, and I’m sure I shall enjoy your campaign intensely. And while we are on the subject of
money, let me make this clear to you. You can have all
the cash you want for the house and all you want for
your fal-lals. And if you like jewelry, you can have it
but I’m going to pick it out. You have such execrable
taste, my pet. And anything you want for Wade or
Ella. And if Will Benteen can’t make a go of the cotton, I’m willing to chip in and help out on that white
elephant in Clayton County that you love so much.
That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”
“Of course. You’re very generous.”
“But listen closely. Not one cent for the store and not
one cent for that kindling factory of yours.”
“Oh,” said Scarlett, her face falling. All during the
honeymoon she had been thinking how she could
1643
�PART FIVE
bring up the subject of the thousand dollars she
needed to buy fifty feet more of land to enlarge her
lumber yard.
“I thought you always bragged about being broad
minded and not caring what people said about my
running a business, and you’re just like every other
man–so afraid people will say I wear the pants in the
family.”
“There’s never going to be any doubt in anybody’s
mind about who wears the pants in the Butler family,” drawled Rhett. “I don’t care what fools say. In
fact, I’m ill bred enough to be proud of having a smart
wife. I want you to keep on running the store and the
mills. They are your children’s. When Wade grows
up he won’t feel right about being supported by his
stepfather, and then he can take over the management. But not one cent of mine goes into either business.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t care to contribute to the support of
Ashley Wilkes.”
“Are you going to begin that again?”
“No. But you asked my reasons and I have given
them. And another thing. Don’t think you can juggle
books on me and lie about how much your clothes
1644
�PART FIVE
cost and how much it takes to run the house, so that
you can use the money to buy more mules or another
mill for Ashley. I intend to look over and carefully
check your expenditures and I know what things cost.
Oh, don’t get insulted. You’d do it. I wouldn’t put it
beyond you. In fact, I wouldn’t put anything beyond
you where either Tara or Ashley is concerned. I don’t
mind Tara. But I must draw the line at Ashley. I’m
riding you with a slack rein, my pet, but don’t forget
that I’m riding with curb and spurs just the same.”
1645
�CHAPTER XLIX
her ear toward the hall. Hearing Melanie’s steps die away into the kitchen where
rattling dishes and clinking silverware gave promise
of refreshments, she turned and spoke softly to the
ladies who sat in a circle in the parlor, their sewing
baskets in their laps.
M RS . E LSING
COCKED
“Personally, I do not intend to call on Scarlett now
or ever,” she said, the chill elegance of her face colder
than usual.
The other members of the Ladies’ Sewing Circle
for the Widows and Orphans of the Confederacy eagerly laid down their needles and edged their rocking chairs closer. All the ladies had been bursting
to discuss Scarlett and Rhett but Melanie’s presence
prevented it. Just the day before, the couple had returned from New Orleans and they were occupying
the bridal suite at the National Hotel.
“Hugh says that I must call out of courtesy for the
way Captain Butler saved his life,” Mrs. Elsing continued. “And poor Fanny sides with him and says she
will call too. I said to her ‘Fanny,’ I said, ‘if it wasn’t
for Scarlett, Tommy would be alive this minute. It
is an insult to his memory to call.’ And Fanny had
�PART FIVE
no better sense than to say, ‘Mother, I’m not calling
on Scarlett. I’m calling on Captain Butler. He tried
his best to save Tommy and it wasn’t his fault if he
failed.”’
“How silly young people are!” said Mrs. Merriwether. “Call, indeed!” Her stout bosom swelled
indignantly as she remembered Scarlett’s rude reception of her advice on marrying Rhett. “My Maybelle
is just as silly as your Fanny. She says she and Rene
will call, because Captain Butler kept Rene from getting hanged. And I said if it hadn’t been for Scarlett exposing herself, Rene would never have been
in any danger. And Father Merriwether intends to
call and he talks like he was in his dotage and says
he’s grateful to that scoundrel, even if I’m not. I vow,
since Father Merriwether was in that Watling creature’s house he has acted in a disgraceful way. Call,
indeed! I certainly shan’t call. Scarlett has outlawed
herself by marrying such a man. He was bad enough
when he was a speculator during the war and making
money out of our hunger but now that he is hand in
glove with the Carpetbaggers and Scallawags and a
friend–actually a friend of that odious wretch, Governor Bullock– Call, indeed!”
Mrs. Bonnell sighed. She was a plump brown wren
1647
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of a woman with a cheerful face.
“They’ll only call once, for courtesy, Dolly. I don’t
know that I blame them. I’ve heard that all the men
who were out that night intend to call, and I think
they should. Somehow, it’s hard for me to think that
Scarlett is her mother’s child. I went to school with
Ellen Robillard in Savannah and there was never a
lovelier girl than she was and she was very dear to
me. If only her father had not opposed her match
with her cousin, Philippe Robillard! There was nothing really wrong with the boy–boys must sow their
wild oats. But Ellen must run off and marry old man
O’Hara and have a daughter like Scarlett. But really, I
feel that I must call once out of memory to Ellen.”
“Sentimental nonsense!” snorted Mrs. Merriwether
with vigor. “Kitty Bonnell, are you going to call on a
woman who married a bare year after her husband’s
death? A woman–”
“And she really killed Mr. Kennedy,” interrupted
India. Her voice was cool but acid. Whenever she
thought of Scarlett it was hard for her even to be polite, remembering, always remembering Stuart Tarleton. “And I have always thought there was more
between her and that Butler man before Mr. Kennedy
was killed than most people suspected.”
1648
�PART FIVE
Before the ladies could recover from their shocked
astonishment at her statement and at a spinster mentioning such a matter, Melanie was standing in the
doorway. So engrossed had they been in their gossip that they had not heard her light tread and now,
confronted by their hostess, they looked like whispering schoolgirls caught by a teacher. Alarm was added
to consternation at the change in Melanie’s face. She
was pink with righteous anger, her gentle eyes snapping fire, her nostrils quivering. No one had ever seen
Melanie angry before. Not a lady present thought her
capable of wrath. They all loved her but they thought
her the sweetest, most pliable of young women, deferential to her elders and without any opinions of her
own.
“How dare you, India?” she questioned in a low
voice that shook. “Where will your jealousy lead you?
For shame!”
India’s face went white but her head was high.
“I retract nothing,” she said briefly. But her mind
was seething.
“Jealous, am I?” she thought. With the memory of
Stuart Tarleton and of Honey and Charles, didn’t she
have good reason to be jealous of Scarlett? Didn’t she
have good reason to hate her, especially now that she
1649
�PART FIVE
had a suspicion that Scarlett had somehow entangled
Ashley in her web? She thought: “There’s plenty I
could tell you about Ashley and your precious Scarlett.” India was torn between the desire to shield Ashley by her silence and to extricate him by telling all
her suspicions to Melanie and the whole world. That
would force Scarlett to release whatever hold she had
on Ashley. But this was not the time. She had nothing
definite, only suspicions.
“I retract nothing,” she repeated.
“Then it is fortunate that you are no longer living
under my roof,” said Melanie and her words were
cold.
India leaped to her feet, red flooding her sallow face.
“Melanie, you–my sister-in-law–you aren’t going to
quarrel with me over that fast piece–”
“Scarlett is my sister-in-law, too,” said Melanie,
meeting India’s eyes squarely as though they were
strangers. “And dearer to me than any blood sister
could ever be. If you are so forgetful of my favors at
her hands, I am not. She stayed with me through the
whole siege when she could have gone home, when
even Aunt Pitty had run away to Macon. She brought
my baby for me when the Yankees were almost in Atlanta and she burdened herself with me and Beau all
1650
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that dreadful trip to Tara when she could have left me
here in a hospital for the Yankees to get me. And she
nursed and fed me, even if she was tired and even if
she went hungry. Because I was sick and weak, I had
the best mattress at Tara. When I could walk, I had the
only whole pair of shoes. You can forget those things
she did for me, India, but I cannot. And when Ashley
came home, sick, discouraged, without a home, without a cent in his pockets, she took him in like a sister.
And when we thought we would have to go North
and it was breaking our hearts to leave Georgia, Scarlett stepped in and gave him the mill to run. And
Captain Butler saved Ashley’s life out of the kindness
of his heart. Certainly Ashley had no claim on him!
And I am grateful, grateful to Scarlett and to Captain
Butler. But you, India! How can you forget the favors
Scarlett has done me and Ashley? How can you hold
your brother’s life so cheap as to cast slurs on the man
who saved him? If you went down on your knees to
Captain Butler and Scarlett, it would not be enough.”
“Now, Melly,” began Mrs. Merriwether briskly, for
she had recovered her composure, “that’s no way to
talk to India.”
“I heard what you said about Scarlett too,” cried
Melanie, swinging on the stout old lady with the air
1651
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of a duelist who, having withdrawn a blade from one
prostrate opponent, turns hungrily toward another.
“And you too, Mrs. Elsing. What you think of her
in your own petty minds, I do not care, for that is
your business. But what you say about her in my own
house or in my own hearing, ever, is my business. But
how can you even think such dreadful things, much
less say them? Are your men so cheap to you that you
would rather see them dead than alive? Have you no
gratitude to the man who saved them and saved them
at risk of his own life? The Yankees might easily have
thought him a member of the Klan if the whole truth
had come out! They might have hanged him. But he
risked himself for your men. For your father-in-law,
Mrs. Merriwether, and your son-in-law and your two
nephews, too. And your brother, Mrs. Bonnell, and
your son and son-in-law, Mrs. Elsing. Ingrates, that’s
what you are! I ask an apology from all of you.”
Mrs. Elsing was on her feet cramming her sewing
into her box, her mouth set.
“If anyone had ever told me that you could be so ill
bred, Melly– No, I will not apologize. India is right.
Scarlett is a flighty, fast bit of baggage. I can’t forget how she acted during the war. And I can’t forget
how poor white trashy she’s acted since she got a little
1652
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money–”
“What you can’t forget,” cut in Melanie, clenching
her small fists against her sides, “is that she demoted
Hugh because he wasn’t smart enough to run her
mill.”
“Melly!” moaned a chorus of voices.
Mrs. Elsing’s head jerked up and she started toward
the door. With her hand on the knob of the front door,
she stopped and turned.
“Melly,” she said and her voice softened, “honey,
this breaks my heart. I was your mother’s best friend
and I helped Dr. Meade bring you into this world and
I’ve loved you like you were mine. If it were something that mattered it wouldn’t be so hard to hear you
talk like this. But about a woman like Scarlett O’Hara
who’d just as soon do you a dirty turn as the next of
us–”
Tears had started in Melanie’s eyes at the first words
Mrs. Elsing spoke, but her face hardened when the
old lady had finished.
“I want it understood,” she said, “that any of you
who do not call on Scarlett need never, never call on
me.”
There was a loud murmur of voices, confusion as
the ladies got to their feet. Mrs. Elsing dropped her
1653
�PART FIVE
sewing box on the floor and came back into the room,
her false fringe jerking awry.
“I won’t have it!” she cried. “I won’t have it! You are
beside yourself, Melly, and I don’t hold you responsible. You shall be my friend and I shall be yours. I
refuse to let this come between us.”
She was crying and somehow, Melanie was in her
arms, crying too, but declaring between sobs that
she meant every word she said. Several of the other
ladies burst into tears and Mrs. Merriwether, trumpeting loudly into her handkerchief, embraced both
Mrs. Elsing and Melanie. Aunt Pitty, who had been
a petrified witness to the whole scene, suddenly slid
to the floor in what was one of the few real fainting
spells she had ever had. Amid the tears and confusion and kissing and scurrying for smelling salts and
brandy, there was only one calm face, one dry pair of
eyes. India Wilkes took her departure unnoticed by
anyone.
Grandpa Merriwether, meeting Uncle Henry Hamilton in the Girl of the Period Saloon several hours later,
related the happenings of the morning which he had
heard from Mrs. Merriweather. He told it with relish
for he was delighted that someone had the courage
to face down his redoubtable daughter-in-law. Cer1654
�PART FIVE
tainly, he had never had such courage.
“Well, what did the pack of silly fools finally decide
to do?” asked Uncle Henry irritably.
“I dunno for sure,” said Grandpa, “but it looks to
me like Melly won hands down on this go-round. I’ll
bet they’ll all call, at least once. Folks set a store by
that niece of yours, Henry.”
“Melly’s a fool and the ladies are right. Scarlett is
a slick piece of baggage and I don’t see why Charlie
ever married her,” said Uncle Henry gloomily. “But
Melly was right too, in a way. It’s only decent that
the families of the men Captain Butler saved should
call. When you come right down to it, I haven’t got so
much against Butler. He showed himself a fine man
that night he saved our hides. It’s Scarlett who sticks
under my tail like a cocklebur. She’s a sight too smart
for her own good. Well, I’ve got to call. Scallawag or
not, Scarlett is my niece by marriage, after all. I was
aiming to call this afternoon.”
“I’ll go with you, Henry. Dolly will be fit to be tied
when she hears I’ve gone. Wait till I get one more
drink.”
“No, we’ll get a drink off Captain Butler. I’ll say this
for him, he always has good licker.”
Rhett had said that the Old Guard would never sur1655
�PART FIVE
render and he was right. He knew how little significance there was to the few calls made upon them, and
he knew why the calls were made. The families of the
men who had been in the ill-starred Klan foray did
call first, but called with obvious infrequency thereafter. And they did not invite the Rhett Butlers to their
homes.
Rhett said they would not have come at all, except
for fear of violence at the hands of Melanie. Where
he got this idea, Scarlett did not know but she dismissed it with the contempt it deserved. For what
possible influence could Melanie have on people like
Mrs. Elsing and Mrs. Merriwether? That they did not
call again worried her very little; in fact, their absence
was hardly noticed, for her suite was crowded with
guests of another type. “New people,” established
Atlantians called them, when they were not calling
them something less polite.
There were many “new people” staying at the National Hotel who, like Rhett and Scarlett, were waiting for their houses to be completed. They were gay,
wealthy people, very much like Rhett’s New Orleans
friends, elegant of dress, free with their money, vague
as to their antecedents. All the men were Republicans
and were “in Atlanta on business connected with the
1656
�PART FIVE
state government.” Just what the business was, Scarlett did not know and did not trouble to learn.
Rhett could have told her exactly what it was–the
same business that buzzards have with dying animals. They smelled death from afar and were drawn
unerringly to it, to gorge themselves. Government of
Georgia by its own citizens was dead, the state was
helpless and the adventurers were swarming in.
The wives of Rhett’s Scallawag and Carpetbagger
friends called in droves and so did the “new people”
she had met when she sold lumber for their homes.
Rhett said that, having done business with them, she
should receive them and, having received them, she
found them pleasant company. They wore lovely
clothes and never talked about the war or hard times,
but confined the conversation to fashions, scandals
and whist. Scarlett had never played cards before and
she took to whist with joy, becoming a good player in
a short time.
Whenever she was at the hotel there was a crowd
of whist players in her suite. But she was not often
in her suite these days, for she was too busy with the
building of her new house to be bothered with callers.
These days she did not much care whether she had
callers or not. She wanted to delay her social activ1657
�PART FIVE
ities until the day when the house was finished and
she could emerge as the mistress of Atlanta’s largest
mansion, the hostess of the town’s most elaborate entertainments.
Through the long warm days she watched her red
stone and gray shingle house rise grandly, to tower
above any other house on Peachtree Street. Forgetful
of the store and the mills, she spent her time on the
lot, arguing with carpenters, bickering with masons,
harrying the contractor. As the walls went swiftly
up she thought with satisfaction that, when finished,
it would be larger and finer looking than any other
house in town. It would be even more imposing than
the near-by James residence which had just been purchased for the official mansion of Governor Bullock.
The governor’s mansion was brave with jigsaw
work on banisters and eaves, but the intricate scrollwork on Scarlett’s house put the mansion to shame.
The mansion had a ballroom, but it looked like a billiard table compared with the enormous room that
covered the entire third floor of Scarlett’s house. In
fact, her house had more of everything than the mansion, or any other house in town for that matter, more
cupolas and turrets and towers and balconies and
lightning rods and far more windows with colored
1658
�PART FIVE
panes.
A veranda encircled the entire house, and four
flights of steps on the four sides of the building led
up to it. The yard was wide and green and scattered
about it were rustic iron benches, an iron summerhouse, fashionably called a “gazebo” which, Scarlett
had been assured, was of pure Gothic design, and two
large iron statues, one a stag and the other a mastiff
as large as a Shetland pony. To Wade and Ella, a little
dazzled by the size, splendor and fashionable dark
gloom of their new home, these two metal animals
were the only cheerful notes.
Within, the house was furnished as Scarlett had desired, with thick red carpeting which ran from wall
to wall, red velvet portieres and the newest of highly
varnished black-walnut furniture, carved wherever
there was an inch for carving and upholstered in such
slick horsehair that ladies had to deposit themselves
thereon with great care for fear of sliding off. Everywhere on the walls were gilt-framed mirrors and long
pier glasses–as many, Rhett said idly, as there were in
Belle Watling’s establishment. Interspread were steel
engravings in heavy frames, some of them eight feet
long, which Scarlett had ordered especially from New
York. The walls were covered with rich dark paper,
the ceilings were high and the house was always dim,
1659
�PART FIVE
for the windows were overdraped with plum-colored
plush hangings that shut out most of the sunlight.
All in all it was an establishment to take one’s breath
away and Scarlett, stepping on the soft carpets and
sinking into the embrace of the deep feather beds,
remembered the cold floors and the straw- stuffed
bedticks of Tara and was satisfied. She thought it the
most beautiful and most elegantly furnished house
she had ever seen, but Rhett said it was a nightmare.
However, if it made her happy, she was welcome to
it.
“A stranger without being told a word about us
would know this house was built with ill-gotten
gains,” he said. “You know, Scarlett, money ill come
by never comes to good and this house is proof of the
axiom. It’s just the kind of house a profiteer would
build.”
But Scarlett, abrim with pride and happiness and
full of plans for the entertainments she would give
when they were thoroughly settled in the house, only
pinched his ear playfully and said: “Fiddle- dee-dee!
How you do run on!”
She knew, by now, that Rhett loved to take her down
a peg, and would spoil her fun whenever he could, if
she lent an attentive ear to his jibes. Should she take
1660
�PART FIVE
him seriously, she would be forced to quarrel with
him and she did not care to match swords, for she
always came off second best. So she hardly ever listened to anything he said, and what she was forced to
hear she tried to turn off as a joke. At least, she tried
for a while.
During their honeymoon and for the greater part
of their stay at the National Hotel, they had lived
together with amiability. But scarcely had they
moved into the new house and Scarlett gathered her
new friends about her, when sudden sharp quarrels
sprang up between them. They were brief quarrels,
short lived because it was impossible to keep a quarrel going with Rhett, who remained coolly indifferent
to her hot words and waited his chance to pink her
in an unguarded spot. She quarreled; Rhett did not.
He only stated his unequivocal opinion of herself, her
actions, her house and her new friends. And some of
his opinions were of such a nature that she could no
longer ignore them and treat them as jokes.
For instance when she decided to change the name
of “Kennedy’s General Store” to something more edifying, she asked him to think of a title that would
include the word “emporium.” Rhett suggested
“Caveat Emptorium,” assuring her that it would be a
1661
�PART FIVE
title most in keeping with the type of goods sold in the
store. She thought it had an imposing sound and even
went so far as to have the sign painted, when Ashley Wilkes, embarrassed, translated the real meaning.
And Rhett had roared at her rage.
And there was the way he treated Mammy. Mammy
had never yielded an inch from her stand that Rhett
was a mule in horse harness. She was polite but cold
to Rhett. She always called him “Cap’n Butler,” never
“Mist’ Rhett.” She never even dropped a curtsy when
Rhett presented her with the red petticoat and she
never wore it either. She kept Ella and Wade out of
Rhett’s way whenever she could, despite the fact that
Wade adored Uncle Rhett and Rhett was obviously
fond of the boy. But instead of discharging Mammy or
being short and stern with her, Rhett treated her with
the utmost deference, with far more courtesy than he
treated any of the ladies of Scarlett’s recent acquaintance. In fact, with more courtesy than he treated
Scarlett herself. He always asked Mammy’s permission to take Wade riding and consulted with her before he bought Ella dolls. And Mammy was hardly
polite to him.
Scarlett felt that Rhett should be firm with Mammy,
as became the head of the house, but Rhett only
1662
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laughed and said that Mammy was the real head of
the house.
He infuriated Scarlett by saying coolly that he was
preparing to be very sorry for her some years hence,
when the Republican rule was gone from Georgia and
the Democrats back in power.
“When the Democrats get a governor and a legislature of their own, all your new vulgar Republican
friends will be wiped off the chess board and sent
back to minding bars and emptying slops where they
belong. And you’ll be left out on the end of a limb,
with never a Democratic friend or a Republican either. Well, take no thought of the morrow.”
Scarlett laughed, and with some justice, for at
that time, Bullock was safe in the governor’s chair,
twenty-seven negroes were in the legislature and
thousands of the Democratic voters of Georgia were
disfranchised.
“The Democrats will never get back. All they do is
make Yankees madder and put off the day when they
could get back. All they do is talk big and run around
at night Ku Kluxing.”
“They will get back. I know Southerners. I know
Georgians. They are a tough and bullheaded lot. If
they’ve got to fight another war to get back, they’ll
1663
�PART FIVE
fight another war. If they’ve got to buy black votes
like the Yankees have done, then they will buy black
votes. If they’ve got to vote ten thousand dead men
like the Yankees did, every corpse in every cemetery
in Georgia will be at the polls. Things are going to get
so bad under the benign rule of our good friend Rufus
Bullock that Georgia is going to vomit him up.
“Rhett, don’t use such vulgar words!” cried Scarlett.
“You talk like I wouldn’t be glad to see the Democrats
come back! And you know that isn’t so! I’d be very
glad to see them back. Do you think I like to see
these soldiers hanging around, reminding me of– do
you think I like–why, I’m a Georgian, too! I’d like
to see the Democrats get back. But they won’t. Not
ever. And even if they did, how would that affect
my friends? They’d still have their money, wouldn’t
they?”
“If they kept their money. But I doubt the ability of
any of them to keep money more than five years at
the rate they’re spending. Easy come, easy go. Their
money won’t do them any good. Any more than my
money has done you any good. It certainly hasn’t
made a horse out of you yet, has it, my pretty mule?”
The quarrel which sprang from this last remark
lasted for days. After the fourth day of Scarlett’s sulks
1664
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and obvious silent demands for an apology, Rhett
went to New Orleans, taking Wade with him, over
Mammy’s protests, and he stayed away until Scarlett’s tantrum had passed. But the sting of not humbling him remained with her.
When he came back from New Orleans, cool and
bland, she swallowed her anger as best she could,
pushing it into the back of her mind to be thought
of at some later date. She did not want to bother with
anything unpleasant now. She wanted to be happy
for her mind was full of the first party she would
give in the new house. It would be an enormous
night reception with palms and an orchestra and all
the porches shrouded in canvas, and a collation that
made her mouth water in anticipation. To it she intended to invite everyone she had ever known in Atlanta, all the old friends and all the new and charming ones she had met since returning from her honeymoon. The excitement of the party banished, for
the most part, the memory of Rhett’s barbs and she
was happy, happier than she had been in years as she
planned her reception.
Oh, what fun it was to be rich! To give parties and
never count the cost! To buy the most expensive furniture and dresses and food and never think about the
1665
�PART FIVE
bills! How marvelous to be able to send tidy checks
to Aunt Pauline and Aunt Eulalie in Charleston, and
to Will at Tara! Oh, the jealous fools who said money
wasn’t everything! How perverse of Rhett to say that
it had done nothing for her!
Scarlett issued cards of invitation to all her friends
and acquaintances, old and new, even those she did
not like. She did not except even Mrs. Merriwether
who had been almost rude when she called on her at
the National Hotel or Mrs. Elsing who had been cool
to frigidness. She invited Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Whiting who she knew disliked her and who she knew
would be embarrassed because they did not have the
proper clothes to wear to so elegant a function. For
Scarlett’s housewarming, or “crush,” as it was fashionable to call such evening parties, half-reception,
half- ball, was by far the most elaborate affair Atlanta
had ever seen.
That night the house and canvas-covered veranda
were filled with guests who drank her champagne
punch and ate her patties and creamed oysters and
danced to the music of the orchestra that was carefully screened by a wall of palms and rubber plants.
But none of those whom Rhett had termed the “Old
Guard” were present except Melanie and Ashley,
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Aunt Pitty and Uncle Henry, Dr. and Mrs. Meade
and Grandpa Merriwether.
Many of the Old Guard had reluctantly decided to
attend the “crush.” Some had accepted because of
Melanie’s attitude, others because they felt they owed
Rhett a debt for saving their lives and those of their
relatives. But, two days before the function, a rumor
went about Atlanta that Governor Bullock had been
invited. The Old Guard signified their disapproval
by a sheaf of cards, regretting their inability to accept
Scarlett’s kind invitation. And the small group of old
friends who did attend took their departure, embarrassed but firm, as soon as the governor entered Scarlett’s house.
Scarlett was so bewildered and infuriated at these
slights that the party was utterly ruined for her. Her
elegant “crush”! She had planned it so lovingly and
so few old friends and no old enemies had been there
to see how wonderful it was! After the last guest
had gone home at dawn, she would have cried and
stormed had she not been afraid that Rhett would
roar with laughter, afraid that she would read “I told
you so” in his dancing black eyes, even if he did not
speak the words. So she swallowed her wrath with
poor grace and pretended indifference.
1667
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Only to Melanie, the next morning, did she permit
herself the luxury of exploding.
“You insulted me, Melly Wilkes, and you made Ashley and the others insult me! You know they’d have
never gone home so soon if you hadn’t dragged them.
Oh, I saw you! Just when I started to bring Governor
Bullock over to present him to you, you ran like a rabbit!”
“I did not believe–I could not believe that he
would really be present,” answered Melanie unhappily. “Even though everybody said–”
“Everybody? So everybody’s been clacking and
blabbing about me, have they?” cried Scarlett furiously. “Do you mean to tell me if you’d known the
governor was going to be present, you wouldn’t have
come either?”
“No,” said Melanie in a low voice, her eyes on the
floor. “Darling, I just wouldn’t have come.”
“Great balls of fire! So you’d have insulted me like
everybody else did!”
“Oh, mercy!” cried Melly, in real distress. “I didn’t
mean to hurt you. You’re my own sister, darling, my
own Charlie’s widow and I–”
She put a timid hand on Scarlett’s arm. But Scarlett
flung it off, wishing fervently that she could roar as
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loudly as Gerald used to roar when in a temper. But
Melanie faced her wrath. And as she looked into Scarlett’s stormy green eyes, her slight shoulders straightened and a mantle of dignity, strangely at variance
with her childish face and figure, fell upon her.
“I’m sorry you’re hurt, my dear, but I cannot
meet Governor Bullock or any Republican or any
Scallawag. I will not meet them, in your house or any
other house. No, not even if I have to–if I have to–”
Melanie cast about her for the worst thing she could
think of– “Not even if I have to be rude.”
“Are you criticizing my friends?”
“No, dear. But they are your friends and not mine.”
“Are you criticizing me for having the governor at
my house?”
Cornered, Melanie still met Scarlett’s eyes unwaveringly.
“Darling, what you do, you always do for a good
reason and I love you and trust you and it is not for
me to criticize. And I will not permit anyone to criticize you in my hearing. But, oh, Scarlett!” Suddenly
words began to bubble out, swift hot words and there
was inflexible hate in the low voice. “Can you forget
what these people did to us? Can you forget darling
Charlie dead and Ashley’s health ruined and Twelve
1669
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Oaks burned? Oh, Scarlett, you can’t forget that terrible man you shot with your mother’s sewing box
in his hands! You can’t forget Sherman’s men at Tara
and how they even stole our underwear! And tried
to burn the place down and actually handled my father’s sword! Oh, Scarlett, it was these same people
who robbed us and tortured us and left us to starve
that you invited to your party! The same people who
have set the darkies up to lord it over us, who are
robbing us and keeping our men from voting! I can’t
forget. I won’t forget. I won’t let my Beau forget and
I’ll teach my grandchildren to hate these people– and
my grandchildren’s grandchildren if God lets me live
that long! Scarlett, how can you forget?”
Melanie paused for breath and Scarlett stared at her,
startled out of her own anger by the quivering note of
violence in Melanie’s voice.
“Do you think I’m a fool?” she questioned impatiently. “Of course, I remember! But all that’s past,
Melly. It’s up to us to make the best of things and
I’m trying to do it. Governor Bullock and some of the
nicer Republicans can help us a lot if we handle them
right.”
“There are no nice Republicans,” said Melanie flatly.
“And I don’t want their help. And I don’t intend to
1670
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make the best of things–if they are Yankee things.”
“Good Heaven, Melly, why get in such a pet?”
“Oh!” cried Melanie, looking conscience stricken.
“How I have run on! Scarlett, I didn’t mean to hurt
your feelings or to criticize. Everybody thinks differently and everybody’s got a right to their own opinion. Now, dear, I love you and you know I love
you and nothing you could ever do would make me
change. And you still love me, don’t you? I haven’t
made you hate me, have I? Scarlett, I couldn’t stand it
if anything ever came between us–after all we’ve been
through together! Say it’s all right.”
“Fiddle-dee-dee, Melly, what a tempest you make
in a teapot,” said Scarlett grudgingly, but she did not
throw off the hand that stole around her waist.
“Now, we’re all right again,” said Melanie pleasedly
but she added softly, “I want us to visit each other
just like we always did, darling. Just you let me know
what days Republicans and Scallawags are coming to
see you and I’ll stay at home on those days.”
“It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me whether
you come or not,” said Scarlett, putting on her bonnet and going home in a huff. There was some satisfaction to her wounded vanity in the hurt look on
Melanie’s face.
1671
�PART FIVE
In the weeks that followed her first party, Scarlett
was hard put to keep up her pretense of supreme indifference to public opinion. When she did not receive calls from old friends, except Melanie and Pitty
and Uncle Henry and Ashley, and did not get cards to
their modest entertainments, she was genuinely puzzled and hurt. Had she not gone out of her way to
bury old hatchets and show these people that she bore
them no ill will for their gossiping and backbiting?
Surely they must know that she didn’t like Governor
Bullock any more than they did but that it was expedient to be nice to him. The idiots! If everybody
would be nice to the Republicans, Georgia would get
out of the fix she was in very quickly.
She did not realize then that with one stroke she had
cut forever any fragile tie that still bound her to the
old days, to old friends. Not even Melanie’s influence
could repair the break of that gossamer thread. And
Melanie, bewildered, broken hearted but still loyal,
did not try to repair it. Even had Scarlett wanted to
turn back to old ways, old friends, there was no turning back possible now. The face of the town was set
against her as stonily as granite. The hate that enveloped the Bullock regime enveloped her too, a hate
that had little fire and fury in it but much cold implacability. Scarlett had cast her lot with the enemy and,
1672
�PART FIVE
whatever her birth and family connections, she was
now in the category of a turncoat, a nigger lover, a
traitor, a Republican– and a Scallawag.
After a miserable while, Scarlett’s pretended indifference gave way to the real thing. She had never
been one to worry long over the vagaries of human
conduct or to be cast down for long if one line of action failed. Soon she did not care what the Merriwethers, the Elsings, the Whitings, the Bonnells, the
Meades and others thought of her. At least, Melanie
called, bringing Ashley, and Ashley was the one who
mattered the most. And there were other people in
Atlanta who would come to her parties, other people
far more congenial than those hide-bound old hens.
Any time she wanted to fill her house with guests,
she could do so and these guests would be far more
entertaining, far more handsomely dressed than those
prissy, strait-laced old fools who disapproved of her.
These people were newcomers to Atlanta. Some
of them were acquaintances of Rhett, some associated with him in those mysterious affairs which he referred to as “mere business, my pet.” Some were couples Scarlett had met when she was living at the National Hotel and some were Governor Bullock’s appointees.
1673
�PART FIVE
The set with which she was now moving was a motley crew. Among them were the Gelerts who had
lived in a dozen different states and who apparently
had left each one hastily upon detection of their swindling schemes; the Conningtons whose connection
with the Freedmen’s Bureau in a distant state had
been highly lucrative at the expense of the ignorant
blacks they were supposed to protect; the Deals who
had sold “cardboard” shoes to the Confederate government until it became necessary for them to spend
the last year of the war in Europe; the Hundons who
had police records in many cities but nevertheless
were often successful bidders on state contracts; the
Carahans who had gotten their start in a gambling
house and now were gambling for bigger stakes in
the building of nonexistent railroads with the state’s
money; the Flahertys who had bought salt at one cent
a pound in 1861 and made a fortune when salt went
to fifty cents in 1863, and the Barts who had owned
the largest brothel in a Northern metropolis during
the war and now were moving in the best circles of
Carpetbagger society.
Such people were Scarlett’s intimates now, but those
who attended her larger receptions included others of
some culture and refinement, many of excellent families. In addition to the Carpetbag gentry, substantial
1674
�PART FIVE
people from the North were moving into Atlanta, attracted by the never ceasing business activity of the
town in this period of rebuilding and expansion. Yankee families of wealth sent young sons to the South
to pioneer on the new frontier, and Yankee officers
after their discharge took up permanent residence in
the town they had fought so hard to capture. At first,
strangers in a strange town, they were glad to accept
invitations to the lavish entertainments of the wealthy
and hospitable Mrs. Butler, but they soon drifted out
of her set. They were good people and they needed
only a short acquaintance with Carpetbaggers and
Carpetbag rule to become as resentful of them as the
native Georgians were. Many became Democrats and
more Southern than the Southerners.
Other misfits in Scarlett’s circle remained there only
because they were not welcome elsewhere. They
would have much preferred the quiet parlors of the
Old Guard, but the Old Guard would have none of
them. Among these were the Yankee schoolmarms
who had come South imbued with the desire to uplift the Negro and the Scallawags who had been born
good Democrats but had turned Republican after the
surrender.
It was hard to say which class was more cordially
1675
�PART FIVE
hated by the settled citizenry, the impractical Yankee
schoolmarms or the Scallawags, but the balance probably fell with the latter. The schoolmarms could be
dismissed with, “Well, what can you expect of niggerloving Yankees? Of course they think the nigger is just
as good as they are!” But for those Georgians who
had turned Republican for personal gain, there was
no excuse.
“Starving is good enough for us. It ought to be
good enough for you,” was the way the Old Guard
felt. Many ex-Confederate soldiers, knowing the frantic fear of men who saw their families in want, were
more tolerant of former comrades who had changed
political colors in order that their families might eat.
But not the women of the Old Guard, and the women
were the implacable and inflexible power behind the
social throne. The Lost Cause was stronger, dearer
now in their hearts than it had ever been at the height
of its glory. It was a fetish now. Everything about it
was sacred, the graves of the men who had died for
it, the battle fields, the torn flags, the crossed sabres
in their halls, the fading letters from the front, the veterans. These women gave no aid, comfort or quarter to the late enemy, and now Scarlett was numbered
among the enemy.
1676
�PART FIVE
In this mongrel society thrown together by the exigencies of the political situation, there was but one
thing in common. That was money. As most of them
had never had twenty-five dollars at one time in their
whole lives, previous to the war, they were now embarked on an orgy of spending such as Atlanta had
never seen before.
With the Republicans in the political saddle the
town entered into an era of waste and ostentation,
with the trappings of refinement thinly veneering the
vice and vulgarity beneath. Never before had the
cleavage of the very rich and the very poor been so
marked. Those on top took no thought for those less
fortunate. Except for the negroes, of course. They
must have the very best. The best of schools and lodgings and clothes and amusements, for they were the
power in politics and every negro vote counted. But
as for the recently impoverished Atlanta people, they
could starve and drop in the streets for all the newly
rich Republicans cared.
On the crest of this wave of vulgarity, Scarlett rode
triumphantly, newly a bride, dashingly pretty in her
fine clothes, with Rhett’s money solidly behind her.
It was an era that suited her, crude, garish, showy,
full of over-dressed women, over-furnished houses,
1677
�PART FIVE
too many jewels, too many horses, too much food, too
much whisky. When Scarlett infrequently stopped to
think about the matter she knew that none of her new
associates could be called ladies by Ellen’s strict standards. But she had broken with Ellen’s standards too
many times since that far-away day when she stood
in the parlor at Tara and decided to be Rhett’s mistress, and she did not often feel the bite of conscience
now.
Perhaps these new friends were not, strictly speaking, ladies and gentlemen but like Rhett’s New Orleans friends, they were so much fun! So very
much more fun than the subdued, churchgoing,
Shakespeare-reading friends of her earlier Atlanta
days. And, except for her brief honeymoon interlude, she had not had fun in so long. Nor had she
had any sense of security. Now secure, she wanted
to dance, to play, to riot, to gorge on foods and fine
wine, to deck herself in silks and satins, to wallow on
soft feather beds and fine upholstery. And she did
all these things. Encouraged by Rhett’s amused tolerance, freed now from the restraints of her childhood,
freed even from that last fear of poverty, she was permitting herself the luxury she had often dreamed–
of doing exactly what she pleased and telling people
who didn’t like it to go to hell.
1678
�PART FIVE
To her had come that pleasant intoxication peculiar
to those whose lives are a deliberate slap in the face of
organized society–the gambler, the confidence man,
the polite adventuress, all those who succeed by their
wits. She said and did exactly what she pleased and,
in practically no time, her insolence knew no bounds.
She did not hesitate to display arrogance to her new
Republican and Scallawag friends but to no class was
she ruder or more insolent than the Yankee officers of
the garrison and their families. Of all the heterogeneous mass of people who had poured into Atlanta,
the army people alone she refused to receive or tolerate. She even went out of her way to be bad mannered to them. Melanie was not alone in being unable
to forget what a blue uniform meant. To Scarlett, that
uniform and those gold buttons would always mean
the fears of the siege, the terror of flight, the looting
and burning, the desperate poverty and the grinding
work at Tara. Now that she was rich and secure in
the friendship of the governor and many prominent
Republicans, she could be insulting to every blue uniform she saw. And she was insulting.
Rhett once lazily pointed out to her that most of
the male guests who assembled under their roof had
worn that same blue uniform not so long ago, but she
1679
�PART FIVE
retorted that a Yankee didn’t seem like a Yankee unless he had on a blue uniform. To which Rhett replied:
“Consistency, thou art a jewel,” and shrugged.
Scarlett, hating the bright hard blue they wore, enjoyed snubbing them all the more because it so bewildered them. The garrison families had a right to
be bewildered for most of them were quiet, well-bred
folk, lonely in a hostile land, anxious to go home to
the North, a little ashamed of the riffraff whose rule
they were forced to uphold–an infinitely better class
than that of Scarlett’s associates. Naturally, the officers’ wives were puzzled that the dashing Mrs. Butler
took to her bosom such women as the common redhaired Bridget Flaherty and went out of her way to
slight them.
But even the ladies whom Scarlett took to her bosom
had to endure much from her. However, they did it
gladly. To them, she not only represented wealth and
elegance but the old regime, with its old names, old
families, old traditions with which they wished ardently to identify themselves. The old families they
yearned after might have cast Scarlett out but the
ladies of the new aristocracy did not know it. They
only knew that Scarlett’s father had been a great slave
owner, her mother a Robillard of Savannah and her
1680
�PART FIVE
husband was Rhett Butler of Charleston. And this
was enough for them. She was their opening wedge
into the old society they wished to enter, the society which scorned them, would not return calls and
bowed frigidly in churches. In fact, she was more than
their wedge into society. To them, fresh from obscure
beginnings, she WAS society. Pinchbeck ladies themselves, they no more saw through Scarlett’s pinchbeck
pretensions than she herself did. They took her at
her own valuation and endured much at her hands,
her airs, her graces, her tempers, her arrogance, her
downright rudeness and her frankness about their
shortcomings.
They were so lately come from nothing and so uncertain of themselves they were doubly anxious to appear refined and feared to show their temper or make
retorts in kind, lest they be considered unladylike. At
all costs they must be ladies. They pretended to great
delicacy, modesty and innocence. To hear them talk
one would have thought they had no legs, natural
functions or knowledge of the wicked world. No one
would have thought that red-haired Bridget Flaherty,
who had a sun-defying white skin and a brogue that
could be cut with a butter knife, had stolen her father’s hidden hoard to come to America to be chambermaid in a New York hotel. And to observe the del1681
�PART FIVE
icate vapors of Sylvia (formerly Sadie Belle) Connington and Mamie Bart, no one would have suspected
that the first grew up above her father’s saloon in the
Bowery and waited on the bar at rush times, and that
the latter, so it was said, had come out of one of her
husband’s own brothels. No, they were delicate sheltered creatures now.
The men, though they had made money, learned
new ways less easily or were, perhaps, less patient
with the demands of the new gentility. They drank
heavily at Scarlett’s parties, far too heavily, and usually after a reception there were one or more unexpected guests who stayed the night. They did not
drink like the men of Scarlett’s girlhood. They became
sodden, stupid, ugly or obscene. Moreover, no matter how many spittoons she might put out in view,
the rugs always showed signs of tobacco juice on the
mornings after.
She had a contempt for these people but she enjoyed
them. Because she enjoyed them, she filled the house
with them. And because of her contempt, she told
them to go to hell as often as they annoyed her. But
they stood it.
They even stood Rhett, a more difficult matter, for
Rhett saw through them and they knew it. He had
1682
�PART FIVE
no hesitation about stripping them verbally, even under his own roof, always in a manner that left them
no reply. Unashamed of how he came by his fortune,
he pretended that they, too, were unashamed of their
beginnings and he seldom missed an opportunity to
remark upon matters which, by common consent, everyone felt were better left in polite obscurity.
There was never any knowing when he would remark affably, over a punch cup: “Ralph, if I’d had
any sense I’d have made my money selling gold-mine
stocks to widows and orphans, like you, instead of
blockading. It’s so much safer.” “Well, Bill, I see you
have a new span of horses. Been selling a few thousand more bonds for nonexistent railroads? Good
work, boy!” “Congratulations, Amos, on landing that
state contract. Too bad you had to grease so many
palms to get it.”
The ladies felt that he was odiously, unendurably
vulgar. The men said, behind his back, that he was
a swine and a bastard. New Atlanta liked Rhett no
better than old Atlanta had done and he made as little attempt to conciliate the one as he had the other.
He went his way, amused, contemptuous, impervious to the opinions of those about him, so courteous
that his courtesy was an affront in itself. To Scarlett,
1683
�PART FIVE
he was still an enigma but an enigma about which she
no longer bothered her head. She was convinced that
nothing ever pleased him or ever would please him,
that he either wanted something badly and didn’t
have it, or never had wanted anything and so didn’t
care about anything. He laughed at everything she
did, encouraged her extravagances and insolences,
jeered at her pretenses–and paid the bills.
1684
�CHAPTER L
from his smooth, imperturbable
manners, even in their most intimate moments. But
Scarlett never lost the old feeling that he was watching her covertly, knew that if she turned her head suddenly she would surprise in his eyes that speculative,
waiting look, that look of almost terrible patience that
she did not understand.
Sometimes, he was a very comfortable person to live
with, for all his unfortunate habit of not permitting
anyone in his presence to act a lie, palm off a pretense or indulge in bombast. He listened to her talk
of the store and the mills and the saloon, the convicts
and the cost of feeding them, and gave shrewd hardheaded advice. He had untiring energy for the dancing and parties she loved and an unending supply of
coarse stories with which he regaled her on their infrequent evenings alone when the table was cleared
and brandy and coffee before them. She found that
he would give her anything she desired, answer any
question she asked as long as she was forthright, and
refuse her anything she attempted to gain by indirection, hints and feminine angling. He had a disconcerting habit of seeing through her and laughing rudely.
Contemplating the suave indifference with which
R HETT NEVER DEVIATED
�PART FIVE
he generally treated her, Scarlett frequently wondered, but with no real curiosity, why he had married
her. Men married for love or a home and children or
money but she knew he had married her for none of
these things. He certainly did not love her. He referred to her lovely house as an architectural horror
and said he would rather live in a well-regulated hotel than a home. And he never once hinted about children as Charles and Frank had done. Once when trying to coquet with him she asked why he married her
and was infuriated when he replied with an amused
gleam in his eyes: “I married you to keep you for a
pet, my dear.”
No, he hadn’t married her for any of the usual reasons men marry women. He had married her solely
because he wanted her and couldn’t get her any other
way. He had admitted as much the night he proposed
to her. He had wanted her, just as he had wanted Belle
Watling. This was not a pleasant thought. In fact, it
was a barefaced insult. But she shrugged it off as she
had learned to shrug off all unpleasant facts. They
had made a bargain and she was quite pleased with
her side of the bargain. She hoped he was equally
pleased but she did not care very much whether he
was or not.
1686
�PART FIVE
But one afternoon when she was consulting Dr.
Meade about a digestive upset, she learned an unpleasant fact which she could not shrug off. It was
with real hate in her eyes that she stormed into her
bedroom at twilight and told Rhett that she was going to have a baby.
He was lounging in a silk dressing gown in a cloud
of smoke and his eyes went sharply to her face as she
spoke. But he said nothing. He watched her in silence
but there was a tenseness about his pose, as he waited
for her next words, that was lost on her. Indignation
and despair had claimed her to the exclusion of all
other thoughts.
“You know I don’t want any more children! I never
wanted any at all. Every time things are going right
with me I have to have a baby. Oh, don’t sit there and
laugh! You don’t want it either. Oh, Mother of God!”
If he was waiting for words from her, these were not
the words he wanted. His face hardened slightly and
his eyes became blank.
“Well, why not give it to Miss Melly? Didn’t you tell
me she was so misguided as to want another baby?”
“Oh, I could kill you! I won’t have it, I tell you, I
won’t!”
“No? Pray continue.”
1687
�PART FIVE
“Oh, there are things to do. I’m not the stupid country fool I used to be. Now, I know that a woman
doesn’t have to have children if she doesn’t want
them! There are things–”
He was on his feet and had her by the wrist and
there was a hard, driving fear in his face.
“Scarlett, you fool, tell me the truth! You haven’t
done anything?”
“No, I haven’t, but I’m going to. Do you think I’m
going to have my figure ruined all over again, just
when I’ve gotten my waist line down and am having
a good time.”
“Where did you get this idea? Who’s been telling
you things?”
“Mamie Bart–she–”
“The madam of a whore house would know such
tricks. That woman never puts foot in this house
again, do you understand? After all, it is my house
and I’m the master of it. I do not even want you to
speak to her again.”
“I’ll do as I please. Turn me loose. Why should you
care?”
“I don’t care whether you have one child or twenty,
but I do care if you die.”
1688
�PART FIVE
“Die? Me?”
“Yes, die. I don’t suppose Mamie Bart told you the
chances a woman takes when she does a thing like
that?”
“No,” said Scarlett reluctantly. “She just said it
would fix things up fine.”
“By God, I will kill her!” cried Rhett and his face
was black with rage. He looked down into Scarlett’s
tear-stained face and some of the wrath faded but it
was still hard and set. Suddenly he picked her up in
his arms and sat down in the chair, holding her close
to him, tightly, as if he feared she would get away
from him.
“Listen, my baby, I won’t have you take your life
in your hands. Do you hear? Good God, I don’t
want children any more than you do, but I can support them. I don’t want to hear any more foolishness
out of you, and if you dare try to–Scarlett, I saw a girl
die that way once. She was only a–well, but she was
a pretty sort at that. It’s not an easy way to die. I–”
“Why, Rhett!” she cried, startled out of her misery
at the emotion in his voice. She had never seen him
so moved. “Where–who–”
“In New Orleans–oh, years ago. I was young and
impressionable.” He bent his head suddenly and
1689
�PART FIVE
buried his lips in her hair. “You’ll have your baby,
Scarlett, if I have to handcuff you to my wrist for the
next nine months.”
She sat up in his lap and stared into his face with
frank curiosity. Under her gaze it was suddenly
smooth and bland as though wiped clear by magic.
His eyebrows were up and the corner of his mouth
was down.
“Do I mean so much to you?” she questioned, dropping her eyelids.
He gave her a level look as though estimating how
much coquetry was behind the question. Reading the
true meaning of her demeanor, he made casual answer.
“Well, yes. You see, I’ve invested a good deal of
money in you, and I’d hate to lose it.”
*****
Melanie came out of Scarlett’s room, weary from
the strain but happy to tears at the birth of Scarlett’s
daughter. Rhett stood tensely in the hall, surrounded
by cigar butts which had burned holes in the fine carpet.
“You can go in now, Captain Butler,” she said shyly.
Rhett went swiftly past her into the room and
1690
�PART FIVE
Melanie had a brief glimpse of him bending over the
small naked baby in Mammy’s lap before Dr. Meade
shut the door. Melanie sank into a chair, her face
pinkening with embarrassment that she had unintentionally witnessed so intimate a scene.
“Ah!” she thought. “How sweet! How worried
poor Captain Butler has been! And he did not take a
single drink all this time! How nice of him. So many
gentlemen are so intoxicated by the time their babies
are born. I fear he needs a drink badly. Dare I suggest
it? No, that would be very forward of me.”
She sank gratefully into a chair, her back, which always ached these days, feeling as though it would
break in two at the waist line. Oh, how fortunate
Scarlett was to have Captain Butler just outside her
door while the baby was being born! If only she had
had Ashley with her that dreadful day Beau came she
would not have suffered half so much. If only that
small girl behind those closed doors were hers and
not Scarlett’s! Oh, how wicked I am, she thought
guiltily. I am coveting her baby and Scarlett has been
so good to me. Forgive me, Lord. I wouldn’t really
want Scarlett’s baby but–but I would so like a baby of
my own!
She pushed a small cushion behind her aching back
1691
�PART FIVE
and thought hungrily of a daughter of her own. But
Dr. Meade had never changed his opinion on that
subject. And though she was quite willing to risk her
life for another child, Ashley would not hear of it. A
daughter. How Ashley would love a daughter!
A daughter! Mercy! She sat up in alarm. I never
told Captain Butler it was a girl! And of course he
was expecting a boy. Oh, how dreadful!
Melanie knew that to a woman a child of either sex
was equally welcome but to a man, and especially
such a self-willed man as Captain Butler, a girl would
be a blow, a reflection upon his manhood. Oh, how
thankful she was that God had permitted her only
child to be a boy! She knew that, had she been the
wife of the fearsome Captain Butler, she would have
thankfully died in childbirth rather than present him
with a daughter as his first- born.
But Mammy, waddling grinning from the room, set
her mind at ease– and at the same time made her wonder just what kind of man Captain Butler really was.
“W’en Ah wuz bathin’ dat chile jes’ now,” said
Mammy, “Ah kinder ‘pologized ter Mist’ Rhett ‘bout
it not bein’ a boy. But, Lawd, Miss Melly, you know
whut he say? He say, ‘Hesh yo’ mouf, Mammy! Who
want a boy? Boys ain’ no fun. Dey’s jes’ a passel
1692
�PART FIVE
of trouble. Gals is whut is fun. Ah wouldn’ swap
disyere gal fer a baker’s dozen of boys.’ Den he try
ter snatch de chile frum me, buck nekked as she wuz
an’ Ah slap his wrist an’ say ‘B’have yo’seff, Mist’
Rhett! Ah’ll jes’ bide mah time tell you gits a boy,
an’ den Ah’ll laff out loud to hear you holler fer joy.’
He grin an’ shake his haid an’ say, ‘Mammy, you is
a fool. Boys ain’ no use ter nobody. Ain’ Ah a proof
of dat?’ Yas’m, Miss Melly, he ack lak a gempmum
‘bout it,” finished Mammy graciously. It was not lost
on Melanie that Rhett’s conduct had gone far toward
redeeming him in Mammy’s eyes. “Maybe Ah done
been a mite wrong ‘bout Mist’ Rhett. Dis sho is a
happy day ter me, Miss Melly. Ah done diapered
three ginrations of Robillard gals, an’ it sho is a happy
day.”
“Oh, yes, it is a happy day, Mammy. The happiest
days are the days when babies come!”
To one person in the house it was not a happy day.
Scolded and for the most part ignored, Wade Hampton idled miserably about the dining room. Early that
morning, Mammy had waked him abruptly, dressed
him hurriedly and sent him with Ella to Aunt Pitty’s
house for breakfast. The only explanation he received
was that his mother was sick and the noise of his play1693
�PART FIVE
ing might upset her. Aunt Pitty’s house was in an
uproar, for the news of Scarlett’s sickness had sent
the old lady to bed in a state with Cookie in attendance, and breakfast was a scant meal that Peter concocted for the children. As the morning wore on
fear began to possess Wade’s soul. Suppose Mother
died? Other boys’ mothers had died. He had seen
the hearses move away from the house and heard his
small friends sobbing. Suppose Mother should die?
Wade loved his mother very much, almost as much
as he feared her, and the thought of her being carried away in a black hearse behind black horses with
plumes on their bridles made his small chest ache so
that he could hardly breathe.
When noon came and Peter was busy in the kitchen,
Wade slipped out the front door and hurried home as
fast as his short legs could carry him, fear speeding
him. Uncle Rhett or Aunt Melly or Mammy surely
would tell him the truth. But Uncle Rhett and Aunt
Melly were not to be seen and Mammy and Dilcey
sped up and down the back stairs with towels and
basins of hot water and did not once notice him in the
front hall. From upstairs he could hear occasionally
the curt tones of Dr. Meade whenever a door opened.
Once he heard his mother groan and he burst into
sobbing hiccoughs. He knew she was going to die.
1694
�PART FIVE
For comfort, he made overtures to the honey- colored
cat which lay on the sunny window sill in the front
hall. But Tom, full of years and irritable at disturbances, switched his tail and spat softly.
Finally, Mammy, coming down the front stairs, her
apron rumpled and spotted, her head rag awry, saw
him and scowled. Mammy had always been Wade’s
mainstay and her frown made him tremble.
“You is de wustes’ boy Ah ever seed,” she said.
“Ain’ Ah done sont you ter Miss Pitty’s? Gwan back
dar!”
“Is Mother going to–will she die?”
“You is de troublesomes’ chile Ah ever seed! Die?
Gawdlmighty, no! Lawd, boys is a tawment. Ah doan
see why de Lawd sen’s boys ter folks. Now, gwan
way from here.”
But Wade did not go. He retreated behind the
portieres in the hall, only half convinced by her
words. The remark about the troublesomeness of
boys stung, for he had always tried his best to be
good. Aunt Melly hurried down the stairs half an
hour later, pale and tired but smiling to herself. She
looked thunderstruck when she saw his woebegone
face in the shadows of the drapery. Usually Aunt
Melly had all the time in the world to give him. She
1695
�PART FIVE
never said, as Mother so often did: “Don’t bother me
now. I’m in a hurry” or “Run away, Wade. I am busy.”
But this morning she said: “Wade, you’ve been very
naughty. Why didn’t you stay at Aunt Pitty’s?”
“Is Mother going to die?”
“Gracious, no, Wade! Don’t be a silly child,” and
then, relenting: “Dr. Meade has just brought her a
nice little baby, a sweet little sister for you to play
with, and if you are real good you can see her tonight.
Now, run out and play and don’t make any noise.”
Wade slipped into the quiet dining room, his small
and insecure world tottering. Was there no place for
a worried little seven- year-old boy on this sunshiny
day when the grown-ups acted so curiously? He sat
down on the window still in the alcove and nibbled
a bit of the elephant’s ear which grew in a box in the
sun. It was so peppery that it stung his eyes to tears
and he began to cry. Mother was probably dying, nobody paid him any heed and one and all, they rushed
about because of a new baby–a girl baby. Wade had
little interest in babies, still less in girls. The only little
girl he knew intimately was Ella and, so far, she had
done nothing to command his respect or liking.
After a long interval Dr. Meade and Uncle Rhett
came down the stairs and stood talking in the hall
1696
�PART FIVE
in low voices. After the door shut behind the doctor,
Uncle Rhett came swiftly into the dining room and
poured himself a large drink from the decanter before
he saw Wade. Wade shrank back, expecting to be told
again that he was naughty and must return to Aunt
Pitty’s, but instead, Uncle Rhett smiled. Wade had
never seen him smile like that or look so happy and,
encouraged, he leaped from the sill and ran to him.
“You’ve got a sister,” said Rhett, squeezing him. “By
God, the most beautiful baby you ever saw! Now,
why are you crying?”
“Mother–”
“Your mother’s eating a great big dinner, chicken
and rice and gravy and coffee, and we’re going to
make her some ice cream in a little while and you can
have two plates if you want them. And I’ll show you
your sister too.”
Weak with relief, Wade tried to be polite about his
new sister but failed. Everyone was interested in this
girl. No one cared anything about him any more, not
even Aunt Melly or Uncle Rhett.
“Uncle Rhett,” he began, “do people like girls better
than boys?”
Rhett set down his glass and looked sharply into the
small face and instant comprehension came into his
1697
�PART FIVE
eyes.
“No, I can’t say they do,” he answered seriously, as
though giving the matter due thought. “It’s just that
girls are more trouble than boys and people are apt
to worry more about troublesome people than those
who aren’t.”
“Mammy just said boys were troublesome.”
“Well, Mammy was upset. She didn’t mean it.”
“Uncle Rhett, wouldn’t you rather have had a little
boy than a little girl?” questioned Wade hopefully.
“No,” answered Rhett swiftly and, seeing the boy’s
face fall, he continued: “Now, why should I want a
boy when I’ve already got one?”
“You have?” cried Wade, his mouth falling open at
this information. “Where is he?”
“Right here,” answered Rhett and, picking the child
up, drew him to his knee. “You are boy enough for
me, son.”
For a moment, the security and happiness of being
wanted was so great that Wade almost cried again.
His throat worked and he ducked his head against
Rhett’s waistcoat.
“You are my boy, aren’t you?”
“Can you be–well, two men’s boy?” questioned
1698
�PART FIVE
Wade, loyalty to the father he had never known struggling with love for the man who held him so understandingly.
“Yes,” said Rhett firmly. “Just like you can be your
mother’s boy and Aunt Melly’s, too.”
Wade digested this statement. It made sense to
him and he smiled and wriggled against Rhett’s arm
shyly.
“You understand little boys, don’t you, Uncle
Rhett?”
Rhett’s dark face fell into its old harsh lines and his
lip twisted.
“Yes,” he said bitterly, “I understand little boys.”
For a moment, fear came back to Wade, fear and a
sudden sense of jealousy. Uncle Rhett was not thinking of him but of some one else.
“You haven’t got any other little boys have you?”
Rhett set him on his feet.
“I’m going to have a drink and so are you, Wade,
your first drink, a toast to your new sister.”
“You haven’t got any other–” began Wade and then
seeing Rhett reach for the decanter of claret, the excitement at being included in this grown-up ceremony diverted him.
1699
�PART FIVE
“Oh, I can’t, Uncle Rhett! I promised Aunt Melly
I wouldn’t drink till I graduated from the university
and she’s going to give me a watch, if I don’t.”
“And I’ll give you a chain for it–this one I’m wearing
now, if you want it,” said Rhett and he was smiling
again. “Aunt Melly’s quite right. But she was talking about spirits, not wine. You must learn to drink
wine like a gentleman, son, and there’s no time like
the present to learn.”
Skillfully, he diluted the claret with water from the
carafe until the liquid was barely pink and handed
the glass to Wade. At that moment, Mammy entered
the dining room. She had changed to her best Sunday black and her apron and head rag were fresh and
crisp. As she waddled, she switched herself and from
her skirts came the whisper and rustle of silk. The
worried look had gone from her face and her almost
toothless gums showed in a wide smile.
“Burfday gif’, Mist’ Rhett!” she said.
Wade stopped with his glass at his lips. He knew
Mammy had never liked his stepfather. He had never
heard her call him anything except “Cap’n Butler,”
and her conduct toward him had been dignified but
cold. And here she was beaming and sidling and calling him “Mist’ Rhett!” What a topsy-turvy day!
1700
�PART FIVE
“You’d rather have rum than claret, I suppose,” said
Rhett, reaching into the cellaret and producing a squat
bottle. “She is a beautiful baby, isn’t she, Mammy?”
“She sho is,” answered Mammy, smacking her lips
as she took the glass.
“Did you ever see a prettier one?”
“Well, suh, Miss Scarlett wuz mout nigh as pretty
w’en she come but not quite.”
“Have another glass, Mammy. And Mammy,” his
tone was stern but his eyes twinkled, “what’s that
rustling noise I hear?”
“Lawd, Mist’ Rhett, dat ain’ nuthin’ but mah red
silk petticoat!” Mammy giggled and switched till her
huge bulk shook.
“Nothing but your petticoat! I don’t believe it. You
sound like a peck of dried leaves rubbing together.
Let me see. Pull up your skirt.”
“Mist’ Rhett, you is bad! Yeah-O, Lawd!”
Mammy gave a little shriek and retreated and from a
distance of a yard, modestly elevated her dress a few
inches and showed the ruffle of a red taffeta petticoat.
“You took long enough about wearing it,” grumbled
Rhett but his black eyes laughed and danced.
“Yassuh, too long.”
1701
�PART FIVE
Then Rhett said something that Wade did not understand.
“No more mule in horse harness?”
“Mist’ Rhett, Miss Scarlett wuz bad ter tell you dat!
You ain’ holin’ dat again’ dis ole nigger?”
“No. I’m not holding it. I just wanted to know. Have
another drink, Mammy. Have the whole bottle. Drink
up, Wade! Give us a toast.”
“To Sissy,” cried Wade and gulped the liquid down.
Choking he began to cough and hiccough and the
other two laughed and beat him on the back.
From the moment his daughter was born, Rhett’s
conduct was puzzling to all observers and he upset
many settled notions about himself, notions which
both the town and Scarlett were loath to surrender.
Whoever would have thought that he of all people
would be so shamelessly, so openly proud of fatherhood? Especially in view of the embarrassing circumstance that his first-born was a girl and not a boy.
The novelty of fatherhood did not wear off. This
caused some secret envy among women whose husbands took offspring for granted, long before the children were christened. He buttonholed people on the
street and related details of his child’s miraculous
progress without even prefacing his remarks with the
1702
�PART FIVE
hypocritical but polite: “I know everyone thinks their
own child is smart but–” He thought his daughter
marvelous, not to be compared with lesser brats, and
he did not care who knew it. When the new nurse
permitted the baby to suck a bit of fat pork, thereby
bringing on the first attack of colic, Rhett’s conduct
sent seasoned fathers and mothers into gales of laughter. He hurriedly summoned Dr. Meade and two
other doctors, and with difficulty he was restrained
from beating the unfortunate nurse with his crop. The
nurse was discharged and thereafter followed a series
of nurses who remained, at the most, a week. None
of them was good enough to satisfy the exacting requirements Rhett laid down.
Mammy likewise viewed with displeasure the
nurses that came and went, for she was jealous of any
strange negro and saw no reason why she could not
care for the baby and Wade and Ella, too. But Mammy
was showing her age and rheumatism was slowing
her lumbering tread. Rhett lacked the courage to cite
these reasons for employing another nurse. He told
her instead that a man of his position could not afford to have only one nurse. It did not look well. He
would hire two others to do the drudgery and leave
her as Mammy-in-chief. This Mammy understood
very well. More servants were a credit to her posi1703
�PART FIVE
tion as well as Rhett’s. But she would not, she told
him firmly, have any trashy free issue niggers in her
nursery. So Rhett sent to Tara for Prissy. He knew her
shortcomings but, after all, she was a family darky.
And Uncle Peter produced a great-niece named Lou
who had belonged to one of Miss Pitty’s Burr cousins.
Even before Scarlett was able to be about again, she
noticed Rhett’s pre-occupation with the baby and was
somewhat nettled and embarrassed at his pride in her
in front of callers. It was all very well for a man to love
his child but she felt there was something unmanly in
the display of such love. He should be offhand and
careless, as other men were.
“You are making a fool of yourself,” she said irritably, “and I don’t see why.”
“No? Well, you wouldn’t. The reason is that she’s
the first person who’s ever belonged utterly to me.”
“She belongs to me, too!”
“No, you have two other children. She’s mine.”
“Great balls of fire!” said Scarlett. “I had the baby,
didn’t I? Besides, honey, I belong to you.”
Rhett looked at her over the black head of the child
and smiled oddly.
“Do you, my dear?”
1704
�PART FIVE
Only the entrance of Melanie stopped one of those
swift hot quarrels which seemed to spring up so easily between them these days. Scarlett swallowed her
wrath and watched Melanie take the baby. The name
agreed upon for the child was Eugenie Victoria, but
that afternoon Melanie unwittingly bestowed a name
that clung, even as “Pittypat” had blotted out all
memory of Sarah Jane.
Rhett leaning over the child had said: “Her eyes are
going to be pea green.”
“Indeed they are not,” cried Melanie indignantly,
forgetting that Scarlett’s eyes were almost that shade.
“They are going to be blue, like Mr. O’Hara’s eyes, as
blue as–as blue as the bonnie blue flag.”
“Bonnie Blue Butler,” laughed Rhett, taking the
child from her and peering more closely into the small
eyes. And Bonnie she became until even her parents did not recall that she had been named for two
queens.
1705
�CHAPTER LI
finally able to go out again, Scarlett had
Lou lace her into stays as tightly as the strings would
pull. Then she passed the tape measure about her
waist. Twenty inches! She groaned aloud. That was
what having babies did to your figure! Her waist was
a large as Aunt Pitty’s, as large as Mammy’s.
“Pull them tighter, Lou. See if you can’t make it
eighteen and a half inches or I can’t get into any of
my dresses.”
“It’ll bust de strings,” said Lou. “Yo’ wais’ jes’ done
got bigger, Miss Scarlett, an’ dar ain’ nuthin’ ter do
‘bout it.”
“There is something to do about it,” thought Scarlett
as she ripped savagely at the seams of her dress to let
out the necessary inches. “I just won’t have any more
babies.”
Of course, Bonnie was pretty and a credit to her and
Rhett adored the child, but she would not have another baby. Just how she would manage this she did
not know, for she couldn’t handle Rhett as she had
Frank. Rhett wasn’t afraid of her. It would probably
be difficult with Rhett acting so foolishly about Bonnie and probably wanting a son next year, for all that
W HEN SHE WAS
�PART FIVE
he said he’d drown any boy she gave him. Well, she
wouldn’t give him a boy or girl either. Three children
were enough for any woman to have.
When Lou had stitched up the ripped seams,
pressed them smooth and buttoned Scarlett into the
dress, she called the carriage and Scarlett set out for
the lumber yard. Her spirits rose as she went and she
forgot about her waist line, for she was going to meet
Ashley at the yard to go over the books with him.
And, if she was lucky, she might see him alone. She
hadn’t seen him since long before Bonnie was born.
She hadn’t wanted to see him at all when she was so
obviously pregnant. And she had missed the daily
contact with him, even if there was always someone
around. She had missed the importance and activity
of her lumber business while she was immured. Of
course, she did not have to work now. She could easily sell the mills and invest the money for Wade and
Ella. But that would mean she would hardly ever see
Ashley, except in a formal social way with crowds of
people around. And working by Ashley’s side was
her greatest pleasure.
When she drove up to the yard she saw with interest how high the piles of lumber were and how
many customers were standing among them, talking
1707
�PART FIVE
to Hugh Elsing. And there were six mule teams and
wagons being loaded by the negro drivers. Six teams,
she thought, with pride. And I did all this by myself!
Ashley came to the door of the little office, his eyes
joyful with the pleasure of seeing her again and he
handed her out of her carriage and into the office as if
she were a queen.
But some of her pleasure was dimmed when she
went over the books of his mill and compared them
with Johnnie Gallegher’s books. Ashley had barely
made expenses and Johnnie had a remarkable sum to
his credit. She forbore to say anything as she looked
at the two sheets but Ashley read her face.
“Scarlett, I’m sorry. All I can say is that I wish you’d
let me hire free darkies instead of using convicts. I
believe I could do better.”
“Darkies! Why, their pay would break us. Convicts
are dirt cheap. If Johnnie can make this much with
them–”
Ashley’s eyes went over her shoulder, looking at
something she could not see, and the glad light went
out of his eyes.
“I can’t work convicts like Johnnie Gallegher. I can’t
drive men.”
“God’s nightgown! Johnnie’s a wonder at it. Ashley,
1708
�PART FIVE
you are just too soft hearted. You ought to get more
work out of them. Johnnie told me that any time a malingerer wanted to get out of work he told you he was
sick and you gave him a day off. Good Lord, Ashley!
That’s no way to make money. A couple of licks will
cure most any sickness short of a broken leg–”
“Scarlett! Scarlett! Stop! I can’t bear to hear you talk
that way,” cried Ashley, his eyes coming back to her
with a fierceness that stopped her short. “Don’t you
realize that they are men–some of them sick, underfed, miserable and– Oh, my dear, I can’t bear to see
the way he has brutalized you, you who were always
so sweet–”
“Who has whatted me?”
“I’ve got to say it and I haven’t any right. But
I’ve got to say it. Your–Rhett Butler. Everything he
touches he poisons. And he has taken you who were
so sweet and generous and gentle, for all your spirited ways, and he has done this to you–hardened you,
brutalized you by his contact.”
“Oh,” breathed Scarlett, guilt struggling with joy
that Ashley should feel so deeply about her, should
still think her sweet. Thank God, he thought Rhett to
blame for her penny-pinching ways. Of course, Rhett
had nothing to do with it and the guilt was hers but,
1709
�PART FIVE
after all, another black mark on Rhett could do him
no harm.
“If it were any other man in the world, I wouldn’t
care so much– but Rhett Butler! I’ve seen what he’s
done to you. Without your realizing it, he’s twisted
your thoughts into the same hard path his own run
in. Oh, yes, I know I shouldn’t say this– He saved my
life and I am grateful but I wish to God it had been
any other man but him! And I haven’t the right to
talk to you like–”
“Oh, Ashley, you have the right–no, one else has!”
“I tell you I can’t bear it, seeing your fineness coarsened by him, knowing that your beauty and your
charm are in the keeping of a man who– When I think
of him touching you, I–”
“He’s going to kiss me!” thought Scarlett ecstatically. “And it won’t be my fault!” She swayed toward
him. But he drew back suddenly, as if realizing he had
said too much–said things he never intended to say.
“I apologize most humbly, Scarlett. I–I’ve been insinuating that your husband is not a gentleman and
my own words have proved that I’m not one. No one
has a right to criticize a husband to a wife. I haven’t
any excuse except–except–” He faltered and his face
twisted. She waited breathless.
1710
�PART FIVE
“I haven’t any excuse at all.”
All the way home in the carriage Scarlett’s mind
raced. No excuse at all except–except that he loved
her! And the thought of her lying in Rhett’s arms
roused a fury in him that she did not think possible. Well, she could understand that. If it wasn’t for
the knowledge that his relations with Melanie were,
necessarily, those of brother and sister, her own life
would be a torment. And Rhett’s embraces coarsened her, brutalized her! Well, if Ashley thought
that, she could do very well without those embraces.
She thought how sweet and romantic it would be for
them both to be physically true to each other, even
though married to other people. The idea possessed
her imagination and she took pleasure in it. And then,
too, there was the practical side of it. It would mean
that she would not have to have any more children.
When she reached home and dismissed the carriage,
some of the exaltation which had filled her at Ashley’s words began to fade as she faced the prospect of
telling Rhett that she wanted separate bedrooms and
all which that implied. It would be difficult. Moreover, how could she tell Ashley that she had denied
herself to Rhett, because of his wishes? What earthly
good was a sacrifice if no one knew about it? What a
1711
�PART FIVE
burden modesty and delicacy were! If she could only
talk to Ashley as frankly as she could to Rhett! Well,
no matter. She’d insinuate the truth to Ashley somehow.
She went up the stairs and, opening the nursery
door, found Rhett sitting beside Bonnie’s crib with
Ella upon his lap and Wade displaying the contents
of his pocket to him. What a blessing Rhett liked children and made much of them! Some stepfathers were
so bitter about children of former marriages.
“I want to talk to you,” she said and passed on into
their bedroom. Better have this over now while her
determination not to have any more children was hot
within her and while Ashley’s love was giving her
strength.
“Rhett,” she said abruptly when he had closed the
bedroom door behind him, “I’ve decided that I don’t
want any more children.”
If he was startled at her unexpected statement he did
not show it. He lounged to a chair and sitting down,
tilted it back.
“My pet, as I told you before Bonnie was born, it
is immaterial to me whether you have one child or
twenty.”
How perverse of him to evade the issue so neatly, as
1712
�PART FIVE
if not caring whether children came had anything to
do with their actual arrival.
“I think three are enough. I don’t intend to have one
every year.”
“Three seems an adequate number.”
“You know very well–” she began, embarrassment
making her cheeks red. “You know what I mean?”
“I do. Do you realize that I can divorce you for refusing me my marital rights?”
“You are just low enough to think of something like
that,” she cried, annoyed that nothing was going as
she planned it. “If you had any chivalry you’d–you’d
be nice like– Well, look at Ashley Wilkes. Melanie
can’t have any children and he–”
“Quite the little gentleman, Ashley,” said Rhett and
his eyes began to gleam oddly. “Pray go on with your
discourse.”
Scarlett choked, for her discourse was at its end and
she had nothing more to say. Now she saw how foolish had been her hope of amicably settling so important a matter, especially with a selfish swine like
Rhett.
“You’ve been to the lumber office this afternoon,
haven’t you?”
1713
�PART FIVE
“What has that to do with it?”
“You like dogs, don’t you, Scarlett? Do you prefer
them in kennels or mangers?”
The allusion was lost on her as the tide of her anger
and disappointment rose.
He got lightly to his feet and coming to her put his
hand under her chin and jerked her face up to his.
“What a child you are! You have lived with three
men and still know nothing of men’s natures. You
seem to think they are like old ladies past the change
of life.”
He pinched her chin playfully and his hand
dropped away from her. One black eyebrow went up
as he bent a cool long look on her.
“Scarlett, understand this. If you and your bed still
held any charms for me, no looks and no entreaties
could keep me away. And I would have no sense of
shame for anything I did, for I made a bargain with
you–a bargain which I have kept and you are now
breaking. Keep your chaste bed, my dear.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” cried Scarlett indignantly,
“that you don’t care–”
“You have tired of me, haven’t you? Well, men tire
more easily than women. Keep your sanctity, Scarlett.
1714
�PART FIVE
It will work no hardship on me. It doesn’t matter,” he
shrugged and grinned. “Fortunately the world is full
of beds–and most of the beds are full of women.”
“You mean you’d actually be so–”
“My dear innocent! But, of course. It’s a wonder I
haven’t strayed long ere this. I never held fidelity to
be a Virtue.”
“I shall lock my door every night!”
“Why bother? If I wanted you, no lock would keep
me out.”
He turned, as though the subject were closed, and
left the room. Scarlett heard him going back to the
nursery where he was welcomed by the children. She
sat down abruptly. She had had her way. This was
what she wanted and Ashley wanted. But it was not
making her happy. Her vanity was sore and she was
mortified at the thought that Rhett had taken it all so
lightly, that he didn’t want her, that he put her on the
level of other women in other beds.
She wished she could think of some delicate way
to tell Ashley that she and Rhett were no longer actually man and wife. But she knew now she could
not. It all seemed a terrible mess now and she half
heartedly wished she had said nothing about it. She
would miss the long amusing conversations in bed
1715
�PART FIVE
with Rhett when the ember of his cigar glowed in the
dark. She would miss the comfort of his arms when
she woke terrified from the dreams that she was running through cold mist.
Suddenly she felt very unhappy and leaning her
head on the arm of the chair, she cried.
1716
�CHAPTER LII
when Bonnie was barely past
her first birthday, Wade moped about the sitting
room, occasionally going to the window and flattening his nose on the dripping pane. He was a slender,
weedy boy, small for his eight years, quiet almost to
shyness, never speaking unless spoken to. He was
bored and obviously at loss for entertainment, for Ella
was busy in the corner with her dolls, Scarlett was at
her secretary muttering to herself as she added a long
column of figures, and Rhett was lying on the floor,
swinging his watch by its chain, just out of Bonnie’s
reach.
After Wade had picked up several books and let
them drop with bangs and sighed deeply, Scarlett
turned to him in irritation.
“Heavens, Wade! Run out and play.”
“I can’t. It’s raining.”
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed. Well, do something. You
make me nervous, fidgeting about. Go tell Pork to
hitch up the carriage and take you over to play with
Beau.”
“He isn’t home,” sighed Wade. “He’s at Raoul Picard’s birthday party.”
O NE
RAINY AFTERNOON
�PART FIVE
Raoul was the small son of Maybelle and Rene
Picard–a detestable little brat, Scarlett thought, more
like an ape than a child.
“Well, you can go to see anyone you want to. Run
tell Pork.”
“Nobody’s at home,” answered Wade. “Everybody’s at the party.”
The unspoken words “everybody–but me” hung in
the air; but Scarlett, her mind on her account books,
paid no heed.
Rhett raised himself to a sitting posture and said:
“Why aren’t you at the party too, son?”
Wade edged closer to him, scuffing one foot and
looking unhappy.
“I wasn’t invited, sir.”
Rhett handed his watch into Bonnie’s destructive
grasp and rose lightly to his feet.
“Leave those damned figures alone, Scarlett. Why
wasn’t Wade invited to this party?”
“For Heaven’s sake, Rhett! Don’t bother me now.
Ashley has gotten these accounts in an awful snarl–
Oh, that party? Well, I think it’s nothing unusual
that Wade wasn’t invited and I wouldn’t let him go
if he had been. Don’t forget that Raoul is Mrs. Merri1718
�PART FIVE
wether’s grandchild and Mrs. Merriwether would as
soon have a free issue nigger in her sacred parlor as
one of us.”
Rhett, watching Wade’s face with meditative eyes,
saw the boy flinch.
“Come here, son,” he said, drawing the boy to him.
“Would you like to be at that party?”
“No, sir,” said Wade bravely but his eyes fell.
“Hum. Tell me, Wade, do you go to little Joe Whiting’s parties or Frank Bonnell’s or–well, any of your
playmates?”
“No, sir. I don’t get invited to many parties.”
“Wade, you are lying!” cried Scarlett, turning. “You
went to three last week, the Bart children’s party and
the Gelerts’ and the Hundons’.”
“As choice a collection of mules in horse harness as
you could group together,” said Rhett, his voice going
into a soft drawl. “Did you have a good time at those
parties? Speak up.”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“I–I dunno, sir. Mammy–Mammy says they’re
white trash.”
“I’ll skin Mammy this minute!” cried Scarlett, leap1719
�PART FIVE
ing to her feet. “And as for you, Wade, talking so
about Mother’s friends–”
“The boy’s telling the truth and so is Mammy,” said
Rhett. “But, of course, you’ve never been able to
know the truth if you met it in the road. . . . Don’t
bother, son. You don’t have to go to any more parties you don’t want to go to. Here,” he pulled a bill
from his pocket, “tell Pork to harness the carriage and
take you downtown. Buy yourself some candy–a lot,
enough to give you a wonderful stomach ache.”
Wade, beaming, pocketed the bill and looked anxiously toward his mother for confirmation. But she,
with a pucker in her brows, was watching Rhett. He
had picked Bonnie from the floor and was cradling
her to him, her small face against his cheek. She could
not read his face but there was something in his eyes
almost like fear–fear and self-accusation.
Wade, encouraged by his stepfather’s generosity,
came shyly toward him.
“Uncle Rhett, can I ask you sumpin’?”
“Of course.” Rhett’s look was anxious, absent, as he
held Bonnie’s head closer. “What is it, Wade?”
“Uncle Rhett, were you–did you fight in the war?”
Rhett’s eyes came alertly back and they were sharp,
but his voice was casual.
1720
�PART FIVE
“Why do you ask, son?”
“Well, Joe Whiting said you didn’t and so did
Frankie Bonnell.”
“Ah,” said Rhett, “and what did you tell them?”
Wade looked unhappy.
“I–I said–I told them I didn’t know.” And with a
rush, “But I didn’t care and I hit them. Were you in
the war, Uncle Rhett?”
“Yes,” said Rhett, suddenly violent. “I was in the
war. I was in the army for eight months. I fought all
the way from Lovejoy up to Franklin, Tennessee. And
I was with Johnston when he surrendered.”
Wade wriggled with pride but Scarlett laughed.
“I thought you were ashamed of your war record,”
she said. “Didn’t you tell me to keep it quiet?”
“Hush,” he said briefly. “Does that satisfy you,
Wade?”
“Oh, yes, sir! I knew you were in the war. I knew
you weren’t scared like they said. But–why weren’t
you with the other little boys’ fathers?”
“Because the other little boys’ fathers were such
fools they had to put them in the infantry. I was a
West Pointer and so I was in the artillery. In the regular artillery, Wade, not the Home Guard. It takes a
1721
�PART FIVE
pile of sense to be in the artillery, Wade.”
“I bet,” said Wade, his face shining. “Did you get
wounded, Uncle Rhett?”
Rhett hesitated.
“Tell him about your dysentery,” jeered Scarlett.
Rhett carefully set the baby on the floor and pulled
his shirt and undershirt out of his trouser band.
“Come here, Wade, and I’ll show you where I was
wounded.”
Wade advanced, excited, and gazed where Rhett’s
finger pointed. A long raised scar ran across his
brown chest and down into his heavily muscled abdomen. It was the souvenir of a knife fight in the
California gold fields but Wade did not know it. He
breathed heavily and happily.
“I guess you’re ‘bout as brave as my father, Uncle
Rhett.”
“Almost but not quite,” said Rhett, stuffing his shirt
into his trousers. “Now, go on and spend your dollar
and whale hell out of any boy who says I wasn’t in
the army.”
Wade went dancing out happily, calling to Pork, and
Rhett picked up the baby again.
“Now why all these lies, my gallant soldier laddie?”
1722
�PART FIVE
asked Scarlett.
“A boy has to be proud of his father–or stepfather. I
can’t let him be ashamed before the other little brutes.
Cruel creatures, children.”
“Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!”
“I never thought about what it meant to Wade,” said
Rhett slowly. “I never thought how he’s suffered.
And it’s not going to be that way for Bonnie.”
“What way?”
“Do you think I’m going to have my Bonnie
ashamed of her father? Have her left out of parties
when she’s nine or ten? Do you think I’m going to
have her humiliated like Wade for things that aren’t
her fault but yours and mine?”
“Oh, children’s parties!”
“Out of children’s parties grow young girls’ debut
parties. Do you think I’m going to let my daughter
grow up outside of everything decent in Atlanta? I’m
not going to send her North to school and to visit because she won’t be accepted here or in Charleston or
Savannah or New Orleans. And I’m not going to see
her forced to marry a Yankee or a foreigner because
no decent Southern family will have her–because her
mother was a fool and her father a blackguard.”
1723
�PART FIVE
Wade, who had come back to the door, was an interested but puzzled listener.
“Bonnie can marry Beau, Uncle Rhett.”
The anger went from Rhett’s face as he turned to the
little boy, and he considered his words with apparent
seriousness as he always did when dealing with the
children.
“That’s true, Wade. Bonnie can marry Beau Wilkes,
but who will you marry?”
“Oh, I shan’t marry anyone,” said Wade confidently,
luxuriating in a man-to-man talk with the one person,
except Aunt Melly, who never reproved and always
encouraged him. “I’m going to go to Harvard and be
a lawyer, like my father, and then I’m going to be a
brave soldier just like him.”
“I wish Melly would keep her mouth shut,” cried
Scarlett. “Wade, you are not going to Harvard. It’s a
Yankee school and I won’t have you going to a Yankee
school. You are going to the University of Georgia
and after you graduate you are going to manage the
store for me. And as for your father being a brave
soldier–”
“Hush,” said Rhett curtly, not missing the shining
light in Wade’s eyes when he spoke of the father he
had never known. “You grow up and be a brave man
1724
�PART FIVE
like your father, Wade. Try to be just like him, for he
was a hero and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
He married your mother, didn’t he? Well, that’s proof
enough of heroism. And I’ll see that you go to Harvard and become a lawyer. Now, run along and tell
Pork to take you to town.”
“I’ll thank you to let me manage my children,” cried
Scarlett as Wade obediently trotted from the room.
“You’re a damned poor manager. You’ve wrecked
whatever chances Ella and Wade had, but I won’t permit you to do Bonnie that way. Bonnie’s going to be
a little princess and everyone in the world is going to
want her. There’s not going to be any place she can’t
go. Good God, do you think I’m going to let her grow
up and associate with the riffraff that fills this house?”
“They are good enough for you–”
“And a damned sight too good for you, my pet. But
not for Bonnie. Do you think I’d let her marry any of
this runagate gang you spend your time with? Irishmen on the make, Yankees, white trash, Carpetbag
parvenus– My Bonnie with her Butler blood and her
Robillard strain–”
“The O’Haras–”
“The O’Haras might have been kings of Ireland once
but your father was nothing but a smart Mick on the
1725
�PART FIVE
make. And you are no better– But then, I’m at fault
too. I’ve gone through life like a bat out of hell, never
caring what I did, because nothing ever mattered to
me. But Bonnie matters. God, what a fool I’ve been!
Bonnie wouldn’t be received in Charleston, no matter what my mother or your Aunt Eulalie or Aunt
Pauline did–and it’s obvious that she won’t be received here unless we do something quickly–”
“Oh, Rhett, you take it so seriously you’re funny.
With our money–”
“Damn our money! All our money can’t buy what I
want for her. I’d rather Bonnie was invited to eat dry
bread in the Picards’ miserable house or Mrs. Elsing’s
rickety barn than to be the belle of a Republican inaugural ball. Scarlett, you’ve been a fool. You should
have insured a place for your children in the social
scheme years ago–but you didn’t. You didn’t even
bother to keep what position you had. And it’s too
much to hope that you’ll mend your ways at this late
date. You’re too anxious to make money and too fond
of bullying people.”
“I consider this whole affair a tempest in a teapot,”
said Scarlett coldly, rattling her papers to indicate that
as far as she was concerned the discussion was finished.
1726
�PART FIVE
“We have only Mrs. Wilkes to help us and you
do your best to alienate and insult her. Oh, spare
me your remarks about her poverty and her tacky
clothes. She’s the soul and the center of everything
in Atlanta that’s sterling. Thank God for her. She’ll
help me do something about it.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Do? I’m going to cultivate every female dragon of
the Old Guard in this town, especially Mrs. Merriwether, Mrs. Elsing, Mrs. Whiting and Mrs. Meade.
If I have to crawl on my belly to every fat old cat
who hates me, I’ll do it. I’ll be meek under their
coldness and repentant of my evil ways. I’ll contribute to their damned charities and I’ll go to their
damned churches. I’ll admit and brag about my services to the Confederacy and, if worst comes to worst,
I’ll join their damned Klan–though a merciful God
could hardly lay so heavy a penance on my shoulders as that. And I shall not hesitate to remind the
fools whose necks I saved that they owe me a debt.
And you, Madam, will kindly refrain from undoing
my work behind my back and foreclosing mortgages
on any of the people I’m courting or selling them rotten lumber or in other ways insulting them. And Governor Bullock never sets foot in this house again. Do
1727
�PART FIVE
you hear? And none of this gang of elegant thieves
you’ve been associating with, either. If you do invite them, over my request, you will find yourself in
the embarrassing position of having no host in your
home. If they come in this house, I will spend the time
in Belle Watling’s bar telling anyone who cares to hear
that I won’t stay under the same roof with them.”
Scarlett, who had been smarting under his words,
laughed shortly.
“So the river-boat gambler and the speculator is going to be respectable! Well, your first move toward
respectability had better be the sale of Belle Watling’s
house.”
That was a shot in the dark. She had never been
absolutely certain that Rhett owned the house. He
laughed suddenly, as though he read her mind.
“Thanks for the suggestion.”
Had he tried, Rhett could not have chosen a more
difficult time to beat his way back to respectability.
Never before or after did the names Republican and
Scallawag carry such odium, for now the corruption
of the Carpet bag regime was at its height. And,
since the surrender, Rhett’s name had been inextricably linked with Yankees, Republicans and Scallawags.
Atlanta people had thought, with helpless fury, in
1728
�PART FIVE
1866, that nothing could be worse than the harsh military rule they had then, but now, under Bullock, they
were learning the worst. Thanks to the negro vote, the
Republicans and their allies were firmly entrenched
and they were riding rough-shod over the powerless
but still protesting minority.
Word had been spread among the negroes that there
were only two political parties mentioned in the Bible,
the Publicans and the Sinners. No negro wanted to
join a party made up entirely of sinners, so they hastened to join the Republicans. Their new masters
voted them over and over again, electing poor whites
and Scallawags to high places, electing even some negroes. These negroes sat in the legislature where they
spent most of their time eating goobers and easing
their unaccustomed feet into and out of new shoes.
Few of them could read or write. They were fresh
from cotton patch and canebrake, but it was within
their power to vote taxes and bonds as well as enormous expense accounts to themselves and their Republican friends. And they voted them. The state
staggered under taxes which were paid in fury, for
the taxpayers knew that much of the money voted
for public purposes was finding its way into private
pockets.
1729
�PART FIVE
Completely surrounding the state capitol was a host
of promoters, speculators, seekers after contracts and
others hoping to profit from the orgy of spending,
and many were growing shamelessly rich. They had
no difficulty at all in obtaining the state’s money for
building railroads that were never built, for buying
cars and engines that were never bought, for erecting public buildings that never existed except in the
minds of their promoters.
Bonds were issued running into the millions. Most
of them were illegal and fraudulent but they were issued just the same. The state treasurer, a Republican
but an honest man, protested against the illegal issues and refused to sign them, but he and others who
sought to check the abuses could do nothing against
the tide that was running.
The state-owned railroad had once been an asset to
the state but now it was a liability and its debts had
piled up to the million mark. It was no longer a railroad. It was an enormous bottomless trough in which
the hogs could swill and wallow. Many of its officials were appointed for political reasons, regardless
of their knowledge of the operation of railroads, there
were three times as many people employed as were
necessary, Republicans rode free on passes, carloads
1730
�PART FIVE
of negroes rode free on their happy jaunts about the
state to vote and revote in the same elections.
The mismanagement of the state road especially infuriated the taxpayers for, out of the earnings of the
road, was to come the money for free schools. But
there were no earnings, there were only debts, and
so there were no free schools and there was a generation of children growing up in ignorance who would
spread the seeds of illiteracy down the years.
But far and above their anger at the waste and mismanagement and graft was the resentment of the people at the bad light in which the governor represented
them in the North. When Georgia howled against corruption, the governor hastily went North, appeared
before Congress and told of white outrages against
negroes, of Georgia’s preparation for another rebellion and the need for a stern military rule in the state.
No Georgian wanted trouble with the negroes and
they tried to avoid trouble. No one wanted another
war, no one wanted or needed bayonet rule. All Georgia wanted was to be let alone so the state could recuperate. But with the operation of what came to be
known as the governor’s “slander mill,” the North
saw only a rebellious state that needed a heavy hand,
and a heavy hand was laid upon it.
1731
�PART FIVE
It was a glorious spree for the gang which had Georgia by the throat. There was an orgy of grabbing and
over all there was a cold cynicism about open theft in
high places that was chilling to contemplate. Protests
and efforts to resist accomplished nothing, for the
state government was being upheld and supported
by the power of the United States Army.
Atlanta cursed the name of Bullock and his
Scallawags and Republicans and they cursed the
name of anyone connected with them. And Rhett
was connected with them. He had been in with them,
so everyone said, in all their schemes. But now, he
turned against the stream in which he had drifted so
short a while before, and began swimming arduously
back against the current.
He went about his campaign slowly, subtly, not
arousing the suspicions of Atlanta by the spectacle of
a leopard trying to change his spots overnight. He
avoided his dubious cronies and was seen no more
in the company of Yankee officers, Scallawags and
Republicans. He attended Democratic rallies and he
ostentatiously voted the Democratic ticket. He gave
up high-stake card games and stayed comparatively
sober. If he went to Belle Watling’s house at all, he
went by night and by stealth as did more respectable
1732
�PART FIVE
townsmen, instead of leaving his horse hitched in
front of her door in the afternoons as an advertisement of his presence within.
And the congregation of the Episcopal Church almost fell out of their pews when he tiptoed in, late
for services, with Wade’s hand held in his. The congregation was as much stunned by Wade’s appearance as by Rhett’s, for the little boy was supposed
to be a Catholic. At least, Scarlett was one. Or she
was supposed to be one. But she had not put foot in
the church in years, for religion had gone from her as
many of Ellen’s other teachings had gone. Everyone
thought she had neglected her boy’s religious education and thought more of Rhett for trying to rectify
the matter, even if he did take the boy to the Episcopal Church instead of the Catholic.
Rhett could be grave of manner and charming when
he chose to restrain his tongue and keep his black eyes
from dancing maliciously. It had been years since he
had chosen to do this but he did it now, putting on
gravity and charm, even as he put on waistcoats of
more sober hues. It was not difficult to gain a foothold
of friendliness with the men who owed their necks
to him. They would have showed their appreciation
long ago, had Rhett not acted as if their appreciation
1733
�PART FIVE
were a matter of small moment. Now, Hugh Elsing,
Rene, the Simmons boys, Andy Bonnell and the others found him pleasant, diffident about putting himself forward and embarrassed when they spoke of the
obligation they owed him.
“It was nothing,” he would protest. “In my place
you’d have all done the same thing.”
He subscribed handsomely to the fund for the repairs of the Episcopal Church and he gave a large,
but not vulgarly large, contribution to the Association for the Beautification of the Graves of Our Glorious Dead. He sought out Mrs. Elsing to make this
donation and embarrassedly begged that she keep his
gift a secret, knowing very well that this would spur
her to spreading the news. Mrs. Elsing hated to take
his money–“speculator money”–but the Association
needed money badly.
“I don’t see why you of all people should be subscribing,” she said acidly.
When Rhett told her with the proper sober mien that
he was moved to contribute by the memories of former comrades in arms, braver than he but less fortunate, who now lay in unmarked graves, Mrs. Elsing’s
aristocratic jaw dropped. Dolly Merriwether had told
her Scarlett had said Captain Butler was in the army
1734
�PART FIVE
but, of course, she hadn’t believed it. Nobody had
believed it.
“You in the army? What was your company–your
regiment?”
Rhett gave them.
“Oh, the artillery! Everyone I knew was either in
the cavalry or the infantry. Then, that explains–” She
broke off, disconcerted, expecting to see his eyes snap
with malice. But he only looked down and toyed with
his watch chain.
“I would have liked the infantry,” he said, passing completely over her insinuation, “but when they
found that I was a West Pointer– though I did not
graduate, Mrs. Elsing, due to a boyish prank–they put
me in the artillery, the regular artillery, not the militia. They needed men with specialized knowledge in
that last campaign. You know how heavy the losses
had been, so many artillerymen killed. It was pretty
lonely in the artillery. I didn’t see a soul I knew. I
don’t believe I saw a single man from Atlanta during
my whole service.”
“Well!” said Mrs. Elsing, confused. If he had been
in the army then she was wrong. She had made many
sharp remarks about his cowardice and the memory
of them made her feel guilty. “Well! And why haven’t
1735
�PART FIVE
you ever told anybody about your service? You act as
though you were ashamed of it.”
Rhett looked her squarely in the eyes, his face blank.
“Mrs. Elsing,” he said earnestly, “believe me when
I say that I am prouder of my services to the Confederacy than of anything I have ever done or will do. I
feel–I feel–”
“Well, why did you keep it hidden?”
“I was ashamed to speak of it, in the light of–of some
of my former actions.”
Mrs. Elsing reported the contribution and the conversation in detail to Mrs. Merriwether.
“And, Dolly, I give you my word that when he said
that about being ashamed, tears came into his eyes!
Yes, tears! I nearly cried myself.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Mrs. Merriwether in
disbelief. “I don’t believe tears came into his eyes any
more than I believe he was in the army. And I can find
out mighty quick. If he was in that artillery outfit, I
can get at the truth, for Colonel Carleton who commanded it married the daughter of one of my grandfather’s sisters and I’ll write him.”
She wrote Colonel Carlton and to her consternation
received a reply praising Rhett’s services in no un1736
�PART FIVE
certain terms. A born artilleryman, a brave soldier
and an uncomplaining gentleman, a modest man who
wouldn’t even take a commission when it was offered
him.
“Well!” said Mrs. Merriwether showing the letter to
Mrs. Elsing. “You can knock me down with a feather!
Maybe we did misjudge the scamp about not being a
soldier. Maybe we should have believed what Scarlett and Melanie said about him enlisting the day the
town fell. But, just the same, he’s a Scallawag and a
rascal and I don’t like him!”
“Somehow,” said Mrs. Elsing uncertainly, “somehow, I don’t think he’s so bad. A man who fought for
the Confederacy can’t be all bad. It’s Scarlett who is
the bad one. Do you know, Dolly, I really believe that
he–well, he’s ashamed of Scarlett but is too much of a
gentleman to let on.”
“Ashamed! Pooh! They’re both cut out of the same
piece of cloth. Where did you ever get such a silly
notion?”
“It isn’t silly,” said Mrs. Elsing indignantly. “Yesterday, in the pouring rain, he had those three children,
even the baby, mind you, out in his carriage riding
them up and down Peachtree Street and he gave me
a lift home. And when I said: ‘Captain Butler, have
1737
�PART FIVE
you lost your mind keeping these children out in the
damp? Why don’t you take them home?’ And he
didn’t say a word but just looked embarrassed. But
Mammy spoke up and said: ‘De house full of w’ite
trash an’ it healthier fer de chillun in de rain dan at
home!”’
“What did he say?”
“What could he say? He just scowled at Mammy
and passed it over. You know Scarlett was giving
a big whist party yesterday afternoon with all those
common ordinary women there. I guess he didn’t
want them kissing his baby.”
“Well!” said Mrs. Merriwether, wavering but still
obstinate. But the next week she, too, capitulated.
Rhett now had a desk in the bank. What he did
at this desk the bewildered officials of the bank did
not know, but he owned too large a block of the stock
for them to protest his presence there. After a while
they forgot that they had objected to him for he was
quiet and well mannered and actually knew something about banking and investments. At any rate he
sat at his desk all day, giving every appearance of industry, for he wished to be on equal terms with his respectable fellow townsmen who worked and worked
hard.
1738
�PART FIVE
Mrs. Merriwether, wishing to expand her growing bakery, had tried to borrow two thousand dollars
from the bank with her house as security. She had
been refused because there were already two mortgages on the house. The stout old lady was storming
out of the bank when Rhett stopped her, learned the
trouble and said, worriedly: “But there must be some
mistake, Mrs. Merriwether. Some dreadful mistake.
You of all people shouldn’t have to bother about collateral. Why, I’d lend you money just on your word!
Any lady who could build up the business you’ve
built up is the best risk in the world. The bank wants
to lend money to people like you. Now, do sit down
right here in my chair and I will attend to it for you.”
When he came back he was smiling blandly, saying
that there had been a mistake, just as he had thought.
The two thousand dollars was right there waiting for
her whenever she cared to draw against it. Now,
about her house–would she just sign right here?
Mrs. Merriwether, torn with indignation and insult,
furious that she had to take this favor from a man she
disliked and distrusted, was hardly gracious in her
thanks.
But he failed to notice it. As he escorted her to the
door, he said: “Mrs. Merriwether, I have always had a
1739
�PART FIVE
great regard for your knowledge and I wonder if you
could tell me something?”
The plumes on her bonnet barely moved as she nodded.
“What did you do when your Maybelle was little
and she sucked her thumb?”
“What?”
“My Bonnie sucks her thumb. I can’t make her stop
it.”
“You should make her stop it,” said Mrs. Merriwether vigorously. “It will ruin the shape of her
mouth.”
“I know! I know! And she has a beautiful mouth.
But I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, Scarlett ought to know,” said Mrs. Merriwether shortly. “She’s had two other children.”
Rhett looked down at his shoes and sighed.
“I’ve tried putting soap under her finger nails,” he
said, passing over her remark about Scarlett.
“Soap! Bah! Soap is no good at all. I put quinine on
Maybelle’s thumb and let me tell you, Captain Butler,
she stopped sucking that thumb mighty quick.”
“Quinine! I would never have thought of it! I can’t
thank you enough, Mrs. Merriwether. It was worry1740
�PART FIVE
ing me.”
He gave her a smile, so pleasant, so grateful that
Mrs. Merriwether stood uncertainly for a moment.
But as she told him good-by she was smiling too. She
hated to admit to Mrs. Elsing that she had misjudged
the man but she was an honest person and she said
there had to be something good about a man who
loved his child. What a pity Scarlett took no interest
in so pretty a creature as Bonnie! There was something pathetic about a man trying to raise a little girl
all by himself! Rhett knew very well the pathos of the
spectacle, and if it blackened Scarlett’s reputation he
did not care.
From the time the child could walk he took her
about with him constantly, in the carriage or in front
of his saddle. When he came home from the bank in
the afternoon, he took her walking down Peachtree
Street, holding her hand, slowing his long strides to
her toddling steps, patiently answering her thousand
questions. People were always in their front yards or
on their porches at sunset and, as Bonnie was such
a friendly, pretty child, with her tangle of black curls
and her bright blue eyes, few could resist talking to
her. Rhett never presumed on these conversations but
stood by, exuding fatherly pride and gratification at
1741
�PART FIVE
the notice taken of his daughter.
Atlanta had a long memory and was suspicious and
slow to change. Times were hard and feeling was bitter against anyone who had had anything to do with
Bullock and his crowd. But Bonnie had the combined
charm of Scarlett and Rhett at their best and she was
the small opening wedge Rhett drove into the wall of
Atlanta’s coldness.
Bonnie grew rapidly and every day it became more
evident that Gerald O’Hara had been her grandfather.
She had short sturdy legs and wide eyes of Irish blue
and a small square jaw that went with a determination to have her own way. She had Gerald’s sudden
temper to which she gave vent in screaming tantrums
that were forgotten as soon as her wishes were gratified. And as long as her father was near her, they
were always gratified hastily. He spoiled her despite
all the efforts of Mammy and Scarlett, for in all things
she pleased him, except one. And that was her fear of
the dark.
Until she was two years old she went to sleep readily in the nursery she shared with Wade and Ella.
Then, for no apparent reason, she began to sob whenever Mammy waddled out of the room, carrying the
lamp. From this she progressed to wakening in the
1742
�PART FIVE
late night hours, screaming with terror, frightening
the other two children and alarming the house. Once
Dr. Meade had to be called and Rhett was short with
him when he diagnosed only bad dreams. All anyone
could get from her was one word, “Dark.”
Scarlett was inclined to be irritated with the child
and favored a spanking. She would not humor her by
leaving a lamp burning in the nursery, for then Wade
and Ella would be unable to sleep. Rhett, worried but
gentle, attempting to extract further information from
his daughter, said coldly that if any spanking were
done, he would do it personally and to Scarlett.
The upshot of the situation was that Bonnie was removed from the nursery to the room Rhett now occupied alone. Her small bed was placed beside his large
one and a shaded lamp burned on the table all night
long. The town buzzed when this story got about.
Somehow, there was something indelicate about a girl
child sleeping in her father’s room, even though the
girl was only two years old. Scarlett suffered from
this gossip in two ways. First, it proved indubitably
that she and her husband occupied separate rooms,
in itself a shocking enough state of affairs. Second,
everyone thought that if the child was afraid to sleep
alone, her place was with her mother. And Scarlett
1743
�PART FIVE
did not feel equal to explaining that she could not
sleep in a lighted room nor would Rhett permit the
child to sleep with her.
“You’d never wake up unless she screamed and then
you’d probably slap her,” he said shortly.
Scarlett was annoyed at the weight he attached to
Bonnie’s night terrors but she thought she could eventually remedy the state of affairs and transfer the child
back to the nursery. All children were afraid of the
dark and the only cure was firmness. Rhett was just
being perverse in the matter, making her appear a
poor mother, just to pay her back for banishing him
from her room.
He had never put foot in her room or even rattled
the door knob since the night she told him she did
not want any more children. Thereafter and until he
began staying at home on account of Bonnie’s fears,
he had been absent from the supper table more often than he had been present. Sometimes he had
stayed out all night and Scarlett, lying awake behind
her locked door, hearing the clock count off the early
morning hours, wondered where he was. She remembered: “There are other beds, my dear!” Though
the thought made her writhe, there was nothing she
could do about it. There was nothing she could say
1744
�PART FIVE
that would not precipitate a scene in which he would
be sure to remark upon her locked door and the probable connection Ashley had with it. Yes, his foolishness about Bonnie sleeping in a lighted room–in
his lighted room–was just a mean way of paying her
back.
She did not realize the importance he attached to
Bonnie’s foolishness nor the completeness of his devotion to the child until one dreadful night. The family never forgot that night.
That day Rhett had met an ex-blockade runner and
they had had much to say to each other. Where they
had gone to talk and drink, Scarlett did not know but
she suspected, of course, Belle Watling’s house. He
did not come home in the afternoon to take Bonnie
walking nor did he come home to supper. Bonnie,
who had watched from the window impatiently all
afternoon, anxious to display a mangled collection of
beetles and roaches to her father, had finally been put
to bed by Lou, amid wails and protests.
Either Lou had forgotten to light the lamp or it had
burned out. No one ever knew exactly what happened but when Rhett finally came home, somewhat
the worse for drink, the house was in an uproar and
Bonnie’s screams reached him even in the stables. She
1745
�PART FIVE
had waked in darkness and called for him and he had
not been there. All the nameless horrors that peopled
her small imagination clutched her. All the soothing and bright lights brought by Scarlett and the servants could not quiet her and Rhett, coming up the
stairs three at a jump, looked like a man who has seen
Death.
When he finally had her in his arms and from
her sobbing gasps had recognized only one word,
“Dark,” he turned on Scarlett and the negroes in fury.
“Who put out the light? Who left her alone in the
dark? Prissy, I’ll skin you for this, you–”
“Gawdlmighty, Mist’ Rhett! ‘Twarn’t me! ‘Twuz
Lou!”
“Fo’ Gawd, Mist’ Rhett, Ah–”
“Shut up. You know my orders. By God, I’ll–get out.
Don’t come back. Scarlett, give her some money and
see that she’s gone before I come down stairs. Now,
everybody get out, everybody!”
The negroes fled, the luckless Lou wailing into her
apron. But Scarlett remained. It was hard to see her
favorite child quieting in Rhett’s arms when she had
screamed so pitifully in her own. It was hard to see
the small arms going around his neck and hear the
choking voice relate what had frightened her, when
1746
�PART FIVE
she, Scarlett, had gotten nothing coherent out of her.
“So it sat on your chest,” said Rhett softly. “Was it a
big one?”
“Oh, yes! Dretfull big. And claws.”
“Ah, claws, too. Well, now. I shall certainly sit up
all night and shoot him if he comes back.” Rhett’s
voice was interested and soothing and Bonnie’s sobs
died away. Her voice became less choked as she went
into detailed description of her monster guest in a
language which only he could understand. Irritation
stirred in Scarlett as Rhett discussed the matter as if it
had been something real.
“For Heaven’s sake, Rhett–”
But he made a sign for silence. When Bonnie was at
last asleep, he laid her in her bed and pulled up the
sheet.
“I’m going to skin that nigger alive,” he said quietly.
“It’s your fault too. Why didn’t you come up here to
see if the light was burning?”
“Don’t be a fool, Rhett,” she whispered. “She gets
this way because you humor her. Lots of children
are afraid of the dark but they get over it. Wade was
afraid but I didn’t pamper him. If you’d just let her
scream for a night or two–”
1747
�PART FIVE
“Let her scream!” For a moment Scarlett thought
he would hit her. “Either you are a fool or the most
inhuman woman I’ve ever seen.”
“I don’t want her to grow up nervous and cowardly.”
“Cowardly? Hell’s afire! There isn’t a cowardly
bone in her body! But you haven’t any imagination
and, of course, you can’t appreciate the tortures of
people who have one–especially a child. If something
with claws and horns came and sat on your chest,
you’d tell it to get the hell off you, wouldn’t you? Like
hell you would. Kindly remember, Madam, that I’ve
seen you wake up squalling like a scalded cat simply
because you dreamed of running in a fog. And that’s
not been so long ago either!”
Scarlett was taken aback, for she never liked to think
of that dream. Moreover, it embarrassed her to remember that Rhett had comforted her in much the
same manner he comforted Bonnie. So she swung
rapidly to a different attack.
“You are just humoring her and–”
“And I intend to keep on humoring her. If I do, she’ll
outgrow it and forget about it.”
“Then,” said Scarlett acidly, “if you intend to play
nursemaid, you might try coming home nights and
1748
�PART FIVE
sober too, for a change.”
“I shall come home early but drunk as a fiddler’s
bitch if I please.”
He did come home early thereafter, arriving long before time for Bonnie to be put to bed. He sat beside
her, holding her hand until sleep loosened her grasp.
Only then did he tiptoe downstairs, leaving the lamp
burning brightly and the door ajar so he might hear
her should she awake and become frightened. Never
again did he intend her to have a recurrence of fear
of the dark. The whole household was acutely conscious of the burning light, Scarlett, Mammy, Prissy
and Pork, frequently tiptoeing upstairs to make sure
that it still burned.
He came home sober too, but that was none of Scarlett’s doing. For months he had been drinking heavily, though he was never actually drunk, and one
evening the smell of whisky was especially strong
upon his breath. He picked up Bonnie, swung her
to his shoulder and asked her: “Have you a kiss for
your sweetheart?”
She wrinkled her small upturned nose and wriggled
to get down from his arms.
“No,” she said frankly. “Nasty.”
“I’m what?”
1749
�PART FIVE
“Smell nasty. Uncle Ashley don’t smell nasty.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said ruefully, putting her
on the floor. “I never expected to find a temperance
advocate in my own home, of all places!”
But, thereafter, he limited his drinking to a glass of
wine after supper. Bonnie, who was always permitted to have the last drops in the glass, did not think
the smell of wine nasty at all. As the result, the puffiness which had begun to obscure the hard lines of his
cheeks slowly disappeared and the circles beneath his
black eyes were not so dark or so harshly cut. Because Bonnie liked to ride on the front of his saddle,
he stayed out of doors more and the sunburn began
to creep across his dark face, making him swarthier
than ever. He looked healthier and laughed more and
was again like the dashing young blockader who had
excited Atlanta early in the war.
People who had never liked him came to smile as he
went by with the small figure perched before him on
his saddle. Women who had heretofore believed that
no woman was safe with him, began to stop and talk
with him on the streets, to admire Bonnie. Even the
strictest old ladies felt that a man who could discuss
the ailments and problems of childhood as well as he
did could not be altogether bad.
1750
�CHAPTER LIII
birthday and Melanie was giving him
a surprise reception that night. Everyone knew about
the reception, except Ashley. Even Wade and little
Beau knew and were sworn to secrecy that puffed
them up with pride. Everyone in Atlanta who was
nice had been invited and was coming. General Gordon and his family had graciously accepted, Alexander Stephens would be present if his ever-uncertain
health permitted and even Bob Toombs, the stormy
petrel of the Confederacy, was expected.
All that morning, Scarlett, with Melanie, India and
Aunt Pitty flew about the little house, directing the
negroes as they hung freshly laundered curtains, polished silver, waxed the floor and cooked, stirred
and tasted the refreshments. Scarlett had never seen
Melanie so excited or so happy.
“You see, dear, Ashley hasn’t had a birthday party
since–since, you remember the barbecue at Twelve
Oaks? The day we heard about Mr. Lincoln’s call for
volunteers? Well, he hasn’t had a birthday party since
then. And he works so hard and he’s so tired when he
gets home at night that he really hasn’t thought about
today being his birthday. And won’t he be surprised
after supper when everybody troops in!”
IT
WAS
A SHLEY ’ S
�PART FIVE
“How you goin’ to manage them lanterns on the
lawn without Mr. Wilkes seein’ them when he comes
home to supper?” demanded Archie grumpily.
He had sat all morning watching the preparations,
interested but unwilling to admit it. He had never
been behind the scenes at a large town folks’ party
and it was a new experience. He made frank remarks about women running around like the house
was afire, just because they were having company,
but wild horses could not have dragged him from the
scene. The colored-paper lanterns which Mrs. Elsing and Fanny had made and painted for the occasion held a special interest for him, as he had never
seen “sech contraptions” before. They had been hidden in his room in the cellar and he had examined
them minutely.
“Mercy! I hadn’t thought of that!” cried Melanie.
“Archie, how fortunate that you mentioned it. Dear,
dear! What shall I do? They’ve got to be strung on
the bushes and trees and little candles put in them
and lighted just at the proper time when the guests
are arriving. Scarlett, can you send Pork down to do
it while we’re eating supper?”
“Miz Wilkes, you got more sense than most women
but you gits flurried right easy,” said Archie. “And
1752
�PART FIVE
as for that fool nigger, Pork, he ain’t got no bizness
with them thar contraptions. He’d set them afire in no
time. They are–right pretty,” he conceded. “I’ll hang
them for you, whilst you and Mr. Wilkes are eatin’.”
“Oh, Archie, how kind of you!” Melanie turned
childlike eyes of gratitude and dependence upon him.
“I don’t know what I should do without you. Do you
suppose you could go put the candles in them now,
so we’d have that much out of the way?”
“Well, I could, p’raps,” said Archie ungraciously
and stumped off toward the cellar stairs.
“There’s more ways of killing a cat than choking
him to death with butter,” giggled Melanie when the
whiskered old man had thumped down the stairs.
“I had intended all along for Archie to put up those
lanterns but you know how he is. He won’t do a thing
if you ask him to. And now we’ve got him out from
underfoot for a while. The darkies are so scared of
him they just won’t do any work when he’s around,
breathing down their necks.”
“Melly, I wouldn’t have that old desperado in
my house,” said Scarlett crossly. She hated Archie
as much as he hated her and they barely spoke.
Melanie’s was the only house in which he would remain if she were present. And even in Melanie’s
1753
�PART FIVE
house, he stared at her with suspicion and cold contempt. “He’ll cause you trouble, mark my words.”
“Oh, he’s harmless if you flatter him and act like you
depend on him,” said Melanie. “And he’s so devoted
to Ashley and Beau that I always feel safe having him
around.”
“You mean he’s so devoted to you, Melly,” said India, her cold face relaxing into a faintly warm smile as
her gaze rested fondly on her sister-in-law. “I believe
you’re the first person that old ruffian has loved since
his wife–er–since his wife. I think he’d really like for
somebody to insult you, so he could kill them to show
his respect for you.”
“Mercy! How you run on, India!” said Melanie
blushing. “He thinks I’m a terrible goose and you
know it.”
“Well, I don’t see that what that smelly old hill-billy
thinks is of any importance,” said Scarlett abruptly.
The very thought of how Archie had sat in judgment
upon her about the convicts always enraged her. “I
have to go now. I’ve got to go get dinner and then
go by the store and pay off the clerks and go by the
lumber yard and pay the drivers and Hugh Elsing.”
“Oh, are you going to the lumber yard?” asked
Melanie. “Ashley is coming in to the yard in the late
1754
�PART FIVE
afternoon to see Hugh. Can you possibly hold him
there till five o’clock? If he comes home earlier he’ll
be sure to catch us finishing up a cake or something
and then he won’t be surprised at all.”
Scarlett smiled inwardly, good temper restored.
“Yes, I’ll hold him,” she said.
As she spoke, India’s pale lashless eyes met hers
piercingly. She always looks at me so oddly when I
speak of Ashley, thought Scarlett.
“Well, hold him there as long as you can after five
o’clock,” said Melanie. “And then India will drive
down and pick him up. . . . Scarlett, do come early
tonight. I don’t want you to miss a minute of the reception.”
As Scarlett rode home she thought sullenly: “She
doesn’t want me to miss a minute of the reception,
eh? Well then, why didn’t she invite me to receive
with her and India and Aunt Pitty?”
Generally, Scarlett would not have cared whether
she received at Melly’s piddling parties or not. But
this was the largest party Melanie had ever given and
Ashley’s birthday party too, and Scarlett longed to
stand by Ashley’s side and receive with him. But she
knew why she had not been invited to receive. Even
had she not known it, Rhett’s comment on the subject
1755
�PART FIVE
had been frank enough.
“A Scallawag receive when all the prominent exConfederates and Democrats are going to be there?
Your notions are as enchanting as they are muddle
headed. It’s only because of Miss Melly’s loyalty that
you are invited at all.”
Scarlett dressed with more than usual care that afternoon for her trip to the store and the lumber yard,
wearing the new dull-green changeable taffeta frock
that looked lilac in some lights and the new palegreen bonnet, circled about with dark-green plumes.
If only Rhett would let her cut bangs and frizzle them
on her forehead, how much better this bonnet would
look! But he had declared that he would shave her
whole head if she banged her forelocks. And these
days he acted so atrociously he really might do it.
It was a lovely afternoon, sunny but not too hot,
bright but not glaring, and the warm breeze that rustled the trees along Peachtree Street made the plumes
on Scarlett’s bonnet dance. Her heart danced too, as
always when she was going to see Ashley. Perhaps,
if she paid off the team drivers and Hugh early, they
would go home and leave her and Ashley alone in the
square little office in the middle of the lumber yard.
Chances to see Ashley alone were all too infrequent
1756
�PART FIVE
these days. And to think that Melanie had asked her
to hold him! That was funny!
Her heart was merry when she reached the store,
and she paid off Willie and the other counter boys
without even asking what the day’s business had
been. It was Saturday, the biggest day of the week
for the store, for all the farmers came to town to shop
that day, but she asked no questions.
Along the way to the lumber yard she stopped
a dozen times to speak with Carpetbagger ladies
in splendid equipages–not so splendid as her own,
she thought with pleasure–and with many men who
came through the red dust of the street to stand hat
in hand and compliment her. It was a beautiful afternoon, she was happy, she looked pretty and her
progress was a royal one. Because of these delays
she arrived at the lumber yard later than she intended
and found Hugh and the team drivers sitting on a low
pile of lumber waiting for her.
“Is Ashley here?”
“Yes, he’s in the office,” said Hugh, the habitually
worried expression leaving his face at the sight of her
happy, dancing eyes. “He’s trying to–I mean, he’s going over the books.”
“Oh, he needn’t bother about that today,” she said
1757
�PART FIVE
and then lowering her voice: “Melly sent me down to
keep him here till they get the house straight for the
reception tonight.”
Hugh smiled for he was going to the reception. He
liked parties and he guessed Scarlett did too from the
way she looked this afternoon. She paid off the teamsters and Hugh and, abruptly leaving them, walked
toward the office, showing plainly by her manner that
she did not care to be accompanied. Ashley met her at
the door and stood in the afternoon sunshine, his hair
bright and on his lips a little smile that was almost a
grin.
“Why, Scarlett, what are you doing downtown this
time of the day? Why aren’t you out at my house
helping Melly get ready for the surprise party?”
“Why, Ashley Wilkes!” she cried indignantly. “You
weren’t supposed to know a thing about it. Melly will
be so disappointed if you aren’t surprised.”
“Oh, I won’t let on. I’ll be the most surprised man
in Atlanta,” said Ashley, his eyes laughing.
“Now, who was mean enough to tell you?”
“Practically every man Melly invited. General Gordon was the first. He said it had been his experience
that when women gave surprise parties they usually
gave them on the very nights men had decided to pol1758
�PART FIVE
ish and clean all the guns in the house. And then
Grandpa Merriwether warned me. He said Mrs. Merriwether gave him a surprise party once and she was
the most surprised person there, because Grandpa
had been treating his rheumatism, on the sly, with
a bottle of whisky and he was too drunk to get out
of bed and–oh, every man who’s ever had a surprise
party given him told me.”
“The mean things!” cried Scarlett but she had to
smile.
He looked like the old Ashley she knew at twelve
Oaks when he smiled like this. And he smiled so seldom these days. The air was so soft, the sun so gentle, Ashley’s face so gay, his talk so unconstrained that
her heart leaped with happiness. It swelled in her bosom until it positively ached with pleasure, ached as
with a burden of joyful, hot, unshed tears. Suddenly
she felt sixteen again and happy, a little breathless and
excited. She had a mad impulse to snatch off her bonnet and toss it into the air and cry “Hurray!” Then
she thought how startled Ashley would be if she did
this, and she suddenly laughed, laughed until tears
came to her eyes. He laughed, too, throwing back
his head as though he enjoyed laughter, thinking her
mirth came from the friendly treachery of the men
1759
�PART FIVE
who had given Melly’s secret away.
“Come in, Scarlett. I’m going over the books.”
She passed into the small room, blazing with the afternoon sun, and sat down in the chair before the rolltopped desk. Ashley, following her, seated himself on
the corner of the rough table, his long legs dangling
easily.
“Oh, don’t let’s fool with any books this afternoon,
Ashley! I just can’t be bothered. When I’m wearing a
new bonnet, it seems like all the figures I know leave
my head.”
“Figures are well lost when the bonnet’s as pretty as
that one,” he said. “Scarlett, you get prettier all the
time!”
He slipped from the table and, laughing, took her
hands, spreading them wide so he could see her dress.
“You are so pretty! I don’t believe you’ll ever get old!”
At his touch she realized that, without being conscious of it, she had hoped that just this thing would
happen. All this happy afternoon, she had hoped
for the warmth of his hands, the tenderness of his
eyes, a word that would show he cared. This was the
first time they had been utterly alone since the cold
day in the orchard at Tara, the first time their hands
had met in any but formal gestures, and through the
1760
�PART FIVE
long months she had hungered for closer contact. But
now–
How odd that the touch of his hands did not excite
her! Once his very nearness would have set her atremble. Now she felt a curious warm friendliness
and content. No fever leaped from his hands to hers
and in his hands her heart hushed to happy quietness.
This puzzled her, made her a little disconcerted. He
was still her Ashley, still her bright, shining darling
and she loved him better than life. Then why–
But she pushed the thought from her mind. It was
enough that she was with him and he was holding
her hands and smiling, completely friendly, without
strain or fever. It seemed miraculous that this could
be when she thought of all the unsaid things that lay
between them. His eyes looked into hers, clear and
shining, smiling in the old way she loved, smiling as
though there had never been anything between them
but happiness. There was no barrier between his eyes
and hers now, no baffling remoteness. She laughed.
“Oh, Ashley, I’m getting old and decrepit.”
“Ah, that’s very apparent! No, Scarlett, when you
are sixty, you’ll look the same to me. I’ll always remember you as you were that day of our last barbecue, sitting under an oak with a dozen boys around
1761
�PART FIVE
you. I can even tell you just how you were dressed,
in a white dress covered with tiny green flowers and
a white lace shawl about your shoulders. You had on
little green slippers with black lacings and an enormous leghorn hat with long green streamers. I know
that dress by heart because when I was in prison and
things got too bad, I’d take out my memories and
thumb them over like pictures, recalling every little
detail–”
He stopped abruptly and the eager light faded from
his face. He dropped her hands gently and she sat
waiting, waiting for his next words.
“We’ve come a long way, both of us, since that day,
haven’t we, Scarlett? We’ve traveled roads we never
expected to travel. You’ve come swiftly, directly, and
I, slowly and reluctantly.”
He sat down on the table again and looked at her
and a small smile crept back into his face. But it was
not the smile that had made her so happy so short a
while before. It was a bleak smile.
“Yes, you came swiftly, dragging me at your chariot
wheels. Scarlett, sometimes I have an impersonal curiosity as to what would have happened to me without you.”
Scarlett went quickly to defend him from himself,
1762
�PART FIVE
more quickly because treacherously there rose to her
mind Rhett’s words on this same subject.
“But I’ve never done anything for you, Ashley.
Without me, you’d have been just the same. Some
day, you’d have been a rich man, a great man like you
are going to be.”
“No, Scarlett, the seeds of greatness were never in
me. I think that if it hadn’t been for you, I’d have
gone down into oblivion– like poor Cathleen Calvert
and so many other people who once had great names,
old names.”
“Oh, Ashley, don’t talk like that. You sound so sad.”
“No, I’m not sad. Not any longer. Once–once I was
sad. Now, I’m only–”
He stopped and suddenly she knew what he was
thinking. It was the first time she had ever known
what Ashley was thinking when his eyes went past
her, crystal clear, absent. When the fury of love had
beaten in her heart, his mind had been closed to her.
Now, in the quiet friendliness that lay between them,
she could walk a little way into his mind, understand
a little. He was not sad any longer. He had been sad
after the surrender, sad when she begged him to come
to Atlanta. Now, he was only resigned.
“I hate to hear you talk like that, Ashley,” she said
1763
�PART FIVE
vehemently. “You sound just like Rhett. He’s always
harping on things like that and something he calls the
survival of the fitting till I’m so bored I could scream.”
Ashley smiled.
“Did you ever stop to think, Scarlett, that Rhett and
I are fundamentally alike?”
“Oh, no! You are so fine, so honorable and he–” She
broke off, confused.
“But we are. We came of the same kind of people, we were raised in the same pattern, brought up
to think the same things. And somewhere along the
road we took different turnings. We still think alike
but we react differently. As, for instance, neither of us
believed in the war but I enlisted and fought and he
stayed out till nearly the end. We both knew the war
was all wrong. We both knew it was a losing fight. I
was willing to fight a losing fight. He wasn’t. Sometimes I think he was right and then, again–”
“Oh, Ashley, when will you stop seeing both sides
of questions?” she asked. But she did not speak impatiently as she once would have done. “No one ever
gets anywhere seeing both sides.”
“That’s true but–Scarlett, just where do you want to
get? I’ve often wondered. You see, I never wanted to
get anywhere at all. I’ve only wanted to be myself.”
1764
�PART FIVE
Where did she want to get? That was a silly question. Money and security, of course. And yet– Her
mind fumbled. She had money and as much security
as one could hope for in an insecure world. But, now
that she thought about it, they weren’t quite enough.
Now that she thought about it, they hadn’t made her
particularly happy, though they made her less harried, less fearful of the morrow. If I’d had money
and security and you, that would have been where I
wanted to get, she thought, looking at him yearningly.
But she did not speak the words, fearful of breaking
the spell that lay between them, fearful that his mind
would close against her.
“You only want to be yourself?” she laughed, a little ruefully. “Not being myself has always been my
hardest trouble! As to where I want to get, well, I
guess I’ve gotten there. I wanted to be rich and safe
and–”
“But, Scarlett, did it ever occur to you that I don’t
care whether I’m rich or not?”
No, it had never occurred to her that anyone would
not want to be rich.
“Then, what do you want?”
“I don’t know, now. I knew once but I’ve half forgotten. Mostly to be left alone, not to be harried by peo1765
�PART FIVE
ple I don’t like, driven to do things I don’t want to do.
Perhaps–I want the old days back again and they’ll
never come back, and I am haunted by the memory
of them and of the world falling about my ears.”
Scarlett set her mouth obstinately. It was not that
she did not know what he meant. The very tones of
his voice called up other days as nothing else could,
made her heart hurt suddenly, as she too remembered. But since the day she had lain sick and desolate in the garden at Twelve Oaks and said: “I won’t
look back,” she had set her face against the past.
“I like these days better,” she said. But she did not
meet his eyes as she spoke. “There’s always something exciting happening now, parties and so on. Everything’s got a glitter to it. The old days were so
dull.” (Oh, lazy days and warm still country twilights! The high soft laughter from the quarters!
The golden warmth life had then and the comforting
knowledge of what all tomorrows would bring! How
can I deny you?)
“I like these days better,” she said but her voice was
tremulous.
He slipped from the table, laughing softly in unbelief. Putting his hand under her chin, he turned her
face up to his.
1766
�PART FIVE
“Ah, Scarlett, what a poor liar you are! Yes, life has
a glitter now–of a sort. That’s what’s wrong with it.
The old days had no glitter but they had a charm, a
beauty, a slow-paced glamour.”
Her mind pulled two ways, she dropped her eyes.
The sound of his voice, the touch of his hand were
softly unlocking doors that she had locked forever.
Behind those doors lay the beauty of the old days, and
a sad hunger for them welled up within her. But she
knew that no matter what beauty lay behind, it must
remain there. No one could go forward with a load of
aching memories.
His hand dropped from her chin and he took one of
her hands between his two and held it gently.
“Do you remember,” he said–and a warning bell in
her mind rang: Don’t look back! Don’t look back!
But she swiftly disregarded it, swept forward on a
tide of happiness. At last she was understanding him,
at last their minds had met. This moment was too
precious to be lost, no matter what pain came after.
“Do you remember,” he said and under the spell of
his voice the bare walls of the little office faded and
the years rolled aside and they were riding country
bridle paths together in a long-gone spring. As he
spoke, his light grip tightened on her hand and in his
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voice was the sad magic of old half-forgotten songs.
She could hear the gay jingle of bridle bits as they
rode under the dogwood trees to the Tarletons’ picnic, hear her own careless laughter, see the sun glinting on his silver-gilt hair and note the proud easy
grace with which he sat his horse. There was music
in his voice, the music of fiddles and banjos to which
they had danced in the white house that was no more.
There was the far-off yelping of possum dogs in the
dark swamp under cool autumn moons and the smell
of eggnog bowls, wreathed with holly at Christmas
time and smiles on black and white faces. And old
friends came trooping back, laughing as though they
had not been dead these many years: Stuart and Brent
with their long legs and their red hair and their practical jokes, Tom and Boyd as wild as young horses,
Joe Fontaine with his hot black eyes, and Cade and
Raiford Calvert who moved with such languid grace.
There was John Wilkes, too; and Gerald, red with
brandy; and a whisper and a fragrance that was Ellen.
Over it all rested a sense of security, a knowledge that
tomorrow could only bring the same happiness today
had brought.
His voice stopped and they looked for a long quiet
moment into each other’s eyes and between them lay
the sunny lost youth that they had so unthinkingly
1768
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shared.
“Now I know why you can’t be happy,” she thought
sadly. “I never understood before. I never understood
before why I wasn’t altogether happy either. But–
why, we are talking like old people talk!” she thought
with dreary surprise. “Old people looking back fifty
years. And we’re not old! It’s just that so much has
happened in between. Everything’s changed so much
that it seems like fifty years ago. But we’re not old!”
But when she looked at Ashley he was no longer
young and shining. His head was bowed as he looked
down absently at her hand which he still held and
she saw that his once bright hair was very gray, silver
gray as moonlight on still water. Somehow the bright
beauty had gone from the April afternoon and from
her heart as well and the sad sweetness of remembering was as bitter as gall.
“I shouldn’t have let him make me look back,” she
thought despairingly. “I was right when I said I’d
never look back. It hurts too much, it drags at your
heart till you can’t ever do anything else except look
back. That’s what’s wrong with Ashley. He can’t look
forward any more. He can’t see the present, he fears
the future, and so he looks back. I never understood
it before. I never understood Ashley before. Oh, Ash1769
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ley, my darling, you shouldn’t look back! What good
will it do? I shouldn’t have let you tempt me into talking of the old days. This is what happens when you
look back to happiness, this pain, this heartbreak, this
discontent.”
She rose to her feet, her hand still in his. She must
go. She could not stay and think of the old days and
see his face, tired and sad and bleak as it now was.
“We’ve come a long way since those days, Ashley,”
she said, trying to steady her voice, trying to fight the
constriction in her throat. “We had fine notions then,
didn’t we?” And then, with a rush, “Oh, Ashley, nothing has turned out as we expected!”
“It never does,” he said. “Life’s under no obligation
to give us what we expect. We take what we get and
are thankful it’s no worse than it is.”
Her heart was suddenly dull with pain, with weariness, as she thought of the long road she had come
since those days. There rose up in her mind the memory of Scarlett O’Hara who loved beaux and pretty
dresses and who intended, some day, when she had
the time, to be a great lady like Ellen.
Without warning, tears started in her eyes and
rolled slowly down her cheeks and she stood looking
at him dumbly, like a hurt bewildered child. He said
1770
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no word but took her gently in his arms, pressed her
head against his shoulder and, leaning down, laid his
cheek against hers. She relaxed against him and her
arms went round his body. The comfort of his arms
helped dry her sudden tears. Ah, it was good to be
in his arms, without passion, without tenseness, to be
there as a loved friend. Only Ashley who shared her
memories and her youth, who knew her beginnings
and her present could understand.
She heard the sound of feet outside but paid little
heed, thinking it was the teamsters going home. She
stood for a moment, listening to the slow beat of Ashley’s heart. Then suddenly he wrenched himself from
her, confusing her by his violence. She looked up into
his face in surprise but he was not looking at her. He
was looking over her shoulder at the door.
She turned and there stood India, white faced, her
pale eyes blazing, and Archie, malevolent as a oneeyed parrot. Behind them stood Mrs. Elsing.
How she got out of the office she never remembered. But she went instantly, swiftly, by Ashley’s
order, leaving Ashley and Archie in grim converse in
the little room and India and Mrs. Elsing outside with
their backs to her. Shame and fear sped her homeward and, in her mind, Archie with his patriarch’s
1771
�PART FIVE
beard assumed the proportions of an avenging angel
straight from the pages of the Old Testament.
The house was empty and still in the April sunset.
All the servants had gone to a funeral and the children
were playing in Melanie’s back yard. Melanie–
Melanie! Scarlett went cold at the thought of her as
she climbed the stairs to her room. Melanie would
hear of this. India had said she would tell her. Oh, India would glory in telling her, not caring if she blackened Ashley’s name, not caring if she hurt Melanie, if
by so doing she could injure Scarlett! And Mrs. Elsing
would talk too, even though she had really seen nothing, because she was behind India and Archie in the
door of the lumber office. But she would talk, just the
same. The news would be all over town by supper
time. Everyone, even the negroes, would know by
tomorrow’s breakfast. At the party tonight, women
would gather in corners and whisper discreetly and
with malicious pleasure. Scarlett Butler tumbled from
her high and mighty place! And the story would
grow and grow. There was no way of stopping it. It
wouldn’t stop at the bare facts, that Ashley was holding her in his arms while she cried. Before nightfall
people would be saying she had been taken in adultery. And it had been so innocent, so sweet! Scarlett
1772
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thought wildly: If we had been caught that Christmas
of his furlough when I kissed him good-by–if we had
been caught in the orchard at Tara when I begged him
to run away with me–oh, if we’d been caught any of
the times when we were really guilty, it wouldn’t be
so bad! But now! Now! When I went to his arms as a
friend–
But no one would believe that. She wouldn’t have
a single friend to take her part, not a single voice
would be raised to say: “I don’t believe she was doing anything wrong.” She had outraged old friends
too long to find a champion among them now. Her
new friends, suffering in silence under her insolences,
would welcome a chance to blackguard her. No, everybody would believe anything about her, though
they might regret that so fine a man as Ashley Wilkes
was mixed up in so dirty an affair. As usual they
would cast the blame upon the woman and shrug at
the man’s guilt. And in this case they would be right.
She had gone into his arms.
Oh, she could stand the cuts, the slights, the covert
smiles, anything the town might say, if she had to
stand them–but not Melanie! Oh, not Melanie! She
did not know why she should mind Melanie knowing, more than anyone else. She was too frightened
1773
�PART FIVE
and weighed down by a sense of past guilt to try to
understand it. But she burst into tears at the thought
of what would be in Melanie’s eyes when India told
her that she had caught Ashley fondling Scarlett. And
what would Melanie do when she knew? Leave Ashley? What else could she do, with any dignity? And
what will Ashley and I do then? she thought frenziedly, the tears streaming down her face. Oh, Ashley
will die of shame and hate me for bringing this on
him. Suddenly her tears stopped short as a deadly
fear went through her heart. What of Rhett? What
would he do?
Perhaps he’d never know. What was that old saying,
that cynical saying? “The husband is always the last
to find out.” Perhaps no one would tell him. It would
take a brave man to break such news to Rhett, for
Rhett had the reputation for shooting first and asking
questions afterwards. Please, God, don’t let anybody
be brave enough to tell him! But she remembered
the face of Archie in the lumber office, the cold, pale
eye, remorseless, full of hate for her and all women.
Archie feared neither God nor man and he hated loose
women. He had hated them enough to kill one. And
he had said he would tell Rhett. And he’d tell him in
spite of all Ashley could do to dissuade him. Unless
Ashley killed him, Archie would tell Rhett, feeling it
1774
�PART FIVE
his Christian duty.
She pulled off her clothes and lay down on the bed,
her mind whirling round and round. If she could
only lock her door and stay in this safe place forever and ever and never see anyone again. Perhaps
Rhett wouldn’t find out tonight. She’d say she had a
headache and didn’t feel like going to the reception.
By morning she would have thought up some excuse
to offer, some defense that might hold water.
“I won’t think of it now,” she said desperately, burying her face in the pillow. “I won’t think of it now. I’ll
think of it later when I can stand it.”
She heard the servants come back as night fell and
it seemed to her that they were very silent as they
moved about preparing supper. Or was it her guilty
conscience? Mammy came to the door and knocked
but Scarlett sent her away, saying she did not want
any supper. Time passed and finally she heard Rhett
coming up the steps. She held herself tensely as he
reached the upper hall, gathered all her strength for
a meeting but he passed into his room. She breathed
easier. He hadn’t heard. Thank God, he still respected
her icy request that he never put foot in her bedroom
again, for if he saw her now, her face would give her
away. She must gather herself together enough to tell
1775
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him that she felt too ill to go to the reception. Well,
there was time enough for her to calm herself. Or was
there time? Since the awful moment that afternoon,
life had seemed timeless. She heard Rhett moving
about in his room for a long time, speaking occasionally to Pork. Still she could not find courage to call to
him. She lay still on the bed in the darkness, shaking.
After a long time, he knocked on her door and she
said, trying to control her voice: “Come in.”
“Am I actually being invited into the sanctuary?” he
questioned, opening the door. It was dark and she
could not see his face. Nor could she make anything
of his voice. He entered and closed the door.
“Are you ready for the reception?”
“I’m so sorry but I have a headache.” How odd
that her voice sounded natural! Thank God for the
dark! “I don’t believe I’ll go. You go, Rhett, and give
Melanie my regrets.”
There was a long pause and he spoke drawlingly,
bitingly in the dark.
“What a white livered, cowardly little bitch you
are.”
He knew! She lay shaking, unable to speak. She
heard him fumble in the dark, strike a match and
the room sprang into light. He walked over to the
1776
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bed and looked down at her. She saw that he was in
evening clothes.
“Get up,” he said and there was nothing in his voice.
“We are going to the reception. You will have to
hurry.”
“Oh, Rhett, I can’t. You see–”
“I can see. Get up.”
“Rhett, did Archie dare–”
“Archie dared. A very brave man, Archie.”
“You should have killed him for telling lies–”
“I have a strange way of not killing people who tell
the truth. There’s no time to argue now. Get up.”
She sat up, hugging her wrapper close to her, her
eyes searching his face. It was dark and impassive.
“I won’t go, Rhett.
I can’t until this–
misunderstanding is cleared up.”
“If you don’t show your face tonight, you’ll never be
able to show it in this town as long as you live. And
while I may endure a trollop for a wife, I won’t endure
a coward. You are going tonight, even if everyone,
from Alex Stephens down, cuts you and Mrs. Wilkes
asks us to leave the house.”
“Rhett, let me explain.”
1777
�PART FIVE
“I don’t want to hear. There isn’t time. Get on your
clothes.”
“They misunderstood–India and Mrs. Elsing and
Archie. And they hate me so. India hates me so much
that she’d even tell lies about her own brother to make
me appear in a bad light. If you’ll only let me explain–
”
Oh, Mother of God, she thought in agony, suppose
he says: “Pray do explain!” What can I say? How can
I explain?
“They’ll have told everybody lies.
tonight.”
I can’t go
“You will go,” he said, “if I have to drag you by the
neck and plant my boot on your ever so charming bottom every step of the way.”
There was a cold glitter in his eyes as he jerked her
to her feet. He picked up her stays and threw them at
her.
“Put them on. I’ll lace you. Oh yes, I know all about
lacing. No, I won’t call Mammy to help you and have
you lock the door and skulk here like the coward you
are.”
“I’m not a coward,” she cried, stung out of her fear.
“I–”
1778
�PART FIVE
“Oh, spare me your saga about shooting Yankees
and facing Sherman’s army. You’re a coward–among
other things. If not for your own sake, you are going tonight for Bonnie’s sake. How could you further
ruin her chances? Put on your stays, quick.”
Hastily she slipped off her wrapper and stood clad
only in her chemise. If only he would look at her and
see how nice she looked in her chemise, perhaps that
frightening look would leave his face. After all, he
hadn’t seen her in her chemise for ever and ever so
long. But he did not look. He was in her closet, going
through her dresses swiftly. He fumbled and drew
out her new jade-green watered-silk dress. It was cut
low over the bosom and the skirt was draped back
over an enormous bustle and on the bustle was a huge
bunch of pink velvet roses.
“Wear that,” he said, tossing it on the bed and coming toward her. “No modest, matronly dove grays
and lilacs tonight. Your flag must be nailed to the
mast, for obviously you’d run it down if it wasn’t.
And plenty of rouge. I’m sure the woman the Pharisees took in adultery didn’t look half so pale. Turn
around.”
He took the strings of the stays in his hands and
jerked them so hard that she cried out, frightened,
1779
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humiliated, embarrassed at such an untoward performance.
“Hurts, does it?” He laughed shortly and she could
not see his face. “Pity it isn’t around your neck.”
Melanie’s house blazed lights from every room and
they could hear the music far up the street. As they
drew up in front, the pleasant exciting sounds of
many people enjoying themselves floated out. The
house was packed with guests. They overflowed on
verandas and many were sitting on benches in the
dim lantern-hung yard.
I can’t go in–I can’t, thought Scarlett, sitting in the
carriage, gripping her balled-up handkerchief. I can’t.
I won’t. I will jump out and run away, somewhere,
back home to Tara. Why did Rhett force me to come
here? What will people do? What will Melanie do?
What will she look like? Oh, I can’t face her. I will run
away.
As though he read her mind, Rhett’s hand closed
upon her arm in a grip that would leave a bruise, the
rough grip of a careless stranger.
“I’ve never known an Irishman to be a coward.
Where’s your much- vaunted courage?”
“Rhett, do please, let me go home and explain.”
“You have eternity in which to explain and only one
1780
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night to be a martyr in the amphitheater. Get out, darling, and let me see the lions eat you. Get out.”
She went up the walk somehow, the arm she was
holding as hard and steady as granite, communicating to her some courage. By God, she could face
them and she would. What were they but a bunch of
howling, clawing cats who were jealous of her? She’d
show them. She didn’t care what they thought. Only
Melanie–only Melanie.
They were on the porch and Rhett was bowing right
and left, his hat in his hand, his voice cool and soft.
The music stopped as they entered and the crowd of
people seemed to her confused mind to surge up to
her like the roar of the sea and then ebb away, with
lessening, ever-lessening sound. Was everyone going
to cut her? Well, God’s nightgown, let them do it! Her
chin went up and she smiled, the corners of her eyes
crinkling.
Before she could turn to speak to those nearest the
door, someone came through the press of people.
There was an odd hush that caught Scarlett’s heart.
Then through the lane came Melanie on small feet
that hurried, hurried to meet Scarlett at the door, to
speak to her before anyone else could speak. Her narrow shoulders were squared and her small jaw set in1781
�PART FIVE
dignantly and, for all her notice, she might have had
no other guest but Scarlett. She went to her side and
slipped an arm about her waist.
“What a lovely dress, darling,” she said in her small,
clear voice. “Will you be an angel? India was unable
to come tonight and assist me. Will you receive with
me?”
1782
�CHAPTER LIV
room again, Scarlett fell on the bed, careless of her moire dress, bustle and roses. For a time
she could only lie still and think of standing between
Melanie and Ashley, greeting guests. What a horror!
She would face Sherman’s army again rather than repeat that performance! After a time, she rose from
the bed and nervously paced the floor, shedding garments as she walked.
Reaction from strain set in and she began to shake.
Hairpins slipped out of her fingers and tinkled to the
floor and when she tried to give her hair its customary hundred strokes, she banged the back of the brush
hurtingly against her temple. A dozen times she tiptoed to the door to listen for noises downstairs but the
hall below lay like a black silent pit.
Rhett had sent her home alone in the carriage when
the party was over and she had thanked God for the
reprieve. He had not come in yet. Thank God, he had
not come in. She could not face him tonight, shamed,
frightened, shaking. But where was he? Probably at
that creature’s place. For the first time, Scarlett was
glad there was such a person as Belle Watling. Glad
there was some other place than this house to shelter Rhett until his glittering, murderous mood had
S AFE
IN HER
�PART FIVE
passed. That was wrong, being glad a husband was
at the house of a prostitute, but she could not help it.
She would be almost glad if he were dead, if it meant
she would not have to see him tonight.
Tomorrow–well, tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow she would think of some excuse, some
counter accusations, some way of putting Rhett in the
wrong. Tomorrow the memory of this hideous night
would not be driving her so fiercely that she shook.
Tomorrow she would not be so haunted by the memory of Ashley’s face, his broken pride and his shame–
shame that she had caused, shame in which he had so
little part. Would he hate her now, her darling honorable Ashley, because she had shamed him? Of course
he would hate her now–now that they had both been
saved by the indignant squaring of Melanie’s thin
shoulders and the love and outspoken trust which
had been in her voice as she crossed the glassy floor
to slip her arm through Scarlett’s and face the curious, malicious, covertly hostile crowd. How neatly
Melanie had scotched the scandal, keeping Scarlett at
her side all through the dreadful evening! People had
been a bit cool, somewhat bewildered, but they had
been polite.
Oh, the ignominy of it all, to be sheltered be1784
�PART FIVE
hind Melanie’s skirts from those who hated her, who
would have torn her to bits with their whispers! To
be sheltered by Melanie’s blind trust, Melanie of all
people!
Scarlett shook as with a chill at the thought. She
must have a drink, a number of drinks before she
could lie down and hope to sleep. She threw a wrapper about her gown and went hastily out into the dark
hall, her backless slippers making a great clatter in
the stillness. She was halfway down the stairs before
she looked toward the closed door of the dining room
and saw a narrow line of light streaming from under
it. Her heart stopped for a moment. Had that light
been burning when she came home and had she been
too upset to notice it? Or was Rhett home after all?
He could have come in quietly through the kitchen
door. If Rhett were home, she would tiptoe back to
bed without her brandy, much as she needed it. Then
she wouldn’t have to face him. Once in her room she
would be safe, for she could lock the door.
She was leaning over to pluck off her slippers, so
she might hurry back in silence, when the diningroom door swung open abruptly and Rhett stood silhouetted against the dim candlelight behind him. He
looked huge, larger than she had ever seen him, a ter1785
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rifying faceless black bulk that swayed slightly on its
feet.
“Pray join me, Mrs. Butler,” he said and his voice
was a little thick.
He was drunk and showing it and she had never
before seen him show his liquor, no matter how much
he drank. She paused irresolutely, saying nothing and
his arm went up in gesture of command.
“Come here, damn you!” he said roughly.
He must be very drunk, she thought with a fluttering heart. Usually, the more he drank, the more
polished became his manners. He sneered more, his
words were apt to be more biting, but the manner that
accompanied them was always punctilious–too punctilious.
“I must never let him know I’m afraid to face him,”
she thought, and, clutching the wrapper closer to her
throat, she went down the stairs with her head up and
her heels clacking noisily.
He stood aside and bowed her through the door
with a mockery that made her wince. She saw that
he was coatless and his cravat hung down on either
side of his open collar. His shirt was open down to
the thick mat of black hair on his chest. His hair was
rumpled and his eyes bloodshot and narrow. One
1786
�PART FIVE
candle burned on the table, a tiny spark of light that
threw monstrous shadows about the high- ceilinged
room and made the massive sideboards and buffet
look like still, crouching beasts. On the table on the
silver tray stood the decanter with cut-glass stopper
out, surrounded by glasses.
“Sit down,” he said curtly, following her into the
room.
Now a new kind of fear crept into her, a fear that
made her alarm at facing him seem very small. He
looked and talked and acted like a stranger. This
was an ill-mannered Rhett she had never seen before.
Never at any time, even in most intimate moments,
had he been other than nonchalant. Even in anger, he
was suave and satirical, and whisky usually served
to intensify these qualities. At first it had annoyed her
and she had tried to break down that nonchalance but
soon she had come to accept it as a very convenient
thing. For years she had thought that nothing mattered very much to him, that he thought everything
in life, including her, an ironic joke. But as she faced
him across the table, she knew with a sinking feeling
in her stomach that at last something was mattering
to him, mattering very much.
“There is no reason why you should not have your
1787
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nightcap, even if I am ill bred enough to be at home,”
he said. “Shall I pour it for you?”
“I did not want a drink,” she said stiffly. “I heard a
noise and came–”
“You heard nothing. You wouldn’t have come down
if you’d thought I was home. I’ve sat here and listened to you racing up and down the floor upstairs.
You must need a drink badly. Take it.”
“I do not–”
He picked up the decanter and sloshed a glassful,
untidily.
“Take it,” he said, shoving it into her hand. “You are
shaking all over. Oh, don’t give yourself airs. I know
you drink on the quiet and I know how much you
drink. For some time I’ve been intending to tell you
to stop your elaborate pretenses and drink openly if
you want to. Do you think I give a damn if you like
your brandy?”
She took the wet glass, silently cursing him. He read
her like a book. He had always read her and he was
the one man in the world from whom she would like
to hide her real thoughts.
“Drink it, I say.”
She raised the glass and bolted the contents with one
1788
�PART FIVE
abrupt motion of her arm, wrist stiff, just as Gerald
had always taken his neat whisky, bolted it before she
thought how practiced and unbecoming it looked. He
did not miss the gesture and his mouth went down at
the corner.
“Sit down and we will have a pleasant domestic
discussion of the elegant reception we have just attended.”
“You are drunk,” she said coldly, “and I am going to
bed.”
“I am very drunk and I intend to get still drunker before the evening’s over. But you aren’t going to bed–
not yet. Sit down.”
His voice still held a remnant of its wonted cool
drawl but beneath the words she could feel violence
fighting its way to the surface, violence as cruel as
the crack of a whip. She wavered irresolutely and he
was at her side, his hand on her arm in a grip that
hurt. He gave it a slight wrench and she hastily sat
down with a little cry of pain. Now, she was afraid,
more afraid than she had ever been in her life. As he
leaned over her, she saw that his face was dark and
flushed and his eyes still held their frightening glitter.
There was something in their depths she did not recognize, could not understand, something deeper than
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�PART FIVE
anger, stronger than pain, something driving him until his eyes glowed redly like twin coals. He looked
down at her for a long time, so long that her defiant
gaze wavered and fell, and then he slumped into a
chair opposite her and poured himself another drink.
She thought rapidly, trying to lay a line of defenses.
But until he spoke, she would not know what to say
for she did not know exactly what accusation he intended to make.
He drank slowly, watching her over the glass and
she tightened her nerves, trying to keep from trembling. For a time his face did not change its expression but finally he laughed, still keeping his eyes on
her, and at the sound she could not still her shaking.
“It was an amusing comedy, this evening, wasn’t
it?”
She said nothing, curling her toes in the loose slippers in an effort at controlling her quivering.
“A pleasant comedy with no character missing. The
village assembled to stone the erring woman, the
wronged husband supporting his wife as a gentleman
should, the wronged wife stepping in with Christian
spirit and casting the garments of her spotless reputation over it all. And the lover–”
“Please.”
1790
�PART FIVE
“I don’t please. Not tonight. It’s too amusing. And
the lover looking like a damned fool and wishing he
were dead. How does it feel, my dear, to have the
woman you hate stand by you and cloak your sins for
you? Sit down.”
She sat down.
“You don’t like her any better for it, I imagine.
You are wondering if she knows all about you and
Ashley–wondering why she did this if she does
know–if she just did it to save her own face. And you
are thinking she’s a fool for doing it, even if it did save
your hide but–”
“I will not listen–”
“Yes, you will listen. And I’ll tell you this to ease
your worry. Miss Melly is a fool but not the kind you
think. It was obvious that someone had told her but
she didn’t believe it. Even if she saw, she wouldn’t
believe. There’s too much honor in her to conceive
of dishonor in anyone she loves. I don’t know what
lie Ashley Wilkes told her–but any clumsy one would
do, for she loves Ashley and she loves you. I’m sure I
can’t see why she loves you but she does. Let that be
one of your crosses.”
“If you were not so drunk and insulting, I would explain everything,” said Scarlett, recovering some dig1791
�PART FIVE
nity. “But now–”
“I am not interested in your explanations. I know
the truth better than you do. By God, if you get up
out of that chair just once more–
“And what I find more amusing than even tonight’s
comedy is the fact that while you have been so virtuously denying me the pleasures of your bed because
of my many sins, you have been lusting in your heart
after Ashley Wilkes. ‘Lusting in your heart.’ That’s
a good phrase, isn’t it? There are a number of good
phrases in that Book, aren’t there?”
“What book? What book?” her mind ran on, foolishly, irrelevantly as she cast frantic eyes about the
room, noting how dully the massive silver gleamed
in the dim light, how frighteningly dark the corners
were.
“And I was cast out because my coarse ardors were
too much for your refinement–because you didn’t
want any more children. How bad that made me feel,
dear heart! How it cut me! So I went out and found
pleasant consolation and left you to your refinements.
And you spent that time tracking the long-suffering
Mr. Wilkes. God damn him, what ails him? He can’t
be faithful to his wife with his mind or unfaithful with
his body. Why doesn’t he make up his mind? You
1792
�PART FIVE
wouldn’t object to having his children, would you–
and passing them off as mine?”
She sprang to her feet with a cry and he lunged from
his seat, laughing that soft laugh that made her blood
cold. He pressed her back into her chair with large
brown hands and leaned over her.
“Observe my hands, my dear,” he said, flexing them
before her eyes. “I could tear you to pieces with them
with no trouble whatsoever and I would do it if it
would take Ashley out of your mind. But it wouldn’t.
So I think I’ll remove him from your mind forever, this
way. I’ll put my hands, so, on each side of your head
and I’ll smash your skull between them like a walnut
and that will blot him out.”
His hands were on her head, under her flowing
hair, caressing, hard, turning her face up to his. She
was looking into the face of a stranger, a drunken
drawling-voiced stranger. She had never lacked animal courage and in the face of danger it flooded back
hotly into her veins, stiffening her spine, narrowing
her eyes.
“You drunken fool,” she said. “Take your hands off
me.”
To her surprise, he did so and seating himself on the
edge of the table he poured himself another drink.
1793
�PART FIVE
“I have always admired your spirit, my dear. Never
more than now when you are cornered.”
She drew her wrapper close about her body. Oh, if
she could only reach her room and turn the key in the
stout door and be alone. Somehow, she must stand
him off, bully him into submission, this Rhett she had
never seen before. She rose without haste, though her
knees shook, tightened the wrapper across her hips
and threw back her hair from her face.
“I’m not cornered,” she said cuttingly. “You’ll never
corner me, Rhett Butler, or frighten me. You are nothing but a drunken beast who’s been with bad women
so long that you can’t understand anything else but
badness. You can’t understand Ashley or me. You’ve
lived in dirt too long to know anything else. You
are jealous of something you can’t understand. Good
night.”
She turned casually and started toward the door and
a burst of laughter stopped her. She turned and he
swayed across the room toward her. Name of God,
if he would only stop that terrible laugh! What was
there to laugh about in all of this? As he came toward
her, she backed toward the door and found herself
against the wall. He put his hands heavily upon her
and pinned her shoulders to the wall.
1794
�PART FIVE
“Stop laughing.”
“I am laughing because I am so sorry for you.”
“Sorry–for me? Be sorry for yourself.”
“Yes, by God, I’m sorry for you, my dear, my pretty
little fool. That hurts, doesn’t it? You can’t stand either laughter or pity, can you?”
He stopped laughing, leaning so heavily against her
shoulders that they ached. His face changed and he
leaned so close to her that the heavy whisky smell of
his breath made her turn her head.
“Jealous, am I?” he said. “And why not? Oh, yes,
I’m jealous of Ashley Wilkes. Why not? Oh, don’t try
to talk and explain. I know you’ve been physically
faithful to me. Was that what you were trying to say?
Oh, I’ve known that all along. All these years. How
do I know? Oh, well, I know Ashley Wilkes and his
breed. I know he is honorable and a gentleman. And
that, my dear, is more than I can say for you–or for
me, for that matter. We are not gentlemen and we
have no honor, have we? That’s why we flourish like
green bay trees.”
“Let me go. I won’t stand here and be insulted.”
“I’m not insulting you. I’m praising your physical
virtue. And it hasn’t fooled me one bit. You think men
are such fools, Scarlett. It never pays to underestimate
1795
�PART FIVE
your opponent’s strength and intelligence. And I’m
not a fool. Don’t you suppose I know that you’ve lain
in my arms and pretended I was Ashley Wilkes?”
Her jaw dropped and fear and astonishment were
written plainly in her face.
“Pleasant thing, that. Rather ghostly, in fact. Like
having three in a bed where there ought to be just
two.” He shook her shoulders, ever so slightly, hiccoughed and smiled mockingly.
“Oh, yes, you’ve been faithful to me because Ashley wouldn’t have you. But, hell, I wouldn’t have
grudged him your body. I know how little bodies
mean–especially women’s bodies. But I do grudge
him your heart and your dear, hard, unscrupulous,
stubborn mind. He doesn’t want your mind, the fool,
and I don’t want your body. I can buy women cheap.
But I do want your mind and your heart, and I’ll
never have them, any more than you’ll ever have Ashley’s mind. And that’s why I’m sorry for you.”
Even through her fear and bewilderment, his sneer
stung.
“Sorry–for me?”
“Yes, sorry because you’re such a child, Scarlett. A
child crying for the moon. What would a child do
with the moon if it got it? And what would you
1796
�PART FIVE
do with Ashley? Yes, I’m sorry for you–sorry to see
you throwing away happiness with both hands and
reaching out for something that would never make
you happy. I’m sorry because you are such a fool you
don’t know there can’t ever be happiness except when
like mates like. If I were dead, if Miss Melly were
dead and you had your precious honorable lover, do
you think you’d be happy with him? Hell, no! You
would never know him, never know what he was
thinking about, never understand him any more than
you understand music and poetry and books or anything that isn’t dollars and cents. Whereas, we, dear
wife of my bosom, could have been perfectly happy
if you had ever given us half a chance, for we are
so much alike. We are both scoundrels, Scarlett, and
nothing is beyond us when we want something. We
could have been happy, for I loved you and I know
you, Scarlett, down to your bones, in a way that Ashley could never know you. And he would despise
you if he did know. . . . But no, you must go mooning
all your life after a man you cannot understand. And
I, my darling, will continue to moon after whores.
And, I dare say we’ll do better than most couples.”
He released her abruptly and made a weaving way
back toward the decanter. For a moment, Scarlett
stood rooted, thoughts tearing in and out of her mind
1797
�PART FIVE
so swiftly that she could seize none of them long
enough to examine them. Rhett had said he loved
her. Did he mean it? Or was he merely drunk? Or
was this one of his horrible jokes? And Ashley–the
moon–crying for the moon. She ran swiftly into the
dark hall, fleeing as though demons were upon her.
Oh, if she could only reach her room! She turned her
ankle and the slipper fell half off. As she stopped to
kick it loose frantically, Rhett, running lightly as an Indian, was beside her in the dark. His breath was not
on her face and his hands went round her roughly,
under the wrapper, against her bare skin.
“You turned me out on the town while you chased
him. By God, this is one night when there are only
going to be two in my bed.”
He swung her off her feet into his arms and started
up the stairs. Her head was crushed against his chest
and she heard the hard hammering of his heart beneath her ears. He hurt her and she cried out, muffled, frightened. Up the stairs he went in the utter
darkness, up, up, and she was wild with fear. He
was a mad stranger and this was a black darkness she
did not know, darker than death. He was like death,
carrying her away in arms that hurt. She screamed,
stifled against him and he stopped suddenly on the
1798
�PART FIVE
landing and, turning her swiftly in his arms, bent over
and kissed her with a savagery and a completeness
that wiped out everything from her mind but the dark
into which she was sinking and the lips on hers. He
was shaking, as though he stood in a strong wind,
and his lips, traveling from her mouth downward to
where the wrapper had fallen from her body, fell on
her soft flesh. He was muttering things she did not
hear, his lips were evoking feelings never felt before.
She was darkness and he was darkness and there had
never been anything before this time, only darkness
and his lips upon her. She tried to speak and his
mouth was over hers again. Suddenly she had a wild
thrill such as she had never known; joy, fear, madness,
excitement, surrender to arms that were too strong,
lips too bruising, fate that moved too fast. For the
first time in her life she had met someone, something
stronger than she, someone she could neither bully
nor break, someone who was bullying and breaking
her. Somehow, her arms were around his neck and
her lips trembling beneath his and they were going
up, up into the darkness again, a darkness that was
soft and swirling and all enveloping.
When she awoke the next morning, he was gone and
had it not been for the rumpled pillow beside her, she
would have thought the happenings of the night be1799
�PART FIVE
fore a wild preposterous dream. She went crimson
at the memory and, pulling the bed covers up about
her neck, lay bathed in sunlight, trying to sort out the
jumbled impressions in her mind.
Two things stood to the fore. She had lived for years
with Rhett, slept with him, eaten with him, quarreled
with him and borne his child–and yet, she did not
know him. The man who had carried her up the dark
stairs was a stranger of whose existence she had not
dreamed. And now, though she tried to make herself hate him, tried to be indignant, she could not. He
had humbled her, hurt her, used her brutally through
a wild mad night and she had gloried in it.
Oh, she should be ashamed, should shrink from the
very memory of the hot swirling darkness! A lady, a
real lady, could never hold up her head after such a
night. But, stronger than shame, was the memory of
rapture, of the ecstasy of surrender. For the first time
in her life she had felt alive, felt passion as sweeping
and primitive as the fear she had known the night she
fled Atlanta, as dizzy sweet as the cold hate when she
had shot the Yankee.
Rhett loved her! At least, he said he loved her and
how could she doubt it now? How odd and bewildering and how incredible that he loved her, this savage
1800
�PART FIVE
stranger with whom she had lived in such coolness.
She was not altogether certain how she felt about this
revelation but as an idea came to her she suddenly
laughed aloud. He loved her and so she had him at
last. She had almost forgotten her early desire to entrap him into loving her, so she could hold the whip
over his insolent black head. Now, it came back and
it gave her great satisfaction. For one night, he had
had her at his mercy but now she knew the weakness of his armor. From now on she had him where
she wanted him. She had smarted under his jeers for
a long time, but now she had him where she could
make him jump through any hoops she cared to hold.
When she thought of meeting him again, face to face
in the sober light of day, a nervous tingling embarrassment that carried with it an exciting pleasure enveloped her.
“I’m nervous as a bride,” she thought. “And about
Rhett!” And, at the idea she fell to giggling foolishly.
But Rhett did not appear for dinner, nor was he at
his place at the supper table. The night passed, a long
night during which she lay awake until dawn, her
ears strained to hear his key in the latch. But he did
not come. When the second day passed with no word
from him, she was frantic with disappointment and
1801
�PART FIVE
fear. She went by the bank but he was not there. She
went to the store and was very sharp with everyone,
for every time the door opened to admit a customer
she looked up with a flutter, hoping it was Rhett. She
went to the lumber yard and bullied Hugh until he
hid himself behind a pile of lumber. But Rhett did not
seek her there.
She could not humble herself to ask friends if they
had seen him. She could not make inquiries among
the servants for news of him. But she felt they knew
something she did not know. Negroes always knew
everything. Mammy was unusually silent those two
days. She watched Scarlett out of the corner of her eye
and said nothing. When the second night had passed
Scarlett made up her mind to go to the police. Perhaps he had had an accident, perhaps his horse had
thrown him and he was lying helpless in some ditch.
Perhaps–oh, horrible thought–perhaps he was dead.
The next morning when she had finished her breakfast and was in her room putting on her bonnet, she
heard swift feet on the stairs. As she sank to the bed in
weak thankfulness, Rhett entered the room. He was
freshly barbered, shaved and massaged and he was
sober, but his eyes were bloodshot and his face puffy
from drink. He waved an airy hand at her and said:
1802
�PART FIVE
“Oh, hello.”
How could a man say “Oh, hello,” after being gone
without explanation for two days? How could he be
so nonchalant with the memory of such a night as
they had spent? He couldn’t unless– unless–the terrible thought leaped into her mind. Unless such nights
were the usual thing to him. For a moment she could
not speak and all the pretty gestures and smiles she
had thought to use upon him were forgotten. He did
not even come to her to give her his usual offhand kiss
but stood looking at her, with a grin, a smoking cigar
in his hand.
“Where–where have you been?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t know! I thought surely the
whole town knew by now. Perhaps they all do, except
you. You know the old adage: ‘The wife is always the
last one to find out.”’
“What do you mean?”
“I thought that after the police called at Belle’s night
before last–”
“Belle’s–that–that woman! You have been with–”
“Of course. Where else would I be? I hope you
haven’t worried about me.”
“You went from me to–oh!”
1803
�PART FIVE
“Come, come, Scarlett! Don’t play the deceived
wife. You must have known about Belle long ago.”
“You went to her from me, after–after–”
“Oh, that.” He made a careless gesture. “I will forget my manners. My apologies for my conduct at
our last meeting. I was very drunk, as you doubtless
know, and quite swept off my feet by your charms–
need I enumerate them?”
Suddenly she wanted to cry, to lie down on the bed
and sob endlessly. He hadn’t changed, nothing had
changed, and she had been a fool, a stupid, conceited,
silly fool, thinking he loved her. It had all been one
of his repulsive drunken jests. He had taken her and
used her when he was drunk, just as he would use
any woman in Belle’s house. And now he was back,
insulting, sardonic, out of reach. She swallowed her
tears and rallied. He must never, never know what
she had thought. How he would laugh if he knew!
Well, he’d never know. She looked up quickly at
him and caught that old, puzzling, watchful glint in
his eyes–keen, eager as though he hung on her next
words, hoping they would be–what was he hoping?
That she’d make a fool out of herself and bawl and
give him something to laugh about? Not she! Her
slanting brows rushed together in a cold frown.
1804
�PART FIVE
“I had naturally suspected what your relations with
that creature were.”
“Only suspected? Why didn’t you ask me and satisfy your curiosity? I’d have told you. I’ve been living
with her ever since the day you and Ashley Wilkes
decided that we should have separate bedrooms.”
“You have the gall to stand there and boast to me,
your wife, that–”
“Oh, spare me your moral indignation. You never
gave a damn what I did as long as I paid the bills.
And you know I’ve been no angel recently. And as for
you being my wife–you haven’t been much of a wife
since Bonnie came, have you? You’ve been a poor investment, Scarlett. Belle’s been a better one.”
“Investment? You mean you gave her–?”
“‘Set her up in business’ is the correct term, I believe.
Belle’s a smart woman. I wanted to see her get ahead
and all she needed was money to start a house of her
own. You ought to know what miracles a woman can
perform when she has a bit of cash. Look at yourself.”
“You compare me–”
“Well, you are both hard-headed business women
and both successful. Belle’s got the edge on you, of
course, because she’s a kind- hearted, good-natured
soul–”
1805
�PART FIVE
“Will you get out of this room?”
He lounged toward the door, one eyebrow raised
quizzically. How could he insult her so, she thought
in rage and pain. He was going out of his way to hurt
and humiliate her and she writhed as she thought
how she had longed for his homecoming, while all
the time he was drunk and brawling with police in a
bawdy house.
“Get out of this room and don’t ever come back in it.
I told you that once before and you weren’t enough of
a gentleman to understand. Hereafter I will lock my
door.”
“Don’t bother.”
“I will lock it. After the way you acted the other
night–so drunk, so disgusting–”
“Come now, darling! Not disgusting, surely!”
“Get out.”
“Don’t worry. I’m going. And I promise I’ll never
bother you again. That’s final. And I just thought I’d
tell you that if my infamous conduct was too much
for you to bear, I’ll let you have a divorce. Just give
me Bonnie and I won’t contest it.”
“I would not think of disgracing the family with a
divorce.”
1806
�PART FIVE
“You’d disgrace it quick enough if Miss Melly was
dead, wouldn’t you? It makes my head spin to think
how quickly you’d divorce me.”
“Will you go?”
“Yes, I’m going. That’s what I came home to tell
you. I’m going to Charleston and New Orleans and–
oh, well, a very extended trip. I’m leaving today.”
“Oh!”
“And I’m taking Bonnie with me. Get that foolish
Prissy to pack her little duds. I’ll take Prissy too.”
“You’ll never take my child out of this house.”
“My child too, Mrs. Butler. Surely you do not mind
me taking her to Charleston to see her grandmother?”
“Her grandmother, my foot! Do you think I’ll let
you take that baby out of here when you’ll be drunk
every night and most likely taking her to houses like
that Belle’s–”
He threw down the cigar violently and it smoked
acridly on the carpet, the smell of scorching wool rising to their nostrils. In an instant he was across the
floor and by her side, his face black with fury.
“If you were a man, I would break your neck for
that. As it is, all I can say is for you to shut your
God-damn mouth. Do you think I do not love Bon1807
�PART FIVE
nie, that I would take her where–my daughter! Good
God, you fool! And as for you, giving yourself pious airs about your motherhood, why, a cat’s a better
mother than you! What have you ever done for the
children? Wade and Ella are frightened to death of
you and if it wasn’t for Melanie Wilkes, they’d never
know what love and affection are. But Bonnie, my
Bonnie! Do you think I can’t take better care of her
than you? Do you think I’ll ever let you bully her and
break her spirit, as you’ve broken Wade’s and Ella’s?
Hell, no! Have her packed up and ready for me in an
hour or I warn you what happened the other night
will be mild beside what will happen. I’ve always
thought a good lashing with a buggy whip would
benefit you immensely.”
He turned on his heel before she could speak and
went out of the room on swift feet. She heard him
cross the floor of the hall to the children’s play room
and open the door. There was a glad, quick treble of
childish voices and she heard Bonnie’s tones rise over
Ella’s.
“Daddy, where you been?”
“Hunting for a rabbit’s skin to wrap my little Bonnie
in. Give your best sweetheart a kiss, Bonnie–and you
too, Ella.”
1808
�CHAPTER LV
want any explanation from you and
I won’t listen to one,” said Melanie firmly as she gently laid a small hand across Scarlett’s tortured lips and
stilled her words. “You insult yourself and Ashley
and me by even thinking there could be need of explanations between us. Why, we three have been–
have been like soldiers fighting the world together
for so many years that I’m ashamed of you for thinking idle gossip could come between us. Do you think
I’d believe that you and my Ashley– Why, the idea!
Don’t you realize I know you better than anyone in
the world knows you? Do you think I’ve forgotten all
the wonderful, unselfish things you’ve done for Ashley and Beau and me–everything from saving my life
to keeping us from starving! Do you think I could
remember you walking in a furrow behind that Yankee’s horse almost barefooted and with your hands
blistered–just so the baby and I could have something
to eat–and then believe such dreadful things about
you? I don’t want to hear a word out of you, Scarlett O’Hara. Not a word.”
“But–” Scarlett fumbled and stopped.
Rhett had left town the hour before with Bonnie and
Prissy, and desolation was added to Scarlett’s shame
“D ARLING , I DON ’ T
�PART FIVE
and anger. The additional burden of her guilt with
Ashley and Melanie’s defense was more than she
could bear. Had Melanie believed India and Archie,
cut her at the reception or even greeted her frigidly,
then she could have held her head high and fought
back with every weapon in her armory. But now, with
the memory of Melanie standing between her and social ruin, standing like a thin, shining blade, with trust
and a fighting light in her eyes, there seemed nothing honest to do but confess. Yes, blurt out everything from that far-off beginning on the sunny porch
at Tara.
She was driven by a conscience which, though long
suppressed, could still rise up, an active Catholic conscience. “Confess your sins and do penance for them
in sorrow and contrition,” Ellen had told her a hundred times and, in this crisis, Ellen’s religious training
came back and gripped her. She would confess–yes,
everything, every look and word, those few caresses–
and then God would ease her pain and give her peace.
And, for her penance, there would be the dreadful sight of Melanie’s face changing from fond love
and trust to incredulous horror and repulsion. Oh,
that was too hard a penance, she thought in anguish,
to have to live out her life remembering Melanie’s
face, knowing that Melanie knew all the pettiness, the
1810
�PART FIVE
meanness, the two-faced disloyalty and the hypocrisy
that were in her.
Once, the thought of flinging the truth tauntingly
in Melanie’s face and seeing the collapse of her fool’s
paradise had been an intoxicating one, a gesture
worth everything she might lose thereby. But now,
all that had changed overnight and there was nothing she desired less. Why this should be she did not
know. There was too great a tumult of conflicting
ideas in her mind for her to sort them out. She only
knew that as she had once desired to keep her mother
thinking her modest, kind, pure of heart, so she now
passionately desired to keep Melanie’s high opinion.
She only knew that she did not care what the world
thought of her or what Ashley or Rhett thought of her,
but Melanie must not think her other than she had always thought her.
She dreaded to tell Melanie the truth but one of her
rare honest instincts arose, an instinct that would not
let her masquerade in false colors before the woman
who had fought her battles for her. So she had hurried
to Melanie that morning, as soon as Rhett and Bonnie
had left the house.
But at her first tumbled-out words: “Melly, I must
explain about the other day–” Melanie had imperi1811
�PART FIVE
ously stopped her. Scarlett looking shamefaced into
the dark eyes that were flashing with love and anger,
knew with a sinking heart that the peace and calm following confession could never be hers. Melanie had
forever cut off that line of action by her first words.
With one of the few adult emotions Scarlett had ever
had, she realized that to unburden her own tortured
heart would be the purest selfishness. She would be
ridding herself of her burden and laying it on the
heart of an innocent and trusting person. She owed
Melanie a debt for her championship and that debt
could only be paid with silence. What cruel payment
it would be to wreck Melanie’s life with the unwelcome knowledge that her husband was unfaithful to
her, and her beloved friend a party to it!
“I can’t tell her,” she thought miserably. “Never, not
even if my conscience kills me.” She remembered irrelevantly Rhett’s drunken remark: “She can’t conceive of dishonor in anyone she loves . . . let that
be your cross.”
Yes, it would be her cross, until she died, to keep
this torment silent within her, to wear the hair shirt of
shame, to feel it chafing her at every tender look and
gesture Melanie would make throughout the years, to
subdue forever the impulse to cry: “Don’t be so kind!
1812
�PART FIVE
Don’t fight for me! I’m not worth it!”
“If you only weren’t such a fool, such a sweet, trusting, simple- minded fool, it wouldn’t be so hard,” she
thought desperately. “I’ve toted lots of weary loads
but this is going to be the heaviest and most galling
load I’ve ever toted.”
Melanie sat facing her, in a low chair, her feet firmly
planted on an ottoman so high that her knees stuck
up like a child’s, a posture she would never have assumed had not rage possessed her to the point of forgetting proprieties. She held a line of tatting in her
hands and she was driving the shining needle back
and forth as furiously as though handling a rapier in
a duel.
Had Scarlett been possessed of such an anger, she
would have been stamping both feet and roaring like
Gerald in his finest days, calling on God to witness
the accursed duplicity and knavishness of mankind
and uttering blood-curdling threats of retaliation. But
only by the flashing needle and the delicate brows
drawn down toward her nose did Melanie indicate
that she was inwardly seething. Her voice was cool
and her words were more close clipped than usual.
But the forceful words she uttered were foreign to
Melanie who seldom voiced an opinion at all and
1813
�PART FIVE
never an unkind word. Scarlett realized suddenly
that the Wilkeses and the Hamiltons were capable of
furies equal to and surpassing those of the O’Haras.
“I’ve gotten mighty tired of hearing people criticize
you, darling,” Melanie said, “and this is the last straw
and I’m going to do something about it. All this has
happened because people are jealous of you, because
you are so smart and successful. You’ve succeeded
where lots of men, even, have failed. Now, don’t be
vexed with me, dear, for saying that. I don’t mean
you’ve ever been unwomanly or unsexed yourself, as
lots of folks have said. Because you haven’t. People just don’t understand you and people can’t bear
for women to be smart. But your smartness and your
success don’t give people the right to say that you and
Ashley– Stars above!”
The soft vehemence of this last ejaculation would
have been, upon a man’s lips, profanity of no uncertain meaning. Scarlett stared at her, alarmed by so
unprecedented an outburst.
“And for them to come to me with the filthy lies
they’d concocted– Archie, India, Mrs. Elsing! How
did they dare? Of course, Mrs. Elsing didn’t come
here. No, indeed, she didn’t have the courage. But
she’s always hated you, darling, because you were
1814
�PART FIVE
more popular than Fanny. And she was so incensed
at your demoting Hugh from the management of the
mill. But you were quite right in demoting him. He’s
just a piddling, do-less, good-for-nothing!” Swiftly
Melanie dismissed the playmate of her childhood and
the beau of her teen years. “I blame myself about
Archie. I shouldn’t have given the old scoundrel shelter. Everyone told me so but I wouldn’t listen. He
didn’t like you, dear, because of the convicts, but who
is he to criticize you? A murderer, and the murderer
of a woman, too! And after all I’ve done for him, he
comes to me and tells me– I shouldn’t have been a bit
sorry if Ashley had shot him. Well, I packed him off
with a large flea in his ear, I can tell you! And he’s left
town.
“And as for India, the vile thing! Darling, I couldn’t
help noticing from the first time I saw you two together that she was jealous of you and hated you, because you were so much prettier and had so many
beaux. And she hated you especially about Stuart
Tarleton. And she’s brooded about Stuart so much
that–well, I hate to say it about Ashley’s sister but I
think her mind has broken with thinking so much!
There’s no other explanation for her action. . . . I
told her never to put foot in this house again and that
if I heard her breathe so vile an insinuation I would–I
1815
�PART FIVE
would call her a liar in public!”
Melanie stopped speaking and abruptly the anger
left her face and sorrow swamped it. Melanie had all
that passionate clan loyalty peculiar to Georgians and
the thought of a family quarrel tore her heart. She faltered for a moment. But Scarlett was dearest, Scarlett
came first in her heart, and she went on loyally:
“She’s always been jealous because I loved you best,
dear. She’ll never come in this house again and I’ll
never put foot under any roof that receives her. Ashley agrees with me, but it’s just about broken his heart
that his own sister should tell such a–”
At the mention of Ashley’s name, Scarlett’s overwrought nerves gave way and she burst into tears.
Would she never stop stabbing him to the heart? Her
only thought had been to make him happy and safe
but at every turn she seemed to hurt him. She had
wrecked his life, broken his pride and self-respect,
shattered that inner peace, that calm based on integrity. And now she had alienated him from the sister he loved so dearly. To save her own reputation and
his wife’s happiness, India had to be sacrificed, forced
into the light of a lying, half-crazed, jealous old maid–
India who was absolutely justified in every suspicion
she had ever harbored and every accusing word she
1816
�PART FIVE
had uttered. Whenever Ashley looked into India’s
eyes, he would see the truth shining there, truth and
reproach and the cold contempt of which the Wilkeses
were masters.
Knowing how Ashley valued honor above his life,
Scarlett knew he must be writhing. He, like Scarlett,
was forced to shelter behind Melanie’s skirts. While
Scarlett realized the necessity for this and knew that
the blame for his false position lay mostly at her own
door, still–still– Womanlike she would have respected
Ashley more, had he shot Archie and admitted everything to Melanie and the world. She knew she was
being unfair but she was too miserable to care for
such fine points. Some of Rhett’s taunting words of
contempt came back to her and she wondered if indeed Ashley had played the manly part in this mess.
And, for the first time, some of the bright glow which
had enveloped him since the first day she fell in love
with him began to fade imperceptibly. The tarnish of
shame and guilt that enveloped her spread to him as
well. Resolutely she tried to fight off this thought but
it only made her cry harder.
“Don’t! Don’t!” cried Melanie, dropping her tatting
and flinging herself onto the sofa and drawing Scarlett’s head down onto her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have
1817
�PART FIVE
talked about it all and distressed you so. I know how
dreadfully you must feel and we’ll never mention it
again. No, not to each other or to anybody. It’ll be
as though it never happened. But,” she added with
quiet venom, “I’m going to show India and Mrs. Elsing what’s what. They needn’t think they can spread
lies about my husband and my sister-in-law. I’m going to fix it so neither of them can hold up their heads
in Atlanta. And anybody who believes them or receives them is my enemy.”
Scarlett, looking sorrowfully down the long vista of
years to come, knew that she was the cause of a feud
that would split the town and the family for generations.
Melanie was as good as her word. She never again
mentioned the subject to Scarlett or to Ashley. Nor,
for that matter, would she discuss it with anyone.
She maintained an air of cool indifference that could
speedily change to icy formality if anyone even dared
hint about the matter. During the weeks that followed
her surprise party, while Rhett was mysteriously absent and the town in a frenzied state of gossip, excitement and partisanship, she gave no quarter to Scarlett’s detractors, whether they were her old friends or
her blood kin. She did not speak, she acted.
1818
�PART FIVE
She stuck by Scarlett’s side like a cocklebur. She
made Scarlett go to the store and the lumber yard, as
usual, every morning and she went with her. She insisted that Scarlett go driving in the afternoons, little
though Scarlett wished to expose herself to the eager
curious gaze of her fellow townspeople. And Melanie
sat in the carriage beside her. Melanie took her calling with her on formal afternoons, gently forcing her
into parlors in which Scarlett had not sat for more
than two years. And Melanie, with a fierce “love-melove-my-dog” look on her face, made converse with
astounded hostesses.
She made Scarlett arrive early on these afternoons
and remain until the last callers had gone, thereby
depriving the ladies of the opportunity for enjoyable
group discussion and speculation, a matter which
caused some mild indignation. These calls were an
especial torment to Scarlett but she dared not refuse
to go with Melanie. She hated to sit amid crowds of
women who were secretly wondering if she had been
actually taken in adultery. She hated the knowledge
that these women would not have spoken to her, had
it not been that they loved Melanie and did not want
to lose her friendship. But Scarlett knew that, having
once received her, they could not cut her thereafter.
1819
�PART FIVE
It was characteristic of the regard in which Scarlett
was held that few people based their defense or their
criticism of her on her personal integrity. “I wouldn’t
put much beyond her,” was the universal attitude.
Scarlett had made too many enemies to have many
champions now. Her words and her actions rankled
in too many hearts for many people to care whether
this scandal hurt her or not. But everyone cared violently about hurting Melanie or India and the storm
revolved around them, rather than Scarlett, centering
upon the one question–“Did India lie?”
Those who espoused Melanie’s side pointed triumphantly to the fact that Melanie was constantly
with Scarlett these days.
Would a woman of
Melanie’s high principles champion the cause of a
guilty woman, especially a woman guilty with her
own husband? No, indeed! India was just a cracked
old maid who hated Scarlett and lied about her and
induced Archie and Mrs. Elsing to believe her lies.
But, questioned India’s adherents, if Scarlett isn’t
guilty, where is Captain Butler? Why isn’t he here at
his wife’s side, lending her the strength of his countenance? That was an unanswerable question and, as
the weeks went by and the rumor spread that Scarlett was pregnant, the pro-India group nodded with
1820
�PART FIVE
satisfaction. It couldn’t be Captain Butler’s baby, they
said. For too long the fact of their estrangement had
been public property. For too long the town had been
scandalized by the separate bedrooms.
So the gossip ran, tearing the town apart, tearing
apart, too, the close-knit clan of Hamiltons, Wilkeses, Burrs, Whitemans and Winfields. Everyone in the
family connection was forced to take sides. There was
no neutral ground. Melanie with cool dignity and India with acid bitterness saw to that. But no matter
which side the relatives took, they all were resentful
that Scarlett should have been the cause of the family breach. None of them thought her worth it. And
no matter which side they took, the relatives heartily
deplored the fact that India had taken it upon herself
to wash the family dirty linen so publicly and involve
Ashley in so degrading a scandal. But now that she
had spoken, many rushed to her defense and took her
side against Scarlett, even as others, loving Melanie,
stood by her and Scarlett.
Half of Atlanta was kin to or claimed kin with
Melanie and India. The ramifications of cousins, double cousins, cousins-in-law and kissing cousins were
so intricate and involved that no one but a born Georgian could ever unravel them. They had always been
1821
�PART FIVE
a clannish tribe, presenting an unbroken phalanx of
overlapping shields to the world in time of stress, no
matter what their private opinions of the conduct of
individual kinsmen might be. With the exception of
the guerrilla warfare carried on by Aunt Pitty against
Uncle Henry, which had been a matter for hilarious
laughter within the family for years, there had never
been an open breach in the pleasant relations. They
were gentle, quiet spoken, reserved people and not
given to even the amiable bickering that characterized
most Atlanta families.
But now they were split in twain and the town was
privileged to witness cousins of the fifth and sixth
degree taking sides in the most shattering scandal
Atlanta had ever seen. This worked great hardship
and strained the tact and forbearance of the unrelated half of the town, for the India-Melanie feud
made a rupture in practically every social organization. The Thalians, the Sewing Circle for the Widows and Orphans of the Confederacy, the Association
for the Beautification of the Graves of Our Glorious
Dead, the Saturday Night Musical Circle, the Ladies’
Evening Cotillion Society, the Young Men’s Library
were all involved. So were four churches with their
Ladies’ Aid and Missionary societies. Great care had
to be taken to avoid putting members of warring fac1822
�PART FIVE
tions on the same committees.
On their regular afternoons at home, Atlanta matrons were in anguish from four to six o’clock for fear
Melanie and Scarlett would call at the same time India
and her loyal kin were in their parlors.
Of all the family, poor Aunt Pitty suffered the most.
Pitty, who desired nothing except to live comfortably
amid the love of her relatives, would have been very
pleased, in this matter, to run with the hares and hunt
with the hounds. But neither the hares nor the hounds
would permit this.
India lived with Aunt Pitty and, if Pitty sided with
Melanie, as she wished to do, India would leave. And
if India left her, what would poor Pitty do then? She
could not live alone. She would have to get a stranger
to live with her or she would have to close up her
house and go and live with Scarlett. Aunt Pitty felt
vaguely that Captain Butler would not care for this,
or she would have to go and live with Melanie and
sleep in the little cubbyhole that was Beau’s nursery.
Pitty was not overly fond of India, for India intimidated her with her dry, stiff-necked ways and her
passionate convictions. But she made it possible for
Pitty to keep her own comfortable establishment and
Pitty was always swayed more by considerations of
1823
�PART FIVE
personal comfort than by moral issues. And so India
remained.
But her presence in the house made Aunt Pitty a
storm center, for both Scarlett and Melanie took that
to mean that she sided with India. Scarlett curtly refused to contribute more money to Pitty’s establishment as long as India was under the same roof. Ashley sent India money every week and every week
India proudly and silently returned it, much to the
old lady’s alarm and regret. Finances at the red-brick
house would have been in a deplorable state, but for
Uncle Henry’s intervention, and it humiliated Pitty to
take money from him.
Pitty loved Melanie better than anyone in the world,
except herself, and now Melly acted like a cool, polite stranger. Though she practically lived in Pitty’s
back yard, she never once came through the hedge
and she used to run in and out a dozen times a day.
Pitty called on her and wept and protested her love
and devotion, but Melanie always refused to discuss
matters and never returned the calls.
Pitty knew very well what she owed Scarlett–almost
her very existence. Certainly in those black days after the war when Pitty was faced with the alternative
of Brother Henry or starvation, Scarlett had kept her
1824
�PART FIVE
home for her, fed her, clothed her and enabled her to
hold up her head in Atlanta society. And since Scarlett had married and moved into her own home, she
had been generosity itself. And that frightening fascinating Captain Butler–frequently after he called with
Scarlett, Pitty found brand-new purses stuffed with
bills on her console table or lace handkerchiefs knotted about gold pieces which had been slyly slipped
into her sewing box. Rhett always vowed he knew
nothing about them and accused her, in a very unrefined way, of having a secret admirer, usually the
be-whiskered Grandpa Merriwether.
Yes, Pitty owed love to Melanie, security to Scarlett,
and what did she owe India? Nothing, except that
India’s presence kept her from having to break up her
pleasant life and make decisions for herself. It was all
most distressing and too, too vulgar and Pitty, who
had never made a decision for herself in her whole
life, simply let matters go on as they were and as a
result spent much time in uncomforted tears.
In the end, some people believed whole-heartedly
in Scarlett’s innocence, not because of her own personal virtue but because Melanie believed in it. Some
had mental reservations but they were courteous to
Scarlett and called on her because they loved Melanie
1825
�PART FIVE
and wished to keep her love. India’s adherents bowed
coldly and some few cut her openly. These last were
embarrassing, infuriating, but Scarlett realized that,
except for Melanie’s championship and her quick action, the face of the whole town would have been set
against her and she would have been an outcast.
1826
�CHAPTER LVI
for three months and during that time
Scarlett had no word from him. She did not know
where he was or how long he would be gone. Indeed,
she had no idea if he would ever return. During this
time, she went about her business with her head high
and her heart sick. She did not feel well physically
but, forced by Melanie, she went to the store every
day and tried to keep up a superficial interest in the
mills. But the store palled on her for the first time and,
although the business was treble what it had been
the year before and the money rolling in, she could
take no interest in it and was sharp and cross with
the clerks. Johnnie Gallegher’s mill was thriving and
the lumber yard selling all his supply easily, but nothing Johnnie did or said pleased her. Johnnie, as Irish
as she, finally erupted into rage at her naggings and
threatened to quit, after a long tirade which ended
with “and the back of both me hands to you, Ma’m,
and the curse of Cromwell on you.” She had to appease him with the most abject of apologies.
She never went to Ashley’s mill. Nor did she go to
the lumber-yard office when she thought he would
be there. She knew he was avoiding her, knew that
her constant presence in his house, at Melanie’s inR HETT WAS GONE
�PART FIVE
escapable invitations, was a torment to him. They
never spoke alone and she was desperate to question
him. She wanted to know whether he now hated her
and exactly what he had told Melanie, but he held
her at arm’s length and silently pleaded with her not
to speak. The sight of his face, old, haggard with remorse, added to her load, and the fact that his mill
lost money every week was an extra irritant which
she could not voice.
His helplessness in the face of the present situation
irked her. She did not know what he could do to better matters but she felt that he should do something.
Rhett would have done something. Rhett always did
something, even if it was the wrong thing, and she
unwillingly respected him for it.
Now that her first rage at Rhett and his insults had
passed, she began to miss him and she missed him
more and more as days went by without news of him.
Out of the welter of rapture and anger and heartbreak
and hurt pride that he had left, depression emerged to
sit upon her shoulder like a carrion crow. She missed
him, missed his light flippant touch in anecdotes that
made her shout with laughter, his sardonic grin that
reduced troubles to their proper proportions, missed
even his jeers that stung her to angry retort. Most
1828
�PART FIVE
of all she missed having him to tell things to. Rhett
was so satisfactory in that respect. She could recount
shamelessly and with pride how she had skinned
people out of their eyeteeth and he would applaud.
And if she even mentioned such things to other people they were shocked.
She was lonely without him and Bonnie. She missed
the child more than she had thought possible. Remembering the last harsh words Rhett had hurled at
her about Wade and Ella, she tried to fill in some of
her empty hours with them. But it was no use. Rhett’s
words and the children’s reactions opened her eyes to
a startling, a galling truth. During the babyhood of
each child she had been too busy, too worried with
money matters, too sharp and easily vexed, to win
their confidence or affection. And now, it was either
too late or she did not have the patience or the wisdom to penetrate their small secretive hearts.
Ella! It annoyed Scarlett to realize that Ella was a
silly child but she undoubtedly was. She couldn’t
keep her little mind on one subject any longer than
a bird could stay on one twig and even when Scarlett tried to tell her stories, Ella went off at childish
tangents, interrupting with questions about matters
that had nothing to do with the story and forgetting
1829
�PART FIVE
what she had asked long before Scarlett could get the
explanation out of her mouth. And as for Wade–
perhaps Rhett was right. Perhaps he was afraid of
her. That was odd and it hurt her. Why should her
own boy, her only boy, be afraid of her? When she
tried to draw him out in talk, he looked at her with
Charles’ soft brown eyes and squirmed and twisted
his feet in embarrassment. But with Melanie, he bubbled over with talk and brought from his pocket everything from fishing worms to old strings to show
her.
Melanie had a way with brats. There was no getting
around it. Her own little Beau was the best behaved
and most lovable child in Atlanta. Scarlett got on better with him than she did with her own son because
little Beau had no self-consciousness where grown
people were concerned and climbed on her knee, uninvited, whenever he saw her. What a beautiful blond
boy he was, just like Ashley! Now if only Wade were
like Beau– Of course, the reason Melanie could do so
much with him was that she had only one child and
she hadn’t had to worry and work as Scarlett had. At
least, Scarlett tried to excuse herself that way but honesty forced her to admit that Melanie loved children
and would have welcomed a dozen. And the overbrimming affection she had was poured out on Wade
1830
�PART FIVE
and the neighbors’ broods.
Scarlett would never forget the shock of the day she
drove by Melanie’s house to pick up Wade and heard,
as she came up the front walk, the sound of her son’s
voice raised in a very fair imitation of the Rebel Yell–
Wade who was always as still as a mouse at home.
And manfully seconding Wade’s yell was the shrill
piping of Beau. When she had walked into the sitting
room she had found the two charging at the sofa with
wooden swords. They had hushed abashed as she entered and Melanie had arisen, laughing and clutching at hairpins and flying curls from where she was
crouching behind the sofa.
“It’s Gettysburg,” she explained. “And I’m the Yankees and I’ve gotten the worst of it. This is General
Lee,” pointing to Beau, “and this is General Pickett,”
putting an arm about Wade’s shoulder.
Yes, Melanie had a way with children that Scarlett
could never fathom.
“At least,” she thought, “Bonnie loves me and likes
to play with me.” But honesty forced her to admit that
Bonnie infinitely preferred Rhett to her. And perhaps
she would never see Bonnie again. For all she knew,
Rhett might be in Perisa or Egypt and intending to
stay there forever.
1831
�PART FIVE
When Dr. Meade told her she was pregnant, she was
astounded, for she had been expecting a diagnosis of
biliousness and over-wrought nerves. Then her mind
fled back to that wild night and her face went crimson at the memory. So a child was coming from those
moments of high rapture–even if the memory of the
rapture was dimmed by what followed. And for the
first time she was glad that she was going to have a
child. If it were only a boy! A fine boy, not a spiritless
little creature like Wade. How she would care for him!
Now that she had the leisure to devote to a baby and
the money to smooth his path, how happy she would
be! She had an impulse to write to Rhett in care of
his mother in Charleston and tell him. Good Heavens, he must come home now! Suppose he stayed
away till after the baby was born! She could never explain that! But if she wrote him he’d think she wanted
him to come home and he would be amused. And he
mustn’t ever think she wanted him or needed him.
She was very glad she had stifled this impulse when
her first news of Rhett came in a letter from Aunt
Pauline in Charleston where, it seemed, Rhett was
visiting his mother. What a relief to know he was still
in the United States, even if Aunt Pauline’s letter was
infuriating. Rhett had brought Bonnie to see her and
Aunt Eulalie and the letter was full of praise.
1832
�PART FIVE
“Such a little beauty! When she grows up she will
certainly be a belle. But I suppose you know that any
man who courts her will have a tussle with Captain
Butler, for I never saw such a devoted father. Now,
my dear, I wish to confess something. Until I met
Captain Butler, I felt that your marriage with him had
been a dreadful mesalliance for, of course, no one in
Charleston hears anything good about him and everyone is so sorry for his family. In fact, Eulalie and
I were uncertain as to whether or not we should receive him–but, after all, the dear child is our greatniece. When he came, we were pleasantly surprised,
most pleasantly, and realized how un-Christian it is
to credit idle gossip. For he is most charming. Quite
handsome, too, we thought, and so very grave and
courteous. And so devoted to you and the child.
“And now, my dear, I must write you of something
that has come to our ears–something Eulalie and I
were loath to believe at first. We had heard, of course,
that you sometimes did help out at the store that Mr.
Kennedy had left you. We had heard rumors but, of
course, we denied them. We realized that in those first
dreadful days after the war, it was perhaps necessary,
conditions being what they were. But there is no necessity now for such conduct on your part, as I know
Captain Butler is in quite comfortable circumstances
1833
�PART FIVE
and is, moreover, fully capable of managing for you
any business and property you may own. We had to
know the truth of these rumors and were forced to
ask Captain Butler point-blank questions which was
most distressing to all of us.
“With reluctance he told us that you spent your
mornings at the store and would permit no one else to
do the bookkeeping. He also admitted that you had
some interest in a mill or mills (we did not press him
on this, being most upset at this information which
was news to us) that necessitated your riding about
alone, or attended by a ruffian who, Captain Butler assures us, is a murderer. We could see how this wrung
his heart and think he must be a most indulgent–in
fact, a far too indulgent husband. Scarlett, this must
stop. Your mother is not here to command you and
I must do it in her place. Think how your little children will feel when they grow older and realize that
you were in trade! How mortified they will be to
know that you exposed yourself to the insults of rude
men and the dangers of careless gossip in attending
to mills. Such unwomanly–”
Scarlett flung down the letter unfinished, with an
oath. She could just see Aunt Pauline and Aunt
Eulalie sitting in judgment on her in the crumbling
1834
�PART FIVE
house on the Battery with little between them and
starvation except what she, Scarlett, sent them every
month. Unwomanly? By God, if she hadn’t been
unwomanly Aunt Pauline and Aunt Eulalie probably wouldn’t have a roof over their heads this very
moment. And damn Rhett for telling them about the
store and the bookkeeping and the mills! Reluctant,
was he? She knew very well the joy he took in palming himself off on the old ladies as grave, courteous
and charming, the devoted husband and father. How
he must have loved harrowing them with descriptions of her activities with the store, the mills, the saloon. What a devil he was. Why did such perverse
things give him such pleasure?
But soon, even this rage passed into apathy. So
much of the keen zest had gone out of life recently.
If only she could recapture the thrill and the glow of
Ashley–if only Rhett would come home and make her
laugh.
They were home again, without warning. The first
intimation of their return was the sound of luggage
being thumped on the front- hall floor and Bonnie’s
voice crying, “Mother!”
Scarlett hurried from her room to the top of the stairs
and saw her daughter stretching her short plump legs
1835
�PART FIVE
in an effort to climb the steps. A resigned striped kitten was clutched to her breast.
“Gran’ma gave him to me,” she cried excitedly,
holding the kitten out by the scruff.
Scarlett swept her up into her arms and kissed her,
thankful that the child’s presence spared her her first
meeting alone with Rhett. Looking over Bonnie’s
head, she saw him in the hall below, paying the cab
driver. He looked up, saw her and swept off his hat
in a wide gesture, bowing as he did. When she met
his dark eyes, her heart leaped. No matter what he
was, no matter what he had done, he was home and
she was glad.
“Where’s Mammy?” asked Bonnie, wriggling in
Scarlett’s grasp and she reluctantly set the child on
her feet.
It was going to be more difficult than she anticipated, greeting Rhett with just the proper degree of
casualness and, as for telling him about the new baby!
She looked at his face as he came up the steps, that
dark nonchalant face, so impervious, so blank. No,
she’d wait to tell him. She couldn’t tell him right
away. And yet, such tidings as these belonged first to
a husband, for a husband was always happy to hear
them. But she did not think he would be happy about
1836
�PART FIVE
it.
She stood on the landing, leaning against the banisters and wondered if he would kiss her. But he did
not. He said only: “You are looking pale, Mrs. Butler.
Is there a rouge shortage?”
No word of missing her, even if he didn’t mean
it. And he might have at least kissed her in front
of Mammy who, after bobbing a curtsy, was leading Bonnie away down the hall to the nursery. He
stood beside her on the landing, his eyes appraising
her carelessly.
“Can this wanness mean that you’ve been missing
me?” he questioned and though his lips smiled, his
eyes did not.
So that was going to be his attitude. He was going to
be as hateful as ever. Suddenly the child she was carrying became a nauseating burden instead of something she had gladly carried, and this man before her,
standing carelessly with his wide Panama hat upon
his hip, her bitterest foe, the cause of all her troubles.
There was venom in her eyes as she answered, venom
that was too unmistakable to be missed, and the smile
went from his face.
“If I’m pale it’s your fault and not because I’ve
missed you, you conceited thing. It’s because–” Oh,
1837
�PART FIVE
she hadn’t intended to tell him like this but the hot
words rushed to her lips and she flung them at him,
careless of the servants who might hear. “It’s because
I’m going to have a baby!”
He sucked in his breath suddenly and his eyes went
rapidly over her. He took a quick step toward her
as though to put a hand on her arm but she twisted
away from him, and before the hate in her eyes his
face hardened.
“Indeed!” he said coolly. “Well, who’s the happy
father? Ashley?”
She clutched the newel post until the ears of the
carved lion dug with sudden pain into her palm.
Even she who knew him so well had not anticipated
this insult. Of course, he was joking but there were
some jokes too monstrous to be borne. She wanted to
rake her sharp nails across his eyes and blot out that
queer light in them.
“Damn you!” she began, her voice shaking with sick
rage. “You–you know it’s yours. And I don’t want it
any more than you do. No–no woman would want
the children of a cad like you. I wish– Oh, God, I wish
it was anybody’s baby but yours!”
She saw his swarthy face change suddenly, anger
and something she could not analyze making it twitch
1838
�PART FIVE
as though stung.
“There!” she thought in a hot rage of pleasure.
“There! I’ve hurt him now!”
But the old impassive mask was back across his face
and he stroked one side of his mustache.
“Cheer up,” he said, turning from her and starting
up the stairs, “maybe you’ll have a miscarriage.”
For a dizzy moment she thought what childbearing meant, the nausea that tore her, the tedious waiting, the thickening of her figure, the hours of pain.
Things no man could ever realize. And he dared to
joke. She would claw him. Nothing but the sight of
blood upon his dark face would ease this pain in her
heart. She lunged for him, swift as a cat, but with
a light startled movement, he sidestepped, throwing
up his arm to ward her off. She was standing on the
edge of the freshly waxed top step, and as her arm
with the whole weight of her body behind it, struck
his out-thrust arm, she lost her balance. She made a
wild clutch for the newel post and missed it. She went
down the stairs backwards, feeling a sickening dart of
pain in her ribs as she landed. And, too dazed to catch
herself, she rolled over and over to the bottom of the
flight.
It was the first time Scarlett had ever been ill, except
1839
�PART FIVE
when she had her babies, and somehow those times
did not count. She had not been forlorn and frightened then, as she was now, weak and pain racked and
bewildered. She knew she was sicker than they dared
tell her, feebly realized that she might die. The broken rib stabbed when she breathed, her bruised face
and head ached and her whole body was given over
to demons who plucked at her with hot pinchers and
sawed on her with dull knives and left her, for short
intervals, so drained of strength that she could not regain grip on herself before they returned. No, childbirth had not been like this. She had been able to eat
hearty meals two hours after Wade and Ella and Bonnie had been born, but now the thought of anything
but cool water brought on feeble nausea.
How easy it was to have a child and how painful not
to have one! Strange, what a pang it had been even in
her pain, to know that she would not have this child.
Stranger still that it should have been the first child
she really wanted. She tried to think why she wanted
it but her mind was too tired. Her mind was too tired
to think of anything except fear of death. Death was
in the room and she had no strength to confront it,
to fight it back and she was frightened. She wanted
someone strong to stand by her and hold her hand
and fight off death until enough strength came back
1840
�PART FIVE
for her to do her own fighting.
Rage had been swallowed up in pain and she
wanted Rhett. But he was not there and she could
not bring herself to ask for him.
Her last memory of him was how he looked as
he picked her up in the dark hall at the bottom of
the steps, his face white and wiped clean of all save
hideous fear, his voice hoarsely calling for Mammy.
And then there was a faint memory of being carried
upstairs, before darkness came over her mind. And
then pain and more pain and the room full of buzzing
voices and Aunt Pittypat’s sobs and Dr. Meade’s
brusque orders and feet that hurried on the stairs and
tiptoes in the upper hall. And then like a blinding
ray of lightning, the knowledge of death and fear that
suddenly made her try to scream a name and the
scream was only a whisper.
But that forlorn whisper brought instant response
from somewhere in the darkness beside the bed and
the soft voice of the one she called made answer in
lullaby tones: “I’m here, dear. I’ve been right here all
the time.”
Death and fear receded gently as Melanie took her
hand and laid it quietly against her cool cheek. Scarlett tried to turn to see her face and could not. Melly
1841
�PART FIVE
was having a baby and the Yankees were coming. The
town was afire and she must hurry, hurry. But Melly
was having a baby and she couldn’t hurry. She must
stay with her till the baby came and be strong because Melly needed her strength. Melly was hurting
so bad–there were hot pinchers at her and dull knives
and recurrent waves of pain. She must hold Melly’s
hand.
But Dr. Meade was there after all, he had come, even
if the soldiers at the depot did need him for she heard
him say: “Delirious. Where’s Captain Butler?”
The night was dark and then light and sometimes
she was having a baby and sometimes it was Melanie
who cried out, but through it all Melly was there
and her hands were cool and she did not make futile anxious gestures or sob like Aunt Pitty. Whenever Scarlett opened her eyes, she said “Melly?” and
the voice answered. And usually she started to whisper: “Rhett–I want Rhett” and remembered, as from
a dream, that Rhett didn’t want her, that Rhett’s face
was dark as an Indian’s and his teeth were white in a
jeer. She wanted him and he didn’t want her.
Once she said “Melly?” and Mammy’s voice said:
“S’me, chile,” and put a cold rag on her forehead
and she cried fretfully: “Melly– Melanie” over and
1842
�PART FIVE
over but for a long time Melanie did not come. For
Melanie was sitting on the edge of Rhett’s bed and
Rhett, drunk and sobbing, was sprawled on the floor,
crying, his head in her lap.
Every time she had come out of Scarlett’s room
she had seen him, sitting on his bed, his door wide,
watching the door across the hall. The room was untidy, littered with cigar butts and dishes of untouched
food. The bed was tumbled and unmade and he sat
on it, unshaven and suddenly gaunt, endlessly smoking. He never asked questions when he saw her. She
always stood in the doorway for a minute, giving the
news: “I’m sorry, she’s worse,” or “No, she hasn’t
asked for you yet. You see, she’s delirious” or “You
mustn’t give up hope, Captain Butler. Let me fix you
some hot coffee and something to eat. You’ll make
yourself ill.”
Her heart always ached with pity for him, although
she was almost too tired and sleepy to feel anything.
How could people say such mean things about him–
say he was heartless and wicked and unfaithful to
Scarlett, when she could see him getting thin before
her eyes, see the torment in his face? Tired as she
was, she always tried to be kinder than usual when
she gave bulletins from the sick room. He looked so
1843
�PART FIVE
like a damned soul waiting judgment– so like a child
in a suddenly hostile world. But everyone was like a
child to Melanie.
But when, at last, she went joyfully to his door to
tell him that Scarlett was better, she was unprepared
for what she found. There was a half-empty bottle of
whisky on the table by the bed and the room reeked
with the odor. He looked at her with bright glazed
eyes and his jaw muscles trembled despite his efforts
to set his teeth.
“She’s dead?”
“Oh, no. She’s much better.”
He said: “Oh, my God,” and put his head in his
hands. She saw his wide shoulders shake as with a
nervous chill and, as she watched him pityingly, her
pity changed to horror for she saw that he was crying. Melanie had never seen a man cry and of all men,
Rhett, so suave, so mocking, so eternally sure of himself.
It frightened her, the desperate choking sound he
made. She had a terrified thought that he was drunk
and Melanie was afraid of drunkenness. But when
he raised his head and she caught one glimpse of his
eyes, she stepped swiftly into the room, closed the
door softly behind her and went to him. She had
1844
�PART FIVE
never seen a man cry but she had comforted the tears
of many children. When she put a soft hand on his
shoulder, his arms went suddenly around her skirts.
Before she knew how it happened she was sitting on
the bed and he was on the floor, his head in her lap
and his arms and hands clutching her in a frantic
clasp that hurt her.
She stroked the black head gently and said: “There!
There!” soothingly. “There! She’s going to get well.”
At her words, his grip tightened and he began
speaking rapidly, hoarsely, babbling as though to a
grave which would never give up its secrets, babbling the truth for the first time in his life, baring himself mercilessly to Melanie who was at first, utterly
uncomprehending, utterly maternal. He talked brokenly, burrowing his head in her lap, tugging at the
folds of her skirt. Sometimes his words were blurred,
muffled, sometimes they came far too clearly to her
ears, harsh, bitter words of confession and abasement,
speaking of things she had never heard even a woman
mention, secret things that brought the hot blood of
modesty to her cheeks and made her grateful for his
bowed head.
She patted his head as she did little Beau’s and said:
“Hush! Captain Butler! You must not tell me these
1845
�PART FIVE
things! You are not yourself. Hush!” But his voice
went on in a wild torrent of outpouring and he held
to her dress as though it were his hope of life.
He accused himself of deeds she did not understand; he mumbled the name of Belle Watling and
then he shook her with his violence as he cried: “I’ve
killed Scarlett, I’ve killed her. You don’t understand.
She didn’t want this baby and–”
“You must hush! You are beside yourself! Not want
a baby? Why every woman wants–”
“No! No! You want babies. But she doesn’t. Not my
babies–”
“You must stop!”
“You don’t understand. She didn’t want a baby and
I made her. This–this baby–it’s all my damned fault.
We hadn’t been sleeping together–”
“Hush, Captain Butler! It is not fit–”
“And I was drunk and insane and I wanted to hurt
her–because she had hurt me. I wanted to–and I did–
but she didn’t want me. She’s never wanted me. She
never has and I tried–I tried so hard and–”
“Oh, please!”
“And I didn’t know about this baby till the other
day–when she fell. She didn’t know where I was to
1846
�PART FIVE
write to me and tell me–but she wouldn’t have written me if she had known. I tell you–I tell you I’d have
come straight home–if I’d only known–whether she
wanted me home or not. . . .”
“Oh, yes, I know you would!”
“God, I’ve been crazy these weeks, crazy and drunk!
And when she told me, there on the steps–what did I
do? What did I say? I laughed and said: ‘Cheer up.
Maybe you’ll have a miscarriage.’ And she–”
Melanie suddenly went white and her eyes widened
with horror as she looked down at the black tormented head writhing in her lap. The afternoon sun
streamed in through the open window and suddenly
she saw, as for the first time, how large and brown
and strong his hands were and how thickly the black
hairs grew along the backs of them. Involuntarily,
she recoiled from them. They seemed so predatory,
so ruthless and yet, twined in her skirt, so broken, so
helpless.
Could it be possible that he had heard and believed
the preposterous lie about Scarlett and Ashley and become jealous? True, he had left town immediately
after the scandal broke but– No, it couldn’t be that.
Captain Butler was always going off abruptly on journeys. He couldn’t have believed the gossip. He was
1847
�PART FIVE
too sensible. If that had been the cause of the trouble,
wouldn’t he have tried to shoot Ashley? Or at least
demanded an explanation?
No, it couldn’t be that. It was only that he was drunk
and sick from strain and his mind was running wild,
like a man delirious, babbling wild fantasies. Men
couldn’t stand strains as well as women. Something
had upset him, perhaps he had had a small quarrel
with Scarlett and magnified it. Perhaps some of the
awful things he said were true. But all of them could
not be true. Oh, not that last, certainly! No man could
say such a thing to a woman he loved as passionately
as this man loved Scarlett. Melanie had never seen
evil, never seen cruelty, and now that she looked on
them for the first time she found them too inconceivable to believe. He was drunk and sick. And sick
children must be humored.
“There! There!” she said crooningly. “Hush, now. I
understand.”
He raised his head violently and looked up at her
with bloodshot eyes, fiercely throwing off her hands.
“No, by God, you don’t understand! You can’t understand! You’re– you’re too good to understand.
You don’t believe me but it’s all true and I’m a dog.
Do you know why I did it? I was mad, crazy with
1848
�PART FIVE
jealousy. She never cared for me and I thought I could
make her care. But she never cared. She doesn’t love
me. She never has. She loves–”
His passionate, drunken gaze met hers and he
stopped, mouth open, as though for the first time he
realized to whom he was speaking. Her face was
white and strained but her eyes were steady and
sweet and full of pity and unbelief. There was a luminous serenity in them and the innocence in the soft
brown depths struck him like a blow in the face, clearing some of the alcohol out of his brain, halting his
mad, careering words in mid-flight. He trailed off into
a mumble, his eyes dropping away from hers, his lids
batting rapidly as he fought back to sanity.
“I’m a cad,” he muttered, dropping his head tiredly
back into her lap. “But not that big a cad. And if I
did tell you, you wouldn’t believe me, would you?
You’re too good to believe me. I never before knew
anybody who was really good. You wouldn’t believe
me, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t believe you,” said Melanie soothingly, beginning to stroke his hair again. “She’s going
to get well. There, Captain Butler! Don’t cry! She’s
going to get well.”
1849
�CHAPTER LVII
pale, thin woman that Rhett put on the Jonesboro train a month later. Wade and Ella, who were to
make the trip with her, were silent and uneasy at their
mother’s still, white face. They clung close to Prissy,
for even to their childish minds there was something
frightening in the cold, impersonal atmosphere between their mother and their stepfather.
Weak as she was, Scarlett was going home to Tara.
She felt that she would stifle if she stayed in Atlanta
another day, with her tired mind forcing itself round
and round the deeply worn circle of futile thoughts
about the mess she was in. She was sick in body and
weary in mind and she was standing like a lost child
in a nightmare country in which there was no familiar
landmark to guide her.
As she had once fled Atlanta before an invading
army, so she was fleeing it again, pressing her worries
into the back of her mind with her old defense against
the world: “I won’t think of it now. I can’t stand
it if I do. I’ll think of it tomorrow at Tara. Tomorrow’s another day.” It seemed that if she could only
get back to the stillness and the green cotton fields of
home, all her troubles would fall away and she would
somehow be able to mold her shattered thoughts into
I T WAS A
�PART FIVE
something she could live by.
Rhett watched the train until it was out of sight and
on his face there was a look of speculative bitterness
that was not pleasant. He sighed, dismissed the carriage and mounting his horse, rode down Ivy Street
toward Melanie’s house.
It was a warm morning and Melanie sat on the vineshaded porch, her mending basket piled high with
socks. Confusion and dismay filled her when she saw
Rhett alight from his horse and toss the reins over
the arm of the cast-iron negro boy who stood at the
sidewalk. She had not seen him alone since that too
dreadful day when Scarlett had been so ill and he had
been so–well–so drunk. Melanie hated even to think
the word. She had spoken to him only casually during Scarlett’s convalescence and, on those occasions,
she had found it difficult to meet his eyes. However,
he had been his usual bland self at those times, and
never by look or word showed that such a scene had
taken place between them. Ashley had told her once
that men frequently did not remember things said
and done in drink and Melanie prayed heartily that
Captain Butler’s memory had failed him on that occasion. She felt she would rather die than learn that he
remembered his outpourings. Timidity and embar1851
�PART FIVE
rassment swept over her and waves of color mounted
her cheeks as he came up the walk. But perhaps he
had only come to ask if Beau could spend the day
with Bonnie. Surely he wouldn’t have the bad taste to
come and thank her for what she had done that day!
She rose to meet him, noting with surprise, as always, how lightly he walked for a big man.
“Scarlett has gone?”
“Yes. Tara will do her good,” he said smiling.
“Sometimes I think she’s like the giant Antaeus who
became stronger each time he touched Mother Earth.
It doesn’t do for Scarlett to stay away too long from
the patch of red mud she loves. The sight of cotton
growing will do her more good than all Dr. Meade’s
tonics.”
“Won’t you sit down?” said Melanie, her hands fluttering. He was so very large and male, and excessively male creatures always discomposed her. They
seem to radiate a force and vitality that made her feel
smaller and weaker even than she was. He looked
so swarthy and formidable and the heavy muscles in
his shoulders swelled against his white linen coat in
a way that frightened her. It seemed impossible that
she had seen all this strength and insolence brought
low. And she had held that black head in her lap!
1852
�PART FIVE
“Oh, dear!” she thought in distress and blushed
again.
“Miss Melly,” he said gently, “does my presence annoy you? Would you rather I went away? Pray be
frank.”
“Oh!” she thought. “He does remember! And he
knows how upset I am!”
She looked up at him, imploringly, and suddenly
her embarrassment and confusion faded. His eyes
were so quiet, so kind, so understanding that she
wondered how she could ever have been silly enough
to be flurried. His face looked tired and, she thought
with surprise, more than a little sad. How could she
have even thought he’d be ill bred enough to bring up
subjects both would rather forget?
“Poor thing, he’s been so worried about Scarlett,”
she thought, and managing a smile, she said: “Do sit
down, Captain Butler.”
He sat down heavily and watched her as she picked
up her darning.
“Miss Melly, I’ve come to ask a very great favor of
you and,” he smiled and his mouth twisted down, “to
enlist your aid in a deception from which I know you
will shrink.”
“A–deception?”
1853
�PART FIVE
“Yes. Really, I’ve come to talk business to you.”
“Oh, dear. Then it’s Mr. Wilkes you’d better see.
I’m such a goose about business. I’m not smart like
Scarlett.”
“I’m afraid Scarlett is too smart for her own good,”
he said, “and that is exactly what I want to talk to you
about. You know how– ill she’s been. When she gets
back from Tara she will start again hammer and tongs
with the store and those mills which I wish devoutly
would explode some night. I fear for her health, Miss
Melly.”
“Yes, she does far too much. You must make her
stop and take care of herself.”
He laughed.
“You know how headstrong she is. I never even try
to argue with her. She’s just like a willful child. She
won’t let me help her– she won’t let anyone help her.
I’ve tried to get her to sell her share in the mills but she
won’t. And now, Miss Melly, I come to the business
matter. I know Scarlett would sell the remainder of
her interest in the mills to Mr. Wilkes but to no one
else, and I want Mr. Wilkes to buy her out.”
“Oh, dear me! That would be nice but–” Melanie
stopped and bit her lip. She could not mention money
matters to an outsider. Somehow, despite what he
1854
�PART FIVE
made from the mill, she and Ashley never seemed to
have enough money. It worried her that they saved so
little. She did not know where the money went. Ashley gave her enough to run the house on, but when
it came to extra expenses they were often pinched.
Of course, her doctors bills were so much, and then
the books and furniture Ashley ordered from New
York did run into money. And they had fed and
clothed any number of waifs who slept in their cellar. And Ashley never felt like refusing a loan to any
man who’d been in the Confederate Army. And–
“Miss Melly, I want to lend you the money,” said
Rhett.
“That’s so kind of you, but we might never repay
it.”
“I don’t want it repaid. Don’t be angry with me,
Miss Melly! Please hear me through. It will repay me
enough to know that Scarlett will not be exhausting
herself driving miles to the mills every day. The store
will be enough to keep her busy and happy. . . . Don’t
you see?”
“Well–yes–” said Melanie uncertainly.
“You want your boy to have a pony don’t you? And
want him to go to the university and to Harvard and
to Europe on a Grand Tour?”
1855
�PART FIVE
“Oh, of course,” cried Melanie, her face lighting up,
as always, at the mention of Beau. “I want him to
have everything but–well, everyone is so poor these
days that–”
“Mr. Wilkes could make a pile of money out of the
mills some day,” said Rhett. “And I’d like to see Beau
have all the advantages he deserves.”
“Oh, Captain Butler, what a crafty wretch you are!”
she cried, smiling. “Appealing to a mother’s pride! I
can read you like a book.”
“I hope not,” said Rhett, and for the first time there
was a gleam in his eye. “Now will you let me lend
you the money?”
“But where does the deception come in?”
“We must be conspirators and deceive both Scarlett
and Mr. Wilkes.”
“Oh, dear! I couldn’t!”
“If Scarlett knew I had plotted behind her back, even
for her own good–well, you know her temper! And
I’m afraid Mr. Wilkes would refuse any loan I offered
him. So neither of them must know where the money
comes from.”
“Oh, but I’m sure Mr. Wilkes wouldn’t refuse, if he
understood the matter. He is so fond of Scarlett.”
1856
�PART FIVE
“Yes, I’m sure he is,” said Rhett smoothly. “But just
the same he would refuse. You know how proud all
the Wilkes are.”
“Oh, dear!” cried Melanie miserably, “I wish– Really, Captain Butler, I couldn’t deceive my husband.”
“Not even to help Scarlett?” Rhett looked very hurt.
“And she is so fond of you!”
Tears trembled on Melanie’s eyelids.
“You know I’d do anything in the world for her. I
can never, never half repay her for what she’s done
for me. You know.”
“Yes,” he said shortly, “I know what she’s done for
you. Couldn’t you tell Mr. Wilkes that the money was
left you in the will of some relative?”
“Oh, Captain Butler, I haven’t a relative with a
penny to bless him!”
“Then, if I sent the money through the mail to Mr.
Wilkes without his knowing who sent it, would you
see that it was used to buy the mills and not–well,
given away to destitute ex-Confederates?”
At first she looked hurt at his last words, as though
they implied criticism of Ashley, but he smiled so understandingly she smiled back.
“Of course I will.”
1857
�PART FIVE
“So it’s settled? It’s to be our secret?”
“But I have never kept anything secret from my husband!”
“I’m sure of that, Miss Melly.”
As she looked at him she thought how right she
had always been about him and how wrong so many
other people were. People had said he was brutal
and sneering and bad mannered and even dishonest.
Though many of the nicest people were now admitting they had been wrong. Well! She had known
from the very beginning that he was a fine man. She
had never received from him anything but the kindest
treatment, thoughtfulness, utter respect and what understanding! And then, how he loved Scarlett! How
sweet of him to take this roundabout way of sparing
Scarlett one of the loads she carried!
In an impulsive rush of feeling, she said: “Scarlett’s
lucky to have a husband who’s so nice to her!”
“You think so? I’m afraid she wouldn’t agree with
you, if she could hear you. Besides, I want to be nice
to you too, Miss Melly. I’m giving you more than I’m
giving Scarlett.”
“Me!” she questioned, puzzled. “Oh, you mean for
Beau.”
He picked up his hat and rose. He stood for a mo1858
�PART FIVE
ment looking down at the plain, heart-shaped face
with its long widow’s peak and serious dark eyes.
Such an unworldly face, a face with no defenses
against life.
“No, not Beau. I’m trying to give you something
more than Beau, if you can imagine that.”
“No, I can’t,” she said, bewildered again. “There’s
nothing in the world more precious to me than Beau
except Ash–except Mr. Wilkes.”
Rhett said nothing and looked down at her, his dark
face still.
“You’re mighty nice to want to do things for me,
Captain Butler, but really, I’m so lucky. I have everything in the world any woman could want.”
“That’s fine,” said Rhett, suddenly grim. “And I intend to see that you keep them.”
When Scarlett came back from Tara, the unhealthy
pallor had gone from her face and her cheeks were
rounded and faintly pink. Her green eyes were
alert and sparkling again, and she laughed aloud for
the first time in weeks when Rhett and Bonnie met
her and Wade and Ella at the depot–laughed in annoyance and amusement. Rhett had two straggling
turkey feathers in the brim of his hat and Bonnie,
dressed in a sadly torn dress that was her Sunday
1859
�PART FIVE
frock, had diagonal lines of indigo blue on her cheeks
and a peacock feather half as long as she was in
her curls. Evidently a game of Indian had been in
progress when the time came to meet the train and
it was obvious from the look of quizzical helplessness on Rhett’s face and the lowering indignation of
Mammy that Bonnie had refused to have her toilet
remedied, even to meet her mother.
Scarlett said: “What a ragamuffin!” as she kissed
the child and turned a cheek for Rhett’s lips. There
were crowds of people in the depot or she would
never have invited this caress. She could not help
noticing, for all her embarrassment at Bonnie’s appearance, that everyone in the crowd was smiling at
the figure father and daughter cut, smiling not in derision but in genuine amusement and kindness. Everyone knew that Scarlett’s youngest had her father
under her thumb and Atlanta was amused and approving. Rhett’s great love for his child had gone far
toward reinstating him in public opinion.
On the way home, Scarlett was full of County news.
The hot, dry weather was making the cotton grow
so fast you could almost hear it but Will said cotton prices were going to be low this fall. Suellen
was going to have another baby–she spelled this out
1860
�PART FIVE
so the children would not comprehend–and Ella had
shown unwonted spirit in biting Suellen’s oldest girl.
Though, observed Scarlett, it was no more than little
Susie deserved, she being her mother all over again.
But Suellen had become infuriated and they had had
an invigorating quarrel that was just like old times.
Wade had killed a water moccasin, all by himself.
‘Randa and Camilla Tarleton were teaching school
and wasn’t that a joke? Not a one of the Tarletons
had ever been able to spell cat! Betsy Tarleton had
married a fat one-armed man from Lovejoy and they
and Hetty and Jim Tarleton were raising a good cotton crop at Fairhill. Mrs. Tarleton had a brood mare
and a colt and was as happy as though she had a million dollars. And there were negroes living in the
old Calvert house! Swarms of them and they actually owned it! They’d bought it in at the sheriff’s sale.
The place was dilapidated and it made you cry to look
at it. No one knew where Cathleen and her no-good
husband had gone. And Alex was to marry Sally, his
brother’s widow! Imagine that, after them living in
the same house for so many years! Everybody said it
was a marriage of convenience because people were
beginning to gossip about them living there alone,
since both Old Miss and Young Miss had died. And
it had about broken Dimity Munroe’s heart. But it
1861
�PART FIVE
served her right. If she’d had any gumption she’d
have caught her another man long ago, instead of
waiting for Alex to get money enough to marry her.
Scarlett chattered on cheerfully but there were
many things about the County which she suppressed,
things that hurt to think about. She had driven over
the County with Will, trying not to remember when
these thousands of fertile acres had stood green with
cotton. Now, plantation after plantation was going
back to the forest, and dismal fields of broomsedge,
scrub oak and runty pines had grown stealthily about
silent ruins and over old cotton fields. Only one acre
was being farmed now where once a hundred had
been under the plow. It was like moving through a
dead land.
“This section won’t come back for fifty years–if it
ever comes back,” Will had said. “Tara’s the best farm
in the County, thanks to you and me, Scarlett, but
it’s a farm, a two-mule farm, not a plantation. And
the Fontaine place, it comes next to Tara and then the
Tarletons. They ain’t makin’ much money but they’re
gettin’ along and they got gumption. But most of the
rest of the folks, the rest of the farms–”
No, Scarlett did not like to remember the way the
deserted County looked. It seemed even sadder, in
1862
�PART FIVE
retrospect, beside the bustle and prosperity of Atlanta.
“Has anything happened here?” she asked when
they were finally home and were seated on the front
porch. She had talked rapidly and continuously all
the way home, fearing that a silence would fall. She
had not had a word alone with Rhett since that day
when she fell down the steps and she was none too
anxious to be alone with him now. She did not know
how he felt toward her. He had been kindness itself during her miserable convalescence, but it was
the kindness of an impersonal stranger. He had anticipated her wants, kept the children from bothering
her and supervised the store and the mills. But he
had never said: “I’m sorry.” Well, perhaps he wasn’t
sorry. Perhaps he still thought that child that was
never born was not his child. How could she tell what
went on in the mind behind the bland dark face? But
he had showed a disposition to be courteous, for the
first time in their married life, and a desire to let life
go on as though there had never been anything unpleasant between them–as though, thought Scarlett,
cheerlessly, as though there had never been anything
at all between them. Well, if that was what he wanted,
she could act her part too.
1863
�PART FIVE
“Is everything all right?” she repeated. “Did you
get the new shingles for the store? Did you swap the
mules? For Heaven’s sake, Rhett, take those feathers
out of your hat. You look a fool and you’ll be likely to
wear them downtown without remembering to take
them out.”
“No,” said Bonnie, picking up her father’s hat, defensively.
“Everything has gone very well here,” replied Rhett.
“Bonnie and I have had a nice time and I don’t believe
her hair has been combed since you left. Don’t suck
the feathers, darling, they may be nasty. Yes, the shingles are fixed and I got a good trade on the mules.
No, there’s really no news. Everything has been quite
dull.”
Then, as an afterthought, he added: “The honorable
Ashley was over here last night. He wanted to know
if I thought you would sell him your mill and the part
interest you have in his.”
Scarlett, who had been rocking and fanning herself
with a turkey tail fan, stopped abruptly.
“Sell? Where on earth did Ashley get the money?
You know they never have a cent. Melanie spends it
as fast as he makes it.”
Rhett shrugged. “I always thought her a frugal little
1864
�PART FIVE
person, but then I’m not as well informed about the
intimate details of the Wilkes family as you seem to
be.”
That jab seemed in something of Rhett’s old style
and Scarlett grew annoyed.
“Run away, dear,” she said to Bonnie. “Mother
wants to talk to Father.”
“No,” said Bonnie positively and climbed upon
Rhett’s lap.
Scarlett frowned at her child and Bonnie scowled
back in so complete a resemblance to Gerald O’Hara
that Scarlett almost laughed.
“Let her stay,” said Rhett comfortably. “As to where
he got the money, it seems it was sent him by someone
he nursed through a case of smallpox at Rock Island.
It renews my faith in human nature to know that gratitude still exists.”
“Who was it? Anyone we know?”
“The letter was unsigned and came from Washington. Ashley was at a loss to know who could have
sent it. But then, one of Ashley’s unselfish temperament goes about the world doing so many good deeds
that you can’t expect him to remember all of them.”
Had she not been so surprised at Ashley’s windfall,
1865
�PART FIVE
Scarlett would have taken up this gauntlet, although
while at Tara she had decided that never again would
she permit herself to be involved in any quarrel with
Rhett about Ashley. The ground on which she stood
in this matter was entirely too uncertain and, until she
knew exactly where she stood with both men, she did
not care to be drawn out.
“He wants to buy me out?”
“Yes. But of course, I told him you wouldn’t sell.”
“I wish you’d let me mind my own business.”
“Well, you know you wouldn’t part with the mills.
I told him that he knew as well as I did that you
couldn’t bear not to have your finger in everybody’s
pie, and if you sold out to him, then you wouldn’t be
able to tell him how to mind his own business.”
“You dared say that to him about me?”
“Why not? It’s true, isn’t it? I believe he heartily
agreed with me but, of course, he was too much of a
gentleman to come right out and say so.”
“It’s a lie! I will sell them to him!” cried Scarlett
angrily.
Until that moment, she had had no idea of parting
with the mills. She had several reasons for wanting
to keep them and their monetary value was the least
1866
�PART FIVE
reason. She could have sold them for large sums any
time in the last few years, but she had refused all offers. The mills were the tangible evidence of what
she had done, unaided and against great odds, and
she was proud of them and of herself. Most of all,
she did not want to sell them because they were the
only path that lay open to Ashley. If the mills went
from her control it would mean that she would seldom see Ashley and probably never see him alone.
And she had to see him alone. She could not go on
this way any longer, wondering what his feelings toward her were now, wondering if all his love had died
in shame since the dreadful night of Melanie’s party.
In the course of business she could find many opportune times for conversations without it appearing to
anyone that she was seeking him out. And, given
time, she knew she could gain back whatever ground
she had lost in his heart. But if she sold the mills–
No, she did not want to sell but, goaded by the
thought that Rhett had exposed her to Ashley in so
truthful and so unflattering a light, she had made up
her mind instantly. Ashley should have the mills and
at a price so low he could not help realizing how generous she was.
“I will sell!” she cried furiously. “Now, what do you
1867
�PART FIVE
think of that?”
There was the faintest gleam of triumph in Rhett’s
eyes as he bent to tie Bonnie’s shoe string.
“I think you’ll regret it,” he said.
Already she was regretting the hasty words. Had
they been spoken to anyone save Rhett she would
have shamelessly retracted them. Why had she burst
out like that? She looked at Rhett with an angry frown
and saw that he was watching her with his old keen,
cat-at-a- mouse-hole look. When he saw her frown,
he laughed suddenly, his white teeth flashing. Scarlett had an uncertain feeling that he had jockeyed her
into this position.
“Did you have anything to do with this?” she
snapped.
“I?” His brows went up in mock surprise. “You
should know me better. I never go about the world
doing good deeds if I can avoid it.”
That night she sold the mills and all her interest in
them to Ashley. She did not lose thereby for Ashley refused to take advantage of her first low offer
and met the highest bid that she had ever had for
them. When she had signed the papers and the mills
were irrevocably gone and Melanie was passing small
glasses of wine to Ashley and Rhett to celebrate the
1868
�PART FIVE
transaction, Scarlett felt bereft, as though she had sold
one of her children.
The mills had been her darlings, her pride, the fruit
of her small grasping hands. She had started with one
little mill in those black days when Atlanta was barely
struggling up from ruin and ashes and want was staring her in the face. She had fought and schemed
and nursed them through the dark times when Yankee confiscation loomed, when money was tight and
smart men going to the wall. And now when Atlanta
was covering its scars and buildings were going up
everywhere and newcomers flocking to the town every day, she had two fine mills, two lumber yards, a
dozen mule teams and convict labor to operate the
business at low cost. Bidding farewell to them was
like closing a door forever on a part of her life, a bitter,
harsh part but one which she recalled with a nostalgic
satisfaction.
She had built up this business and now she had
sold it and she was oppressed with the certainty that,
without her at the helm, Ashley would lose it all–
everything that she had worked to build. Ashley
trusted everyone and still hardly knew a two-by-four
from a six-by- eight. And now she would never be
able to give him the benefit of her advice–all because
1869
�PART FIVE
Rhett had told him that she liked to boss everything.
“Oh, damn Rhett!” she thought and as she watched
him the conviction grew that he was at the bottom
of all this. Just how and why she did not know. He
was talking to Ashley and his words brought her up
sharply.
“I suppose you’ll turn the convicts back right away,”
he said.
Turn the convicts back? Why should there be any
idea of turning them back? Rhett knew perfectly
well that the large profits from the mills grew out of
the cheap convict labor. And why did Rhett speak
with such certainty about what Ashley’s future actions would be? What did he know of him?
“Yes, they’ll go back immediately,” replied Ashley
and he avoided Scarlett’s dumbfounded gaze.
“Have you lost your mind?” she cried. “You’ll lose
all the money on the lease and what kind of labor can
you get, anyway?”
“I’ll use free darkies,” said Ashley.
“Free darkies! Fiddle-dee-dee! You know what their
wages will cost and besides you’ll have the Yankees
on your neck every minute to see if you’re giving
them chicken three times a day and tucking them to
sleep under eiderdown quilts. And if you give a lazy
1870
�PART FIVE
darky a couple of licks to speed him up, you’ll hear
the Yankees scream from here to Dalton and you’ll
end up in jail. Why, convicts are the only–”
Melanie looked down into her lap at her twisted
hands. Ashley looked unhappy but obdurate. For a
moment he was silent. Then his gaze crossed Rhett’s
and it was as if he found understanding and encouragement in Rhett’s eyes–a glance that was not lost on
Scarlett.
“I won’t work convicts, Scarlett,” he said quietly.
“Well, sir!” her breath was taken away. “And why
not? Are you afraid people will talk about you like
they do about me?”
Ashley raised his head.
“I’m not afraid of what people say as long as I’m
right. And I have never felt that convict labor was
right.”
“But why–”
“I can’t make money from the enforced labor and
misery of others.”
“But you owned slaves!”
“They weren’t miserable. And besides, I’d have
freed them all when Father died if the war hadn’t already freed them. But this is different, Scarlett. The
1871
�PART FIVE
system is open to too many abuses. Perhaps you don’t
know it but I do. I know very well that Johnnie Gallegher has killed at least one man at his camp. Maybe
more–who cares about one convict, more or less? He
said the man was killed trying to escape, but that’s
not what I’ve heard elsewhere. And I know he works
men who are too sick to work. Call it superstition, but
I do not believe that happiness can come from money
made from the sufferings of others.”
“God’s nightgown! You mean–goodness, Ashley,
you didn’t swallow all the Reverend Wallace’s bellowings about tainted money?”
“I didn’t have to swallow it. I believed it long before
he preached on it.”
“Then, you must think all my money is tainted,”
cried Scarlett beginning to be angry. “Because I
worked convicts and own saloon property and–” She
stopped short. Both the Wilkes looked embarrassed
and Rhett was grinning broadly. Damn him, thought
Scarlett, vehemently. He’s thinking that I’m sticking
my finger in other people’s pies again and so is Ashley. I’d like to crack their heads together! She swallowed her wrath and tried to assume an aloof air of
dignity but with little success.
“Of course, it’s immaterial to me,” she said.
1872
�PART FIVE
“Scarlett, don’t think I’m criticizing you! I’m not.
It’s just that we look at things in different ways and
what is good for you might not be good for me.”
She suddenly wished that they were alone, wished
ardently that Rhett and Melanie were at the end of
the earth, so she could cry out: “But I want to look at
things the way you look at them! Tell me just what
you mean, so I can understand and be like you!”
But with Melanie present, trembling with the distress of the scene, and Rhett lounging, grinning at
her, she could only say with as much coolness and offended virtue as she could muster: “I’m sure it’s your
own business, Ashley, and far be it from me to tell you
how to run it. But, I must say, I do not understand
your attitude or your remarks.”
Oh, if they were only alone, so she would not be
forced to say these cool things to him, these words
that were making him unhappy!
“I’ve offended you, Scarlett, and I did not mean to.
You must believe me and forgive me. There is nothing
enigmatic in what I said. It is only that I believe that
money which comes in certain ways seldom brings
happiness.”
“But you’re wrong!” she cried, unable to restrain
herself any longer. “Look at me! You know how my
1873
�PART FIVE
money came. You know how things were before I
made my money! You remember that winter at Tara
when it was so cold and we were cutting up the carpets for shoes and there wasn’t enough to eat and we
used to wonder how we were going to give Beau and
Wade an education. You remem–”
“I remember,” said Ashley tiredly, “but I’d rather
forget.”
“Well, you can’t say any of us were happy then, can
you? And look at us now! You’ve a nice home and
a good future. And has anyone a prettier house than
mine or nicer clothes or finer horses? Nobody sets as
fine a table as me or gives nicer receptions and my
children have everything they want. Well, how did I
get the money to make it possible? Off trees? No, sir!
Convicts and saloon rentals and–”
“And don’t forget murdering that Yankee,” said
Rhett softly. “He really gave you your start.”
Scarlett swung on him, furious words on her lips.
“And the money has made you very, very happy,
hasn’t it, darling?” he asked, poisonously sweet.
Scarlett stopped short, her mouth open, and her
eyes went swiftly to the eyes of the other three.
Melanie was almost crying with embarrassment, Ashley was suddenly bleak and withdrawn and Rhett
1874
�PART FIVE
was watching her over his cigar with impersonal
amusement. She started to cry out: “But of course,
it’s made me happy!”
But somehow, she could not speak.
1875
�CHAPTER LVIII
that followed her illness Scarlett noticed
a change in Rhett and she was not altogether certain
that she liked it. He was sober and quiet and preoccupied. He was at home more often for supper now and
he was kinder to the servants and more affectionate
to Wade and Ella. He never referred to anything in
their past, pleasant or otherwise, and silently seemed
to dare her to bring up such subjects. Scarlett held
her peace, for it was easier to let well enough alone,
and life went on smoothly enough, on the surface.
His impersonal courtesy toward her that had begun
during her convalescence continued and he did not
fling softly drawled barbs at her or sting her with sarcasm. She realized now that though he had infuriated her with his malicious comments and roused her
to heated rejoinders, he had done it because he cared
what she did and said. Now she wondered if he cared
about anything she did. He was polite and disinterested and she missed his interest, perverse though it
had been, missed the old days of bickering and retort.
He was pleasant to her now, almost as though she
were a stranger; but, as his eyes had once followed
her, they now followed Bonnie. It was as though the
swift flood of his life had been diverted into one narIN
THE TIME
�PART FIVE
row channel. Sometimes Scarlett thought that if Rhett
had given her one-half the attention and tenderness
he lavished on Bonnie, life would have been different. Sometimes it was hard to smile when people said:
“How Captain Butler idolizes that child!” But, if she
did not smile, people would think it strange and Scarlett hated to acknowledge, even to herself, that she
was jealous of a little girl, especially when that little
girl was her favorite child. Scarlett always wanted to
be first in the hearts of those around her and it was
obvious now that Rhett and Bonnie would always be
first with each other.
Rhett was out late many nights but he came home
sober on these nights. Often she heard him whistling
softly to himself as he went down the hall past her
closed door. Sometimes men came home with him
in the late hours and sat talking in the dining room
around the brandy decanter. They were not the same
men with whom he had drunk the first year they
were married. No rich Carpetbaggers, no Scallawags,
no Republicans came to the house now at his invitation. Scarlett, creeping on tiptoe to the banister of
the upstairs hall, listened and, to her amazement, frequently heard the voices of Rene Picard, Hugh Elsing,
the Simmons boys and Andy Bonnell. And always
Grandpa Merriwether and Uncle Henry were there.
1877
�PART FIVE
Once, to her astonishment, she heard the tones of Dr.
Meade. And these men had once thought hanging too
good for Rhett!
This group was always linked in her mind with
Frank’s death, and the late hours Rhett kept these
days reminded her still more of the times preceding
the Klan foray when Frank lost his life. She remembered with dread Rhett’s remark that he would even
join their damned Klan to be respectable, though he
hoped God would not lay so heavy a penance on his
shoulders. Suppose Rhett, like Frank–
One night when he was out later than usual she
could stand the strain no longer. When she heard the
rasp of his key in the lock, she threw on a wrapper
and, going into the gas lit upper hall, met him at the
top of the stairs. His expression, absent, thoughtful,
changed to surprise when he saw her standing there.
“Rhett, I’ve got to know! I’ve got to know if you–if
it’s the Klan–is that why you stay out so late? Do you
belong–”
In the flaring gas light he looked at her incuriously
and then he smiled.
“You are way behind the times,” he said. “There
is no Klan in Atlanta now. Probably not in Georgia.
You’ve been listening to the Klan outrage stories of
1878
�PART FIVE
your Scallawag and Carpetbagger friends.”
“No Klan? Are you lying to try to soothe me?”
“My dear, when did I ever try to soothe you? No,
there is no Klan now. We decided that it did more
harm than good because it just kept the Yankees
stirred up and furnished more grist for the slander
mill of his excellency, Governor Bullock. He knows he
can stay in power just so long as he can convince the
Federal government and the Yankee newspapers that
Georgia is seething with rebellion and there’s a Klansman hiding behind every bush. To keep in power he’s
been desperately manufacturing Klan outrage stories
where none exist, telling of loyal Republicans being
hung up by the thumbs and honest darkies lynched
for rape. But he’s shooting at a nonexistent target and
he knows it. Thank you for your apprehensions, but
there hasn’t been an active Klan since shortly after
I stopped being a Scallawag and became an humble
Democrat.”
Most of what he said about Governor Bullock went
in one ear and out the other for her mind was mainly
occupied with relief that there was no Klan any
longer. Rhett would not be killed as Frank was killed;
she wouldn’t lose her store or his money. But one
word of his conversation swam to the top of her
1879
�PART FIVE
mind. He had said “we,” linking himself naturally
with those he had once called the “Old Guard.”
“Rhett,” she asked suddenly, “did you have anything to do with the breaking up of the Klan?”
He gave her a long look and his eyes began to dance.
“My love, I did. Ashley Wilkes and I are mainly responsible.”
“Ashley–and you?”
“Yes, platitudinously but truly, politics make
strange bedfellows. Neither Ashley nor I cared much
for each other as bedfellows but– Ashley never believed in the Klan because he’s against violence of any
sort. And I never believed in it because it’s damned
foolishness and not the way to get what we want. It’s
the one way to keep the Yankees on our necks till
Kingdom Come. And between Ashley and me, we
convinced the hot heads that watching, waiting and
working would get us further than nightshirts and
fiery crosses.”
“You don’t mean the boys actually took your advice
when you–”
“When I was a speculator? A Scallawag? A consorter with Yankees? You forget, Mrs. Butler, that
I am now a Democrat in good standing, devoted to
my last drop of blood to recovering our beloved state
1880
�PART FIVE
from the hands of her ravishers! My advice was good
advice and they took it. My advice in other political
matters is equally good. We have a Democratic majority in the legislature now, haven’t we? And soon,
my love, we will have some of our good Republican
friends behind the bars. They are a bit too rapacious
these days, a bit too open.”
“You’d help put them in jail? Why, they were your
friends! They let you in on that railroad-bond business that you made thousands out of!”
Rhett grinned suddenly, his old mocking grin.
“Oh, I bear them no ill will. But I’m on the other
side now and if I can assist in any way in putting
them where they belong, I’ll do it. And how that
will redound to my credit! I know just enough about
the inside of some of these deals to be very valuable when the legislature starts digging into them–
and that won’t be far off, from the way things look
now. They’re going to investigate the governor, too,
and they’ll put him in jail if they can. Better tell your
good friends the Gelerts and the Hundons to be ready
to leave town on a minute’s notice, because if they can
nab the governor, they’ll nab them too.”
For too many years Scarlett had seen the Republicans, backed up by the force of the Yankee Army, in
1881
�PART FIVE
power in Georgia to believe Rhett’s light words. The
governor was too strongly entrenched for any legislature to do anything to him, much less put him in jail.
“How you do run on,” she observed.
“If he isn’t put in jail, at least he won’t be reelected.
We’re going to have a Democratic governor next time,
for a change.”
“And I suppose you’ll have something to do with
it?” she questioned sarcastically.
“My pet, I will. I am having something to do with
it now. That’s why I stay out so late at nights. I’m
working harder than I ever worked with a shovel in
the gold rush, trying to help get the election organized. And–I know this will hurt you, Mrs. Butler,
but I am contributing plenty of money to the organization, too. Do you remember telling me, years ago,
in Frank’s store, that it was dishonest for me to keep
the Confederate gold? At last I’ve come to agree with
you and the Confederate gold is being spent to get the
Confederates back into power.”
“You’re pouring money down a rat hole!”
“What! You call the Democratic party a rat hole?”
His eyes mocked her and then were quiet, expressionless. “It doesn’t matter a damn to me who wins this
election. What does matter is that everyone knows
1882
�PART FIVE
I’ve worked for it and that I’ve spent money on it.
And that’ll be remembered in Bonnie’s favor in years
to come.”
“I was almost afraid from your pious talk that you’d
had a change of heart, but I see you’ve got no more
sincerity about the Democrats than about anything
else.”
“Not a change of heart at all. Merely a change of
hide. You might possibly sponge the spots off a leopard but he’d remain a leopard, just the same.”
Bonnie, awakened by the sound of voices in the hall,
called sleepily but imperiously: “Daddy!” and Rhett
started past Scarlett.
“Rhett, wait a minute. There’s something else I want
to tell you. You must stop taking Bonnie around
with you in the afternoons to political meetings. It
just doesn’t look well. The idea of a little girl at
such places! And it makes you look so silly. I never
dreamed that you took her until Uncle Henry mentioned it, as though he thought I knew and–”
He swung round on her and his face was hard.
“How can you read wrong in a little girl sitting on
her father’s lap while he talks to friends? You may
think it looks silly but it isn’t silly. People will remember for years that Bonnie sat on my lap while I
1883
�PART FIVE
helped run the Republicans out of this state. People
will remember for years–” The hardness went out of
his face and a malicious light danced in his eyes. “Did
you know that when people ask her who she loves
best, she says ‘Daddy and the Demiquats,’ and who
she hates most, she says: ‘The Scallywags.’ People,
thank God, remember things like that.”
Scarlett’s voice rose furiously. “And I suppose you
tell her I’m a Scallawag!”
“Daddy!” said the small voice, indignant now, and
Rhett, still laughing, went down the hall to his daughter.
That October Governor Bullock resigned his office
and fled from Georgia. Misuse of public funds, waste
and corruption had reached such proportions during
his administration that the edifice was toppling of its
own weight. Even his own party was split, so great
had public indignation become. The Democrats had
a majority in the legislature now, and that meant just
one thing. Knowing that he was going to be investigated and fearing impeachment, Bullock did not wait.
He hastily and secretly decamped, arranging that his
resignation would not become public until he was
safely in the North.
When it was announced, a week after his flight,
1884
�PART FIVE
Atlanta was wild with excitement and joy. People thronged the streets, men laughing and shaking
hands in congratulation, ladies kissing each other and
crying. Everybody gave parties in celebration and
the fire department was kept busy fighting the flames
that spread from the bonfires of jubilant small boys.
Almost out of the woods! Reconstruction’s almost
over! to be sure, the acting governor was a Republican too, but the election was coming up in December
and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind as to what
the result would be. And when the election came,
despite the frantic efforts of the Republicans, Georgia
once more had a Democratic governor.
There was joy then, excitement too, but of a different sort from that which seized the town when
Bullock took to his heels. This was a more sober
heartfelt joy, a deep-souled feeling of thanksgiving,
and the churches were filled as ministers reverently
thanked God for the deliverance of the state. There
was pride too, mingled with the elation and joy, pride
that Georgia was back in the hands of her own people
again, in spite of all the administration in Washington
could do, in spite of the army, the Carpetbaggers, the
Scallawags and the native Republicans.
Seven times Congress had passed crushing acts
1885
�PART FIVE
against the state to keep it a conquered province, three
times the army had set aside civil law. The negroes
had frolicked through the legislature, grasping aliens
had mismanaged the government, private individuals had enriched themselves from public funds. Georgia had been helpless, tormented, abused, hammered
down. But now, in spite of them all, Georgia belonged
to herself again and through the efforts of her own
people.
The sudden overturn of the Republicans did not
bring joy to everyone. There was consternation in
the ranks of the Scallawags, the Carpetbaggers and
the Republicans. The Gelerts and Hundons, evidently
apprised of Bullock’s departure before his resignation
became public, left town abruptly, disappearing into
that oblivion from which they had come. The other
Carpetbaggers and Scallawags who remained were
uncertain, frightened, and they hovered together for
comfort, wondering what the legislative investigation would bring to light concerning their own private affairs. They were not insolent now. They were
stunned, bewildered, afraid. And the ladies who
called on Scarlett said over and over:
“But who would have thought it would turn out this
way? We thought the governor was too powerful. We
1886
�PART FIVE
thought he was here to stay. We thought–”
Scarlett was equally bewildered by the turn of
events, despite Rhett’s warning as to the direction it
would take. It was not that she was sorry Bullock had
gone and the Democrats were back again. Though
no one would have believed it she, too, felt a grim
happiness that the Yankee rule was at last thrown off.
She remembered all too vividly her struggles during
those first days of Reconstruction, her fears that the
soldiers and the Carpetbaggers would confiscate her
money and her property. She remembered her helplessness and her panic at her helplessness and her hatred of the Yankees who had imposed this galling system upon the South. And she had never stopped hating them. But, in trying to make the best of things,
in trying to obtain complete security, she had gone
with the conquerors. No matter how much she disliked them, she had surrounded herself with them,
cut herself off from her old friends and her old ways
of living. And now the power of the conquerors was
at an end. She had gambled on the continuance of the
Bullock regime and she had lost.
As she looked about her, that Christmas of 1871, the
happiest Christmas the state had known in over ten
years, she was disquieted. She could not help seeing
1887
�PART FIVE
that Rhett, once the most execrated man in Atlanta,
was now one of the most popular, for he had humbly
recanted his Republican heresies and given his time
and money and labor and thought to helping Georgia
fight her way back. When he rode down the streets,
smiling, tipping his hat, the small blue bundle that
was Bonnie perched before him on his saddle, everyone smiled back, spoke with enthusiasm and looked
with affection on the little girl. Whereas, she, Scarlett–
1888
�CHAPTER LIX
T HERE WAS NO doubt in anyone’s mind that Bonnie But-
ler was running wild and needed a firm hand but she
was so general a favorite that no one had the heart to
attempt the necessary firmness. She had first gotten
out of control the months when she traveled with her
father. When she had been with Rhett in New Orleans
and Charleston she had been permitted to sit up as
late as she pleased and had gone to sleep in his arms
in theaters, restaurants and at card tables. Thereafter,
nothing short of force would make her go to bed at the
same time as the obedient Ella. While she had been
away with him, Rhett had let her wear any dress she
chose and, since that time, she had gone into tantrums
when Mammy tried to dress her in dimity frocks and
pinafores instead of blue taffeta and lace collars.
There seemed no way to regain the ground which
had been lost when the child was away from home
and later when Scarlett had been ill and at Tara. As
Bonnie grew older Scarlett tried to discipline her,
tried to keep her from becoming too headstrong and
spoiled, but with little success. Rhett always sided
with the child, no matter how foolish her desires or
how outrageous her behavior. He encouraged her to
talk and treated her as an adult, listening to her opin-
�PART FIVE
ions with apparent seriousness and pretending to be
guided by them. As a result, Bonnie interrupted her
elders whenever she pleased and contradicted her father and put him in his place. He only laughed and
would not permit Scarlett even to slap the little girl’s
hand by way of reprimand.
“If she wasn’t such a sweet, darling thing, she’d be
impossible,” thought Scarlett ruefully, realizing that
she had a child with a will equal to her own. “She
adores Rhett and he could make her behave better if
he wanted to.”
But Rhett showed no inclination to make Bonnie behave. Whatever she did was right and if she wanted
the moon she could have it, if he could reach it for her.
His pride in her beauty, her curls, her dimples, her
graceful little gestures was boundless. He loved her
pertness, her high spirits and the quaint sweet manner she had of showing her love for him. For all her
spoiled and willful ways she was such a lovable child
that he lacked the heart to try to curb her. He was her
god, the center of her small world, and that was too
precious for him to risk losing by reprimands.
She clung to him like a shadow. She woke him earlier than he cared to wake, sat beside him at the table,
eating alternately from his plate and her own, rode in
1890
�PART FIVE
front of him on his horse and permitted no one but
Rhett to undress her and put her to sleep in the small
bed beside his.
It amused and touched Scarlett to see the iron hand
with which her small child ruled her father. Who
would have thought that Rhett, of all people, would
take fatherhood so seriously? But sometimes a dart
of jealousy went through Scarlett because Bonnie, at
the age of four, understood Rhett better than she had
ever understood him and could manage him better
than she had ever managed him.
When Bonnie was four years old, Mammy began to
grumble about the impropriety of a girl child riding
“a-straddle in front of her pa wid her dress flyin’ up.”
Rhett lent an attentive ear to this remark, as he did
to all Mammy’s remarks about the proper raising of
little girls. The result was a small brown and white
Shetland pony with a long silky mane and tail and a
tiny sidesaddle with silver trimmings. Ostensibly the
pony was for all three children and Rhett bought a
saddle for Wade too. But Wade infinitely preferred his
St. Bernard dog and Ella was afraid of all animals. So
the pony became Bonnie’s own and was named “Mr.
Butler.” The only flaw in Bonnie’s possessive joy was
that she could not still ride astride like her father, but
1891
�PART FIVE
after he had explained how much more difficult it was
to ride on the sidesaddle, she was content and learned
rapidly. Rhett’s pride in her good seat and her good
hands was enormous.
“Wait till she’s old enough to hunt,” he boasted.
“There’ll be no one like her on any field. I’ll take her to
Virginia then. That’s where the real hunting is. And
Kentucky where they appreciate good riders.”
When it came to making her riding habit, as usual
she had her choice of colors and as usual chose blue.
“But, my darling! Not that blue velvet! The blue
velvet is for a party dress for me,” laughed Scarlett.
“A nice black broadcloth is what little girls wear.”
Seeing the small black brows coming together: “For
Heaven’s sake, Rhett, tell her how unsuitable it would
be and how dirty it will get.”
“Oh, let her have the blue velvet. If it gets dirty, we’ll
make her another one,” said Rhett easily.
So Bonnie had her blue velvet habit with a skirt that
trailed down the pony’s side and a black hat with a
red plume in it, because Aunt Melly’s stories of Jeb
Stuart’s plume had appealed to her imagination. On
days that were bright and clear the two could be seen
riding down Peachtree Street, Rhett reining in his big
black horse to keep pace with the fat pony’s gait.
1892
�PART FIVE
Sometimes they went tearing down the quiet roads
about the town, scattering chickens and dogs and
children, Bonnie beating Mr. Butler with her crop, her
tangled curls flying, Rhett holding in his horse with a
firm hand that she might think Mr. Butler was winning the race.
When he had assured himself of her seat, her hands,
her utter fearlessness, Rhett decided that the time had
come for her to learn to make the low jumps that were
within the reach of Mr. Butler’s short legs. To this
end, he built a hurdle in the back yard and paid Wash,
one of Uncle Peter’s small nephews, twenty-five cents
a day to teach Mr. Butler to jump. He began with a bar
two inches from the ground and gradually worked up
the height to a foot.
This arrangement met with the disapproval of the
three parties concerned, Wash, Mr. Butler and Bonnie.
Wash was afraid of horses and only the princely sum
offered induced him to take the stubborn pony over
the bar dozens of times a day; Mr. Butler, who bore
with equanimity having his tail pulled by his small
mistress and his hooves examined constantly, felt that
the Creator of ponies had not intended him to put his
fat body over the bar; Bonnie, who could not bear to
see anyone else upon her pony, danced with impa1893
�PART FIVE
tience while Mr. Butler was learning his lessons.
When Rhett finally decided that the pony knew his
business well enough to trust Bonnie upon him, the
child’s excitement was boundless. She made her first
jump with flying colors and, thereafter, riding abroad
with her father held no charms for her. Scarlett could
not help laughing at the pride and enthusiasm of father and daughter. She thought, however, that once
the novelty had passed, Bonnie would turn to other
things and the neighborhood would have some peace.
But this sport did not pall. There was a bare track
worn from the arbor at the far end of the yard to the
hurdle, and all morning long the yard resounded with
excited yells. Grandpa Merriwether, who had made
the overland trip in 1849, said that the yells sounded
just like an Apache after a successful scalping.
After the first week, Bonnie begged for a higher bar,
a bar that was a foot and a half from the ground.
“When you are six years old,” said Rhett. “Then
you’ll be big enough for a higher jump and I’ll buy
you a bigger horse. Mr. Butler’s legs aren’t long
enough.”
“They are, too, I jumped Aunt Melly’s rose bushes
and they are ‘normously high!”
“No, you must wait,” said Rhett, firm for once. But
1894
�PART FIVE
the firmness gradually faded away before her incessant importunings and tantrums.
“Oh, all right,” he said with a laugh one morning
and moved the narrow white cross bar higher. “If you
fall off, don’t cry and blame me!”
“Mother!” screamed Bonnie, turning her head up
toward Scarlett’s bedroom. “Mother! Watch me!
Daddy says I can!”
Scarlett, who was combing her hair, came to the window and smiled down at the tiny excited figure, so
absurd in the soiled blue habit.
“I really must get her another habit,” she thought.
“Though Heaven only knows how I’ll make her give
up that dirty one.”
“Mother, watch!”
“I’m watching dear,” said Scarlett smiling.
As Rhett lifted the child and set her on the pony,
Scarlett called with a swift rush of pride at the straight
back and the proud set of the head,
“You’re mighty pretty, precious!”
“So are you,” said Bonnie generously and, hammering a heel into Mr. Butler’s ribs, she galloped down
the yard toward the arbor.
“Mother, watch me take this one!” she cried, laying
1895
�PART FIVE
on the crop.
WATCH ME TAKE THIS ONE!
Memory rang a bell far back in Scarlett’s mind.
There was something ominous about those words.
What was it? Why couldn’t she remember? She
looked down at her small daughter, so lightly poised
on the galloping pony and her brow wrinkled as a
chill swept swiftly through her breast. Bonnie came
on with a rush, her crisp black curls jerking, her blue
eyes blazing.
“They are like Pa’s eyes,” thought Scarlett, “Irish
blue eyes and she’s just like him in every way.”
And, as she thought of Gerald, the memory for
which she had been fumbling came to her swiftly,
came with the heart stopping clarity of summer lightning, throwing, for an instant, a whole countryside into unnatural brightness. She could hear an
Irish voice singing, hear the hard rapid pounding of
hooves coming up the pasture hill at Tara, hear a reckless voice, so like the voice of her child: “Ellen! Watch
me take this one!”
“No!” she cried. “No! Oh, Bonnie, stop!”
Even as she leaned from the window there was a
fearful sound of splintering wood, a hoarse cry from
Rhett, a melee of blue velvet and flying hooves on the
1896
�PART FIVE
ground. Then Mr. Butler scrambled to his feet and
trotted off with an empty saddle.
On the third night after Bonnie’s death, Mammy
waddled slowly up the kitchen steps of Melanie’s
house. She was dressed in black from her huge men’s
shoes, slashed to permit freedom for her toes, to her
black head rag. Her blurred old eyes were bloodshot
and red rimmed, and misery cried out in every line
of her mountainous figure. Her face was puckered in
the sad bewilderment of an old ape but there was determination in her jaw.
She spoke a few soft words to Dilcey who nodded
kindly, as though an unspoken armistice existed in
their old feud. Dilcey put down the supper dishes
she was holding and went quietly through the pantry
toward the dining room. In a minute Melanie was in
the kitchen, her table napkin in her hand, anxiety in
her face.
“Miss Scarlet isn’t–”
“Miss Scarlett bearin’ up, same as allus,” said
Mammy heavily. “Ah din’ ten ter ‘sturb yo’ supper,
Miss Melly. Ah kin wait tell you thoo ter tell you whut
Ah got on mah mine.”
“Supper can wait,” said Melanie. “Dilcey, serve the
rest of the supper. Mammy, come with me.”
1897
�PART FIVE
Mammy waddled after her, down the hall past the
dining room where Ashley sat at the head of the table,
his own little Beau beside him and Scarlett’s two children opposite, making a great clatter with their soup
spoons. The happy voices of Wade and Ella filled the
room. It was like a picnic for them to spend so long a
visit with Aunt Melly. Aunt Melly was always so kind
and she was especially so now. The death of their
younger sister had affected them very little. Bonnie
had fallen off her pony and Mother had cried a long
time and Aunt Melly had taken them home with her
to play in the back yard with Beau and have tea cakes
whenever they wanted them.
Melanie led the way to the small book-lined sitting
room, shut the door and motioned Mammy to the
sofa.
“I was going over right after supper,” she said.
“Now that Captain Butler’s mother has come, I suppose the funeral will be tomorrow morning.”
“De fune’l. Dat’s jes’ it,” said Mammy. “Miss Melly,
we’s all in deep trouble an’ Ah’s come ter you fer he’p.
Ain’ nuthin’ but weery load, honey, nuthin’ but weery
load.”
“Has Miss Scarlett collapsed?” questioned Melanie
worriedly. “I’ve hardly seen her since Bonnie– She
1898
�PART FIVE
has been in her room and Captain Butler has been out
of the house and–”
Suddenly tears began to flow down Mammy’s black
face. Melanie sat down beside her and patted her arm
and, after a moment, Mammy lifted the hem of her
black skirt and dried her eyes.
“You got ter come he’p us, Miss Melly. Ah done de
bes’ Ah kin but it doan do no good.”
“Miss Scarlett–”
Mammy straightened.
“Miss Melly, you knows Miss Scarlett well’s Ah
does. Whut dat chile got ter stan’, de good Lawd give
her strent ter stan’. Disyere done broke her heart but
she kin stan’ it. It’s Mist’ Rhett Ah come ‘bout.”
“I have so wanted to see him but whenever I’ve been
there, he has either been downtown or locked in his
room with– And Scarlett has looked like a ghost and
wouldn’t speak– Tell me quickly, Mammy. You know
I’ll help if I can.”
Mammy wiped her nose on the back of her hand.
“Ah say Miss Scarlett kin stan’ whut de Lawd sen’,
kase she done had ter stan’ a-plen’y, but Mist’ Rhett–
Miss Melly, he ain’ never had ter stan’ nuthin’ he din’
wanter stan’, not nuthin’. It’s him Ah come ter see
1899
�PART FIVE
you ‘bout.”
“But–”
“Miss Melly, you got ter come home wid me, dis
evenin’.” There was urgency in Mammy’s voice.
“Maybe Mist’ Rhett lissen ter you. He allus did think
a heap of yo’ ‘pinion.”
“Oh, Mammy, what is it? What do you mean?”
Mammy squared her shoulders.
“Miss Melly, Mist’ Rhett done–done los’ his mine.
He woan let us put Lil Miss away.”
“Lost his mind? Oh, Mammy, no!”
“Ah ain’ lyin’. It’s de Gawd’s truff. He ain’ gwine
let us buhy dat chile. He done tole me so hisseff, not
mo’n an hour ago.”
“But he can’t–he isn’t–”
“Dat’s huccome Ah say he los’ his mine.”
“But why–”
“Miss Melly, Ah tell you eve’ything. Ah oughtn’ tell
nobody, but you is our fambly an’ you is de onlies’
one Ah kin tell. Ah tell you eve’ything. You knows
whut a sto’ he set by dat chile. Ah ain’ never seed no
man, black or w’ite, set sech a sto’ by any chile. Look
lak he go plumb crazy w’en Doctah Meade say her
neck broke. He grab his gun an’ he run right out an’
1900
�PART FIVE
shoot dat po’ pony an’, fo’ Gawd, Ah think he gwine
shoot hisseff. Ah wuz plumb ‘stracted whut wid Miss
Scarlett in a swoon an’ all de neighbors in an’ outer
de house an’ Mist’ Rhett cahyin’ on an’ jes’ holin’ dat
chile an’ not even lettin’ me wash her lil face whar
de grabble cut it. An’ w’en Miss Scarlett come to, Ah
think, bress Gawd! Now dey kin comfo’t each other.”
Again the tears began to fall but this time Mammy
did not even wipe them away.
“But w’en she come to, she go inter de room whar he
settin’, holin’ Miss Bonnie, an’ she say: ‘Gimme mah
baby whut you kilt.”’
“Oh, no! She couldn’t!”
“Yas’m. Dat whut she say. She say: ‘You kilt her.’
An’ Ah felt so sorry fer Mist’ Rhett Ah bust out cryin’,
kase he look lak a whup houn’. An’ Ah say: ‘Give
dat chile ter its mammy. Ah ain’ gwine have no sech
goin’s on over mah Lil Miss.’ An’ Ah tek de chile
away frum him an’ tek her inter her room an’ wash
her face. An’ Ah hear dem talkin’ an’ it lak ter tuhn
mah blood cole, whut dey say. Miss Scarlett wuz
callin’ him a mudderer fer lettin’ her try ter jump dat
high, an’ him sayin’ Miss Scarlett hadn’ never keered
nuthin’ ‘bout Miss Bonnie nor none of her chillun. . .
.”
1901
�PART FIVE
“Stop, Mammy! Don’t tell me any more. It isn’t
right for you to tell me this!” cried Melanie, her mind
shrinking away from the picture Mammy’s words
evoked.
“Ah knows Ah got no bizness tellin’ you, but mah
heart too full ter know jes’ whut not ter say. Den he
tuck her ter de unnertaker’s hisseff an’ he bring her
back an’ he put her in her baid in his room. An’ w’en
Miss Scarlett say she b’long in de pahlor in de coffin, Ah thought Mist’ Rhett gwine hit her. An’ he say,
right cole lak: ‘She b’long in mah room.’ An’ he tuhn
ter me an’ he say: ‘Mammy, you see dat she stay right
hyah tell Ah gits back.’ Den he light outer de house on
de hawse an’ he wuz gone tell ‘bout sundown. W’en
he come t’arin’ home, Ah seed dat he’d been drinkin’
an’ drinkin’ heavy, but he wuz cahyin’ it well’s usual.
He fling inter de house an’ not even speak ter Miss
Scarlett or Miss Pitty or any of de ladies as wuz callin’,
but he fly up de steps an’ th’ow open de do’ of his
room an’ den he yell for me. W’en Ah comes runnin’
as fas’ as Ah kin, he wuz stan’in’ by de baid an’ it wuz
so dahk in de room Ah couldn’ sceercely see him, kase
de shutters wuz done drawed.
“An’ he say ter me, right fierce lak: ‘Open dem shutters. It’s dahk in hyah.’ An’ Ah fling dem open an’ he
1902
�PART FIVE
look at me an’, fo’ Gawd, Miss Melly, mah knees ‘bout
give way, kase he look so strange. Den he say: ‘Bring
lights. Bring lots of lights. An’ keep dem buhnin’.
An’ doan draw no shades an’ no shutters. Doan you
know Miss Bonnie’s ‘fraid of de dahk?”’
Melanie’s horror struck eyes met Mammy’s and
Mammy nodded ominously.
“Dat’s whut he say. ‘Miss Bonnie’s ‘fraid of de
dahk.”’
Mammy shivvered.
“W’en Ah gits him a dozen candles, he say ‘Git!’ An’
den he lock de do’ an’ dar he set wid Lil Miss, an’
he din’ open de do’ fer Miss Scarlett even w’en she
beat an’ hollered ter him. An’ dat’s de way it been
fer two days. He woan say nuthin’ ‘bout de fune’l,
an’ in de mawnin’ he lock de do’ an’ git on his hawse
an’ go off ter town. An’ he come back at sundown
drunk an’ lock hisseff in agin, an’ he ain’ et nuthin’
or slept none. An’ now his ma, Ole Miss Butler, she
come frum Cha’ston fer de fune’l an’ Miss Suellen an’
Mist’ Will, dey come frum Tara, but Mist’ Rhett woan
talk ter none of dem. Oh, Miss Melly, it been awful!
An’ it’s gwine be wuss, an’ folks gwine talk sumpin’
scan’lous.
“An’ den, dis evenin’,” Mammy paused and again
1903
�PART FIVE
wiped her nose on her hand. “Dis evenin’ Miss Scarleft ketch him in de upstairs hall w’en he come in, an’
she go in de room wid him an’ she say: ‘De fune’l set
fer termorrer mawnin’.’ An’ he say: ‘Do dat an’ Ah
kills you termorrer.”’
“Oh, he must have lost his mind!”
“Yas’m. An’ den dey talks kinder low an’ Ah doan
hear all whut dey say, ‘cept he say agin ‘bout Miss
Bonnie bein’ sceered of de dahk an’ de grabe pow’ful
dahk. An’ affer aw’ile, Miss Scarlett say: ‘You is a fine
one ter tek on so, affer killin’ her ter please yo’ pride.’
An’ he say: ‘Ain’ you got no mercy?’ An’ she say: ‘No.
An’ Ah ain’ got no chile, needer. An’ Ah’m wo’out
wid de way you been ackin’ sence Bonnie wuz kilt.
You is a scan’al ter de town. You been drunk all de
time an’ ef you doan think Ah knows whar you been
spendin’ yo’ days, you is a fool. Ah knows you been
down ter dat creeter’s house, dat Belle Watling.”’
“Oh, Mammy, no!”
“Yas’m. Dat whut she said. An’, Miss Melly, it’s
de truff. Niggers knows a heap of things quicker dan
w’ite folks, an’ Ah knowed dat’s whar he been but Ah
ain’ said nuthin’ ‘bout it. An’ he doan deny it. He say:
‘Yas’m, dat’s whar Ah been an’ you neen tek on, kase
you doan give a damn. A bawdy house is a haben of
1904
�PART FIVE
refuge affer dis house of hell. An’ Belle is got one of
de worl’s kines’ hearts. She doan th’ow it up ter me
dat Ah done kilt mah chile.”’
“Oh,” cried Melanie, stricken to the heart.
Her own life was so pleasant, so sheltered, so
wrapped about with people who loved her, so full of
kindness that what Mammy told her was almost beyond comprehension or belief. Yet there crawled into
her mind a memory, a picture which she hastily put
from her, as she would put from her the thought of
another’s nudity. Rhett had spoken of Belle Watling
the day he cried with his head on her knees. But he
loved Scarlett. She could not have been mistaken that
day. And of course, Scarlett loved him. What had
come between them? How could a husband and a
wife cut each other to pieces with such sharp knives?
Mammy took up her story heavily.
“Affer a w’ile, Miss Scarlett come outer de room,
w’ite as a sheet but her jaw set, an’ she see me stan’in’
dar an’ she say: ‘De fune’l be termorrer, Mammy.’
An’ she pass me by lak a ghos’. Den mah heart tuhn
over, kase whut Miss Scarlett say, she mean. An’ whut
Mist’ Rhett say, he mean too. An’ he say he kill her ef
she do dat. Ah wuz plumb ‘stracted, Miss Melly, kase
Ah done had sumpin’ on mah conscience all de time
1905
�PART FIVE
an’ it weighin’ me down. Miss Melly, it wuz me as
sceered Lil Miss of de dahk.”
“Oh, but Mammy, it doesn’t matter–not now.”
“Yas’m, it do. Dat whut de whole trouble. An’ it
come ter me Ah better tell Mist’ Rhett even ef he kill
me, kase it on mah conscience. So Ah slip in de do’
real quick, fo’ he kin lock it, an’ Ah say: ‘Mist’ Rhett,
Ah’s come ter confess.’ An’ he swung roun’ on me
lak a crazy man an’ say: ‘Git!’ An’, fo’ Gawd, Ah ain’
never been so sceered! But Ah say: ‘Please, suh, Mist’
Rhett, let me tell you. It’s ‘bout ter kill me. It wuz
me as sceered Lil Miss of de dahk.’ An’ den, Miss
Melly, Ah put mah haid down an’ waited fer him ter
hit me. But he din’ say nuthin’. An’ An say: ‘Ah din’
mean no hahm. But, Mist’ Rhett, dat chile din’ have
no caution an’ she wuzn’ sceered of nuthin’. An’ she
wuz allus gittin’ outer baid affer eve’ybody sleep an
runnin’ roun’ de house barefoot. An’ it worrit me,
kase Ah ‘fraid she hu’t herseff. So Ah tells her dar’s
ghos’es an’ buggerboos in de dahk.’
“An’ den–Miss Melly, you know whut he done? His
face got right gentle lak an’ he come ter me an’ put his
han’ on mah arm. Dat’s de fust time he ever done dat.
An’ he say: ‘She wuz so brave, wuzn’ she? ‘Cept fer
de dahk, she wuzn’ sceered of nuthin’.’ An’ wen Ah
1906
�PART FIVE
bust out cryin’ he say: ‘Now, Mammy,’ an’ he pat me.
‘Now, Mammy, doan you cahy on so. Ah’s glad you
tole me. Ah knows you love Miss Bonnie an’ kase you
love her, it doan matter. It’s whut de heart is dat matter.’ Well’m dat kinder cheered me up, so Ah ventu’
ter say: ‘Mist Rhett, suh, what ‘bout de fune’l?’ Den
he tuhn on me lak a wile man an’ his eyes glitter an’ he
say: ‘Good Gawd, Ah thought you’d unnerstan’ even
ef nobody else din’! Does you think Ah’m gwine ter
put mah chile away in de dahk w’en she so sceered
of it? Right now Ah kin hear de way she uster scream
w’en she wake up in de dahk. Ah ain’ gwine have her
sceered.’ Miss Melly, den Ah know he los’ his mine.
He drunk an’ he need sleep an’ sumpin’ ter eat but
dat ain’ all. He plumb crazy. He jes’ push me outer de
do’ an’ say: ‘Git de hell outer hyah!’
“Ah goes downstairs an’ Ah gits ter thinkin’ dat he
say dar ain’ gwine be no fune’l an’ Miss Scarlett say
it be termorrer mawnin’ an’ he say dar be shootin’.
An’ all de kin-folks in de house an’ all de neighbors
already gabblin’ ‘bout it lak a flock of guinea hens,
an’ Ah thought of you, Miss Melly. You got ter come
he’p us.”
“Oh, Mammy, I couldn’t intrude!”
“Ef you kain, who kin?”
1907
�PART FIVE
“But what could I do, Mammy?”
“Miss Melly, Ah doan know. But you kin do
sumpin’. You kin talk ter Mist’ Rhett an’ maybe he
lissen ter you. He set a gret sto’ by you, Miss Melly.
Maybe you doan know it, but he do. Ah done hear
him say time an’ agin, you is de onlies’ gret lady he
knows.”
“But–”
Melanie rose to her feet, confused, her heart quailing
at the thought of confronting Rhett. The thought of arguing with a man as grief crazed as the one Mammy
depicted made her go cold. The thought of entering
that brightly lighted room where lay the little girl she
loved so much wrung her heart. What could she do?
What could she say to Rhett that would ease his grief
and bring him back to reason? For a moment she
stood irresolute and through the closed door came the
sound of her boy’s treble laughter. Like a cold knife
in her heart came the thought of him dead. Suppose
her Beau were lying upstairs, his little body cold and
still, his merry laughter hushed.
“Oh,” she cried aloud, in fright, and in her mind she
clutched him close to her heart. She knew how Rhett
felt. If Beau were dead, how could she put him away,
alone with the wind and the rain and the darkness?
1908
�PART FIVE
“Oh! Poor, poor Captain Butler!” she cried. “I’ll go
to him now, right away.”
She sped back to the dining room, said a few soft
words to Ashley and surprised her little boy by hugging him close to her and kissing his blond curls passionately.
She left the house without a hat, her dinner napkin still clutched in her hand, and the pace she set
was hard for Mammy’s old legs. Once in Scarlett’s
front hall, she bowed briefly to the gathering in the
library, to the frightened Miss Pittypat, the stately old
Mrs. Butler, Will and Suellen. She went up the stairs
swiftly, with Mammy panting behind her. For a moment, she paused before Scarlett’s closed door but
Mammy hissed, “No’m, doan do dat.”
Down the hall Melly went, more slowly now, and
stopped in front of Rhett’s room. She stood irresolutely for a moment as though she longed to take
flight. Then, bracing herself, like a small soldier going
into battle, she knocked on the door and called softly:
“Please let me in, Captain Butler. It’s Mrs. Wilkes. I
want to see Bonnie.”
The door opened quickly and Mammy, shrinking
back into the shadows of the hall, saw Rhett huge and
dark against the blazing background of candles. He
1909
�PART FIVE
was swaying on his feet and Mammy could smell the
whisky on his breath. He looked down at Melly for
a moment and then, taking her by the arm, he pulled
her into the room and shut the door.
Mammy edged herself stealthily to a chair beside
the door and sank into it wearily, her shapeless body
overflowing it. She sat still, weeping silently and
praying. Now and then she lifted the hem of her dress
and wiped her eyes. Strain her ears as hard as she
might, she could hear no words from the room, only
a low broken humming sound.
Alter an interminable period, the door cracked open
and Melly’s face white and strained, appeared.
“Bring me a pot of coffee, quickly, and some sandwiches.”
When the devil drove, Mammy could be as swift as
a lithe black sixteen-year-old and her curiosity to get
into Rhett’s room made her work faster. But her hope
turned to disappointment when Melly merely opened
the door a crack and took the tray. For a long time
Mammy strained her sharp ears but she could distinguish nothing except the clatter of silver on china,
and the muffled soft tones of Melanie’s voice. Then
she heard the creaking of the bed as a heavy body fell
upon it and, soon after, the sound of boots dropping
1910
�PART FIVE
to the floor. After an interval, Melanie appeared in the
doorway but, strive though she might, Mammy could
not see past her into the room. Melanie looked tired
and there were tears glistening on her lashes but her
face was serene again.
“Go tell Miss Scarlett that Captain Butler is quite
willing for the funeral to take place tomorrow morning,” she whispered.
“Bress Gawd!” ejaculated Mammy. “How on uth–”
“Don’t talk so loud. He’s going to sleep. And,
Mammy, tell Miss Scarlett, too, that I’ll be here all
night and you bring me some coffee. Bring it here.”
“Ter disyere room?”
“Yes, I promised Captain Butler that if he would go
to sleep I would sit up by her all night. Now go tell
Miss Scarlett, so she won’t worry any more.”
Mammy started off down the hall, her weight shaking the floor, her relieved heart singing “Halleluja!
Hallelujah!” She paused thoughtfully outside of Scarlett’s door, her mind in a ferment of thankfulness and
curiosity.
“How Miss Melley done it beyon’ me. De angels
fight on her side, Ah specs. Ah’ll tell Miss Scarlett de
fune’l termorrer but Ah specs Ah better keep hid dat
Miss Melly settin’ up wid Lil Miss. Miss Scarlett ain’
1911
�PART FIVE
gwine lak dat a-tall.”
1912
�CHAPTER LX
with the world, a somber,
frightening wrongness that pervaded everything like
a dark impenetrable mist, stealthily closing around
Scarlett. This wrongness went even deeper than Bonnie’s death, for now the first unbearable anguish was
fading into resigned acceptance of her loss. Yet this
eerie sense of disaster to come persisted, as though
something black and hooded stood just at her shoulder, as though the ground beneath her feet might turn
to quicksand as she trod upon it.
She had never before known this type of fear. All her
life her feet had been firmly planted in common sense
and the only things she had ever feared had been the
things she could see, injury, hunger, poverty, loss of
Ashley’s love. Unanalytical she was trying to analyze
now and with no success. She had lost her dearest
child but she could stand that, somehow, as she had
stood other crushing losses. She had her health, she
had as much money as she could wish and she still
had Ashley, though she saw less and less of him these
days. Even the constraint which had been between
them since the day of Melanie’s ill-starred surprise
party did not worry her, for she knew it would pass.
No, her fear was not of pain or hunger or loss of love.
S OMETHING
WAS WRONG
�PART FIVE
Those fears had never weighed her down as this feeling of wrongness was doing–this blighting fear that
was oddly like that which she knew in her old nightmare, a thick, swimming mist through which she ran
with bursting heart, a lost child seeking a haven that
was hidden from her.
She remembered how Rhett had always been able
to laugh her out of her fears. She remembered the
comfort of his broad brown chest and his strong arms.
And so she turned to him with eyes that really saw
him for the first time in weeks. And the change she
saw shocked her. This man was not going to laugh,
nor was he going to comfort her.
For some time after Bonnie’s death she had been too
angry with him, too preoccupied with her own grief
to do more than speak politely in front of the servants.
She had been too busy remembering the swift running patter of Bonnie’s feet and her bubbling laugh
to think that he, too, might be remembering and with
pain even greater than her own. Throughout these
weeks they had met and spoken as courteously as
strangers meeting in the impersonal walls of a hotel,
sharing the same roof, the same table, but never sharing the thoughts of each other.
Now that she was frightened and lonely, she would
1914
�PART FIVE
have broken through this barrier if she could, but she
found that he was holding her at arm’s length, as
though he wished to have no words with her that
went beneath the surface. Now that her anger was
fading she wanted to tell him that she held him guiltless of Bonnie’s death. She wanted to cry in his
arms and say that she, too, had been overly proud
of the child’s horsemanship, overly indulgent to her
wheedlings. Now she would willingly have humbled
herself and admitted that she had only hurled that accusation at him out of her misery, hoping by hurting
him to alleviate her own hurt. But there never seemed
an opportune moment. He looked at her out of black
blank eyes that made no opportunity for her to speak.
And apologies, once postponed, became harder and
harder to make, and finally impossible.
She wondered why this should be. Rhett was her
husband and between them there was the unbreakable bond of two people who have shared the same
bed, begotten and borne a loved child and seen that
child, too soon, laid away in the dark. Only in the
arms of the father of that child could she find comfort, in the exchange of memories and grief that might
hurt at first but would help to heal. But, now, as matters stood between them, she would as soon go to the
arms of a complete stranger.
1915
�PART FIVE
He was seldom at home. When they did sit down to
supper together, he was usually drunk. He was not
drinking as he had formerly, becoming increasingly
more polished and biting as the liquor took hold of
him, saying amusing, malicious things that made her
laugh in spite of herself. Now he was silently, morosely drunk and, as the evenings progressed, soddenly drunk. Sometimes, in the early hours of the
dawn, she heard him ride into the back yard and beat
on the door of the servants’ house so that Pork might
help him up the back stairs and put him to bed. Put
him to bed! Rhett who had always drunk others under the table without turning a hair and then put them
to bed.
He was untidy now, where once he had been well
groomed, and it took all Pork’s scandalized arguing
even to make him change his linen before supper.
Whisky was showing in his face and the hard line of
his long jaw was being obscured under an unhealthy
bloat and puffs rising under his bloodshot eyes. His
big body with its hard swelling muscles looked soft
and slack and his waist line began to thicken.
Often he did not come home at all or even send
word that he would be away overnight. Of course,
he might be snoring drunkenly in some room above
1916
�PART FIVE
a saloon, but Scarlett always believed that he was at
Belle Watling’s house on these occasions. Once she
had seen Belle in a store, a coarse overblown woman
now, with most of her good looks gone. But, for all
her paint and flashy clothes, she was buxom and almost motherly looking. Instead of dropping her eyes
or glaring defiantly, as did other light women when
confronted by ladies, Belle gave her stare for stare,
searching her face with an intent, almost pitying look
that brought a flush to Scarlett’s cheek.
But she could not accuse him now, could not rage at
him, demand fidelity or try to shame him, any more
than she could bring herself to apologize for accusing
him of Bonnie’s death. She was clutched by a bewildered apathy, an unhappiness that she could not understand, an unhappiness that went deeper than anything she had ever known. She was lonely and she
could never remember being so lonely before. Perhaps she had never had the time to be very lonely until now. She was lonely and afraid and there was no
one to whom she could turn, no one except Melanie.
For now, even Mammy, her mainstay, had gone back
to Tara. Gone permanently.
Mammy gave no explanation for her departure. Her
tired old eyes looked sadly at Scarlett when she asked
1917
�PART FIVE
for the train fare home. To Scarlett’s tears and pleading that she stay, Mammy only answered: “Look ter
me lak Miss Ellen say ter me: ‘Mammy, come home.
Yo’ wuk done finish.’ So Ah’s gwine home.”
Rhett, who had listened to the talk, gave Mammy
the money and patted her arm.
“You’re right, Mammy. Miss Ellen is right. Your
work here is done. Go home. Let me know if you ever
need anything.” And as Scarlett broke into renewed
indignant commands: “Hush, you fool! Let her go!
Why should anyone want to stay in this house–now?”
There was such a savage bright glitter in his eyes
when he spoke that Scarlett shrank from him, frightened.
“Dr. Meade, do you think he can–can have lost his
mind?” she questioned afterwards, driven to the doctor by her own sense of helplessness.
“No,” said the doctor, “but he’s drinking like a fish
and will kill himself if he keeps it up. He loved the
child, Scarlett, and I guess he drinks to forget about
her. Now, my advice to you, Miss, is to give him another baby just as quickly as you can.”
“Hah!” thought Scarlett bitterly, as she left his office.
That was easier said than done. She would gladly
have another child, several children, if they would
1918
�PART FIVE
take that look out of Rhett’s eyes and fill up the aching
spaces in her own heart. A boy who had Rhett’s dark
handsomeness and another little girl. Oh, for another
girl, pretty and gay and willful and full of laughter, not like the giddy-brained Ella. Why, oh, why
couldn’t God have taken Ella if He had to take one
of her children? Ella was no comfort to her, now that
Bonnie was gone. But Rhett did not seem to want any
other children. At least he never came to her bedroom
though now the door was never locked and usually
invitingly ajar. He did not seem to care. He did not
seem to care for anything now except whisky and that
blowzy red-haired woman.
He was bitter now, where he had been pleasantly
jeering, brutal where his thrusts had once been tempered with humor. After Bonnie died, many of the
good ladies of the neighborhood who had been won
over to him by his charming manners with his daughter were anxious to show him kindness. They stopped
him on the street to give him their sympathy and
spoke to him from over their hedges, saying that they
understood. But now that Bonnie, the reason for his
good manners, was gone the manners went to. He
cut the ladies and their well-meant condolences off
shortly, rudely.
1919
�PART FIVE
But, oddly enough, the ladies were not offended.
They understood, or thought they understood. When
he rode home in the twilight almost too drunk to stay
in the saddle, scowling at those who spoke to him, the
ladies said “Poor thing!” and redoubled their efforts
to be kind and gentle. They felt very sorry for him,
broken hearted and riding home to no better comfort
than Scarlett.
Everybody knew how cold and heartless she was.
Everybody was appalled at the seeming ease with
which she had recovered from Bonnie’s death, never
realizing or caring to realize the effort that lay behind
that seeming recovery. Rhett had the town’s tenderest sympathy and he neither knew nor cared. Scarlett
had the town’s dislike and, for once, she would have
welcomed the sympathy of old friends.
Now, none of her old friends came to the house, except Aunt Pitty, Melanie and Ashley. Only the new
friends came calling in their shining carriages, anxious to tell her of their sympathy, eager to divert
her with gossip about other new friends in whom
she was not at all interested. All these “new people,” strangers, every one! They didn’t know her.
They would never know her. They had no realization of what her life had been before she reached her
1920
�PART FIVE
present safe eminence in her mansion on Peachtree
Street. They didn’t care to talk about what their lives
had been before they attained stiff brocades and victorias with fine teams of horses. They didn’t know
of her struggles, her privations, all the things that
made this great house and pretty clothes and silver and receptions worth having. They didn’t know.
They didn’t care, these people from God-knowswhere who seemed to live always on the surface of
things, who had no common memories of war and
hunger and fighting, who had no common roots going down into the same red earth.
Now in her loneliness, she would have liked to
while away the afternoons with Maybelle or Fanny or
Mrs. Elsing or Mrs. Whiting or even that redoubtable
old warrior, Mrs. Merriwether. Or Mrs. Bonnell or–or
any of her old friends and neighbors. For they knew.
They had known war and terror and fire, had seen
dear ones dead before their time; they had hungered
and been ragged, had lived with the wolf at the door.
And they had rebuilt fortune from ruin.
It would be a comfort to sit with Maybelle, remembering that Maybelle had buried a baby, dead in the
mad flight before Sherman. There would be solace in
Fanny’s presence, knowing that she and Fanny both
1921
�PART FIVE
had lost husbands in the black days of martial law.
It would be grim fun to laugh with Mrs. Elsing, recalling the old lady’s face as she flogged her horse
through Five Points the day Atlanta fell, her loot from
the commissary jouncing from her carriage. It would
be pleasant to match stories with Mrs. Merriwether,
now secure on the proceeds of her bakery, pleasant to
say: “Do you remember how bad things were right after the surrender? Do you remember when we didn’t
know where our next pair of shoes was coming from?
And look at us now!”
Yes, it would be pleasant. Now she understood why
when two ex- Confederates met, they talked of the
war with so much relish, with pride, with nostalgia.
Those had been days that tried their hearts but they
had come through them. They were veterans. She
was a veteran too, but she had no cronies with whom
she could refight old battles. Oh, to be with her own
kind of people again, those people who had been
through the same things and knew how they hurt–
and yet how great a part of you they were!
But, somehow, these people had slipped away. She
realized that it was her own fault. She had never
cared until now–now that Bonnie was dead and she
was lonely and afraid and she saw across her shining
1922
�PART FIVE
dinner table a swarthy sodden stranger disintegrating
under her eyes.
1923
�CHAPTER LXI
Marietta when Rhett’s urgent telegram came. There was a train leaving for Atlanta in
ten minutes and she caught it, carrying no baggage
except her reticule and leaving Wade and Ella at the
hotel with Prissy.
Atlanta was only twenty miles away but the train
crawled interminably through the wet early autumn
afternoon, stopping at every bypath for passengers.
Panic stricken at Rhett’s message, mad for speed,
Scarlett almost screamed at every halt. Down the road
lumbered the train through forests faintly, tiredly
gold, past red hillsides still scarred with serpentine breastworks, past old battery emplacements and
weed-grown craters, down the road over which Johnston’s men had retreated so bitterly, fighting every
step of the way. Each station, each crossroad the conductor called was the name of a battle, the site of a
skirmish. Once they would have stirred Scarlett to
memories of terror but now she had no thought for
them.
Rhett’s message had been:
“Mrs. Wilkes ill. Come home immediately.”
Twilight had fallen when the train pulled into AtS CARLETT
WAS IN
�PART FIVE
lanta and a light misting rain obscured the town. The
gas street lamps glowed dully, blobs of yellow in the
fog. Rhett was waiting for her at the depot with the
carriage. The very sight of his face frightened her
more than his telegram. She had never seen it so expressionless before.
“She isn’t–” she cried.
“No. She’s still alive.” Rhett assisted her into the
carriage. “To Mrs. Wilkes’ house and as fast as you
can go,” he ordered the coachman.
“What’s the matter with her? I didn’t know she was
ill. She looked all right last week. Did she have an
accident? Oh, Rhett, it isn’t really as serious as you–”
“She’s dying,” said Rhett and his voice had no more
expression than his face. “She wants to see you.”
“Not Melly! Oh, not Melly! What’s happened to
her?”
“She’s had a miscarriage.”
“A–a-mis–but, Rhett, she–” Scarlett floundered.
This information on top of the horror of his announcement took her breath away.
“You did not know she was going to have a baby?”
She could not even shake her head.
“Ah, well. I suppose not. I don’t think she told any1925
�PART FIVE
one. She wanted it to be a surprise. But I knew.”
“You knew? But surely she didn’t tell you!”
“She didn’t have to tell me. I knew. She’s been so–
happy these last two months I knew it couldn’t mean
anything else.”
“But Rhett, the doctor said it would kill her to have
another baby!”
“It has killed her,” said Rhett. And to the coachman:
“For God’s sake, can’t you drive faster?”
“But, Rhett, she can’t be dying! I–I didn’t and I–”
“She hasn’t your strength. She’s never had any
strength. She’s never had anything but heart.”
The carriage rocked to a standstill in front of the flat
little house and Rhett handed her out. Trembling,
frightened, a sudden feeling of loneliness upon her,
she clasped his arm.
“You’re coming in, Rhett?”
“No,” he said and got back into the carriage.
She flew up the front steps, across the porch and
threw open the door. There, in the yellow lamplight
were Ashley, Aunt Pitty and India. Scarlett thought:
“What’s India doing here? Melanie told her never to
set foot in this house again.” The three rose at the
sight of her, Aunt Pitty biting her trembling lips to still
1926
�PART FIVE
them, India staring at her, grief stricken and without
hate. Ashley looked dull as a sleepwalker and, as he
came to her and put his hand upon her arm, he spoke
like a sleepwalker.
“She asked for you,” he said. “She asked for you.”
“Can I see her now?” She turned toward the closed
door of Melanie’s room.
“No. Dr. Meade is in there now. I’m glad you’ve
come, Scarlett.”
“I came as quickly as I could.” Scarlett shed her bonnet and her cloak. “The train– She isn’t really– Tell
me, she’s better, isn’t she, Ashley? Speak to me! Don’t
look like that! She isn’t really–”
“She kept asking for you,” said Ashley and looked
her in the eyes. And, in his eyes she saw the answer
to her question. For a moment, her heart stood still
and then a queer fear, stronger than anxiety, stronger
than grief, began to beat in her breast. It can’t be true,
she thought vehemently, trying to push back the fear.
Doctors make mistakes. I won’t think it’s true. I can’t
let myself think it’s true. I’ll scream if I do. I must
think of something else.
“I don’t believe it!” she cried stormily, looking into
the three drawn faces as though defying them to contradict her. “And why didn’t Melanie tell me? I’d
1927
�PART FIVE
never have gone to Marietta if I’d known!”
Ashley’s eyes awoke and were tormented.
“She didn’t tell anyone, Scarlett, especially not you.
She was afraid you’d scold her if you knew. She
wanted to wait three–till she thought it safe and sure
and then surprise you all and laugh and say how
wrong the doctors had been. And she was so happy.
You know how she was about babies–how much she’s
wanted a little girl. And everything went so well
until–and then for no reason at all–”
The door of Melanie’s room opened quietly and Dr.
Meade came out into the hall, shutting the door behind him. He stood for a moment, his gray beard
sunk on his chest, and looked at the suddenly frozen
four. His gaze fell last on Scarlett. As he came toward her, she saw that there was grief in his eyes and
also dislike and contempt that flooded her frightened
heart with guilt.
“So you finally got here,” he said.
Before she could answer, Ashley started toward the
closed door.
“Not you, yet,” said the doctor. “She wants to speak
to Scarlett.”
“Doctor,” said India, putting a hand on his sleeve.
Though her voice was toneless, it plead more loudly
1928
�PART FIVE
than words. “Let me see her for a moment. I’ve been
here since this morning, waiting, but she– Let me see
her for a moment. I want to tell her–must tell her–that
I was wrong about–something.”
She did not look at Ashley or Scarlett as she spoke,
but Dr. Meade allowed his cold glance to fall on Scarlett.
“I’ll see, Miss India,” he said briefly. “But only if
you’ll give me your word not to use up her strength
telling her you were wrong. She knows you were
wrong and it will only worry her to hear you apologize.”
Pitty began, timidly: “Please, Dr. Meade–”
“Miss Pitty, you know you’d scream and faint.”
Pitty drew up her stout little body and gave the doctor glance for glance. Her eyes were dry and there
was dignity in every curve.
“Well, all right, honey, a little later,” said the doctor,
more kindly. “Come, Scarlett.”
They tiptoed down the hall to the closed door and
the doctor put his hand on Scarlett’s shoulder in a
hard grip.
“Now, Miss,” he whispered briefly, “no hysterics
and no deathbed confessions from you or, before God,
1929
�PART FIVE
I will wring your neck! Don’t give me any of your innocent stares. You know what I mean. Miss Melly is
going to die easily and you aren’t going to ease your
own conscience by telling her anything about Ashley.
I’ve never harmed a woman yet, but if you say anything now–you’ll answer to me.”
He opened the door before she could answer,
pushed her into the room and closed the door behind her. The little room, cheaply furnished in black
walnut, was in semidarkness, the lamp shaded with
a newspaper. It was as small and prim a room as
a schoolgirl’s, the narrow little low-backed bed, the
plain net curtains looped back, the clean faded rag
rugs on the floor, were so different from the lavishness of Scarlett’s own bedroom with its towering
carved furniture, pink brocade draperies and rosestrewn carpet.
Melanie lay in the bed, her figure under the counterpane shrunken and flat like a little girl’s. Two black
braids fell on either side of her face and her closed
eyes were sunken in twin purple circles. At the sight
of her Scarlett stood transfixed, leaning against the
door. Despite the gloom of the room, she could see
that Melanie’s face was of a waxy yellow color. It
was drained of life’s blood and there was a pinched
1930
�PART FIVE
look about the nose. Until that moment, Scarlett had
hoped Dr. Meade was mistaken. But now she knew.
In the hospitals during the war she had seen too many
faces wearing this pinched look not to know what it
inevitably presaged.
Melanie was dying, but for a moment Scarlett’s
mind refused to take it in. Melanie could not die. It
was impossible for her to die. God wouldn’t let her
die when she, Scarlett, needed her so much. Never
before had it occurred to her that she needed Melanie.
But now, the truth surged in, down to the deepest recesses of her soul. She had relied on Melanie, even as
she had relied upon herself, and she had never known
it. Now, Melanie was dying and Scarlett knew she
could not get along without her. Now, as she tiptoed
across the room toward the quiet figure, panic clutching at her heart, she knew that Melanie had been her
sword and her shield, her comfort and her strength.
“I must hold her! I can’t let her get away!” she
thought and sank beside the bed with a rustle of
skirts. Hastily she grasped the limp hand lying on
the coverlet and was frightened anew by its chill.
“It’s me, Melly,” she said.
Melanie’s eyes opened a slit and then, as if having
satisfied herself that it was really Scarlett, she closed
1931
�PART FIVE
them again. After a pause she drew a breath and
whispered:
“Promise me?”
“Oh, anything!”
“Beau–look after him.”
Scarlett could only nod, a strangled feeling in her
throat, and she gently pressed the hand she held by
way of assent.
“I give him to you.” There was the faintest trace of
a smile. “I gave him to you, once before–‘member?–
before he was born.”
Did she remember? Could she ever forget that
time? Almost as clearly as if that dreadful day had returned, she could feel the stifling heat of the September noon, remembering her terror of the Yankees, hear
the tramp of the retreating troops, recall Melanie’s
voice begging her to take the baby should she die–
remember, too, how she had hated Melanie that day
and hoped that she would die.
“I’ve killed her,” she thought, in superstitious
agony. “I wished so often she would die and God
heard me and is punishing me.”
“Oh, Melly, don’t talk like that! You know you’ll
pull through this–”
1932
�PART FIVE
“No. Promise.”
Scarlett gulped.
“You know I promise. I’ll treat him like he was my
own boy.”
“College?” asked Melanie’s faint flat voice.
“Oh, yes! The university and Harvard and Europe
and anything he wants–and–and–a pony–and music
lessons– Oh, please, Melly, do try! Do make an effort!”
The silence fell again and on Melanie’s face there
were signs of a struggle to gather strength to speak.
“Ashley,” she said. “Ashley and you–” Her voice
faltered into stillness.
At the mention of Ashley’s name, Scarlett’s heart
stood still, cold as granite within her. Melanie had
known all the time. Scarlett dropped her head on
the coverlet and a sob that would not rise caught her
throat with a cruel hand. Melanie knew. Scarlett
was beyond shame now, beyond any feeling save a
wild remorse that she had hurt this gentle creature
throughout the long years. Melanie had known–and
yet, she had remained her loyal friend. Oh, if she
could only live those years over again! She would
never even let her eyes meet those of Ashley.
1933
�PART FIVE
“O God,” she prayed rapidly, “do, please, let her
live! I’ll make it up to her. I’ll be so good to her. I’ll
never even speak to Ashley again as long as I live, if
You’ll only let her get well!”
“Ashley,” said Melanie feebly and her fingers
reached out to touch Scarlett’s bowed head. Her
thumb and forefinger tugged with no more strength
than that of a baby at Scarlett’s hair. Scarlett knew
what that meant, knew Melanie wanted her to look
up. But she could not, could not meet Melanie’s eyes
and read that knowledge in them.
“Ashley,” Melanie whispered again and Scarlett
gripped herself. When she looked God in the face
on the Day of Judgment and read her sentence in His
eyes, it would not be as bad as this. Her soul cringed
but she raised her head.
She saw only the same dark loving eyes, sunken and
drowsy with death, the same tender mouth tiredly
fighting pain for breath. No reproach was there, no
accusation and no fear–only an anxiety that she might
not find strength for words.
For a moment Scarlett was too stunned to even feel
relief. Then, as she held Melanie’s hand more closely,
a flood of warm gratitude to God swept over her and,
for the first time since her childhood, she said a hum1934
�PART FIVE
ble, unselfish prayer.
“Thank You, God. I know I’m not worth it but thank
You for not letting her know.”
“What about Ashley, Melly?”
“You’ll–look after him?”
“Oh, yes.”
“He catches cold–so easily.”
There was a pause.
“Look after–his business–you understand?”
“Yes, I understand. I will.”
She made a great effort.
“Ashley isn’t–practical.”
Only death could have forced that disloyalty from
Melanie.
“Look after him, Scarlett–but–don’t ever let him
know.”
“I’ll look after him and the business too, and I’ll
never let him know. I’ll just kind of suggest things
to him.”
Melanie managed a small smile but it was a triumphant one as her eyes met Scarlett’s again. Their
glance sealed the bargain that the protection of Ashley Wilkes from a too harsh world was passing from
1935
�PART FIVE
one woman to another and that Ashley’s masculine
pride should never be humbled by this knowledge.
Now the struggle went out of the tired face as
though with Scarlett’s promise, ease had come to her.
“You’re so smart–so brave–always been so good to
me–”
At these words, the sob came freely to Scarlett’s
throat and she clapped her hand over her mouth.
Now, she was going to bawl like a child and cry out:
“I’ve been a devil! I’ve wronged you so! I never did
anything for you! It was all for Ashley.”
She rose to her feet abruptly, sinking her teeth into
her thumb to regain her control. Rhett’s words came
back to her again, “She loves you. Let that be your
cross.” Well, the cross was heavier now. It was bad
enough that she had tried by every art to take Ashley
from her. But now it was worse that Melanie, who
had trusted her blindly through life, was laying the
same love and trust on her in death. No, she could
not speak. She could not even say again: “Make an
effort to live.” She must let her go easily, without a
struggle, without tears, without sorrow.
The door opened slightly and Dr. Meade stood
on the threshold, beckoning imperiously. Scarlett
bent over the bed, choking back her tears and taking
1936
�PART FIVE
Melanie’s hand, laid it against her cheek.
“Good night,” she said, and her voice was steadier
than she thought it possibly could be.
“Promise me–” came the whisper, very softly now.
“Anything, darling.”
“Captain Butler–be kind to him. He–loves you so.”
“Rhett?” thought Scarlett, bewildered, and the
words meant nothing to her.
“Yes, indeed,” she said automatically and, pressing
a light kiss on the hand, laid it back on the bed.
“Tell the ladies to come in immediately,” whispered
the doctor as she passed through the door.
Through blurred eyes she saw India and Pitty follow the doctor into the room, holding their skirts close
to their sides to keep them from rustling. The door
closed behind them and the house was still. Ashley was nowhere to be seen. Scarlett leaned her head
against the wall, like a naughty child in a corner, and
rubbed her aching throat.
Behind that door, Melanie was going and, with her,
the strength upon which she had relied unknowingly
for so many years. Why, oh, why, had she not realized
before this how much she loved and needed Melanie?
But who would have thought of small plain Melanie
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�PART FIVE
as a tower of strength? Melanie who was shy to tears
before strangers, timid about raising her voice in an
opinion of her own, fearful of the disapproval of old
ladies, Melanie who lacked the courage to say Boo to
a goose? And yet–
Scarlett’s mind went back through the years to the
still, hot noon at Tara when gray smoke curled above
a blue-clad body and Melanie stood at the top of the
stairs with Charles’ saber in her hand. Scarlett remembered that she had thought at the time: “How
silly! Melly couldn’t even heft that sword!” But
now she knew that had the necessity arisen, Melanie
would have charged down those stairs and killed the
Yankee–or been killed herself.
Yes, Melanie had been there that day with a sword
in her small hand, ready to do battle for her. And
now, as Scarlett looked sadly back, she realized that
Melanie had always been there beside her with a
sword in her hand, unobtrusive as her own shadow,
loving her, fighting for her with blind passionate loyalty, fighting Yankees, fire, hunger, poverty, public
opinion and even her beloved blood kin.
Scarlett felt her courage and self-confidence ooze
from her as she realized that the sword which had
flashed between her and the world was sheathed for1938
�PART FIVE
ever.
“Melly is the only woman friend I ever had,” she
thought forlornly, “the only woman except Mother
who really loved me. She’s like Mother, too. Everyone who knew her has clung to her skirts.”
Suddenly it was as if Ellen were lying behind that
closed door, leaving the world for a second time. Suddenly she was standing at Tara again with the world
about her ears, desolate with the knowledge that she
could not face life without the terrible strength of the
weak, the gentle, the tender hearted.
She stood in the hall, irresolute, frightened, and the
glaring light of the fire in the sitting room threw tall
dim shadows on the walls about her. The house was
utterly still and the stillness soaked into her like a fine
chill rain. Ashley! Where was Ashley?
She went toward the sitting room seeking him like a
cold animal seeking the fire but he was not there. She
must find him. She had discovered Melanie’s strength
and her dependence on it only to lose it in the moment
of discovery but there was still Ashley left. There was
Ashley who was strong and wise and comforting. In
Ashley and his love lay strength upon which to lay
her weakness, courage to bolster her fear, ease for her
sorrow.
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�PART FIVE
He must be in his room, she thought, and tiptoeing down the hall, she knocked softly. There was no
answer, so she pushed the door open. Ashley was
standing in front of the dresser, looking at a pair of
Melanie’s mended gloves. First he picked up one and
looked at it, as though he had never seen it before.
Then he laid it down gently, as though it were made
of glass, and picked up the other one.
She said: “Ashley!” in a trembling voice and he
turned slowly and looked at her. The drowsy aloofness had gone from his gray eyes and they were wide
and unmasked. In them she saw fear that matched
her own fear, helplessness weaker than her own,
bewilderment more profound than she would ever
know. The feeling of dread which had possessed her
in the hall deepened as she saw his face. She went
toward him.
“I’m frightened,” she said. “Oh, Ashley, hold me.
I’m so frightened!”
He made no move to her but stared, gripping the
glove tightly in both hands. She put a hand on his
arm and whispered: “What is it?”
His eyes searched her intently, hunting, hunting
desperately for something he did not find. Finally he
spoke and his voice was not his own.
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�PART FIVE
“I was wanting you,” he said. “I was going to run
and find you– run like a child wanting comfort–and I
find a child, more frightened, running to me.”
“Not you–you can’t be frightened,” she cried.
“Nothing has ever frightened you. But I– You’ve always been so strong–”
“If I’ve ever been strong, it was because she was behind me,” he said, his voice breaking, and he looked
down at the glove and smoothed the fingers. “And–
and–all the strength I ever had is going with her.”
There was such a note of wild despair in his low
voice that she dropped her hand from his arm and
stepped back. And in the heavy silence that fell between them, she felt that she really understood him
for the first time in her life.
“Why–” she said slowly, “why, Ashley, you love her,
don’t you?”
He spoke as with an effort.
“She is the only dream I ever had that lived and
breathed and did not die in the face of reality.”
“Dreams!” she thought, an old irritation stirring.
“Always dreams with him! Never common sense!”
With a heart that was heavy and a little bitter, she
said: “You’ve been such a fool, Ashley. Why couldn’t
1941
�PART FIVE
you see that she was worth a million of me?”
“Scarlett, please! If you only knew what I’ve gone
through since the doctor–”
“What you’ve gone through! Don’t you think that
I– Oh, Ashley, you should have known, years ago,
that you loved her and not me! Why didn’t you! Everything would have been so different, so– Oh, you
should have realized and not kept me dangling with
all your talk about honor and sacrifice! If you’d told
me, years ago, I’d have– It would have killed me but
I could have stood it somehow. But you wait till
now, till Melly’s dying, to find it out and now it’s too
late to do anything. Oh, Ashley, men are supposed
to know such things–not women! You should have
seen so clearly that you loved her all the time and
only wanted me like–like Rhett wants that Watling
woman!”
He winced at her words but his eyes still met hers,
imploring silence, comfort. Every line of his face admitted the truth of her words. The very droop of
his shoulders showed that his own self- castigation
was more cruel than any she could give. He stood
silent before her, clutching the glove as though it were
an understanding hand and, in the stillness that followed her words, her indignation fell away and pity,
1942
�PART FIVE
tinged with contempt, took its place. Her conscience
smote her. She was kicking a beaten and defenseless
man–and she had promised Melanie that she would
look after him.
“And just as soon as I promised her, I said mean,
hurting things to him and there’s no need for me to
say them or for anyone to say them. He knows the
truth and it’s killing him,” she thought desolately.
“He’s not grown up. He’s a child, like me, and he’s
sick with fear at losing her. Melly knew how it would
be–Melly knew him far better than I do. That’s why
she said look after him and Beau, in the same breath.
How can Ashley ever stand this? I can stand it. I can
stand anything. I’ve had to stand so much. But he
can’t–he can’t stand anything without her.”
“Forgive me, darling,” she said gently, putting out
her arms. “I know what you must be suffering.
But remember, she doesn’t know anything–she never
even suspected– God was that good to us.”
He came to her quickly and his arms went round her
blindly. She tiptoed to bring her warm cheek comfortingly against his and with one hand she smoothed the
back of his hair.
“Don’t cry, sweet. She’d want you to be brave. She’ll
want to see you in a moment and you must be brave.
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�PART FIVE
She mustn’t see that you’ve been crying. It would
worry her.”
He held her in a grip that made breathing difficult
and his choking voice was in her ear.
“What will I do? I can’t–I can’t live without her!”
“I can’t either,” she thought, shuddering away
from the picture of the long years to come, without
Melanie. But she caught herself in a strong grasp.
Ashley was depending on her, Melanie was depending on her. As once before, in the moonlight at Tara,
drunk, exhausted, she had thought: “Burdens are for
shoulders strong enough to carry them.” Well, her
shoulders were strong and Ashley’s were not. She
squared her shoulders for the load and with a calmness she was far from feeling, kissed his wet cheek
without fever or longing or passion, only with cool
gentleness.
“We shall manage–somehow,” she said.
A door opened with sudden violence into the hall
and Dr. Meade called with sharp urgency:
“Ashley! Quick!”
“My God! She’s gone!” thought Scarlett. “And Ashley didn’t get to tell her good-by! But maybe–”
“Hurry!” she cried aloud, giving him a push, for he
1944
�PART FIVE
stood staring like one stunned. “Hurry!”
She pulled open the door and motioned him
through. Galvanized by her words, he ran into the
hall, the glove still clasped closely in his hand. She
heard his rapid steps for a moment and then the closing of a door.
She said, “My God!” again and walking slowly to
the bed, sat down upon it and dropped her head in
her hands. She was suddenly tired, more tired than
she had ever been in all her life. With the sound of
the closing door, the strain under which she had been
laboring, the strain which had given her strength,
suddenly snapped. She felt exhausted in body and
drained of emotions. Now she felt no sorrow or remorse, no fear or amazement. She was tired and her
mind ticked away dully, mechanically, as the clock on
the mantel.
Out of the dullness, one thought arose. Ashley did
not love her and had never really loved her and the
knowledge did not hurt. It should hurt. She should
be desolate, broken hearted, ready to scream at fate.
She had relied upon his love for so long. It had upheld
her through so many dark places. Yet, there the truth
was. He did not love her and she did not care. She
did not care because she did not love him. She did
1945
�PART FIVE
not love him and so nothing he could do or say could
hurt her.
She lay down on the bed and put her head on the pillow tiredly. Useless to try to combat the idea, useless
to say to herself: “But I do love him. I’ve loved him
for years. Love can’t change to apathy in a minute.”
But it could change and it had changed.
“He never really existed at all, except in my imagination,” she thought wearily. “I loved something I
made up, something that’s just as dead as Melly is. I
made a pretty suit of clothes and fell in love with it.
And when Ashley came riding along, so handsome,
so different, I put that suit on him and made him
wear it whether it fitted him or not. And I wouldn’t
see what he really was. I kept on loving the pretty
clothes–and not him at all.”
Now she could look back down the long years and
see herself in green flowered dimity, standing in the
sunshine at Tara, thrilled by the young horseman with
his blond hair shining like a silver helmet. She could
see so clearly now that he was only a childish fancy,
no more important really than her spoiled desire for
the aquamarine earbobs she had coaxed out of Gerald. For, once she owned the earbobs, they had lost
their value, as everything except money lost its value
1946
�PART FIVE
once it was hers. And so he, too, would have become
cheap if, in those first far-away days, she had ever
had the satisfaction of refusing to marry him. If she
had ever had him at her mercy, seen him grown passionate, importunate, jealous, sulky, pleading, like the
other boys, the wild infatuation which had possessed
her would have passed, blowing away as lightly as
mist before sunshine and light wind when she met a
new man.
“What a fool I’ve been,” she thought bitterly. “And
now I’ve got to pay for it. What I’ve wished for so
often has happened. I’ve wished Melly was dead so
I could have him. And now she’s dead and I’ve got
him and I don’t want him. His damned honor will
make him ask me if I want to divorce Rhett and marry
him. Marry him? I wouldn’t have him on a silver
platter! But, just the same I’ve got him round my neck
for the rest of my life. As long as I live I’ll have to
look after him and see that he doesn’t starve and that
people don’t hurt his feelings. He’ll be just another
child, clinging to my skirts. I’ve lost my lover and
I’ve got another child. And if I hadn’t promised Melly,
I’d–I wouldn’t care if I never saw him again.”
1947
�CHAPTER LXII
voices outside, and going to the
door she saw the frightened negroes standing in the
back hall, Dilcey with her arms sagging under the
heavy weight of the sleeping Beau, Uncle Peter crying, and Cookie wiping her wide wet face on her
apron. All three looked at her, dumbly asking what
they were to do now. She looked up the hall toward
the sitting room and saw India and Aunt Pitty standing speechless, holding each other’s hands and, for
once, India had lost her stiff-necked look. Like the negroes, they looked imploringly at her, expecting her
to give instructions. She walked into the sitting room
and the two women closed about her.
S HE HEARD WHISPERING
“Oh, Scarlett, what–” began Aunt Pitty, her fat,
child’s mouth shaking.
“Don’t speak to me or I’ll scream,” said Scarlett.
Overwrought nerves brought sharpness to her voice
and her hands clenched at her sides. The thought of
speaking of Melanie now, of making the inevitable
arrangements that follow a death made her throat
tighten. “I don’t want a word out of either of you.”
At the authoritative note in her voice, they fell back,
helpless hurt looks on their faces. “I mustn’t cry in
�PART FIVE
front of them,” she thought. “I mustn’t break now
or they’ll begin crying too, and then the darkies will
begin screaming and we’ll all go mad. I must pull
myself together. There’s so much I’ll have to do. See
the undertaker and arrange the funeral and see that
the house is clean and be here to talk to people who’ll
cry on my neck. Ashley can’t do them. I’ve got to
do them. Oh, what a weary load! It’s always been a
weary load and always some one else’s load!”
She looked at the dazed hurt faces of India and Pitty
and contrition swept her. Melanie would not like her
to be so sharp with those who loved her.
“I’m sorry I was cross,” she said, speaking with difficulty. “It’s just that I–I’m sorry I was cross, Auntie.
I’m going out on the porch for a minute. I’ve got to be
alone. Then I’ll come back and we’ll–”
She patted Aunt Pitty and went swiftly by her to the
front door, knowing if she stayed in this room another
minute her control would crack. She had to be alone.
And she had to cry or her heart would break.
She stepped onto the dark porch and closed the door
behind her and the moist night air was cool upon her
face. The rain had ceased and there was no sound except for the occasional drip of water from the eaves.
The world was wrapped in a thick mist, a faintly chill
1949
�PART FIVE
mist that bore on its breath the smell of the dying
year. All the houses across the street were dark except one, and the light from a lamp in the window,
falling into the street, struggled feebly with the fog,
golden particles floating in its rays. It was as if the
whole world were enveloped in an unmoving blanket of gray smoke. And the whole world was still.
She leaned her head against one of the uprights of
the porch and prepared to cry but no tears came. This
was a calamity too deep for tears. Her body shook.
There still reverberated in her mind the crashes of
the two impregnable citadels of her life, thundering
to dust about her ears. She stood for a while, trying to summon up her old charm: “I’ll think of all
this tomorrow when I can stand it better.” But the
charm had lost its potency. She had to think of two
things, now–Melanie and how much she loved and
needed her; Ashley and the obstinate blindness that
had made her refuse to see him as he really was. And
she knew that thoughts of them would hurt just as
much tomorrow and all the tomorrows of her life.
“I can’t go back in there and talk to them now,” she
thought. “I can’t face Ashley tonight and comfort
him. Not tonight! Tomorrow morning I’ll come early
and do the things I must do, say the comforting things
1950
�PART FIVE
I must say. But not tonight. I can’t. I’m going home.”
Home was only five blocks away. She would not
wait for the sobbing Peter to harness the buggy,
would not wait for Dr. Meade to drive her home. She
could not endure the tears of the one, the silent condemnation of the other. She went swiftly down the
dark front steps without her coat or bonnet and into
the misty night. She rounded the corner and started
up the long hill toward Peachree Street, walking in a
still wet world, and even her footsteps were as noiseless as a dream.
As she went up the hill, her chest tight with tears
that would not come, there crept over her an unreal
feeling, a feeling that she had been in this same dim
chill place before, under a like set of circumstances–
not once but many times before. How silly, she
thought uneasily, quickening her steps. Her nerves
were playing her tricks. But the feeling persisted,
stealthily pervading her mind. She peered about her
uncertainly and the feeling grew, eerie but familiar,
and her head went up sharply like an animal scenting
danger. It’s just that I’m worn out, she tried to soothe
herself. And the night’s so queer, so misty. I never
saw such thick mist before except–except!
And then she knew and fear squeezed her heart.
1951
�PART FIVE
She knew now. In a hundred nightmares, she had
fled through fog like this, through a haunted country without landmarks, thick with cold cloaking mist,
peopled with clutching ghosts and shadows. Was she
dreaming again or was this her dream come true?
For an instant, reality went out of her and she was
lost. The old nightmare feeling was sweeping her,
stronger than ever, and her heart began to race. She
was standing again amid death and stillness, even as
she had once stood at Tara. All that mattered in the
world had gone out of it, life was in ruins and panic
howled through her heart like a cold wind. The horror that was in the mist and was the mist laid hands
upon her. And she began to run. As she had run a
hundred times in dreams, she ran now, flying blindly
she knew not where, driven by a nameless dread,
seeking in the gray mist for the safety that lay somewhere.
Up the dim street she fled, her head down, her heart
hammering, the night air wet on her lips, the trees
overhead menacing. Somewhere, somewhere in this
wild land of moist stillness, there was a refuge! She
sped gasping up the long hill, her wet skirts wrapping
coldly about her ankles, her lungs bursting, the tightlaced stays pressing her ribs into her heart.
1952
�PART FIVE
Then before her eyes there loomed a light, a row of
lights, dim and flickering but none the less real. In
her nightmare, there had never been any lights, only
gray fog. Her mind seized on those lights. Lights
meant safety, people, reality. Suddenly she stopped
running, her hands clenching, struggling to pull herself out of her panic, staring intently at the row of gas
lamps which had signaled to her brain that this was
Peachtree Street, Atlanta, and not the gray world of
sleep and ghosts.
She sank down panting on a carriage block, clutching at her nerves as though they were ropes slipping
swiftly through her hands.
“I was running–running like a crazy person!” she
thought, her body shaking with lessening fear, her
thudding heart making her sick. “But where was I
running?”
Her breath came more easily now and she sat with
her hand pressed to her side and looked up Peachtree
Street. There, at the top of the hill, was her own house.
It looked as though every window bore lights, lights
defying the mist to dim their brilliance. Home! It was
real! She looked at the dim far-off bulk of the house
thankfully, longingly, and something like calm fell on
her spirit.
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�PART FIVE
Home! That was where she wanted to go. That was
where she was running. Home to Rhett!
At this realization it was as though chains fell away
from her and with them the fear which had haunted
her dreams since the night she stumbled to Tara to
find the world ended. At the end of the road to Tara
she had found security gone, all strength, all wisdom, all loving tenderness, all understanding gone–
all those things which, embodied in Ellen, had been
the bulwark of her girlhood. And, though she had
won material safety since that night, in her dreams
she was still a frightened child, searching for the lost
security of that lost world.
Now she knew the haven she had sought in dreams,
the place of warm safety which had always been hidden from her in the mist. It was not Ashley–oh, never
Ashley! There was no more warmth in him than in
a marsh light, no more security than in quicksand. It
was Rhett–Rhett who had strong arms to hold her, a
broad chest to pillow her tired head, jeering laughter
to pull her affairs into proper perspective. And complete understanding, because he, like her, saw truth as
truth, unobstructed by impractical notions of honor,
sacrifice, or high belief in human nature. He loved
her! Why hadn’t she realized that he loved her, for
1954
�PART FIVE
all his taunting remarks to the contrary? Melanie had
seen it and with her last breath had said, “Be kind to
him.”
“Oh,” she thought, “Ashley’s not the only stupidly
blind person. I should have seen.”
For years she had had her back against the stone
wall of Rhett’s love and had taken it as much for
granted as she had taken Melanie’s love, flattering
herself that she drew her strength from herself alone.
And even as she had realized earlier in the evening
that Melanie bad been beside her in her bitter campaigns against life, now she knew that silent in the
background, Rhett had stood, loving her, understanding her, ready to help. Rhett at the bazaar, reading her impatience in her eyes and leading her out
in the reel, Rhett helping her out of the bondage of
mourning, Rhett convoying her through the fire and
explosions the night Atlanta fell, Rhett lending her the
money that gave her her start, Rhett who comforted
her when she woke in the nights crying with fright
from her dreams– why, no man did such things without loving a woman to distraction!
The trees dripped dampness upon her but she did
not feel it. The mist swirled about her and she paid
it no heed. For when she thought of Rhett, with his
1955
�PART FIVE
swarthy face, flashing teeth and dark alert eyes, a
trembling came over her.
“I love him,” she thought and, as always, she accepted the truth with little wonder, as a child accepting a gift. “I don’t know how long I’ve loved him but
it’s true. And if it hadn’t been for Ashley, I’d have
realized it long ago. I’ve never been able to see the
world at all, because Ashley stood in the way.”
She loved him, scamp, blackguard, without scruple
or honor–at least, honor as Ashley saw it. “Damn
Ashley’s honor!” she thought. “Ashley’s honor has
always let me down. Yes, from the very beginning
when he kept on coming to see me, even though
he knew his family expected him to marry Melanie.
Rhett has never let me down, even that dreadful night
of Melly’s reception when he ought to have wrung
my neck. Even when he left me on the road the night
Atlanta fell, he knew I’d be safe. He knew I’d get
through somehow. Even when he acted like he was
going to make me pay to get that money from him at
the Yankee camp. He wouldn’t have taken me. He
was just testing me. He’s loved me all along and I’ve
been so mean to him. Time and again, I’ve hurt him
and he was too proud to show it. And when Bonnie
died– Oh, how could I?”
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�PART FIVE
She stood up straight and looked at the house on the
hill. She had thought, half an hour ago, that she had
lost everything in the world, except money, everything that made life desirable, Ellen, Gerald, Bonnie,
Mammy, Melanie and Ashley. She had to lose them all
to realize that she loved Rhett–loved him because he
was strong and unscrupulous, passionate and earthy,
like herself.
“I’ll tell him everything,” she thought. “He’ll understand. He’s always understood. I’ll tell him what a
fool I’ve been and how much I love him and I’ll make
it up to him.”
Suddenly she felt strong and happy. She was not
afraid of the darkness or the fog and she knew with
a singing in her heart that she would never fear them
again. No matter what mists might curl around her
in the future, she knew her refuge. She started briskly
up the street toward home and the blocks seemed
very long. Far, far too long. She caught up her skirts
to her knees and began to run lightly. But this time
she was not running from fear. She was running because Rhett’s arms were at the end of the street.
1957
�CHAPTER LXIII
was slightly ajar and she trotted,
breathless, into the hall and paused for a moment
under the rainbow prisms of the chandelier. For all
its brightness the house was very still, not with the
serene stillness of sleep but with a watchful, tired silence that was faintly ominous. She saw at a glance
that Rhett was not in the parlor or the library and her
heart sank. Suppose he should be out–out with Belle
or wherever it was he spent the many evenings when
he did not appear at the supper table? She had not
bargained on this.
She had started up the steps in search of him when
she saw that the door of the dining room was closed.
Her heart contracted a little with shame at the sight of
that closed door, remembering the many nights of this
last summer when Rhett had sat there alone, drinking until he was sodden and Pork came to urge him
to bed. That had been her fault but she’d change it
all. Everything was to be different from now on–but,
please God, don’t let him be too drunk tonight. If he’s
too drunk he won’t believe me and he’ll laugh at me
and that will break my heart.
She quietly opened the dining-room door a crack
and peered in. He was seated before the table,
T HE
FRONT DOOR
�PART FIVE
slumped in his chair, and a full decanter stood before him with the stopper in place, the glass unused.
Thank God, he was sober! She pulled open the door,
holding herself back from running to him. But when
he looked up at her, something in his gaze stopped
her dead on the threshold, stilled the words on her
lips.
He looked at her steadily with dark eyes that were
heavy with fatigue and there was no leaping light in
them. Though her hair was tumbling about her shoulders, her bosom heaving breathlessly and her skirts
mud splattered to the knees, his face did not change
with surprise or question or his lips twist with mockery. He was sunken in his chair, his suit wrinkling untidily against his thickening waist, every line of him
proclaiming the ruin of a fine body and the coarsening of a strong face. Drink and dissipation had done
their work on the coin-clean profile and now it was
no longer the head of a young pagan prince on newminted gold but a decadent, tired Caesar on copper
debased by long usage. He looked up at her as she
stood there, hand on heart, looked quietly, almost in
a kindly way, that frightened her.
“Come and sit down,” he said. “She is dead?”
She nodded and advanced hesitantly toward him,
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�PART FIVE
uncertainty taking form in her mind at this new expression on his face. Without rising, he pushed back
a chair with his foot and she sank into it. She wished
he had not spoken of Melanie so soon. She did not
want to talk of her now, to re-live the agony of the
last hour. There was all the rest of her life in which to
speak of Melanie. But it seemed to her now, driven by
a fierce desire to cry: “I love you,” that there was only
this night, this hour, in which to tell Rhett what was
in her mind. But there was something in his face that
stopped her and she was suddenly ashamed to speak
of love when Melanie was hardly cold.
“Well, God rest her,” he said heavily. “She was the
only completely kind person I ever knew.”
“Oh, Rhett!” she cried miserably, for his words
brought up too vividly all the kind things Melanie
had ever done for her. “Why didn’t you come in with
me? It was dreadful–and I needed you so!”
“I couldn’t have borne it,” he said simply and for a
moment he was silent. Then he spoke with an effort
and said, softly: “A very great lady.”
His somber gaze went past her and in his eyes was
the same look she had seen in the light of the flames
the night Atlanta fell, when he told her he was going off with the retreating army–the surprise of a man
1960
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who knows himself utterly, yet discovers in himself
unexpected loyalties and emotions and feels a faint
self-ridicule at the discovery.
His moody eyes went over her shoulder as though
he saw Melanie silently passing through the room to
the door. In the look of farewell on his face there was
no sorrow, no pain, only a speculative wonder at himself, only a poignant stirring of emotions dead since
boyhood, as he said again: “A very great lady.”
Scarlett shivered and the glow went from her heart,
the fine warmth, the splendor which had sent her
home on winged feet. She half-grasped what was in
Rhett’s mind as he said farewell to the only person
in the world he respected and she was desolate again
with a terrible sense of loss that was no longer personal. She could not wholly understand or analyze
what he was feeling, but it seemed almost as if she too
had been brushed by whispering skirts, touching her
softly in a last caress. She was seeing through Rhett’s
eyes the passing, not of a woman but of a legend–
the gentle, self-effacing but steel-spined women on
whom the South had builded its house in war and
to whose proud and loving arms it had returned in
defeat.
His eyes came back to her and his voice changed.
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�PART FIVE
Now it was light and cool.
“So she’s dead. That makes it nice for you, doesn’t
it?”
“Oh, how can you say such things,” she cried, stung,
the quick tears coming to her eyes. “You know how I
loved her!”
“No, I can’t say I did. Most unexpected and it’s to
your credit, considering your passion for white trash,
that you could appreciate her at last.”
“How can you talk so? Of course I appreciated her!
You didn’t. You didn’t know her like I did! It isn’t in
you to understand her– how good she was–”
“Indeed? Perhaps not.”
“She thought of everybody except herself–why, her
last words were about you.”
There was a flash of genuine feeling in his eyes as he
turned to her.
“What did she say?”
“Oh, not now, Rhett.”
“Tell me.”
His voice was cool but the hand he put on her wrist
hurt. She did not want to tell, this was not the way
she had intended to lead up to the subject of her love
but his hand was urgent.
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“She said–she said– ‘Be kind to Captain Butler. He
loves you so much.”’
He stared at her and dropped her wrist. His eyelids
went down, leaving his face dark and blank. Suddenly he rose and going to the window, he drew
the curtains and looked out intently as if there were
something to see outside except blinding mist.
“Did she say anything else?” he questioned, not
turning his head.
“She asked me to take care of little Beau and I said I
would, like he was my own boy.”
“What else?”
“She said–Ashley–she asked me to look after Ashley, too.”
He was silent for a moment and then he laughed
softly. “It’s convenient to have the first wife’s permission, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
He turned and even in her confusion she was surprised that there was no mockery in his face. Nor was
there any more interest in it than in the face of a man
watching the last act of a none-too- amusing comedy.
“I think my meaning’s plain enough. Miss Melly is
dead. You certainly have all the evidence you want
1963
�PART FIVE
to divorce me and you haven’t enough reputation left
for a divorce to hurt you. And you haven’t any religion left, so the Church won’t matter. Then– Ashley and dreams come true with the blessings of Miss
Melly.”
“Divorce?” she cried. “No! No!” Incoherent for a
moment she leaped to her feet and running to him
caught his arm. “Oh, you’re all wrong! Terribly
wrong. I don’t want a divorce–I–” She stopped for
she could find no other words.
He put his hand under her chin, quietly turned her
face up to the light and looked for an intent moment
into her eyes. She looked up at him, her heart in her
eyes, her lips quivering as she tried to speak. But she
could marshal no words because she was trying to
find in his face some answering emotions, some leaping light of hope, of joy. Surely he must know, now!
But the smooth dark blankness which had baffled her
so often was all that her frantic, searching eyes could
find. He dropped her chin and, turning, walked back
to his chair and sprawled tiredly again, his chin on his
breast, his eyes looking up at her from under black
brows in an impersonal speculative way.
She followed him back to his chair, her hands twisting, and stood before him.
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�PART FIVE
“You are wrong,” she began again, finding words.
“Rhett, tonight, when I knew, I ran every step of the
way home to tell you. Oh, darling, I–”
“You are tired,” he said, still watching her. “You’d
better go to bed.”
“But I must tell you!”
“Scarlett,” he said heavily, “I don’t want to hear–
anything.”
“But you don’t know what I’m going to say!”
“My pet, it’s written plainly on your face. Something, someone has made you realize that the unfortunate Mr. Wilkes is too large a mouthful of Dead Sea
fruit for even you to chew. And that same something
has suddenly set my charms before you in a new and
attractive light,” he sighed slightly. “And it’s no use
to talk about it.”
She drew a sharp surprised breath. Of course, he
had always read her easily. Heretofore she had resented it but now, after the first shock at her own
transparency, her heart rose with gladness and relief.
He knew, he understood and her task was miraculously made easy. No use to talk about it! Of course
he was bitter at her long neglect, of course he was mistrustful of her sudden turnabout. She would have to
woo him with kindness, convince him with a rich out1965
�PART FIVE
pouring of love, and what a pleasure it would be to do
it!
“Darling, I’m going to tell you everything,” she said,
putting her hands on the arm of his chair and leaning
down to him. “I’ve been so wrong, such a stupid fool–
”
“Scarlett, don’t go on with this. Don’t be humble
before me. I can’t bear it. Leave us some dignity, some
reticence to remember out of our marriage. Spare us
this last.”
She straightened up abruptly. Spare us this last?
What did he mean by “this last”? Last? This was their
first, their beginning.
“But I will tell you,” she began rapidly, as if fearing
his hand upon her mouth, silencing her. “Oh, Rhett, I
love you so, darling! I must have loved you for years
and I was such a fool I didn’t know it. Rhett, you must
believe me!”
He looked at her, standing before him, for a moment, a long look that went to the back of her mind.
She saw there was belief in his eyes but little interest.
Oh, was he going to be mean, at this of all times? To
torment her, pay her back in her own coin?
“Oh, I believe you,” he said at last. “But what of
Ashley Wilkes?”
1966
�PART FIVE
“Ashley!” she said, and made an impatient gesture.
“I–I don’t believe I’ve cared anything about him for
ages. It was–well, a sort of habit I hung onto from
when I was a little girl. Rhett, I’d never even thought I
cared about him if I’d ever known what he was really
like. He’s such a helpless, poor-spirited creature, for
all his prattle about truth and honor and–”
“No,” said Rhett. “If you must see him as he really
is, see him straight. He’s only a gentleman caught in
a world he doesn’t belong in, trying to make a poor
best of it by the rules of the world that’s gone.”
“Oh, Rhett, don’t let’s talk of him! What does he
matter now? Aren’t you glad to know– I mean, now
that I–”
As his tired eyes met hers, she broke off in embarrassment, shy as a girl with her first beau. If he’d only
make it easier for her! If only he would hold out his
arms, so she could crawl thankfully into his lap and
lay her head on his chest. Her lips on his could tell
him better than all her stumbling words. But as she
looked at him, she realized that he was not holding
her off just to be mean. He looked drained and as
though nothing she had said was of any moment.
“Glad?” he said. “Once I would have thanked God,
fasting, to hear you say all this. But, now, it doesn’t
1967
�PART FIVE
matter.”
“Doesn’t matter? What are you talking about? Of
course, it matters! Rhett, you do care, don’t you? You
must care. Melly said you did.”
“Well, she was right, as far as she knew. But, Scarlett, did it ever occur to you that even the most deathless love could wear out?”
She looked at him speechless, her mouth a round O.
“Mine wore out,” he went on, “against Ashley
Wilkes and your insane obstinacy that makes you
hold on like a bulldog to anything you think you
want. . . . Mine wore out.”
“But love can’t wear out!”
“Yours for Ashley did.”
“But I never really loved Ashley!”
“Then, you certainly gave a good imitation of it–up
till tonight. Scarlett, I’m not upbraiding you, accusing
you, reproaching you. That time has passed. So spare
me your defenses and your explanations. If you can
manage to listen to me for a few minutes without interrupting, I can explain what I mean. Though God
knows, I see no need for explanations. The truth’s so
plain.”
She sat down, the harsh gas light falling on her
1968
�PART FIVE
white bewildered face. She looked into the eyes she
knew so well–and knew so little–listened to his quiet
voice saying words which at first meant nothing. This
was the first time he had ever talked to her in this
manner, as one human being to another, talked as
other people talked, without flippancy, mockery or
riddles.
“Did it ever occur to you that I loved you as much as
a man can love a woman? Loved you for years before
I finally got you? During the war I’d go away and try
to forget you, but I couldn’t and I always had to come
back. After the war I risked arrest, just to come back
and find you. I cared so much I believe I would have
killed Frank Kennedy if he hadn’t died when he did.
I loved you but I couldn’t let you know it. You’re so
brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their
love and hold it over their heads like a whip.”
Out of it all only the fact that he loved her meant
anything. At the faint echo of passion in his voice,
pleasure and excitement crept back into her. She sat,
hardly breathing, listening, waiting.
“I knew you didn’t love me when I married you.
I knew about Ashley, you see. But, fool that I was, I
thought I could make you care. Laugh, if you like, but
I wanted to take care of you, to pet you, to give you
1969
�PART FIVE
everything you wanted. I wanted to marry you and
protect you and give you a free rein in anything that
would make you happy–just as I did Bonnie. You’d
had such a struggle, Scarlett. No one knew better than
I what you’d gone through and I wanted you to stop
fighting and let me fight for you. I wanted you to
play, like a child–for you were a child, a brave, frightened, bullheaded child. I think you are still a child.
No one but a child could be so headstrong and so insensitive.”
His voice was calm and tired but there was something in the quality of it that raised a ghost of memory
in Scarlett. She had heard a voice like this once before
and at some other crisis of her life. Where had it been?
The voice of a man facing himself and his world without feeling, without flinching, without hope.
Why–why–it had been Ashley in the wintry,
windswept orchard at Tara, talking of life and shadow
shows with a tired calmness that had more finality in
its timbre than any desperate bitterness could have
revealed. Even as Ashley’s voice then had turned her
cold with dread of things she could not understand,
so now Rhett’s voice made her heart sink. His voice,
his manner, more than the content of his words, disturbed her, made her realize that her pleasurable ex1970
�PART FIVE
citement of a few moments ago had been untimely.
Something was wrong, badly wrong. What it was she
did not know but she listened desperately, her eyes
on his brown face, hoping to hear words that would
dissipate her fears.
“It was so obvious that we were meant for each
other. So obvious that I was the only man of your
acquaintance who could love you after knowing you
as you really are–hard and greedy and unscrupulous, like me. I loved you and I took the chance. I
thought Ashley would fade out of your mind. But,”
he shrugged, “I tried everything I knew and nothing
worked. And I loved you so, Scarlett. If you had only
let me, I could have loved you as gently and as tenderly as ever a man loved a woman. But I couldn’t let
you know, for I knew you’d think me weak and try
to use my love against me. And always–always there
was Ashley. It drove me crazy. I couldn’t sit across
the table from you every night, knowing you wished
Ashley was sitting there in my place. And I couldn’t
hold you in my arms at night and know that–well,
it doesn’t matter now. I wonder, now, why it hurt.
That’s what drove me to Belle. There is a certain swinish comfort in being with a woman who loves you
utterly and respects you for being a fine gentleman–
even if she is an illiterate whore. It soothed my vanity.
1971
�PART FIVE
You’ve never been very soothing, my dear.”
“Oh, Rhett . . .” she began, miserable at the very
mention of Belle’s name, but he waved her to silence
and went on.
“And then, that night when I carried you upstairs–I
thought–I hoped–I hoped so much I was afraid to face
you the next morning, for fear I’d been mistaken and
you didn’t love me. I was so afraid you’d laugh at me
I went off and got drunk. And when I came back, I
was shaking in my boots and if you had come even
halfway to meet me, had given me some sign, I think
I’d have kissed your feet. But you didn’t.”
“Oh, but Rhett, I did want you then but you were
so nasty! I did want you! I think–yes, that must have
been when I first knew I cared about you. Ashley–
I never was happy about Ashley after that, but you
were so nasty that I–”
“Oh, well,” he said. “It seems we’ve been at cross
purposes, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t matter now. I’m
only telling you, so you won’t ever wonder about it
all. When you were sick and it was all my fault, I
stood outside your door, hoping you’d call for me, but
you didn’t, and then I knew what a fool I’d been and
that it was all over.”
He stopped and looked through her and beyond her,
1972
�PART FIVE
even as Ashley had often done, seeing something she
could not see. And she could only stare speechless at
his brooding face.
“But then, there was Bonnie and I saw that everything wasn’t over, after all. I liked to think that Bonnie
was you, a little girl again, before the war and poverty
had done things to you. She was so like you, so willful, so brave and gay and full of high spirits, and I
could pet her and spoil her–just as I wanted to pet
you. But she wasn’t like you–she loved me. It was
a blessing that I could take the love you didn’t want
and give it to her. . . . When she went, she took
everything.”
Suddenly she was sorry for him, sorry with a completeness that wiped out her own grief and her fear of
what his words might mean. It was the first time in
her life she had been sorry for anyone without feeling
contemptuous as well, because it was the first time
she had ever approached understanding any other
human being. And she could understand his shrewd
caginess, so like her own, his obstinate pride that kept
him from admitting his love for fear of a rebuff.
“Ah, darling,” she said coming forward, hoping he
would put out his arms and draw her to his knees.
“Darling, I’m so sorry but I’ll make it all up to you!
1973
�PART FIVE
We can be so happy, now that we know the truth and–
Rhett–look at me, Rhett! There–there can be other
babies–not like Bonnie but–”
“Thank you, no,” said Rhett, as if he were refusing a
piece of bread. “I’ll not risk my heart a third time.”
“Rhett, don’t say such things! Oh, what can I say
to make you understand? I’ve told you how sorry I
am–”
“My darling, you’re such a child. You think that by
saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ all the errors and hurts of years
past can be remedied, obliterated from the mind, all
the poison drawn from old wounds. . . . Take my
handkerchief, Scarlett. Never, at any crisis of your
life, have I known you to have a handkerchief.”
She took the handkerchief, blew her nose and sat
down. It was obvious that he was not going to take
her in his arms. It was beginning to be obvious that
all his talk about loving her meant nothing. It was a
tale of a time long past, and he was looking at it as
though it had never happened to him. And that was
frightening. He looked at her in an almost kindly way,
speculation in his eyes.
“How old are you, my dear? You never would tell
me.”
“Twenty-eight,” she answered dully, muffled in the
1974
�PART FIVE
handkerchief.
“That’s not a vast age. It’s a young age to have
gained the whole world and lost your own soul, isn’t
it? Don’t look frightened. I’m not referring to hell
fire to come for your affair with Ashley. I’m merely
speaking metaphorically. Ever since I’ve known you,
you’ve wanted two things. Ashley and to be rich
enough to tell the world to go to hell. Well, you are
rich enough and you’ve spoken sharply to the world
and you’ve got Ashley, if you want him. But all that
doesn’t seem to be enough now.”
She was frightened but not at the thought of hell fire.
She was thinking: “But Rhett is my soul and I’m losing him. And if I lose him, nothing else matters! No,
not friends or money or–or anything. If only I had
him I wouldn’t even mind being poor again. No, I
wouldn’t mind being cold again or even hungry. But
he can’t mean– Oh, he can’t!”
She wiped her eyes and said desperately:
“Rhett, if you once loved me so much, there must be
something left for me.”
“Out of it all I find only two things that remain and
they are the two things you hate the most–pity and an
odd feeling of kindness.”
Pity! Kindness! “Oh, my God,” she thought de1975
�PART FIVE
spairingly. Anything but pity and kindness. Whenever she felt these two emotions for anyone, they
went hand in hand with contempt. Was he contemptuous of her too? Anything would be preferable to
that. Even the cynical coolness of the war days, the
drunken madness that drove him the night he carried
her up the stairs, his hard fingers bruising her body,
or the barbed drawling words that she now realized
had covered a bitter love. Anything except this impersonal kindness that was written so plainly in his
face.
“Then–then you mean I’ve ruined it all–that you
don’t love me any more?”
“That’s right.”
“But,” she said stubbornly, like a child who still feels
that to state a desire is to gain that desire, “but I love
you!”
“That’s your misfortune.”
She looked up quickly to see if there was a jeer behind those words but there was none. He was simply stating a fact. But it was a fact she still would
not believe–could not believe. She looked at him
with slanting eyes that burned with a desperate obstinacy and the sudden hard line of jaw that sprang
out through her soft cheek was Gerald’s jaw.
1976
�PART FIVE
“Don’t be a fool, Rhett! I can make–”
He flung up a hand in mock horror and his black
brows went up in the old sardonic crescents.
“Don’t look so determined, Scarlett! You frighten
me. I see you are contemplating the transfer of your
tempestuous affections from Ashley to me and I fear
for my liberty and my peace of mind. No, Scarlett, I
will not be pursued as the luckless Ashley was pursued. Besides, I am going away.”
Her jaw trembled before she clenched her teeth to
steady it. Go away? No, anything but that! How
could life go on without him? Everyone had gone
from her, everyone who mattered except Rhett. He
couldn’t go. But how could she stop him? She was
powerless against his cool mind, his disinterested
words.
“I am going away. I intended to tell you when you
came home from Marietta.”
“You are deserting me?”
“Don’t be the neglected, dramatic wife, Scarlett. The
role isn’t becoming. I take it, then, you do not want a
divorce or even a separation? Well, then, I’ll come
back often enough to keep gossip down.”
“Damn gossip!” she said fiercely. “It’s you I want.
Take me with you!”
1977
�PART FIVE
“No,” he said, and there was finality in his voice.
For a moment she was on the verge of an outburst
of childish wild tears. She could have thrown herself
on the floor, cursed and screamed and drummed her
heels. But some remnant of pride, of common sense
stiffened her. She thought, if I did, he’d only laugh,
or just look at me. I mustn’t bawl; I mustn’t beg. I
mustn’t do anything to risk his contempt. He must
respect me even–even if he doesn’t love me.
She lifted her chin and managed to ask quietly:
“Where will you go?”
There was a faint gleam of admiration in his eyes as
he answered.
“Perhaps to England–or to Paris.
Perhaps to
Charleston to try to make peace with my people.”
“But you hate them! I’ve heard you laugh at them
so often and–”
He shrugged.
“I still laugh–but I’ve reached the end of roaming,
Scarlett. I’m forty-five–the age when a man begins to
value some of the things he’s thrown away so lightly
in youth, the clannishness of families, honor and security, roots that go deep– Oh, no! I’m not recanting,
I’m not regretting anything I’ve ever done. I’ve had
a hell of a good time–such a hell of a good time that
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�PART FIVE
it’s begun to pall and now I want something different. No, I never intend to change more than my spots.
But I want the outer semblance of the things I used to
know, the utter boredom of respectability–other people’s respectability, my pet, not my own–the calm dignity life can have when it’s lived by gentle folks, the
genial grace of days that are gone. When I lived those
days I didn’t realize the slow charm of them–”
Again Scarlett was back in the windy orchard of
Tara and there was the same look in Rhett’s eyes that
had been in Ashley’s eyes that day. Ashley’s words
were as clear in her ears as though he and not Rhett
were speaking. Fragments of words came back to her
and she quoted parrot-like: “A glamor to it–a perfection, a symmetry like Grecian art.”
Rhett said sharply: “Why did you say that? That’s
what I meant.”
“It was something that–that Ashley said once, about
the old days.”
He shrugged and the light went out of his eyes.
“Always Ashley,” he said and was silent for a moment.
“Scarlett, when you are forty-five, perhaps you will
know what I’m talking about and then perhaps you,
too, will be tired of imitation gentry and shoddy man1979
�PART FIVE
ners and cheap emotions. But I doubt it. I think
you’ll always be more attracted by glister than by
gold. Anyway, I can’t wait that long to see. And I
have no desire to wait. It just doesn’t interest me. I’m
going to hunt in old towns and old countries where
some of the old times must still linger. I’m that sentimental. Atlanta’s too raw for me, too new.”
“Stop,” she said suddenly. She had hardly heard
anything he had said. Certainly her mind had not
taken it in. But she knew she could no longer endure
with any fortitude the sound of his voice when there
was no love in it.
He paused and looked at her quizzically.
“Well, you get my meaning, don’t you?” he questioned, rising to his feet.
She threw out her hands to him, palms up, in the
age-old gesture of appeal and her heart, again, was in
her face.
“No,” she cried. “All I know is that you do not love
me and you are going away! Oh, my darling, if you
go, what shall I do?”
For a moment he hesitated as if debating whether a
kind lie were kinder in the long run than the truth.
Then he shrugged.
“Scarlett, I was never one to patiently pick up bro1980
�PART FIVE
ken fragments and glue them together and tell myself
that the mended whole was as good as new. What
is broken is broken–and I’d rather remember it as it
was at its best than mend it and see the broken places
as long as I lived. Perhaps, if I were younger–” he
sighed. “But I’m too old to believe in such sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over. I’m too old
to shoulder the burden of constant lies that go with
living in polite disillusionment. I couldn’t live with
you and lie to you and I certainly couldn’t lie to myself. I can’t even lie to you now. I wish I could care
what you do or where you go, but I can’t.”
He drew a short breath and said lightly but softly:
“My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
*****
She silently watched him go up the stairs, feeling
that she would strangle at the pain in her throat. With
the sound of his feet dying away in the upper hall
was dying the last thing in the world that mattered.
She knew now that there was no appeal of emotion
or reason which would turn that cool brain from its
verdict. She knew now that he had meant every word
he said, lightly though some of them had been spoken. She knew because she sensed in him something
strong, unyielding, implacable–all the qualities she
1981
�PART FIVE
had looked for in Ashley and never found.
She had never understood either of the men she
had loved and so she had lost them both. Now, she
had a fumbling knowledge that, had she ever understood Ashley, she would never have loved him; had
she ever understood Rhett, she would never have lost
him. She wondered forlornly if she had ever really
understood anyone in the world.
There was a merciful dullness in her mind now, a
dullness that she knew from long experience would
soon give way to sharp pain, even as severed tissues,
shocked by the surgeon’s knife, have a brief instant of
insensibility before their agony begins.
“I won’t think of it now,” she thought grimly, summoning up her old charm. “I’ll go crazy if I think
about losing him now. I’ll think of it tomorrow.”
“But,” cried her heart, casting aside the charm and
beginning to ache, “I can’t let him go! There must be
some way!”
“I won’t think of it now,” she said again, aloud, trying to push her misery to the back of her mind, trying
to find some bulwark against the rising tide of pain.
“I’ll–why, I’ll go home to Tara tomorrow,” and her
spirits lifted faintly.
She had gone back to Tara once in fear and defeat
1982
�PART FIVE
and she had emerged from its sheltering walls strong
and armed for victory. What she had done once,
somehow–please God, she could do again! How, she
did not know. She did not want to think of that now.
All she wanted was a breathing space in which to
hurt, a quiet place to lick her wounds, a haven in
which to plan her campaign. She thought of Tara and
it was as if a gentle cool hand were stealing over her
heart. She could see the white house gleaming welcome to her through the reddening autumn leaves,
feel the quiet hush of the country twilight coming
down over her like a benediction, feel the dews falling
on the acres of green bushes starred with fleecy white,
see the raw color of the red earth and the dismal dark
beauty of the pines on the rolling hills.
She felt vaguely comforted, strengthened by the picture, and some of her hurt and frantic regret was
pushed from the top of her mind. She stood for a moment remembering small things, the avenue of dark
cedars leading to Tara, the banks of cape jessamine
bushes, vivid green against the white walls, the fluttering white curtains. And Mammy would be there.
Suddenly she wanted Mammy desperately, as she
had wanted her when she was a little girl, wanted the
broad bosom on which to lay her head, the gnarled
black hand on her hair. Mammy, the last link with the
1983
�PART FIVE
old days.
With the spirit of her people who would not know
defeat, even when it stared them in the face, she
raised her chin. She could get Rhett back. She knew
she could. There had never been a man she couldn’t
get, once she set her mind upon him.
“I’ll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it
then. Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him
back. After all, tomorrow is another day.”
THE END
1984
�