02 - Copperhead by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell [Bernard Cornwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2012-05-28T12:34:37+00:00

Hyde House, where the old man lived, occupied a triangular lot where Brook Avenue cut diagonally across Richmond’s grid of streets. The lot was hemmed in by a tall brick wall that was capped with a course of white pitted stone above which a profusion of trees and blossoms showed. Deep inside the unkempt trees, and approached through a metal gate topped with spikes, was a three-story house, grand once, railed around with verandahs on every floor and fronted with an ornate carriage porch. It was not raining, but in the early morning air everything about the house seemed damp. Even the fine blossomed creepers that were draped from the verandah rails drooped disconsolately, while the verandahs themselves had peeling paint and broken balustrades. The wooden front steps up which the old man led Starbuck seemed green and rotted. A slave snatched the varnished front door open an instant before the old man would have walked straight into its heavy panels.

“This is Captain Starbuck,” the old man snarled at the pretty young woman who had opened the door. “Show him to his room. His bath is drawn?”

“Yes, massa.”

The old man pulled out his watch. “Breakfast in forty-five minutes. Martha will show you where. Go!”

“Sir?” Martha said to Starbuck and beckoned him toward the stairs.

Starbuck had not uttered a single word during the journey, but now, surrounded by the sudden and fading luxuries of this old mansion, he felt his self-assurance drain away. “Sir?” he said to the old man’s back.

“Breakfast in forty-four minutes!” the old man said angrily, then disappeared through a door.

“Sir?” Martha said again, and Starbuck let the girl lead him upstairs to a wide and lavish bedroom. The room had been elegant once, but now its fine wallpaper had been spotted and stained by damp, and its lavish carpet was moth-eaten and faded. The bed was draped with threadbare tapestries on which, laid out as carefully as though they were a suit of the finest evening clothes, Starbuck’s own Confederate uniform lay. The coat had been laundered and darned, the belt was polished, and his boots, which stood fitted with trees at the bed’s foot, had been mended and waxed. Even Oliver Wendell Holmes’s overcoat was there. The slave threw open a door that led to a small dressing room where a hip bath stood steaming in front of a coal fire. “You want me to stay, massa?” Martha asked timidly.

“No. No.” Starbuck could scarcely believe what was happening to him. He walked into the dressing room and put a tentative hand into the water. It was so hot he could scarcely bear its touch. A pile of white towels waited on a cane chair, while a straight razor, soap, and a shaving brush stood beside a white china bowl on a washstand.

“If you leave your old clothes outside the door…” Martha said, but did not finish the sentence.

“You’ll burn them?” Starbuck suggested.

“I’ll come back for you in forty minutes, massa,” she said, and dropped a curtsey before backing through the door and closing it behind her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.