One of the mysteries of the American Civil War is what happened to the Confederacy’s treasury in the waning days of the war. In this novella paralleling actual events, hunky Confederate cavalry officer and aide to President Jefferson Davis, Charles Singleton, is literally caught with his pants down in a Richmond male brothel when he is informed that Grant’s Union forces have breached the city’s defenses in Petersburg and will be in the capital by 8:00 that night.
Commandeering both the young quadroon slave prostitute who was servicing him, Eaton Matthews, and the brothel’s wagon and horses, Singleton oversees the transfer of the Confederate treasury into rail cars to follow the train of Davis and his cabinet to presumed safety in Danville, Virginia. What follows in the adventure in which Charles and Eaton grow progressively closer and more reliant on each other, as they dash south with the bullion train going off the rails and the treasury slowly dwindling, is a bittersweet lesson in the slavery of love.
Eaton was flushed and nearly on the run when he mounted the stairs of the large row house at Grace and 4th and entered the foyer, where Thomas Temple was impatiently awaiting his return.
“Good, you are here. There is a young man here for you.”
Eaton looked at the hands of the grandfather clock in the foyer to ensure that it not yet was 11:00 in the morning, a Sunday morning. That was when his time, in the only morning that he had his own time before once more becoming fully chained to Thomas Temple’s time, ran out. It was not much later than 10:00, but Eaton dare not point that out to Temple. There was, in fact, no time that wasn’t Thomas Temple’s time.
“Where is he?” Eaton asked.
“In your room, waiting for you. It’s the cavalry captain who has asked for you before when you were not available. I doubt if he is patiently waiting.”
“The city is on the move again,” Eaton said. “I saw many wagons being loaded on my way from church. Could that mean—?”
“It’s inevitable that Lee can’t hold in Petersburg for much longer,” Temple said. “It’s nearly time for me to put the other flag out and put the photographs of my Philadelphia relatives out on the piano.”
“We will be staying in the city?”
“Of course we will. Union soldiers are as much men, with men’s needs, at Confederate soldiers are.”
Eaton didn’t dare mention that Union troops occupying Richmond would make a crucial difference in at least one regard—his own status. He doubted that Temple even thought that the fall of the capital meant the realization of emancipation for him. He would be free, free of a master and of the obligations of his life between these four walls.
But then, as if Temple could see Eaton’s thoughts in his face, he said. “When the Union troops get here, you can, of course, leave this house. But don’t think you can leave this life. I can give you protection and limit the demands on you. If you choose to leave here and make your own life on the streets, you’d best give second thoughts to what you lose and gain. You may think that men in the North are fighting for your freedom, but they are men like any men and will use you like any other man would. This city will be laid open to their ravishing just as any conquered city is.”
He, of course, was right, Eaton knew. Although a black slave, Eaton had been educated and taught to think and to deliberately consider what his limits were and how he best could maneuver within them. He knew he couldn’t just jump at freedom in a city under occupation by troops who have had to fight hard and seen comrades die in the stubbornness of this city to give in. He knew that, if Temple could give him protection, his safest place until the city settled down again was here.
“I will go up to this cavalry officer then,” he said, as he started up the stairs to his bedroom on the second floor, the most presentable of the bedrooms in keeping with the higher demand for his services by men in the wartime capital even than those of Temple’s women prostitutes.
Eaton could tell that the man was agitated when he entered the room. had had already taken off his boots and his blue broadcloth trousers with the yellow stripe going down the leg and folded and placed them on a straight chair. Similarly his gray jacket was folded and placed on top of the trousers. He had shrugged out of his bibbed shirt and had his hands on the buttons of his underdrawers fly. He must have started unbuttoning those when he heard Eaton on the stairs.
He’d been pacing the room with nervous energy and although the scent coming off of his was a manly musk, Eaton could sense something else in it—impatience and fear.
He was a young, handsome devil, much better put together than most of the men who visited Eaton’s room. His chest was muscular, his waist narrow. His features were Patrician South, his hair, including the tufts under his bulging pecs and on his forearms were a sandy blond. He had unbuttoned enough of his fly for Eaton to see the same shade of reddish blond in his pubic bush.
“You have made me wait,” the Confederate captain growled as Eaton entered the room.
