A Twofold Cord of Godless Strands
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16 June, 1864, 5:30 P.M. Charleston, South Carolina
Three days ago, while waiting for my trial to begin, I took comfort in the Bible's account of Paul and Silas in jail. Hearing footsteps, I closed my Bible and stood up. My time had come. To my surprise, I saw not only the deputy, but Seth Beaumont, his officer's cloak slung over one arm. The deputy let him inside.
He began his story in 1675. He spoke in detail of several Beaumont generations. His ancestors include a pirate, a slave runner, a wealthy Charleston plantation owner with over two thousand slaves, and his grandfather, a mean spirited politician. Seth's father, a veteran of the War of 1812, died prematurely in 1822, killed in a scuffle with one of his own slaves. The slave was lynched that very afternoon--a lynching Seth would never forget. That same afternoon, Seth's twelve-year-old uncle, Nicolas-Eugene, a stowaway on a French frigate, set foot on Charleston's docks. Seth's mother was frightened when Nicolas appeared at the lynching. As Seth thumped the horse's rear and sent the slave to his death, he remembered catching a glimpse of his young uncle's face. Seth did not describe exactly what he had seen that day, but as he rubbed his hand over his left cheek, I could tell that whatever it had been still had power over him. Seth's mother refused to give Nicolas a place in her home, a decision which Seth did not understand. And for several months following her half-brother's arrival, she was plagued with severe fits of depression. When Seth asked about her unhappiness, her half-brother, or her family in Paris, Seth's mother refused to answer. Her countenance would darken and an acute nervousness would overtake her. Her formerly cheerful disposition never completely returned. Nicolas left Charleston in 1822 and headed west. Fourteen years passed before the two met again. Nicolas, a vocal southern sympathizer, worked under the guise of a gambler with his own private riverboat. He ran the Mississippi from New Orleans to St. Louis, serving the violent interests of wealthy men and organizations whose existence depended on the availability of Negro labor. He gleaned huge profits for threatening and beating abolitionists, Northern sympathizers, and conductors for the Underground Railroad, and for burning their houses and businesses and hunting down runaway slaves. It was only a year later, in 1837, when Seth and Nicolas conceived their diabolical plan. After being involved in the attack and murder of a prominent black abolitionist printer, Elijah Lovejoy, from Alton, Illinois, they observed how effective carefully selected violence could enrage large sections of the population, either North or South. They quickly put their plan into motion: find a radical abolitionist, fuel his political and social fires, further inflame the South against the North and create a bloody breach that would further divide the nation and insure the creation of a Confederacy. Shortly afterwards, Nicolas and Seth met John Brown. Playing the part of an abolitionist, Nicolas became a go-between for several monied backers. He worked behind the scenes with Brown for a number of years, encouraging him toward violence and bloodshed as a means of freeing the slaves. It was Nicolas who gave John Brown the idea that the nation could not be purged but with much bloodshed. Beaumont finished the story. The dark circle around his eye seemed to deepen. He tossed his coat from his arm. To my surprise, he clutched two ragged-edged journals. "Sam, these are yours." My surprise turned to shock. My journals? Then I remembered. My journals had disappeared on my return trip from the hanging of John Brown! He studied my reaction and nodded. "You wonder why I have them, don't you? The answer is quite simple. My uncle was there for Brown's hanging. He recognized you--even after six years, from when you lived in Charleston, South Carolina." Again, Beaumont carefully watched my reaction. I sat silent and immobile on my bunk. My hands and feet felt as if they had been nailed down. Had Seth's uncle riden with him the day of Victoria's death? "My uncle saw the priest approach you at the hanging. He followed you to the chapel. He figured that you were a journalist of some kind. After you left the chapel, he followed you again to the hotel, and, the next morning, onto the train for Baltimore. Absconding with your journals was child's play." I listened but could not fathom any logical explanation for his uncle's actions. Why steal my journals? Beaumont spoke slowly. "Four nights ago I found my uncle dead in his hotel room. He'd shot himself in the head with a revolver. He was slumped over his desk . . . and over your journals." Beaumont wore a pained expression. The lines in his face were raw, harsh. "After I buried him, I came back and cleaned out his valuables, including the journals. Read `em myself. It's irony! It was in your journal where I finally learned the truth that my mother kept hidden to her dying day, the truth about her family. The old French priest's story helped me finally understand why my mother despised and rejected Nicolas." I was taken back by an incalculable sadness in his words. "Sam, that's why I'm asking you . . . begging you . . . to forgive me for what happened to. . ." His voice faltered for a moment. He swallowed hard. "What happened to Victoria. Read the letter. I stuck it in here. . ." He tapped the top journal with his finger. Strangely, his eye now seemed to be pleading with me. "In this world I've received my just rewards, and being here with you, I'm still receiving them. Only God knows what reward I'll receive when I pass beyond the veil." Beaumont began to shake all over. He bent at the waist and reached into his boot, pulling out a revolver. He raised his head. I gasped. The scar on his left cheek seemed to flame bright red. I felt the palpable presence of evil, like an oppressive summer heat. Never before had I experienced the demonic so strongly, so intimately, so physically. Sweat popped out across my brow and trickled down my nose. I did not move, but pleaded silently to God that His will be done and not the Devil's. As if responding to my prayer, Beaumont relaxed. Slowly, he lowered the revolver, staring incredulously at it, as if it had a life of its own. Seth's moment of decision had come. My spirit responded to God's prompting. "Seth Beaumont, choose this day whom you will serve. As a boy you first yielded to your hatred when you helped your father hang that slave. You've heard the truth of the gospel--yield now to Christ's Lordship. Only His blood can save you." A frightful shriek unlike anything I had ever heard before broke from his lips. I heard the jailer shout for help as he ran down the hall toward my cell. Seth's eye glazed over. He raised his pistol and placed it against his temple. "No!" I shouted. "In the name of Jesus, no!" In that instant, I thought my eyes were blurring. I saw a strange double image of two Beaumonts sitting in front of me, one clinging to the other. Beaumont squeezed the trigger and the pistol sounded painfully in the tiny cell. He slumped to his side, the pistol still clutched in his hand, the journals across his lap. My heart pounded as a shadowy, human-like figure hovered over him, staring me straight in the eye, its mouth twisted into a hideous mocking smile. Across its opaque left cheek was a long, diagonal scar. The jailer threw open the cell door. His assistant was in the hall behind him with a shotgun. They watched in shock as the apparition passed through the wall of the jailhouse and disappeared from sight. This is the truth as I saw it, and not only I, but the jailer and his assistant. Later that day, they presented their testimony about Seth Beaumont's suicide to the magistrate. Their testimony regarding the ghastly appearance of a demon spirit, coupled with Beaumont's letter in which he rescinded his accusations against me for treason and confessed to the murder of Miss Elkin, secured my freedom. I was released and all of my belongings were returned to me, including the two journals that Seth had brought into the cell with him. I now sit alone in the Moore house. I understand why Mrs. Doyle saw a scar-faced man in Kansas, why Father Gibault saw a scar-faced man beneath the gallows at John Brown's hanging. It was Nicolas, the man with Beaumont at Victoria's death, the man with Beaumont at Jackson's camp. On the table nearby lay my stolen journals, stained with Seth's and Nicolas' blood. On the pages at the end of the journal, following the account of my meeting with Father Gibault, Beaumont's uncle wrote about his own tragic bloodline. All has become clear at last. History has opened itself and yielded up a dark secret. Nicolas was the son of Henri Sanson, the son of Charles-Henri Sanson, chief executioner of Paris. Henri, on that January day in 1793, lifted the king's decapitated head from the basket and paraded it around the scaffold for all to see. Henri, Charles-Henri, and four generations of Sansons before them--over two hundred years--have been human instruments of torture and governmentally-sanctioned death. Nicolas sought to escape his heritage, hoping to find refuge in the home of his older stepsister, Seth's mother. His hopes were dashed. Seth's mother had fled France, like Nicolas, fearing that if she bore a son, he too would share in the Sanson's bloody heritage. Nicolas' arrival in Charleston in 1822 only revived her fears. Unable to bear even the sound of his name, she rejected him and turned him out into the streets. The Beaumonts, unlike the MacDonalds, were a two-fold cord of godless strands. Both of us had murderers in our family lines, but Seth had no one in his line who had experienced the cleansing, redemptive work of Christ. Without an Advocate to plead their cause before the Accuser, a heritage of sin passed from one generation to the next. And except through the blood of Christ, Seth never had a chance. I believe he knew that the crimson scar on Nicolas' cheek manifested a frightening and dark reality. The scar had not been drawn by man's instruments, but by an indwelling presence, a demonic spirit who inhabited the Sanson line for generations. The spirit came to this country with a singular hunger, like that of his master, the Devil, to shed blood. Lord, whence has that spirit fled? And what evil shall that Devilish prince yet contrive against me, now that I have discerned his identity?
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