picquet

"one of whom--Mr. Coldfield--whether he could have held his own or not, had long since drawn in his // picquets // and dismantled his artillery and retired into the impregnable citadel of his passive rectitude" (AA, 49)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary a picquet is a form of piquet, or picket. In it's original usage, piquet referred to "a pointed stake driven into the ground for use in the construction of a fence of stockade, or to mark a position in surveying or military construction, to secure a tent, to tether a horse". While the usage in //Absalom, Absalom!// is clearly military, as a metaphor for Mr. Coldfield's withdrawal from the Civil War and any battle with Sutpen, it is interesting to note that the word eventually gained popular usage in "picket fence", gaining a status in suburban American life. Subsequently, there is an unintended irony in Coldfield drawing in his "picket" to stay locked up in his town home.

–Zach Fruit