“Her Majesty’s forces in the New World passed a restful night.”
Lee looked, saw the ludicrous man in the lustrous hat and the wide gray coat. The man made a sweeping, quixotic bow, nearly falling from the horse. Colonel Fremantle was up. Lee gave a formal bow, smiling inwardly.
Longstreet observed with sloe-eyed surprise. “After a while, you know, he actually begins to grow on you.”
“You’re keeping him entertained?”
“Not exactly. He’s got his heart set on a cavalry charge. Drawn sabers, all that glorious French business. He was horrified when I had to tell him we didn’t use the British square.”
Lee smiled.
“But he’s a likable fella.” Longstreet took off his hat, scratched his head. “Can’t say he’s learning much. But he seems to like us, all right. He says you have a great reputation in Europe.”
Lee said, “There’ll be no help from there.”
“No.”
“President Davis has hope.”
“Well, I guess that won’t do him any harm to hope.”
“At least we’ll be good hosts.” Lee felt a sudden strength. It came out of Longstreet like sunlight. Lee said happily, “And how are you this morning, General?”
“Me?” Longstreet blinked. “I’m all right.” He paused, cocked his head to one side, stared at the old man.
Lee said happily, “You must take care of yourself.”
Longstreet was mystified. No one ever asked him how he felt. His health was legendary, he never tired.
Lee said diplomatically, “The Old Soldier’s illness is going around.”
“It’s the damned cherries,” Longstreet gloomed. “Too many raw cherries.”
Lee nodded. Then he said softly, “General, in the fight that’s coming, I want you to stay back from the main line.”
Longstreet looked at him, expressionless. Black eyes glistened, bright and hard under hairy eyebrows. Impossible to tell what he was thinking.
Lee said, “You are my only veteran commander.”
Longstreet nodded.
“If I should become once again indisposed,” Lee said.
“God forbid.” Longstreet stared. “And how are you?”
Lee smiled, waved a deprecating hand. “I am well, very well. Thank God. But there is always … a possibility. And now Jackson is gone, and we must all do more than before. And I do not know if Hill or Ewell are ready for command, but I know that you …”
He paused. Hard to speak in this fashion. Longstreet was staring with cold silent eyes. Lee said sternly, “You have a very bad habit, General, of going too far forward.”
Longstreet said, “You cannot lead from behind.”
“Well. Let me put it plainly. I cannot spare you.”
Longstreet stood silent for a moment. He bowed slightly, then he grinned. “True,” he said.
“You will oblige me?”
“My pleasure,” Longstreet said.
Lee rubbed his nose, looked down at the table. “Now, let us look to the day. Nothing will happen today. But we have an opportunity, I believe.”
“Nothing from Stuart?”
Lee shook his head. Longstreet grumbled, “The Federals are closing in.”
“I have no new information.”
“When Stuart comes back, if he does come back—which he will eventually, if only just to read the Richmond newspapers—you ought to court-martial him.”
“And will that make him a better soldier?”
Longstreet paused. He said, “All right. What will?”
“Reproach, I think. I must let him know how badly he has let us down.”
Longstreet chuckled. He shook his head, gazing at Lee. “Yes, by George. Maybe. Reproach from you. Yes.” Longstreet grinned widely. “Might do the job. But me … I’m no good at that.”
“Different men, different methods. Docile men make very poor soldiers.”
Longstreet grinned wryly. “An army of temperamentals. It isn’t an army, it’s a gentlemen’s club. My God. Remember when old Powell Hill wanted to fight me a duel, right in the middle of the war?”
“And you ignored him. You did exactly right.”
“Yep. He might have shot me.”
Lee smiled. His heart rolled again, a soft sudden thump, leaving him breathless. Longstreet was grinning, staring off toward the road, did not notice. Lee said, “One new item. I have confirmed some of your man Harrison’s information. The new commander is definitely George Meade, not Reynolds. The news is carried in the local newspapers.”
Longstreet reached inside his coat, extracted a fat cigar.
“You can trust my man, I think. I sent him into Gettysburg last night. He said he saw two brigades of Union cavalry there.”
“Last night?”
“I sent you a report.”
Lee felt a tightening in his chest. He put his hand to his arm. He said slowly, “General Hill reports only militia.”
“It’s cavalry, I think.” Longstreet chewed, spat.
Where there is cavalry there will be infantry close behind.
“Whose troops?”
“John Buford.”
Longstreet meditated.
“Meade’s coming fast. Looks like he’s trying to get behind us.”
“Yes.” Lee thought: the direction does not matter. Fight him wherever he is. Lee said, “We have an opportunity.”
Longstreet chewed, nodded, grinned. “Yep. Objective was to get him out of Washington and in the open. Now he’s out. Now all we have to do is swing round between him and Washington and get astride some nice thick rocks and make him come to us, and we’ve got him in the open.”
Take the defensive. Not again. Lee shook his head. He pointed to Gettysburg.
“He has been forcing the march. The weather has been unusually hot. He will arrive strung out and tired, piece by piece. If we concentrate we can hit him as he comes up. If we ruin one or two corps we can even the odds.”
He was again breathless, but he bent over the map. Longstreet said nothing.
“He’s new to command,” Lee said. “It will take him some days to pick up the reins. His information will be poor, he will have staff problems.”
“Yes, and he will have Washington on his back, urging him to throw us out of Pennsylvania. He has to fight. We don’t.”
Lee put his hand to his eyes. He was fuzzy-brained. Longstreet loved the defense. But all the bright theories so rarely worked. Instinct said: Hit hard, hit quick, hit everything. But he listened. Then he said slowly, “That move will be what Meade expects.”
“Yes. Because he fears it.”
Lee turned away from the table. He wanted no argument now. He had been down this road before, and Longstreet was immovable, and there was no point in argument when you did not even know where the enemy was. Yet it was good counsel. Trust Longstreet to tell the truth. Lee looked up and there was Traveler, led by a black groom. The staff had gathered, the tents were down. Time to move. Lee took a deep, delighted breath.
“Now, General,” he said, “let’s go see what George Meade intends.”
They moved out into the open, into the warm sunlight. It was becoming a marvelous day. Out on the road the army flowed endlessly eastward, pouring toward the great fight. Lee smelled the superb wetness of clean mountain air. He said, “General, will you ride with me?”
Longstreet bowed. “My pleasure.”
Lee mounted in pain, but the hot sun would heal the old bones. They rode out into a space in the great gray bristling stream. Another band played; men were shouting. It was lovely country. They rode through soft green rounded hills, a sunny morn, a splendid air, moving toward adventure as rode the plumed knights of old. Far back in the woods there was still fog in the trees, caught in the branches like fragments of white summer, and Lee remembered:
Bow down Thy Heavens, O Lord, and come down,
Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.
He closed his eyes. Blessed be the Lord my strength,
which teacheth my fingers to fight and my hands to war. Amen.
They rode several miles before they heard the first thunder.
Lee reined to a stop. Silence. Motion of ragged white clouds. He said, “Did you hear that?”
Longstreet, who was slightly deaf, shook his head.
“It might have been thunder.” But Lee waited. Then it came: low, distant thumping. Ominous: angry. Longstreet said grimly, bright-eyed, angered, “I don’t hear too well anymore.”
“That was artillery,” Lee said. Longstreet gazed at him with black marble eyes. “You don’t think …” Lee began, then stopped. “I’d better ride forward,” he said. Longstreet nodded. Lee looked at his watch. Not quite ten in the morning. He left Longstreet and rode toward the sound of the guns.
2.
BUFORD
Just before dawn Buford rode down the line himself, waking them up, all the boyish faces. Then he climbed the ladder into the white cupola and sat listening to the rain, watching the light come. The air was cool and wet and delicious to breathe: a slow, fine, soaking rain, a farmer’s rain, gentle on the roof. The light came slowly: there were great trees out in the mist. Then the guns began.
A single shot. He sat up. Another. Two more widely spaced. Then a small volley, a spattering. A long silence: several seconds. He stared at white air, the rounded tops of smoky trees. Men were moving out in the open below him. An officer paused on horseback in the road. The firing began again, Rebel guns, farther off, but not many. Buford was cold. He shuddered, waited.
The first attack was very short: a ragged fire. Buford nodded, listening. “Yes. Tried to brush us off. Got a bloody nose. Now he’ll get angry, all puffed up like a partridge. Now he’ll form up a line and try us for real, and he’ll hit the main line.” The mist was lifting slowly, the rain was slackening, but Buford could not see the line. He felt the attack come and turned his face toward the sound of the guns, judging the size of the attack by the width of the sound, and he sat grinning alone in the cupola, while the Rebel troops pushed his line and drew back, bloody, and tried again in another place, the firing spreading all down the line like a popping fuse, and then there was another long silence, and Buford could feel them re-forming again, beginning for the first time to take this seriously. The next assault would be organized. He looked at his watch. Reynolds should be awake by now. They will have eaten their breakfast now, the infantry, and maybe they’re on the march.
There was a silence. He climbed down out of the cupola. The staff waited whitefaced under dripping trees. Buford asked for coffee. He went back inside the seminary and waited for the firing to begin again before sending his first word to Reynolds. It took longer than he expected. If whoever was out there attacking him had any brains he would probe this position first and find out what he was attacking. Buford listened for the scattered fire of patrols coming in, moving along his flanks, outlining him, but there was nothing. A long silence, then a massed assault. Buford grinned, baring fangs. Damn fool. He’s got a brigade in position, that’s all. He’s hitting me with one brigade, and I’m dug in. Lovely, lovely.
He wrote to Reynolds: “Rebel infantry attacked at dawn. Am holding west of Gettysburg, expecting relief. John Buford.”
The fire was hotting up. He heard the first cannon: Calef’s battery opening up down the road, grinned again. No Reb cannon to reply: not yet. He sent the messenger off into the mist, climbed again into the cupola.
The light was much clearer. He saw speckles of yellow fire through the mist: winking guns. The road ran black through misty fields. He saw one black cannon spout red fire at the limits of his vision. On the far side of the road there was a deep railroad cut—an unfinished railroad; he had not noticed it before. He saw horsemen moving behind the line. Then he heard that ripply sound that raised the hair, that high thin scream from far away coming out of the mist unbodied and terrible, inhuman. It got inside him for a suspended second. The scream of a flood of charging men: the Rebel yell.
It died in massive fire. There were still no cannon on the other side. Calef’s battery blasted the mist, thunder among the lighter fire. The assault began to die away.
The wounded were beginning to come back off the line. Buford went down from the cupola, restless, found Bill Gamble in the field by Calef’s battery, checking ammunition. There was blood on his left sleeve. His nose was still running. He grinned wetly at Buford.
“Hey, General. That was quite a scrap.”
“How are your losses?”
“Not bad. Not bad at all. We were dug in pretty good. We got ’em right out in the open. Really got a twist on ’em. Arrogant people, you know that? Came right at us. Listen, we got some prisoners. I talked to ’em. They’re Harry Heth’s division, of Hill’s corps. That’s what I’ve got in front of me.”
Buford nodded. Gamble was talking very quickly, head moving in jerky twitches.
“Sir, as I remember, Heth’s got near ten thousand men. They’re all within sound of the fight, back that road, between here and Cashtown.”
Buford squinted. The rain had quit but the sky was still low and gray. He could see a long way off through the trees, and there were ragged bodies in the fields, groups of men digging, cutting trees for cover.
Gamble said, “Sir, he’ll be back with all ten thousand.”
“It’ll take him a while to deploy,” Buford said.
“Yes, but he’s got Hill’s whole corps behind him. Maybe twenty-five thousand. And Longstreet behind that. And Ewell in the north.”
“I know.”
“Thing is this. When John Reynolds gets here, he won’t have the whole army with him, only a part of it. Point is—” he sniffled, wiped his nose “—as I see it, the Rebs will be here this afternoon with everything they’ve got.”
Buford said nothing. Gamble sniffed cheerily.
“Just thought I’d mention it. Now, what you want me to do here?”
Buford thought: if it was a mistake, God help us.
“Heth will be back in a bit,” Buford said. “If he’s got any brains at all, and he’s not stupid, he’ll know by now that he’s got a brigade in front of him. Don’t think he’ll wait to get his whole division in line. That would take half the morning.”
“He doesn’t need his whole division.”
“Right. Does Devin report any activity on his front?”
“Not a thing.”
“All right. I’ll have Devin pull some of his people out and leave a cover in the north and have him dig in alongside, lengthening your line. When Heth comes back he’ll run into two brigades. That should hold him until Reynolds gets here.”
“Right,” Gamble said. He peered up at the sky. “Glad the rain is gone. Don’t want anything to slow up Reynolds.”
“Take care of yourself.”
“You know me: the soul of caution.”
Buford moved off toward the north. He sent a second message to Reynolds. He pulled Devin out of line in the north and brought him in alongside Gamble: two thousand men facing west. All that while whenever he came near the line he could see enemy troops moving in the fields across the way, spreading out as they came down the road, like a gray river spreading where it reaches the sea. If Heth was efficient and deliberate he had the power to come straight through like an avalanche. Buford could hear the artillery coming into place on the far side, heard the spattering of rifle fire from probing patrols. He looked at his watch; it was after eight. Reynolds had to be on the road. The infantry had to be coming. He rode back and forth along the line, watched Devin’s men digging in, heard bullets clip leaves above him as snipers crawled closer. We cannot hold ten thousand. Not for very long. If Heth attacks in force he will roll right over us, and we lose the two brigades and the high ground too, and it will have been my fault. And the road in the north is open; they can come in there and they’ll be behind us, on our flank.
There was nothing he could do about that; he had no more troops. But he pulled a squad out of Devin’s line and put the y
oung Lieutenant with corn-silk hair in charge and gave him orders.
“Son, you ride on out that road to the north about five miles. You squat across some high ground, where you can see. First sign you get of enemy coming down that road, you ride like hell this way and tell me. Understand?”
The squad galloped off. A cannon shell burst in the air nearby, raining fragments in the wet leaves around him. The first Reb cannon were in position, limbering up easily, casually, getting the range. Now Buford had a little time to think. It all depends on how fast Reynolds comes. It all depends on how many men he’s got with him and how fast Lee is moving this way. Nothing to do but fight now and hold this line. But he kept looking at his watch. There ought to be some word. He galloped back to the seminary and climbed the cupola and gazed back to that southern road, but there was nothing there. A short while after that he saw the enemy come out in the open, line after line, heard the guns open up, dozens of guns, watched his own line disappear in smoke. The big attack had come.
Gamble was down. The first report was very bad, and Buford rode over and took command, but it was only concussion and Gamble was back on his feet in a few moments, ragged and dirty. There was a breakthrough on the right but some junior officers patched it. Lone infantry began bending around the right flank. Buford mounted some men and drove them off. There were moments in smoke when he could not see and thought the line was going; one time when a shell burst very close and left him deaf and still and floating, like a bloody cloud.
On the right there was another breakthrough, hand-to-hand fighting. He rode that way, leaping wounded, but it had been repulsed when he got there. One by one Calef’s guns were being silenced. No one had yet broken away, no one was running, but Buford could feel them giving, like a dam. He rode back to the seminary, looked down the road. Nothing. Not much more time. He felt the beginning of an awful anger, an unbearable sadness, suppressed it. He rode back to the line. The fire was weakening. He stood irresolute in the road. An aide suggested he go to cover. He listened. The Rebs were pulling back, forming to come again. But the Reb cannon were pounding, pounding. He heard the great whirring of fragments in the air, saw air bursts in bright electric sparks. He rode slowly along the smoking line, looking at the faces. The brigades were wrecked. There was not much ammunition. They were down in the dirt firing slowly, carefully from behind splintery trees, piled gray rails, mounds of raw dirt. They had maybe half an hour.
The Civil War Trilogy: Gods and Generals / the Killer Angels / the Last Full Measure Page 66
