Confederates

by Thomas Keneally

  Cate could see it struck a potent chord. ‘You haven’t ever been loved by someone like me,’ he repeated. He shook the brush. ‘You want to go with me, Ephie. You can’t even hide it. You want to.’

  Ephie whimpered and shook her head and, almost by accident, put her hand along the line of his jaw, part to caress him, part to push him off. When he tried to clasp her again, it was the quickness of her mouth that surprised him, the way it found his lips and worked at them in that strange fated manner that belongs to people who can’t much help themselves any more.

  Then, using the chair for leverage, she forced herself away and sat for a while with her hand on her forehead, and made those breathy sobbing noises he understood too well, for they begged him both to leave her and to take her.

  It was impossible of course to have her in the parlour by day, with the slave outside or upstairs or in the cookhouse or somewhere close.

  ‘You must come to the barn tonight, Ephie,’ he said. ‘You know you can’t avoid it. When does Mrs Muswell get home?’

  ‘All she said to me,’ Ephie told him, still crouched in the seat and caressing her forehead, ‘is she meant to be home soon as she could.’

  ‘Yes?’ Cate asked, for she had more to tell.

  ‘But I heard her say to Montie …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That she feared it mightn’t be till tomorrow noon.’

  He’ll be watching, that black man, Cate thought. He’ll have orders to watch and he’ll know what to watch for.

  ‘Is Montie partial to drink?’ he asked.

  ‘As much as any man,’ Ephie said. Oh Lordy, I am making plans with the man. But it excited her. In the pit of her belly it excited her.

  Cate said: ‘I could give him liquor.’

  ‘You give him liquor, Mr Cate,’ Ephie whispered, ‘and he’ll guess your purpose. For he is no fool.’

  Cate smiled at her with great certainty, but her eyes were still down and she did not see. ‘You’ll come to me,’ he said. ‘You’ll come to the barn. After Montie and Bridie have tucked themselves up tonight. You’ll do that, won’t you? You’ll come?’

  She raised her face, her eyes bunched close, sweat showing either side of her mouth. She shook her head wildly, like someone trying to come to terms with pain.

  ‘You’ll visit me,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait all night, Ephie. And I’ll die if you don’t come.’

  She went over to the mantelpiece and stood there, still nursing her forehead. ‘Oh mercy, Mr Cate, how can I …’ But she meant more how could she sit calm for any more painting. Cate came up to try to touch her again.

  ‘Forgive me for bringing you this distress,’ he said.

  But she sidestepped him and shook her head again, whatever that meant.

  ‘I’ll die,’ he said, as if for the first time. ‘If you don’t come …’

  He’d stayed there in the parlour and painted devotedly the rest of the day, telling himself all the time it was certain she would get to the barn that night, and yes, they would go to California, leaving no trace behind them, except this one portrait to remind Aunt Sarrie and all the other folk of Bath County of the beauty they’d lost.

  Alone in the rain, Cate remembered the flavour of the certainty of that morning the way an old man remembers the flavour of a distant June and a vanished girl.

  21

  Tom Jackson had got energy to chastise colonels at three a.m. on a steaming summer night from somewhere, and it was from the papers that lay on his desk. Twenty-four hours past Jeb Stuart had taken three cavalry regiments all the way round to Catlett’s Station, way up the Orange and Alexandria Railroad. One regiment tore up railway track, another tried to set fire to the bridge to the north, but the drenched timbers wouldn’t take flame. A third swept up the main street of the town from two directions at once and made prisoners of a good half of Pope’s staff – adjutants, engineers, artillery officers and a clutch of field officers of various rank. In a downstairs hallway of a house just off Main Street a coat was found that had a tag inside its collar with Johnny Pope’s name on it, though there wasn’t any sight of the general himself. But most important of all, the cavalry found secret papers there, right in that house. Copies had been given to Longstreet and Jackson only last evening, and they lay on Jackson’s desk now.

  These captured memoranda and despatches showed that at least two of McClellan’s corps were back in the Washington area from the James River and, not needing too much re-equipping and reorganising, would be able to march to join Pope within six days at the most and come under Pope’s management within a week. Other forces from Pennsylvania and some traitorous West Virginians (7000 in all) and some further corps of McClellan’s would unite with the remaining three corps of McClellan’s army. So that, even allowing for the traditional Yankee slowness of movement, it could happen that within ten days at most, Pope would have at his call some 130,000 troops where now he had just near on 50,000.

  Now this kind of news should have depressed some men. In Jackson it made for a great and nearly sinful excitement. It gave him back the sort of conditions that suited his soul and his health best, the sort of conditions he’d missed for years as a professor and as a loving husband. It made the taking of wild risks a needed and a proper thing. It made gambling legal.

  When the colonels came in to get their ears pinned back, Tom Jackson – anticipating the gamble – had been working at movement orders for his three divisions. He worked through till eight a.m., not even noticing the chimes of the clock or the coming of light beyond the windows. He studied commissary and quartermaster returns, he read the latest reports from his surgeon, young Hunter Maguire, and from his Chief of Artillery, and studied Hotchkiss’s reports and maps for a likely line of country to use during the next few days.

  At eight a.m. he ate a solid breakfast with Sandie and Kyd, then worked on till eleven, when he mounted up and rode with most of his staff a little way south. After two miles he reached a flat open field where a table had been placed in the sunny middle, far out from the copses that surrounded it. All kinds of staff officers crowded into the shadows of the trees, but only Lee himself was out there in the middle, wearing a wide-awake hat for shade, his leonine head bent down over a large map.

  Jackson stepped out to join him in the harsh light, bowed, took a seat at the table and – everyone at the edges of the field could tell – straight away began talking map-talk.

  A minute before the due time for the conference to start, General James Longstreet arrived. He could tell as he stepped through the fringe of respectful officers and out into the middle of the field amongst lupins and bees and clicking insects that it might have been a mistake not coming early. Because Lee and Jackson were nodding at each other like men who’d already come to an agreement.

  Longstreet was from South Carolina. He was a little over forty years old, a tall man with an orderly mind, and he didn’t exactly trust those two, there was a mad streak in both of them. Lee took horrible risks – like when for the sake of hitting McClellan’s flank along the Chickahominy, he left Richmond wide open some seven weeks back with only 1500 boys in the defences. It happened that the ploy had been a success only on account of George McClellan’s weakness of soul. One day the Union might get a soldier of firm intent and then all these temperamental risks Lee took would wreak quite a whirlwind, yessiree!

  As for Jackson, well, James Longstreet didn’t respect him much more than Ambrose Hill did. He thought he was given to impulse.

  General Lee looked up now and called, ‘G’morning there, James.’ And dammit there was already some quiet excitement about him. Longstreet bowed, solemn and proper towards both men, and took a chair at Jackson’s side.

  ‘Well,’ said Lee in a low voice, ‘you know of our situation, James, and I know already that Tom here knows. At the moment we’ve got about 50,000 boys of ours outfacing about 50,000 boys of Pope’s to no one’s particular benefit. We’ve got here what they call a static front and we want to make it f
luid as fast as we can on account of there being some 80,000 Union soldiers on the road to join Pope. Now we’ve about a week to devour Pope in detail, and we may not even have a week when it comes down to it. Yes, I understand you know all this. I just recapitulate, that’s all.

  ‘Now Tom and I’ve been talking about a ploy, James, and I wonder if you see any value in it. It’s this. Tom takes his three divisions and a cavalry screen and clears way off to the west and round Pope’s flank. He moves at great speed, as seems to be the tradition of his divisions …’

  James Longstreet thought, it might be the tradition but I haven’t seen much evidence of it. He said nothing though.

  ‘Tom has a route already planned,’ said Lee.

  Jackson looked up with those blank, staring eyes. He pointed to one of the maps, showing the country off towards the Blue Ridge and behind the Bull Run Mountains. ‘My engineer Captain Boswell grew up in the country we’d be travelling,’ Jackson explained. ‘He recommends taking a line through Amissville, Orleans, Salem, Thoroughfare Gap and Gainesville to put us square across Pope’s rear and communications at Manassas.’

  Manassas again. Well, Manassas couldn’t be avoided, Longstreet knew. There was a grand junction there where the Manassas Gap Railroad and the Orange and Alexandria met. The O & A was essential to Lincoln for shipping troops south from the capital, and the Gap line for despatching them across to the Valley. The first massed battle of the war had been fought for Manassas and it was sure to be fought for again. It was not the name of Manassas that fretted James Long-street. It was the way of getting round to it that James Longstreet felt doubtful about.

  ‘It’s a long flank march,’ he said, a little breathless, because it really scared him. ‘It’s a long, long march.’

  Lee looked away, a faint benevolent smile on his face, towards the shade trees his staff lolled beneath. ‘Well, I suggest, James, it’s better than the front-on style of attack that cost us so many boys at Malvern Hill and other places.’

  Longstreet shook his long patrician head, ‘We’ve got just about equality in numbers with Pope now?’ he said, and Jackson’s eyes came over drowsy.

  ‘In fact there are new boys up from Louisiana, from Mississippi and Alabama,’ said Generalissimo Lee. ‘We’re likely doing just a little better than Johnny Pope at this moment.’

  ‘Yes, well that’s excellent. But in terms of what’s coming Pope’s way, General Lee, we’re way down. So what you want to do – and correct me if I misunderstand – what you want to do is split up a numerically lesser army – ours – right in two – in the presence of the enemy, in very contact with him …!’

  ‘That’s a mite pessimistic way of stating it, James,’ said General Lee.

  ‘… and on top of that, you want to send nearly half of it on a fifty-mile loop right round the back of the enemy. And I ask for what purpose? I simply want to know. I want to measure the purpose, sir, against the risk.’

  ‘Well, I’d say, James, that the purpose was to exploit the situation.’

  ‘But this violates the major military principle of concentration.’

  ‘God help us all, James, what else can we do? Look, with States like Alabama and Louisiana scraping their barrels we can get together 23,000 infantry and some 4000 cavalry to send off with Tom. And you’ll be here with 32,000 in your corps. That’s the South at floodtide, James. They are the numbers we’ve got together by the best efforts we can put forward, by using all the laws in all the States as well as the laws of the Confederate Congress. In a week, as I say, and as you well know, there’d be 130,000 Yankees facing us along the Rappahannock. And if by some gift of God we could fight them ragged, all Abe Lincoln and his War Secretary have to do is call for another quarter of a million boys and put in new requisitions for cannons and muskets. We can’t win it, James, by keeping to the principle of concentration that we learnt at West Point. And the reason is, if we sit still, they can out-concentrate us every day of the week.’

  James Longstreet bit his thumb and stared off into the middle distance. ‘I know all that,’ he told General Lee. ‘But the danger. My wing could be crushed right here, on this ground, after General Jackson marches off.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, James, I don’t intend for your wing to linger long here. I want you just to hold the line while Tom gets away, and of course to cause so much trouble along Johnny Pope’s front with raids and artillery fire that he won’t for a moment think that half of us are gone. And then, allowing two days for Tom here to get poised, you and I will be off too, James, at night. Leaving our fires burning.’

  Long-faced James Longstreet turned to long-faced Tom Jackson. ‘You could be attacked on the march and chewed up.’

  ‘At the worst,’ Jackson told him, not using Christian names since Longstreet wouldn’t, ‘I could retreat to the Blue Ridge.’

  ‘You could really get yourself swamped in the Manassas area. Why there must be at least some 50,000 of the others on the road up that way right now.’

  ‘It will depend a lot,’ said Tom Jackson, closing his eyes like a cat, ‘on the work of my cavalry.’

  Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, James Longstreet wanted to say. But he was a sane man. He could see the reasons for the move if it could be well managed. He doubted Jackson could really manage it well.

  ‘I’ve already drawn up,’ said Lee, almost in apology, ‘the movement orders, James.’ He handed a paper to Longstreet.

  Longstreet read over the details on the page Lee handed him. He took a minute and a half over it, contorting his long lips here and there and giving little grunts. At last he said: ‘It might work if General Jackson’s corps completes the march in two days. That’s 25 miles a day. But how can you do that with a waggon train?’

  ‘There won’t be a waggon train,’ Tom Jackson said. ‘There’ll be a few ambulances. And they’ll move along! Oh yes, they’ll move along at a good clip! We’ll feed and supply ourselves from the Federal trains we find in Manassas.’

  Putting both sets of his fingers against his forehead, James Longstreet laughed a silent and bitter laugh at this crazy optimism. These two men, more staid than him, not given at all to cussing, were like men rendered mad by their initial successes at a gambling table.

  ‘We can depend on you, James,’ said Lee quietly. ‘I know that much.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said James Longstreet, ‘you can depend on me.’

  Lee smiled. ‘I suggest you get Dan Hill’s division to move into the camp sites Tom’s men vacate tonight. But I leave the fine detail to you two.’

  ‘Very well,’ said James Longstreet and sighed. ‘Very well. I’ll talk to Dan Hill.’

  ‘James, Tom,’ said the generalissimo with that chaste smile of his. ‘I think this is just about the biggest thing we ever tried.’

  ‘And all I hope,’ said James Longstreet, ‘is that the Union command stays as lax as it has been up to this.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ General Lee whispered.

  But Tom Jackson said nothing. He was staring at the maps, just like a goddam traveller who knows where he’ll be at nightfall.

  22

  When Searcy rode into that street in Orange a week after Mrs Whipple’s arrival, masons and carpenters were working on scaffolds outside the warehouse. Mrs Dora Whipple, Searcy thought, has ordered holes knocked in the brute walls, is letting in the light and the air. Doing for the hospital what she’s done for me perhaps, for the Honourable Horace Searcy.

  It was while he was dismounting that the thought came to him. Why don’t you marry this woman. Like that. Marry an American! He’d never met anyone who’d done that – apart from other Americans of course. Certainly she came from the aristocracy of Boston and had married into the gentry of the Carolinas, but in English society that counted for little more than being the daughter of a Red Indian chief. Searcy smiled. If I marry an American, it will confirm all the governor’s worst opinions of me, he thought.

  In the lobby of the warehouse he found an orderly i
n a long dirty coat. Once it had been white, now it was yellow and dappled with the brown of old blood which will not wash out. Oh, Searcy thought, guessing correctly, the surgeon in this place isn’t up to Mrs Whipple’s standards.

  ‘Could you direct me to the matron’s quarters, please?’

  ‘Out the back.’

  ‘Out the back isn’t a very exact description.’

  The orderly looked at him and Searcy could just about see him thinking, a friend of hers! Searcy was unrepentant at being thought of that way.

  ‘Come on, ole chap. I asked you where the matron was.’

  The orderly got more specific then. Mrs Whipple’s quarters were a newly built lean-to of green pinewood in the courtyard behind the warehouse. Stone walls on three sides of this yard. It would be a bitter place in winter. Maybe, however, she wouldn’t have to occupy it in winter. She might be in the North. She might be in England. She might be my bride. Searcy started grinning there, in the courtyard, in his enthusiasm for that idea. And as he stood there, the project grew and sent him to her door feeling a grand elation.

  He knocked and heard her businesslike voice telling him to come in. Opening the door he found her at the table, kneading gingerbread and cutting it with a knife. The fragrance of gingerbread cookies came from a small portable army oven in one corner.

  As he entered, he noticed a certain expectant flinching of her eyes. He guessed she was worried what he thought of her for writing, for sending on her new address. ‘Oh, how can I say welcome?’ she said. ‘When I’m all over flour?’

  ‘No need for welcome,’ said Searcy gallantly, bowing broadly. ‘I shall take the welcome as read.’

  She made a mouth. ‘You see, I promised gingerbread to some of the boys for supper. It’s always so important to tempt their appetites …’

  You tempt mine well enough, sweet lady, Searcy thought.

  She coughed. ‘I thought I’d better write you about my new location,’ she whispered, ‘in view of our … our professional connection.…’