by John Jakes
60
BURNSIDE BROUGHT THE ARMY of the Potomac to the Rappahannock in mid-November. The engineers hutted in a huge camp at Falmouth and waited. Seldom had Billy heard such complaining.
“We are delaying so long they will have their best ready to go against us.”
“Bad terrain, Fredericksburg. What are we to do, march up the heights like the redcoats at Breed’s Hill and be mowed down the same way?”
“The general is a shit-ass, fit for nothing but combing his whiskers. There isn’t an officer in the country capable of leading this army to a victory.”
Despite Lije Farmer’s urgings that he have faith and ignore the malcontents, it was the malcontents Billy was starting to believe. Confidence in Burnside was not enhanced when a story got around that he was asking his personal cook for advice on strategy.
The weather, wet and dismal, deepened Billy’s malaise and finally affected him physically. On the ninth of December he started sneezing. Then came queasiness and a headache. The next night, as the pontoon train began its advance to a previously scouted field beside the river, his forehead felt scorching, and he could barely suppress violent shivering. He said nothing.
They moved as quietly as possible. Fog had settled in, helping to muffle sound. At three in the morning, the regular battalion, assisted by the Fifteenth and the Fiftieth New York Volunteer Engineers, unloaded the boats while the teamsters cursed and coddled their horses to minimize noise. Everyone knew the significance of the pale splotches of color in the fog; among the trees and tall houses on the other shore, Confederate picket fires burned.
“Quiet,” Billy said every minute or so. The men repeatedly dropped the boats as they labored across the plowed field or blundered into one another and threatened a fight. There was a bad feeling about this campaign so late in the year. It was misbegotten. Cursed.
The fever swirled his thoughts and filmed his vision, but Billy kept on, softly calling directions, maintaining order, lifting and carrying when some weaker man faltered and fell out. A misty drizzle started. Then he began to ache.
During a break in the work, he clasped his arms around his body in a vain effort to warm up. Lije appeared. Touched his shoulder.
“There are plenty to carry on here. Go to the surgeons, where you belong.”
Billy jerked away from his friend’s hand. “’M all right.”
Lije stood still, said nothing, but Billy knew he was hurt all the same. He started to apologize, but Lije turned and went back to the men.
Shame overwhelmed Billy, then uncharacteristic contempt for his friend. How could Lije believe all that Scriptural twaddle? If there was a compassionate God, how could He permit this nightmare war to drag on?
They kept at the work, continually watching the picket fires on the other side of the river. The drizzle produced heavy smoke from time to time, but the rebs kept the fires replenished with dry wood. One fire directly opposite the bridge site drew special attention because the soldier on picket duty could be seen with some clarity. He was reedy, bearded, and marched back and forth as if he had all the energy in the world. ‘ It was nearly daybreak when the first boats went in. The men dropped one, and it smacked the shallows, loud as a shot. Superintending the work of moving more boats to the shore, Billy heard someone exclaim, “It’s all up,” then saw the rebel picket pluck a brand from the fire and wave it over his head, an arc of sparks.
Over the picket’s cry, Lije shouted, “Press ahead, boys. No need for silence now.”
They rushed forward with balks, chesses, and rails as a small signal cannon banged on the opposite shore. Running figures showed against the watch fires. A detachment of infantry came up behind the engineers, sleepy marksmen readying weapons. Artillery wheeled into place on the bluff above. Billy suspected all of it would be scant protection.
They had five boats anchored and two planked by the time enemy skirmishers appeared and opened fire. Looking bilious in the breaking light, Lieutenant Cross and a crew put out in their boats, the first to strike for the enemy shore, which they might or might not reach.
Billy worked on the end of the bridge, soon extended to midstream; he helped to cleat each boat to a pair of balks, then run it out. He heard the guns begin to crackle. A ball plopped in the water to his right; another thunked the gunwale of the pontoon boat over which he was kneeling.
“Wish I had my fucking gun,” someone said.
“Stop wasting breath,” Billy said. “Work.”
Men ran forward with chesses. One of them jerked suddenly, stepped sideways, and tumbled into the Rappahannock.
Consternation. Hands shot down to seize and lift the wounded engineer. Billy had never felt water so icy. Lije ran out on the bridge. “Courage, boys. ‘Our soul waiteth for the Lord. He is our help and our shield.’”
Dragging the man to safety—blood and water streaming from his face—Billy twisted around and said, “Shut up, Lije. The Lord our shield didn’t help this man, and He isn’t going to help the rest of us, so shut up, will you?”
The white-bearded man seemed to shrivel. Anger flashed in his eyes, quickly replaced by sadness. Billy wanted to bite off his tongue. Men stared at him, but only one mattered. He ran to Lije along the slippery bridge and clutched his arm.
“I didn’t mean that. I’m eternally sorry for saying something so—”
“Down,” Lije yelled as rebs across the river volleyed. He pushed Billy and dropped on top of him.
Billy’s head smacked the bridge. He tried to rise, but too much had worn him down. Too much illness, tiredness, despair. Ashamed though he was, he let himself sink into comforting black.
Later the same day—it was Friday, December eleventh—Billy lay in a field hospital at Falmouth. There he learned that the engineers had worked all morning under constant fire and had finished two of five planned bridges across the Rappahannock by noon.
Too weak to return to duty, he spent the hours of Saturday listening to cannonading. On Sunday, Lije came poking among the cots, found his friend, and sat down on a box beside a pole where a lantern hung. He asked Billy how he felt.
“Ashamed, Lije. Ashamed of what I said and how I said it.”
“Well, sir,” returned the older man a bit formally, “I do confess I took it hard for some length of time.”
“You saved me from a wound anyway.”
“None of us is a perfect vessel, and the heart of the Master’s ministry was forgiveness. You were ill, we were all exhausted, and the situation was perilous. What man can be blamed for a rash word in such circumstances?”
His prophet’s face gentled. “You want the news, no doubt. I am afraid the foreboding expressed by you and many others was justified in full. Even my own faith stretches exceeding thin after events of yesterday.”
Amid the rows of sick, wounded, and dying, Lije told his friend how the federals had crossed the river and what had befallen them.
61
THAT SAME SUNDAY NIGHT, three men kept a vigil in Secretary Stanton’s office.
Potomac mist drifted outside the windows. The gas hissed, and there were soft clickings from an unseen source. Stanley wished the vigil would end so he could go home. He wanted to examine the latest statements from Lashbrook’s, which had doubled its already enormous business thanks to the covert contract arranged by Butler. He tried to conceal his impatience, though unintentionally he shifted farther and farther forward to the edge of the chair. His left foot moved up and down, silently tapping.
Major Albert Johnson, the arrogant young man formerly Stanton’s law clerk and now his most trusted aide, strode from the main door to that of the adjoining cipher room, where he about-faced, crossed the office, and began the circuit again.
The President lay on the couch he had occupied most of the day. His unfashionable dark suit had wrinkled. His eyes, focused somewhere far below the carpet, suited a mourner. His color was that of a man poisoned with jaundice.
Lincoln had angrily told them that a Mr. Villard, a cor
respondent for Greeley’s Tribune, had returned from the front on Saturday and had been brought to the Executive Mansion at 10:00 P.M. There he had reported what he knew and protested the refusal of the military censor to clear his dispatches about Burnside’s futile assaults on Fredericksburg. “I offered him my apology and said I hoped the news was not as bad as he perceived.”
None of them knew for certain. The secretary controlled what was published—the military censors reported to him—and he also controlled the telegraph from the front. He had removed the receiving instruments from McClellan’s headquarters and installed them in the library upstairs soon after he took office. He had even pirated McClellan’s chief telegraph officer, Captain Eckert. Stanley admired the secretary’s audacious seizure of the information lines; nothing of substance came into Washington or went out of it without Stanton knowing it first. Stanton used the telegraph like an umbilical cord to tie his department more securely to the Executive Mansion and Lincoln himself. The President continued to profess great trust in Stanton as well as a magnanimous personal admiration for the man who had once snubbed him professionally when both were lawyers. Stanton now termed Lincoln his dear friend, though he had manipulated the relationship so that the President was the dependent, not the dominant, partner.
Stanley, however, continued to regard Abraham Lincoln as a pathetic clod. At the moment, the President was resting on his side on the couch, reminding Stanley of a cadaver or some piece of sculpture by a talentless beginner. Lincoln’s secretaries had secret nicknames for various people. Some, such as Hellcat for Mary Lincoln, couldn’t be more appropriate. But how could they refer to their chief as the Tycoon unless in mockery? The man would never be reelected, not even if the war reached a swift and successful conclusion, which looked unlikely.
The door of the cipher room opened. Johnson halted. Stanley jumped up. Stanton emerged with several of the flimsy yellow sheets on which decoded dispatches from the front were copied. The secretary smelled of cologne and strong soap, which told Stanley he had been at some large function late in the day. Stanton always scrubbed and anointed himself after contact with the public.
“What is the news?” Lincoln asked.
Reflected gaslight turned the lenses of Stanton’s glasses to shimmering mirrors. “Not good.”
“I asked for the news, not a description of it.” The President’s voice rasped with weariness. He shifted higher on his left elbow, his loosened cravat falling over the edge of the couch.
Stanton folded down corners on the first two flimsies. “I regret that it appears young Villard was right. There were repeated assaults within the town.”
“What was the objective?”
“Marye’s Heights. A position all but impregnable.” Lincoln stared with that bereaved face. “Are we defeated?”
Stanton did not look away. “Yes, Mr. President.”
Slowly, as if suffering arthritic pain, Lincoln sat up. Stanley heard a knee joint creak. Stanton gave him the flimsies, continuing quietly, “A dispatch presently being copied indicates General Burnside wished to assault the rebel positions again this morning, perhaps in hopes of compensating for yesterday. His senior officers dissuaded him from that rash course.”
Momentary doubts about the worth of the telegraph struck Stanley. Certainly the device was changing warfare in a revolutionary way. Orders could be transmitted to commanding officers at a speed never thought possible. On the other hand, bad news could be returned just as fast, and that had all sorts of ramifications in the stock and gold markets, which tended to fluctuate wildly in response to the war news. Of course, if one had a way to get an early look at key dispatches, then telegraphed appropriate buy or sell orders before the news became known, huge killings could be made. He was delighted with himself for having thought of that. The telegraph was a remarkable creation.
Lincoln leafed through the flimsies, then flung them on the couch. “First I had a general who employed the Army of the Potomac as his bodyguard. Now I have one who celebrates a rout by suggesting another.” Shaking his head, he strode to the window and peered into the mist, as if seeking answers there.
Stanton cleared his throat. After a strained silence, Lincoln swung around. His face was a study in aggrieved fury. “I presume the steamers will be bringing us more wounded soon.”
“They already are, Mr. President. The first ones from Aquia Creek docked last night. Those flimsies contain the information.”
“I didn’t read them closely. I can’t bear to—instead of numbers, I see faces. I presume the numbers are large and the casualties heavy?”
“Yes, sir, so the first reports would indicate.”
Looking paler than ever, the President once more turned to confront the night. “Stanton, I’ve said it before. If there is a worse place than hell, I am in it.”
“We share that feeling, Mr. President. To a man.”
Stanley made sure he maintained an appropriately sorrowful expression.
Distant cries woke Virgilia on Tuesday morning. She turned her head toward the small window. Black. Not yet daylight.
The window was unbroken, a rarity in the ancient Union Hotel. New-style hospitals—pavilions on the Nightingale plan—were under construction to supply fifteen thousand beds and promote healing rather than impede it. Construction funds had been appropriated a year ago July. Until the work was finished, however, all sorts of unsuitable structures, from public buildings and churches to warehouses and private homes, had to be used—especially in this bleak December when Burnside’s bungling had cost over twelve thousand casualties.
The cries kept on. Virgilia sat up hurriedly. Something fell to the floor from her hard, narrow bed. She groped and retrieved the small book, slipping it under a thin pillow. She reread certain passages in Coriolanus frequently because they seemed to have relevance to her situation. Ironically, the lines she loved most, from the third scene of the first act, were delivered not by her namesake, the insipid wife of Caius Marcius, but by his mother, Volumnia, the Roman matron whose temperament Virgilia shared.
She reached for the lamp on the floor. She had gone to sleep in her plain gray dress and long white apron with the tabard top. She hadn’t known when she would be needed because no one had said whether casualties destined for the Union Hotel Hospital would arrive in Washington by rail or by steamer.
She knew how they were arriving in Georgetown. “Those infernal two-wheelers,” she muttered as she lit the lamp. The outcries, characterized by abruptness as well as anguish, told her the wounded were coming in the ambulances that were the curse of the medical service. Some of the patients she had attended since joining Miss Dix’s corps said that after riding in one of the tilting, bouncing conveyances, they found themselves wishing they had remained where they had fallen. Better four-wheel models were being tested, but getting them took money and time.
The shimmery lamp revealed the room’s tawdry furnishings, warped flooring, peeling paper. The entire hotel was like that, a ruin. But it was where she had been sent. Ironically, she was less than half a mile from the house of George and Constance. She didn’t know if her brother knew she was a nurse in Washington, but she had no plans to call and inform him.
She did remain grudgingly grateful to Constance and even to Billy’s wife for helping her improve her appearance and showing her a better course. Beyond that, if she never saw any of them again, it wouldn’t trouble her.
Virgilia straightened her hairnet, left her room, and strode downstairs with the lamp. A neat, full-bosomed figure, with an aura of authority, she smelled of the brown soap with which she was careful to wash frequently. Already she had been put in charge of Ward One. Virgilia accepted the customary salary of twelve dollars a month, which some of the volunteers did not take. For her it was a necessity, a hedge against some future misfortune.
The hotel was astir. She smelled coffee and beef soup from the kitchen. Soldier nurses, men still convalescing, were rising from none too clean pallets and cots in the halls
and ground-floor parlors. Her wardmaster, a youthful Illinois artilleryman named Bob Pip, yawned and squinted at her as she approached.
“Morning, matron.”
“Up, Bob, up—they’re here.”
To confirm it, she stopped at a broken window. A little light showed in the bleak sky, revealing a long line of the two-wheeled horrors snaking through the narrow street to the main entrance. Surveying the hall again, she saw no surgeons. They were customarily the last to arrive, something to do with dramatizing their importance, she had decided.
Despite her dislike of the doctors, she realized that all who worked at the hospital had a common cause—succoring and healing men injured in battle with a detestable enemy. Those crying out from the ambulances had fought in behalf of poor dead Grady, against the vicious army of aristocrats and mudsills Virgilia hated more than anything except slavery itself. That was why she worked so hard to replace dirt with cleanliness, pain with ease, despair with contentment.
She had taken to the work. It was honorable. Favorite lines from the Shakespeare play set five centuries before Christ reinforced her view. Every day or so, she silently repeated Volumnia’s scornful speech to Virgilia about the shedding of blood. It more becomes a man than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba, when she did suckle Hector, looked not lovelier than Hector’s forehead when it spit forth blood.
Virgilia had the stomach for nursing. Many of the well-meaning volunteers didn’t and quickly returned home. She had a person like that in her ward now. In Washington only three days, the young woman was clearly revolted by her duties. Still, Virgilia liked her.
She knocked loudly at the door of a parlor converted to a dormitory for the female nurses; the matrons had small separate rooms, no great blessing.
“Ladies? Get up, please. They’ve come. Hurry, you’re needed immediately.”
She heard bustling, soft talk in the parlor. She pivoted with a precision that was unconsciously military and marched toward the flung-back doors of her ward. On one of them a sorry brass sign hung from a nail in its corner. Reading downward at a forty-five-degree angle, the engraved script said BALL ROOM.
