North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  Having gotten the effect he wanted, he softened, grasped her hand. “Why must convention be an obstacle, Virgilia? We have a mutual desire and we can satisfy it discreetly without harming the interests of either party.”

  “How do you know it would work that way, Congressman? Are you an expert at philandering?”

  A chill settled into his eyes. He snatched up his stick, hat, fawn gloves. “I have an appointment. It has been pleasant to visit with you, Miss Hazard. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  He reached the door. She stood abruptly. “Sam—”

  Turning, but giving nothing else, he replied, “Yes?”

  How hard it was to say what had to be said. “Nothing. My terms must stand.”

  “They’re too high, I’m afraid. Very much too high.” He gave her another smile, this one scornful, meant to wound. His stooping figure vanished down the hall.

  She sat again, listening to the faint lobby sounds while a sense of failure consumed her. How stupid she had been to bluff when she held such poor cards. Undoubtedly he could have his pick of half the women in Washington.

  And yet, remembering his eyes, she knew he wanted her. Her breasts, her person—

  What did it matter? She had played all her trumps, and she had still lost. Her despair growing worse, she sat counting rosettes in the carpet pattern until she heard a knock. Like someone rousing from sleep, she turned and saw the old black porter with the pail.

  “You feelin’ all right, ma’am?”

  “Fine, thank you. I was merely a bit dizzy and came in here to rest.”

  Willing herself out of lethargy, she rose. Might it not be a little premature to count failure as a certainty? Setting a high price on her favors could have a reverse effect and make Stout want her all the more. All his back-turning and sneering might be so much sham.

  With these thoughts came another, transformed almost at once into a conviction. This would not be the last time she saw Sam Stout. She didn’t want it to be the last time, and despite his rhetoric about ambition, constituents, his wife, she felt he didn’t either.

  Where would they meet? No way to tell. No matter; it would happen. She left the parlor and strode swiftly, confidently, toward the faint sounds. She noticed that she drew covert stares from gentlemen as she crossed the lobby and went out.

  79

  “IT’S ALL THERE,” SAID the albino. “Where’s the money?”

  “In due time—in due time!”

  Bent’s small dark eyes ran over the closely written pages. The albino, a soft, vulnerable-looking boy of eighteen or nineteen, walked away with a petulant expression. He snatched a piece of straw from one of the bales piled in the shed. His right hand drooped in a limp way as he slipped the straw into his mouth and chewed.

  Bent continued scanning the pages. “You’ll find everything as promised,” the albino said. It sounded like a complaint. “Complete inventory of items the Tredegar is manufacturing—cannon, shell casings, gun carriages, rolled plate for Mr. Mallory’s ironclads. There’s a long list with quantities shown for each. My, uh, friend who got the information together was one of Joe Anderson’s top assistants.”

  Alerted, Bent cleared his throat. “Did you say was?”

  “Yes, Mr. Bascom.” Daintily, he raised his left hand to brush his pretty white hair off the shoulder of his soiled shirt. “He was discharged last week, I regret to say. Some irregularity about payments.”

  “What sort of irregularity?”

  “Something to do with favoring certain suppliers. It doesn’t affect the report. That’s a hundred percent reliable.”

  “Oh, I’m certain it is,” Bent said, nodding. He folded the pages and slipped them into a side pocket of his tentlike coat. He resembled a respectable businessman in his new suit of black alpaca, heavy boots, broad-brimmed black hat and cravat of the same color.

  His mind sped. The poor warped creature, intending to please, had let slip a piece of damaging information. He was now useless as a contact. Bent knew he must act on that information. He wasn’t hesitant about it; Baker had given him wide latitude.

  “I have the money.” He rooted in another pocket. The albino licked his lips. A bell clanged on a night packet moving down the James River & Kanawha Canal at three miles an hour, its lights visible through gaps in the shed wall. The shed was situated among several others on weedy, deserted ground at the foot of Oregon Hill. A short distance downstream, across the canal but on this side of the river, the sprawling Tredegar foundry reddened the night and filled it with the clatter of machinery.

  Bent had not been in the detached service very long, but he already had a grasp of its intricacies, probably because his nature and the nature of the work meshed perfectly. Thus, counting out bills—United States bills, not Confederate; the albino had insisted—he silently ticked off points relative to the situation.

  An inactive contact was potentially dangerous. The albino knew Bent was a Union spy. He could report Bent to the authorities if he felt spiteful, and be no poorer for it. Or, after Bent left Richmond, he could talk too freely, making it unsafe for Bent to return.

  The albino said, “In regard to my gentleman friend who compiled the information—I have to split the proceeds with him, you know. In hard times like these, an extra dollar’s welcome. Also in reference to my friend, I’m not exclusively his, in case—”

  “Some other time,” Bent said, only briefly tempted. He must keep duty and pleasure separate. Besides, the little sod might be diseased, like some of the pitiful males he had seen offering themselves under the trees of Capitol Square. “I think we can consider our business finished.” He handed the money to the albino. “Why don’t you leave first? I’ll extinguish the lantern and follow in a few minutes.”

  “All right, Mr. Bascom.” The albino sounded disappointed.

  “By the way—is your friend still in Richmond?” Bent expected an affirmative answer. It wouldn’t alter his decision about the albino, but it might influence the length of his stay in the city.

  Unexpectedly, the albino said, “No, sir. He went home to Charlottesville for a few days to collect himself. Being sacked by Joe Anderson was a pretty hard blow. He’d worked at the Tredegar ten years. Began as an apprentice, back when the place built locomotives.”

  “Sad,” Bent declared, injecting as much false sympathy as possible. His heart beat fast now, from nerves and anticipation. The albino gave him a last pleading look.

  “Well, then—good night, Mr. Bascom.”

  “Good night.”

  While the albino sauntered to the door and reached for the latch, Bent drew the clasp knife from his coat and silently opened it. The six-inch blade flashed under the hanging lantern.

  The albino heard the swift, heavy tread of Bent’s boots and peeked over his shoulder. Before he could cry out, Bent had his left elbow around the albino’s windpipe. He pushed the knife into the albino’s back. The blade met resistance. He kept pushing until all the metal had disappeared.

  He twisted it one way, then another, to be sure the job was done. The albino pulled at Bent’s left arm but lacked strength to loosen it. His torn shoes scraped and twisted in the dirt. Finally the slight body was limp.

  Bent extricated the bloody knife and gagged only once. He was astonished and pleased about his suitability for this work. He felt sure that since he had never met the albino’s friend, the man would be unable to trace Mr. Bascom or connect him in any way with a Mr. Dayton of Raleigh, North Carolina, who was stopping temporarily at one of the city’s cheaper lodging houses.

  Taking hold of the collar, he dragged the body. It smelled now. He placed it against a wall and concealed it with straw bales pushed in front of it and stacked on top. Then he remembered something, removed two bales, and dug in the dead boy’s pockets till he found the currency. Baker would be glad to have the cash to use again.

  He replaced the bales and with his boot smoothed the dirt floor to remove the most conspicuous signs of disturbance. A
fter a careful inspection, he blew out the lantern and went out the door into the balmy May night. The lights of Richmond twinkled on the hilltop and on either hand. Lamps gleamed on the prison island in the river, and the Tredegar spewed red smoke and light. Bent made his way back along the canal for a short distance, then turned left and climbed toward the center of the city that was mourning for a legend.

  The next day was Wednesday, May 13. In full-dress uniform, including sash and the Solingen sword, Orry walked with a great many other Confederate officers in the funeral procession.

  Behind the officers were hundreds of clerks and minor officials from the statehouse and the city corporation. Directly ahead were Orry’s chief, Seddon, his friend Benjamin, and other cabinet members. Ahead of them, hung with great swags of black crepe, was the carriage of President and Mrs. Davis. The Davises followed the most honored mourners—raggedy veterans who had served with the man the procession honored. The veterans walked or dragged themselves on crutches. A few were borne on litters by tired comrades in butternut or fading gray.

  Ahead of the veterans walked the official military escort, two companies from George Pickett’s division, one of artillery, one of cavalry. Their drummers beat the slow march for the dead.

  Ahead of them, led by a single soldier, was the general’s favorite war charger, Old Sorrel, saddle empty, stirrups tucked up. Ahead of Old Sorrel, drawn by black-plumed horses and with four generals walking at the corners as a special honor guard, was the black hearse containing the body of Thomas Jonathan Jackson.

  Jackson had died on Sunday, after his wound bred pneumonia and bodily poisons and the surgeons lopped off his left arm in a futile attempt to arrest his decline. All day yesterday he had lain in state in the governor’s mansion, his coffin draped in the national flag for which he had fought with such loyalty and ferocity. As the body was being readied for the procession to Capitol Square, Jackson’s widow had finally broken down and been led away.

  On either side of the route of march, Orry saw stricken, tear-stained faces, male and female, soldier and civilian. Even the little children wept. Nothing in recent memory, not even Pelham’s fall, had so devastated the Confederacy. Seddon had whispered to Orry as they stood beside the bier yesterday that Lee was almost beyond consolation.

  It was difficult to believe that Jackson had been slain not by some Yankee but by one of his own, a Confederate soldier who would remain eternally anonymous. Probably the man didn’t know he had fired the fatal bullet.

  Ironic, too, that it had happened immediately after Jackson and Lee had once again gambled brilliantly. Faced with Hooker’s sudden surprise sweep, they had agreed to split their army a second time and send Jackson’s foot cavalry on the swift secret march to the Union right. Jackson had smashed Howard’s corps of Dutchmen and by doing so had perhaps drained all the fight out of Fighting Joe. For whatever reason, Hooker had somehow lost his nerve, withdrawn from a strong offensive position at a key moment, and steadily given ground thereafter. Jubal Early had lost Fredericksburg, but the Yanks had lost the battle of Chancellorsville. The roles of winner and loser might be reversed, however, once the full cost of Jackson’s death was reckoned. Orry thought the victory a hollow one.

  The procession entered Capitol Square through the west gates, where Orry saw his wife in a group of women that included Mrs. Stanard, one of the grandes dames of local society. Benjamin had provided an introduction, and Mrs. Stanard had taken to Madeline instantly, favoring her with the information that she had definitely not taken to Orry’s sister, Mrs. Huntoon, whom she had invited to her salon once only.

  Seeing Madeline cheered him a little. But there wasn’t much to be happy about any more, even setting aside this dark day. In the west, Sam Grant was moving relentlessly on the works around Vicksburg. Men no longer lowered their voices when they discussed impeachment of Davis. And General Winder’s wardens continued to run the overcrowded prisons cruelly, in defiance of frequent inspections and memorandums of protest from Orry and others.

  Cooper was in Richmond, had been for almost a month. His office was in the Mechanics Institute building, so Orry seldom ran into him by accident. Cooper was tragically changed as a result of his son’s death, news of which had stunned Orry and his wife. Uncommunicative, totally uninterested in hospitable overtures and dinner invitations from Madeline, he was lost in his work for Navy Secretary Mallory, whom Orry distrusted, as he distrusted anyone and anything connected with the rival service.

  In recent days, Orry and Madeline had received a visitor from Spotsylvania County, the stylish, intelligent, occasionally sharp-tongued widow with whom Cousin Charles had formed a romantic attachment. With her two Negroes, Augusta Barclay had come flying from Fredericksburg to take up residence on the parlor sofa until Hooker’s withdrawal across the Rapidan became a certainty. She had left only yesterday, her worry about her farm taking precedence over the public rites for Jackson.

  Charles was in love. The widow Barclay didn’t say so, but it was evident to Orry from the way she discussed his cousin. Well, that was Charles’s affair, though these were hardly the best of times for planning a future.

  Nor was Orry enamored of the way Mrs. Barclay sometimes flaunted her learning. She was fond of quoting English poets of the aphoristic school and seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of couplets for all occasions.

  Still, his reaction was essentially a favorable one, as was Madeline’s. Augusta Barclay was undeniably attractive, and during her stay on Marshall Street she had taken pains to see that her freedmen had adequate food and shelter in the backyard in a tent improvised from blankets. She helped Madeline with the cooking and routine chores. And before departing, she said three times that if she could repay their generosity in any way, they must not hesitate to call on her. Orry believed the offer was sincere.

  The hall of the House of Representatives was filled with the sweet fumes of huge floral tributes surrounding the bier and great pyramids of white lilies heaped up beside it. Reluctantly, Orry joined the line of officers shuffling toward the open coffin. When it was his turn to gaze at the bearded head on the satin pillow, he nearly couldn’t do it. He saw a callow and oddly likable West Point plebe, not the strange adult from whose convoluted, some said diseased, mind had come victory after victory. Amidst the lilies, Orry bowed his head and cried.

  Somehow Madeline worked through the crowd and took his arm and held it tightly against her side until he was himself again.

  Like an elephant rousing, Elkanah Bent got out of his disarrayed bed about one that afternoon. He had visited a whorehouse last night and put a black girl to good use. He had returned to the lodging house at dawn, when no one was awake to ask him whether he planned to watch Jackson’s funeral parade. He certainly didn’t. He had no intention of dignifying a traitor’s death with his presence, though he might go take a peek at the body to see how much Jackson had changed since the days when Bent had hazed him. Even then, Jackson had displayed peculiarities; excessive concern for the way his organs hung within his body, for example. More recently, Union officers had jeered at his reluctance to go into battle on Sunday. But the mad old Presbyterian had slaughtered his enemies without pity the other six days of the week. The Union was well shed of him.

  Bent lathered his face, opened his razor case, and set about making himself presentable. He was astonished at the ease with which he had accomplished his mission thus far. Of course he had taken precautions—ridden to Richmond with two pistols and a concealed knife—but the rest had been absurdly simple. Whenever he was stopped, he simply showed the pass forged by one of Baker’s specialists. His speech caused him no trouble because he was in a part of the South in which the mushy accents of the cotton states sounded foreign. Furthermore, Yankees—whores and speculators, mostly—could be found all over town.

  Concerning the female invaders, a barman had given him a piece of advice: “Don’t you fret one minute about the safety of Richmond till you see the Baltimore whores trying to buy train tick
ets. Then you should worry.”

  Too late for breakfast but in plenty of time to eat a huge midday meal, Bent spent an uncomfortable hour with the minor bureaucrats, traveling men, and low-ranking officers who packed the two communal tables in the dining room. The landlady offered him a strip of black satin, something she was providing for every guest. Inwardly contemptuous, he nevertheless thanked her effusively and tied the armband on his left sleeve.

  With the Tredegar information hidden in a special pocket in his coat lining, a pocket he had sewn shut as soon as he filled it, he trudged to Capitol Square and stood in the shuffling line of people who moaned and wept for the dead traitor in a way he found disgusting. When he reached the bier, he hardly recognized the man lying there. But he tried to affect a soulful expression and dabbed at one eye before moving on.

  He was jolted by the sight of two people farther back in line: a man with round glasses, nearly as heavy as Bent but in his opinion considerably less handsome, and a woman whose dark beauty sounded chords of familiarity. He approached an officer standing by himself.

  “Beg pardon, Major—do you happen to know that couple over there? I think the woman may be a distant relative of my wife.”

  The officer couldn’t help him, but a man with the sleek look of a high-ranking government official overheard and said, “Oh, that’s Huntoon. From South Carolina. He has a minor job at Treasury.”

  Bent almost shook with excitement. “South Carolina, you say? Would his wife’s maiden name happen to be Main?”

  He asked the question with such intensity that the civilian’s suspicions were aroused. “I certainly couldn’t tell you that.” Nor would he mention to this fat, sweaty fellow, who looked more speculator than Southerner, that he was acquainted with the woman’s brother, Colonel Main of the War Department. The civilian excused himself quickly.