North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  “Six hundred miles in slightly more than two weeks,” Rosser grumbled. “I’d say they’ve been reading our book.”

  As the evening went on, Charles found himself growing depressed. He said little and watched his friend Fitz with a feeling amounting to envy. For a young man, Fitz had indeed come a long way—and not solely because of family connections. He had a reputation as a good officer, and he had certainly changed his style since Academy days, when he delighted in thumbing his nose at the rules.

  Presently Rosser stood up, putting on his dress hat. “I must go. Pleasure to meet you, Captain Main. Heard good things about you. Hope we’ll see you again.”

  Rosser’s final remark seemed to pass some coded message to Fitz. As the general’s Negro put tin plates of beef and spoon bread before them, Fitz said, “You’re wasting your time with old Hampton, you know. I lost a colonel to gangrene a week ago. His regiment’s yours if you want it.”

  Caught short, Charles stammered, “Fitz, that—well, that’s very flattering.”

  “The devil with that. There are too many problems in this war, right down to and including my rheumatism, for me to squander a minute on flattery. You’re a fine cavalryman, an able leader, and if I may say so, you’re serving with a commander who is not all he should be—now wait. Don’t bristle.”

  “But I’ve been with General Hampton for two years. I signed on with him when he raised his legion in Columbia. He has first claim on my loyalty.”

  “Rightly so. However—”

  “He’s a competent officer and a brave one.”

  “No one doubts Wade Hampton’s courage. But the man is—well—not young. And on occasion he has displayed a certain timidity.”

  “Fitz, with all due respect, please don’t say any more. You’re my friend, but Hampton is the best officer I’ve ever served under.”

  Fitz cooled noticeably. “Do you include General Stuart in that statement?”

  “I’d sooner not elaborate, except on one point. What some call timidity, others call prudence—or wisdom. Hampton concentrates his forces before he attacks. He wants a victory, not casualties or headlines.”

  Fitz practically bit the spoon bread off his fork. “Amos? Get in here with the whiskey.” As the servant poured, Fitz eyed his visitor with disappointment and annoyance. “Your loyalty may be commendable, Charles, but I still insist you’re wasting your talents.” No more nickname; the reunion had soured. “Most every officer who graduated from West Point when we did is a colonel or a major—at minimum.”

  That hurt. Charles took a breath. “For what it’s worth, I was in the promotion line two years ago. I made some mistakes.”

  “I know all about what you term your mistakes. They’re not as serious as you may imagine. Grumble Jones and Beverly Robertson are disciplinarians, too. Both lost elections to colonel because of it. But new commands were found for—”

  “Fitz,” he interrupted, “haven’t I made myself clear? What I’m doing suits me. I don’t want or need a new command.”

  Silence fell in the tent. Outside, the black servant could be heard pottering at his camp stove. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Charles. If you won’t go where you can be most useful, why fight for the South at all?”

  The faint scorn angered Charles. “But I’m not fighting for the South if that means slavery or a separate country. I’m fighting for the place where I live. My land. My home. That’s why most of the men joined up. Sometimes I wonder if Mr. Davis understands that.”

  Fitz shrugged and began to eat quickly. “Sorry to hurry you, but I must make an attempt to get to the ball. By the way, General Lee has announced himself available on Monday. General Stuart has ordered a review.”

  “Another one? What’s he thinking of? Today’s review tired the horses and put the men in bad temper. We should be watching for Yankees north of the river, not expending more energy on military foppery.”

  Fitz cleared his throat. “Let us agree those remarks were never uttered. Thank you for coming, Charles. I’m afraid you will have to excuse me now.”

  The evening taught Charles a gloomy lesson. He and Fitz could no longer be friends. They were divided by rank, by opinion, and by all the political pulling and hauling of command. Next day an incident near Kelly’s Ford deepened his gloom. Scouting northeast of the Rappahannock, beyond the picket outposts, he and Ab stopped at a small farm to water their horses and refill their canteens. The householder, a skinny old man, struck up a conversation. With a bewildered air, he told them that his two elderly slaves, husband and wife, had run off the day before yesterday.

  “Couldn’t get over it. Still can’t. They was always so nice. Smiling, biddable darkies—been that way ever since I bought ’em six years ago.”

  “We had a lot of that in South Carolina,” Charles said. “Folks call it puttin’ on ol’ massa.”

  “Can’t understand it,” the farmer said, staring right through him. “I fed ’em. Didn’t whip ’em but three or four times. I fixed up presents for ’em ever’ Christmas—cakes, little jams and jellies, things like that—”

  “Come on, Ab,” Charles said wearily, while the old man continued to condemn the ingratitude. Charles mounted, and scratched the inside of his left leg. His case of camp itch was worsening. At least the rash wasn’t as bad as the clap that several scouts had caught from camp followers who dignified themselves with the title laundress.

  Bound back toward Brandy Station, Charles pictured the foolish farmer with dismay, then disgust. More and more lately, he saw the peculiar institution for what it was and always had been. The reality of it—from the point of view of those enslaved, anyway—could be nothing less than fear and rage behind a deceptive mask. The kind of mask that had to be worn if the slave meant to survive.

  Gus would understand his feelings about slavery, though he dared not express them to Ab or anyone else with whom he served. He was beginning to think that whereas he was fighting for his home, the politicians in charge of things were fighting for slogans, rhetoric, a “cause.” A wrong one, at that.

  No ladies attended the review on Monday; it was a less pleasant event for that reason. Less pleasant, too, because some idiot invited John Hood, and he brought his entire infantry division. The cavalrymen growled threats of what they would do if a foot soldier dared to taunt them with the familiar, “Mister, where’s your mule?”

  As Charles feared, the review exhausted everyone—and they were supposed to be ready to advance Tuesday morning. He and Ab rode directly from the review field, where they had glimpsed Bob Lee, handsome as ever but graying rapidly, to Hampton’s encampment. Charles’s sleep was restless, and he woke abruptly, jerking his head off the saddle and rolling out of his blanket to bugling and the drummers pounding out the long roll.

  It was just daybreak. The camp was in turmoil. Ab ran up, swirling the fog that had settled during the night. He carried their coffeepot in such a way that Charles knew he hadn’t had a chance to heat it.

  “Off your ass, Charlie. General Stuart paid too damn much attention to the ladies an’ not enough to the bluebellies. A whole cavalry division’s across the river at Beverly Ford.”

  “Whose?”

  “They say it’s Buford’s. He’s got infantry an’ God knows what else. They may be crossin’ at Kelly’s, too. Nobody’s sure.”

  The bugler sounded boots and saddles with several sour notes. “They’s thousands of ’em,” Ab said, dropping the enameled pot. “They come out of the fog an’ took the pickets clean by surprise. We’re s’posed to go along with Butler to scout an’ guard the rear.”

  Whips cracked. Great ships in a sea of soft gray mist, Stuart’s headquarters wagons loomed at the edge of the camp, bound for safety at Culpeper. Damn, Charles thought. Caught napping. But it wouldn’t have happened with Hampton in charge. He grabbed his shotgun and blanket, flung his saddle on his other shoulder, and ran like hell after Ab Woolner.

  Charles knew Ab must have had a hard night. First he yelled at som
e hospital rats scurrying to the surgeons with imaginary complaints, a familiar sight whenever cannonading began. Ab cursed a blue storm when he saw two perfectly good boots lying in weeds. Unshod men, like unshod horses, couldn’t fight and weren’t expected to—and some fucking yellow dog, as Ab characterized him, had shed his boots to escape what looked like a very bad day.

  Riding hard in thinning fog, Charles and Ab soon pulled away from the detachment of Butter’s sent to screen the southern approaches to Fleetwood Hill, where Stuart’s headquarters on high ground was the obvious target of enemy artillery banging away from the southeast. In a small grove of pines above Stevensburg, Charles reined in suddenly. Beyond the trees, half a dozen Union troopers were approaching on a dirt track beside a field of ripening wheat. Alarmingly, Charles saw no sign of the famous mountains of gear the Southern cavalry scornfully termed “Yankee fortifications.” The enemy riders carried weapons, nothing else.

  “Let’s dodge around them, Ab. We’ll get to Stevensburg faster.”

  Haggard, not to say hostile, Ab stared at him. “Let’s kill us some Yanks. Then we’ll get to Stevensburg for sure.”

  “Listen, we’re only supposed to take a look and see whether—”

  “What’s wrong with you, Charlie? Lost your nerve ’cause of that gal?”

  “You son of a bitch—”

  But Ab was already galloping from the pines, double-barrel shotgun booming.

  Any Southerner caught with one of those weapons was subject to hanging, the Yankees said. But the two Ab blew from their saddles would never report him. Dry-mouthed, Charles kneed Sport forward.

  Bullets buzzed by. As soon as he got in range he gave the Yanks both barrels. That disposed of four. The last two wheeled right and plunged into the wheat to escape. Ab pounded toward Stevensburg without a backward glance. Charles hated his friend because he had stated the truth.

  On sunny Fleetwood Hill that afternoon, Jeb Stuart’s cavalry waged a new kind of war. They fought Union troopers who swung sabers and handled their mounts as expertly as any Southern boy raised to hunt and spear the hanging rings on lance point. The Yanks drove Stuart off the hill, and by the time Charles and Ab returned from Stevensburg, every available trooper was being pressed into the fight to regain it. Hampton was back from Beverly Ford, where he had been rushed for the unsuccessful attempt to stop Buford. Two more divisions of Union horse had forced Kelly’s. No wonder; the untalented Robertson commanded that sector.

  Stevensburg, too, had been a disaster. Near there, Frank Hampton had been sabered, then shot to death. Calbraith Butler held his position against the charging Yankees, but at the cost of having a flying shell fragment strike his right foot, nearly blowing it off. The fine troopers of the Fourth Virginia had been routed—a disastrous, confused, angry gallop to the rear—and Charles and Ab had been caught in that for a time.

  At Fleetwood, the squadrons rallied, and Stuart shouted, “Give them the saber, boys!” and the buglers blew Trot and Gallop and finally Charge. Up the slopes they went, in sunshine that quickly dimmed behind smoke and dust.

  Though Charles couldn’t see him, he knew Ab was riding somewhere close by. They had exchanged no words except essential ones since the incident in the pine grove. Charles knew his friend had blurted the accusation because he was tired and tense. But that made it no less telling.

  Sport galloped as he always did when riding to the sound of guns—head up, alert and eager. Charles could feel the gray’s nervousness—it was his own. Horse and rider fused, centaurlike, in a way old cavalry hands took for granted after they had ridden one animal a long time. Old legion sword raised, Charles screamed the rebel yell, along with thousands around him.

  Then they were onto the heights of Fleetwood. Artillery wheeling. Sabers ringing. Pistols flashing. Horses and men tangling. Formations dissolving. Charles fought with a fury he’d never had before. It was necessary to redeem himself in Ab’s eyes. It was necessary because the enemy was a new kind of enemy.

  Blood drops accumulated in his beard. He gave up the sword for the shotgun, the shotgun for the revolver, then went back to the weapon of last resort when he had no time to reload.

  He came upon a dismounted man in gray, reached down to help him. The man struck at him with a rammer staff, nearly took his head off before Charles backed away and thrust his sword into the Yank’s chest. Thick dust was graying many a blue uniform that afternoon. A man could die being a moment late to discern the color.

  As most battles did, the one for the contested hilltop lost shape and organization and soon swirled into many small, ugly skirmishes. The rebels regained the heights, lost them, rallied to take them again. Riding up a second time, Charles nearly slammed into a knot of Union troopers. He raised his sword in time to parry that of a hot-eyed officer with flowing hair and a red scarf knotted at his throat.

  Pushing, pushing down, his sword against Charles’s, their horses neighing and shoving, the lieutenant sneered, “Your servant, Reb—”

  “I’m not yours.” Charles spat in the Yank’s face to gain advantage, and would have stabbed him through had not the officer’s horse stumbled. Circus rider gone mad, said a voice in his memory as the Yank’s eyes locked with his for an instant.

  The horse fell; the Yank disappeared. Neither man would forget the other.

  “Look sharp, Charlie,” Ab shouted above the cannonading, the sabers clashing and sparking, the wounded crying out. Through dust clouds, Charles had a blurry view of Ab pointing behind him. He twisted, saw a Yank sergeant raise a huge pistol.

  Ab closed in on the Yank. Using his empty revolver as a club, he chopped at the sergeant’s arm. The sergeant changed his aim and shot Ab in the chest at a range of two feet.

  “Ab!” A scream did no good. Ab was already gone, sliding sideways, his eyes open but no longer comprehending who or where he was—had been—as he sank from sight. The sergeant vanished in the melee.

  Teeth clenched, Charles parried a cut from a Union trooper ramming his horse into Sport. Clang—the trooper hit a second time. Sparks hissed and leaped where metal edges met.

  The trooper fought his bucking horse. He was a redhead, scarcely twenty, with a foolish grin showing under his big red mustaches.

  “Lost your nerve?” Ab died thinking that. Saved me in spite of it—

  “Got you this time,” the redhead shouted. With a curse and a skillful dodge, Charles escaped the sword and put his own halfway through the boy’s throat. He pulled it out with no remorse. Ab was right: Gus had softened and weakened him. It had taken this bloody June day to reveal the truth.

  Driving on up to the heights of Fleetwood again, Charles suddenly realized a riderless horse was running beside Sport. It was Ab’s mount, Cyclone. The animal kept on toward the sound of the guns. A bursting grape canister put out one of its eyes and opened a wound in its head. Like any brave, battle-trained war horse, Cyclone didn’t neigh or bellow. Cyclone plowed on, slower but still moving forward in blood and silent pain until the wounds and the angle of the slope became too much, and it knelt down on its forelegs, wanting to continue but unable.

  Charles sabered like a madman, weaving and feinting so fast, no one could touch him. Then another Yank charged; an ungainly man with the coaly hair and heavy-cream skin and blue eyes of the black Irish. The Yank wore corporal’s chevrons and swore at Charles in a tongue he took to be Gaelic. Charles fought him nearly four minutes, blocking cuts, striking the Yank’s left shoulder, parrying again, finally running him through the belly. He struck the man’s ribs, yanked out the sword, and stabbed again.

  The horses bucked and bumped each other. The Irishman swayed. Charles stabbed him a third time. What keeps him up? Why won’t he fall? Why couldn’t the hapless fools be dragged out of the saddle any more? Who had taught them to ride and fight so fiercely?

  “Damned pernicious traitor,” cried the trebly wounded Irishman, sounding exactly like a Maine cadet Charles had known at West Point. Were the Yanks also making troopers of lobst
ermen? God help the South if they could accomplish miracles like that.

  A fourth stroke sent the corporal down, sliding sideways, unable to free himself from his right stirrup. An artillery limber rolled over his head and pushed it deep in soft brown loam. The man had been a devil; Charles shook with terror for more than a minute.

  In the end the Southerners won and held the hill. But the Union reconnaissance in force had achieved its objective. Lee’s army was found.

  The Yanks achieved a second, unplanned, objective as well. They put a sword deep into the confidence of the Confederate cavalry. Charles knew it when he fought the Irishman with the Down East voice.

  Pleasanton ordered a general retreat before dark. As the sun sank and the wind cleared Fleetwood of smoke and dust, legions of glistening bluebottle flies descended on the trampled red grass. The turkey buzzards sailed out of the twilight sky. Charles rode through the detritus of the charges and countercharges he could no longer count or remember separately. He searched until he found Ab’s body, a hundred yards beyond the place where he had died. The carrion birds had already reached his face. Charles waved off the birds, but one rose with a piece of pink flesh in its beak. Charles pulled his Colt and killed the bird.

  He buried Ab in some woods south of the railroad line, using a borrowed trenching tool. As he dug, he tried to find comfort in the memory of good times he and Ab had shared. There wasn’t any.

  He put Ab into the hole in the ground, then squatted at the edge, deliberating. A minute passed. He unbuttoned his shirt and lifted the thong over his head. He studied the handmade sack containing the book with the ball embedded in it. The book hadn’t protected him, it had emasculated him. He threw the bag in the grave and began to shovel dirt to fill the hole.

  He had seen General Hampton a number of times during the fighting, whirling that great Crusader’s sword and galloping ahead of his men, as good cavalry generals always did. That night Charles saw him again. The loss of his brother made Hampton look like an old man.