by John Jakes
Down they went, one labored step at a time. Billy held fast to the crutch and now and then uttered a little groan. What in hell had they done to him? Charles’s anger rapidly grew as strong as his fear of discovery.
The second floor. Billy sweated and breathed hard. More men watching. Charles yanked his revolver from under the poncho. “Step lively, or I’ll blow your sonofabitching head off.” He shoved he muzzle in Billy’s back, almost tumbling Billy down the stairs headfirst.
Ground floor. The duty corporal stood. Held out his hand. “I’ll take back the release order, if you please.”
Charles fished it from his pocket, hoping the forged signature would pass muster. They were so close now, just steps away from the doors leading out to Cary, where dust and rubbish rushed on winds of near gale force. The corporal shut the order in the drawer and remained standing, regarding Charles and his prisoner with an unreadable expression.
Six steps to the bottom and the doors.
Four.
Two.
Billy rested his head against the bilious wall. “Give me a minute—”
Hurry, Charles shouted in silence, darting down to the doors so he could turn and observe the duty corporal. The corporal was frowning, sensing something amiss—
“Hurry it up, or I’ll drag you by the heels.”
Billy gulped, pushed away from the wall, struggled down the next step. Charles thrust the door open, feeling the wind’s force on the other side. From under his hat brim he continued to watch the corporal, counting the seconds till they escaped his scrutiny. The corporal represented the maximum threat, Charles felt—discovering his error when he turned in the doorway. There stood the blond guard, musket raised, blue eyes glaring.
“Where are you taking that prisoner?”
“Does everyone have to answer to you, Vesey?” Billy mumbled, immediately conveying to Charles some special animosity between himself and the guard.
“I don’t answer to any pissant private,” Charles said. “One side.”
“Hey, Bull, where are they taking this Yank?” Vesey shouted to the duty corporal.
“Provost’s office. For questioning.”
“Provost?” Vesey repeated, while Charles took Billy’s elbow to help him down the first step. “Mr. Quincy was here not an hour ago, while you were at supper. He didn’t say anything about springing a prisoner.”
The pale eyes widened. “You!” He aimed the musket at Charles. “Hold it right there. I know every one of General Winder’s boys, and you aren’t one of them. Something’s fish—”
Charles smashed the barrel of his Colt against Vesey’s head.
102
VESEY YELLED AND RECOILED against the building. His musket tumbled over the stair rail. Inside, the corporal shouted to raise the alarm. “Go on, around the corner,” Charles told Billy, an instant before Vesey lunged at him with both hands.
Charles thrust the hands away, flung Vesey against the doors so the corporal, pushing from inside, had trouble opening them. Charles started down the steps. Again Vesey tried to grab him. Two fingernails ripped a bloody track down Charles’s cheek. Pain, anger, desperation brought instant response; Charles jammed the Colt into Vesey’s stomach and shot him.
Vesey screamed and died toppling. That noise of the shot went rushing away on the wind. Charles saw that Billy had fallen on hands and knees at the foot of the steps. Charles ran down to him. The corporal inside didn’t open the doors, though now he could have. He resumed his shouting instead.
“Come on,” Charles said, jerking Billy to his feet too roughly; Billy uttered a low cry. Inside Libby, Charles heard more and more voices, a whole baying chorus. At the corner of Twenty-second and Cary, a picket appeared, musket raised. He was young, inexperienced, hesitant. That was worth a few more seconds. Charles forced Billy rapidly to the opposite corner, Twenty-first, where they nearly collided with another picket, who appeared suddenly. Charles pointed the Colt at the boy’s face.
“Run or you’re dead, youngster.”
The picket dropped his musket and ran.
But one more was dashing up the slope of Twenty-first from the river side of the building. Charles hastily untied Sport, shoved his boot in the stirrup, mounted, and fired a shot across his saddle to turn back the running guard. Tightly reining the nervous gray, he pulled his left foot back and thrust his free hand downward.
“Grab hold and use the stirrup. Quick!”
Billy groaned at the exertion, and so did Charles. He fired again to keep the guard cowering. When he felt Billy settle into place behind him, he shouted, “Hang on, Bunk,” and spurred the gray the short distance up to Cary. His friend’s Academy nickname had come back without thought.
Three pickets gathered on the corner to fire at them as Sport carried them by. Billy wrapped his arms around Charles’s poncho and held fast. One shot boomed, then two more. All three missed. The gray galloped away into howling wind.
In an alley a mile from the prison, Billy donned the butternut pants and corduroy shirt unpacked from a blanket roll on the saddle.
“Jesus,” Charles said as he handed Billy the gray jacket.
“What’s wrong?”
“I killed that guard. Didn’t even stop to think about it.”
“You deserve a medal.”
“For shooting a boy?”
“You did every man in Libby Prison a service. That guard is the bastard who put me in this condition.”
“That right? Then I feel better. Glad I did it.” Charles smiled in a way that made Billy shiver. He gave Billy the last article from the blanket roll, a kepi. “Let’s go.”
Billy waited in the darkness with Sport while Charles entered the stable where he had previously arranged to hire a mule for the night. “Get him back by eight in the morning,” the sleepy liveryman said. “I got another customer.”
“Guaranteed,” Charles said, leading the balking animal into the dark.
He had his pass, and Billy had the one Orry had forged, so they traveled north through the defense lines without incident. They dismounted in an orchard, and Charles gave his friend a second smaller, bundle.
“That’s a little hardtack and sliced ham Madeline fixed up. I wish I had a gun for you, or more gear, so you’d look more like a furloughed soldier.”
“I’ll make it the way I am,” Billy promised. “What I wish for is more time for the two of us to catch up on things.” Once past the last picket post, they had hardly stopped talking, covering the whereabouts and fortunes of most of the members of both families. Charles learned why the guard at the prison entrance had taken special interest in Billy; the story of the ride on the caisson wheel disgusted him and, as a Southerner, shamed him, too.
Now he said, “I’d like to take you to see Orry and Madeline, but it’s better if you put some miles between yourself and Richmond before daylight. With a spot of luck, you should be all right even if you’re stopped and questioned. The pass will take you through. When you reach your own lines, don’t forget to ditch the cap and jacket.”
“I won’t—and I’ll approach with my hands high in the air, believe me.”
Both were trying to minimize what lay ahead for him: hours of riding, patrols on the road, hunger, anxiety. And all of it made worse by his weakened condition. There was plenty to contend with, and Billy knew it. But there was also hope now. A goal. The safety of his own side.
The chance to write Brett with miraculous news.
The wind tore petals from the trees and whirled them around the two friends in the spring dark, each a little awkward with the other because the intervening years had made them near-strangers.
“Bison.”
Eyes fixed on the Richmond road, Charles said, “Um?”
“You saved me once before. Now I’ll never get out of your debt.”
“Just get out of the Confederacy; that’s good enough. That’ll make me happy.”
“My worst problem’s liable to be my accent. If I have to answer questions—
”
“Speak slowly. Like—this—here. Drop some of your g’s and tell ’em you’re from out West. Nobody in Virginia really knows how a Missouri reb talks.”
Billy smiled. “Good idea. I was stationed in St. Louis—I can pass.” More soberly: “You told me about Orry’s marriage and a lot of other things, but you haven’t said a word about yourself. How have you been getting along? What command are you with?”
“I’m a scout for General Wade Hampton’s cavalry, and I’m getting along fine,” Charles lied. “I’d be getting along a hell of a lot better if this war was over. I guess it will be soon.”
He thought of saying something about Gus. But why mention a relationship that had to end? “I’d like to talk all night, but you ought to go.”
“Yes, I guess I should.” Billy patted his pocket to be sure he had the pass. Then, with slow, pained movements, he mounted the mule. Charles didn’t help him; Billy had to do it himself.
Once Billy was in the saddle, Charles stepped forward. They clasped hands.
“Safe journey. My love to Cousin Brett when you see her.”
“Mine to Madeline and Orry. I know what he risked to help me. You, too.”
The laugh was dry and forced. “West Point looks after its own, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t joke, Bison. I’ll never be able to repay you.”
“I don’t expect it. Just stay away from our bullets for the next eight or ten months, and then we can have a good, long visit in Pennsylvania or South Carolina. Now get going.”
“God bless you, Bison.”
In a surprisingly strong voice, Billy hawed to the mule and rode rapidly out of the orchard. He was soon gone in the darkness.
Petals blew around Charles, a light, sweet cloud, as he thought, He’ll either make it or he won’t. I did all I could. He was unable to forget the dead guard, but it had nothing to do with regrets about killing him.
He felt drained. He wanted whiskey. “Come on,” he said to the gray, and mounted.
The clock chimed four. Bare feet stretched to a hassock,
Charles swirled the last of the bourbon in the bottom of the glass, then swallowed it.
“I got scared and shot him. Panic—that’s the only word for it.”
Madeline said, “I imagine killing someone, even an enemy, isn’t easy.”
“Oh, you get used to it,” Charles said. She and Orry exchanged swift looks that he didn’t see. “Anyway, the guard was the one who tortured Billy. The reason it bothers me is, I lost control. I’ve seen the elephant often enough. I thought I could handle tight spots.”
“But how many prison escapes have you staged?” Orry asked.
“Yes, there’s that.” Charles nodded, but he remained unconvinced.
“How did Billy look?” Madeline asked.
“White and sickly. Feeble as the devil. I don’t know if he can make it even halfway to the Rapidan.”
“How is Brett? Did he say?”
Charles answered her with a shake of his head. “He hasn’t heard from Brett in months. That guard, Vesey, destroyed every letter Billy wrote, so I’d guess he destroyed any that came in, too. Orry, can you spare some cash for the liveryman? He’ll never see his mule again.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Orry promised.
Charles yawned. He was worn out, ashamed of his loss of self-control, and most of all saddened by the reunion with Billy. It seemed to him their talk had been trivial and difficult to carry on. Years of separation, their service on different sides—everything took its toll. They were friends and foes at the same time, and every halting sentence they had spoken expressed that without words.
“One more drink, and I’m going to get some sleep,” he announced. “I’d like to be out of Richmond early in the morning. We’ll be in the field soon—” He extended his glass to Orry; the liquor trickled noisily from the brown bottle. “Have you heard Grant’s bringing a new cavalry commander from the West? Phil Sheridan. I knew him at West Point. Tough little Irishman. Greatest man with a cussword I ever met. I hate to see him in Virginia. Still—”
He tossed off the two inches with a speed that made Madeline frown. “It just means things will wind up that much faster.”
Orry watched him a moment. “You don’t think we can win?”
“Do you?”
Orry sat still, his gaze wandering through the pattern of the carpet.
Presently Charles stretched and yawned again. “Hell,” he said, “I’m not even sure we can sue for peace on favorable terms. Not with Unconditional Surrender Grant turning the screw.”
“I knew him,” Orry mused. “We drank beer together in Mexico.”
“What’s he like?”
“Oh, it’s been years since I saw him. Our keen-minded Southern journalists scorn him for being round-shouldered and slovenly. Really important considerations, eh? Ask Pete Longstreet whether he respects Sam Grant. Ask Dick Ewell. Three years ago, Ewell said there was an obscure West Point man somewhere in Missouri whom he hoped the Yankees would never discover. He said he feared him more than all the others put together.”
“God help us,” Charles remarked, reaching for a blanket. “Would it be all right with you two if I went to sleep now?” Orry turned off the gas, and he and Madeline said good night. Still fully dressed, Charles rolled up in the blanket and shut his eyes.
He found it hard to rest. Too many ghosts had arisen and roamed tonight.
He dragged the blanket against his cheek. He didn’t want to think about it. Not about Billy in enemy country, riding for his life. Not about the Union horse already surprisingly good but now with a chance at supremacy under Sheridan. Not about Grant, who preached something called “enlightened warfare,” which meant, so far as he could make out, throwing your men away like matchsticks because you always had more.
He fell asleep as some distant steeple rang five. He slept an hour, dreaming of Gus, and of Billy lying in a sunlit field, pierced by bullet holes thick and black with swarming flies.
When he woke, the comforting aroma of the Marshall Street substitute for coffee permeated the flat. In the first wan light, he trudged to the privy behind the building, then returned and splashed water on his face and hands and sat down opposite his cousin over cups of the strong brew Madeline poured for them.
Orry’s expression indicated something serious was on his mind. Charles waited till his cousin came out with it.
“We had so much to talk about last night, I never got to the other bad news.”
“Trouble back home?”
“No. Right here in the city. I uncovered a plot to assassinate the President and members of his cabinet.” Disbelief prompted Charles to smile; Orry’s somber expression restrained him. “Someone well known and close to both of us is involved.”
“Who?”
“Your cousin. My sister.”
“Ashton?”
“Yes.”
“Great balls of Union-blue fire,” Charles said, in the same tone he might have taken if someone had told him the paymaster would be late again. He was startled to probe his feelings and find so little astonishment; scarcely more than mild surprise. There was a hardening center in him that nothing much could reach, let alone affect.
Orry described all that had happened thus far, beginning with Mrs. Halloran’s visit and ending with the abrupt and mysterious disappearance of the chief conspirator and the arms and ammunition Orry had seen at the farm downriver on the James.
“For a few days after that, I thought I was crazy. I’ve gotten over it. They may have highly placed friends helping them cover the trail, and I know what I saw. The plot’s real, Huntoon’s involved, and so is Ashton.”
“What are you going to do?”
Orry’s stare told Charles he wasn’t the only one whose hide had thickened.
“I’m going to catch her.”
103
THEY SURPRISED HIM ON the creek bank at first light, creeping up while he slept. None of the three identified him
self. He named them silently—Scars, One Thumb, Hound Face. All of them wore tattered Confederate uniforms.
To allay suspicion, he shared the last of his hardtack and ham. They shared their experiences of the past few days. Not to be sociable, Billy guessed, merely to fill the silence of the May morning.
“Grant put a hundred thousand into the Wilderness ’gainst our sixty or so. It got so fierce, the trees caught on fire, and our boys either choked to death on the smoke or burned up when the branches dropped on ’em.” One Thumb, whose left eyelid drooped noticeably, shook his head and laid the last morsel of ham in his toothless mouth.
“How far are the lines?” Billy asked.
Hound Face answered, “Twenty, thirty mile. Would you say that?” His companions nodded. “But we all are goin’ the other way. Back to Alabam.” He gave Billy a searching look, awaiting reaction; condemnation, perhaps.
“The omens are bad,” One Thumb resumed. “Old Pete Longstreet, he was wounded by a bullet from our side, just like Stonewall a year ago. And I hear tell Jeff Davis’s little boy fell off a White House balcony a few days ago. Killed him. Like I say—bad omens.”
Scars, the oldest, wiped grease from his mouth. “Mighty kind of you to share your grub, Missouri. We ain’t got much of anythin’ to aid us on our way home”—smoothly, he pulled his side arm and pointed it at Billy—“so we’ll be obliged if you don’t fuss an’ help us out.”
They disappeared five minutes later, having taken his mule and his pass.
Lanterns shone on the bare-chested black men. The May dark resounded with shouting, the clang and bang of rails being unloaded from a flatcar, the pound of mallets, the honk of frogs in the marshy lowlands near the Potomac. A group of George’s men seized each rail, ran it forward, and dropped it on crossties laid only moments before. The rail carriers jumped aside to make room for men with mauls and buckets of spikes. It was the night of May 9; more accurately, the morning of May 10. Repair work to reopen the damaged Aquia Creek & Fredericksburg line down to Falmouth had been under way since dawn yesterday.
