North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  He forced the nag to gallop up the river road. The salt crows screamed. Why did it sound so much like laughter?

  118

  GRAY WOLVES SLUNK INTO the trenches of the Petersburg line that autumn. Clawed a den in the mud and turned, growling, to wait for their tormentors.

  Gray wolves, they lived on burned corn but wanted most of all another drink or two of blood. Cubs of twenty, they had the eyes of predators grown aged from a hundred seasons of killing.

  Colder weather bleached many of the faces. Others remained sun-red from the summer. Whether white or red; they looked mean, they looked deadly.

  Toting a tin cup, blanket, cartridge box, gun, they had tramped and straggled and fought across the map of the state—plantation boys, farm boys, town boys, feared out of all proportion to their numbers. They had marched to the last rampart on the thickened skin of bare feet, in scarecrow garments, their bellies making wet complaint, their bowels noisy as pipes in a hotel. They crouched in the trenches with nothing left but their nerve and the reputation that was bigger than all of them. Bigger than five times all of them. So big it would outlast all the slogans and speeches and rallying cries they no longer remembered; outlast those who sent them here in an unjust cause; outlast their very bones.

  Gray wolves, they were already passed into legend as the first snow fell. They were the Army of Northern Virginia.

  The sound came from the right of the ruined plank road, gone before Orry could make sense of it. He reined in. So did the two orderlies, young and inexperienced Virginians from Montague’s provisional brigade. The orderlies rode one behind the other on the same horse; because of the scarcity of mounts, doubling up was a common sight on the Petersburg lines.

  The road lay east of Richmond. After fronting north of the James, the division had been shifted even farther from Petersburg, to the extreme left of the defense line. They were presently in position from Battery Dantzler, named for a fellow South Carolinian who had fallen, to Swift Creek. It was nine in the morning, Friday, the day before Christmas.

  The horses, peculiarly nervous in the thick fog, snorted and refused to stand still. Orry’s almost stepped into a gap left by a rotted board; there were many such on the half-demolished road. The woodlands on both sides had an evil look, all black tree trunks, leafless limbs, dark clumps of dormant brush between. The white fog muffled sound and slipped through every tiny space.

  “Did you hear that?” Orry asked. His hand rested on the hilt of the Solingen sword. He and the two orderlies were returning from First Corps headquarters when the sound, loud enough to be heard above that made by the animals, brought them to a halt.

  Wary eyes shifting from tree to tree, both orderlies nodded. “A holler for help, sir,” one said. “Least, I think I heard the word help.”

  “Want us to look, sir?” asked the other. Orry’s instinct said no. They were late, held at headquarters too long, and the fog afforded perfect concealment. One man might be lying out there—or a dozen, armed for an ambush. He tried to recreate the sound in his mind. Like the orderlies, he did believe there was pain in it.

  “I’ll lead the way,” he said.

  The orderlies stepped their horse off the half-demolished planking and walked it to the side so Orry could pass. They drew their revolvers; Orry reached beneath his overcoat and drew his. He nudged his horse forward through the trees at a walk, peering left and ahead and right, then repeating the pattern.

  The atmosphere of the morning depressed him. So did the prospect of Christmas without Madeline. Well, he would surely be back at Mont Royal, reunited with her, this time next year. Sherman was advancing to the ocean in Georgia. The next target of the Union Navy was certain to be Fort Fisher, and when that fell, so would the last open port. Bob Lee, stooped and gray and, it was said, atypically grumpy of late, had only sixty-five thousand hungry, worn-out men to defend a line stretching thirty-five miles from the Williamsburg Road here down to Hatcher’s Run southwest of Petersburg. No one spoke seriously of winning anymore, only of holding on and ending the sad business without dishonor.

  Orry drew a deep, slow breath. Strangely, eerily, the fogbound forest seemed filled with the fragrance of the sweet olive, a scent he associated with South Carolina, and going home.

  A sudden whinny alarmed his mount. He controlled the animal, cocked his revolver, circled the next large tree, and saw a fallen cavalry gelding with a great bleeding tear in its side. It raised its head and thrashed its legs feebly. Orry studied the gear and the saddle. A Union horse, no doubt of that.

  “Where are you?” he called into the fog.

  Silence. Trees dripping moisture. The horse of the orderlies crackling the brush.

  Then: “Here.”

  Orry again walked his mount forward. Over his shoulder he said, “The horse is done for. One of you shoot it.” There was murmured acknowledgment, then the cannon-loud boom of a handgun, the echoes rolling away over the noise of the gelding’s last great thrash.

  Stillness again.

  Passing another tree, Orry saw him, blue leg with yellow stripe stuck forward, left leg folded beneath the other to help brace him against the wet bark of the trunk.

  Eyes met Orry’s. They were full of pain, yet cautious, even cold. The trooper was a heavy-browed, stubble-faced young man, a tough-looking sort. His right hand was wedged near his extended right leg. His left rested on a bloodied rip at the waist of his dark blue coat. A bandage stained brown and yellow encircled his upper left arm. So far as Orry could tell, the Yank had no weapon but his sheathed saber.

  “Found him,” Orry said without turning. The orderlies rode up. The semiconscious Yank watched them with sullen eyes. “One of you take his sword.”

  The orderly riding behind dismounted and stepped forward, shifting his revolver to his left hand. The saber slid out with a steely sound. The orderly coughed. “My God, he’s dirty. Pus and lice and Lord knows what else.” He faced Orry. “Bad wound, Colonel. Belly wound, looks like.”

  “What’s your name and unit, Billy Yank?” the other orderly demanded. The Yank licked his lips while Orry held up his hand.

  “Time for that later.”

  The second orderly registered displeasure as he got down from the saddle. “Might as well shoot him, too, wouldn’t you say, sir? Wounded that way, what chance has he got?”

  True enough. Stomach wounds were usually mortal. It would save their hard-pressed doctors time and effort if he just put a ball through the soldier’s heart and was done with it. That was more humane than leaving him to suffer, and it might be wise from another standpoint as well. Orry distrusted the look in the young trooper’s eyes.

  Then shame flooded in. What sort of monster was he becoming even to entertain such thoughts? Slowly, he maneuvered the uncocked revolver into the holster on his left hip, beneath the overcoat. He dismounted and took pains to stand erect, a strangely courtly figure in spite of his patched and shabby coat of gray with its pinned-up sleeve.

  “We should let the surgeons determine his chances,” he said to the Virginia boys. He stepped toward the wounded trooper, who displayed no gratitude, no emotion at all. Well, Orry understood how emotion could be whipped out of a man by war’s fatigue and pain. His wariness changed to cool pity as he stared down at the trooper, who stared back, forced by his position to look at Orry with a great deal of white showing in his eyes.

  Orry stepped backward two paces to a point between the Yank’s outstretched leg and the orderlies. He turned toward the pair, pointing. “See if we can fashion some of those limbs and a saddle blanket into a litter. Then—”

  He heard the sounds behind him. Saw, at the same instant, the shock and fear on one orderly’s face. Orry’s tall body had momentarily prevented the young men from seeing the wounded Yank, who had used the opportunity to slide a concealed Colt from under his right thigh. He aimed at the back of Orry’s head and fired.

  The booming shot lifted most of the top of Orry’s skull. As he dropped to his knees, already
dead, the cursing, screaming orderlies began pumping shots into the Yank. The bullets jerked him one way, then another, like some berserk marionette. When the shooting stopped, he leaned to the right with a peculiar, peaceful sigh and lay down as if asleep. The trembling orderlies lowered their smoking pieces as the white silence settled again.

  At a few minutes before noon that day, Madeline left Belvedere to walk in the hills. There was an air of jubilation throughout the house, generated by news that had come over the telegraph wire earlier in the morning and spread through all of Lehigh Station within two hours. Three days before, General Sherman had sent an unexpected greeting to the President.

  I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.

  Madeline couldn’t share the mood of celebration. Constance in particular was sensitive to this, and restrained in her remarks about Sherman’s incredible march to the sea. Yet it was easy to detect her delight. Even Brett seemed pleased by the news, though she said nothing to indicate it. All of which made Madeline more than a little resentful.

  She wasn’t proud of the feeling, which she tried to purge as she adjusted her shawl around her shoulders and climbed a path toward one of the rounded summits covered with laurel. The December sun lent the day a welcome warmth. The weather had been unusually mild recently, almost autumnal. She wondered why she had bothered with the shawl.

  From the hilltop, she heard the first clang from a steeple. St. Margaret’s-in-the-Vale, she decided. After just a few weeks, she was able to identify the different churches by their bells. She had learned a lot about the industrial town and received a warm welcome there from the Hazards and all the servants. Yet Lehigh Station remained an alien place. Study it as she would, she couldn’t create the illusion that she belonged here.

  One by one, the other churches began to peal their bells in celebration of the news. Head down, Madeline faced away from the hazy vista of town and factory, obsessed by a single thought: How I wish Orry were here for Christmas.

  Suddenly, feeling something on her neck, she raised her head and turned around. She studied the sky. A wide gray mass showed in the northwest. What she had felt was the wind shifting to a different quarter. It was chilly now.

  She adjusted her shawl again, grateful that she had it. The colder wind began to tug and snap the hem of her skirt. She mustn’t resent the bells, but find joy in them. Every Union victory sped the day when Orry would be free to leave Richmond and rejoin her at Mont Royal. Considered that way, the bells pealed a message of hope.

  The earlier resentment gone, she lingered beneath the rapidly graying sky to listen to the loud, discordant, yet strangely beautiful music from the steeples. The peace of the season slowly filled her and showed her visions of many other Christmases she would share with her beloved Orry. She was happy when she took the downward path again.

  BOOK SIX

  THE JUDGMENTS OF THE LORD

  My views are, sir, that our people are tired of war, feel themselves whipped, and will not fight. Our country is overrun.

  GENERAL JOE JOHNSTON TO JEFFERSON DAVIS, after Appomattox, 1865.

  119

  MR. LONZO PERDUE, POSTAL clerk and third-generation resident of Richmond, was a man beset by miseries. Scores of small signs warned that the Confederacy’s death agony had begun, which meant the death agony of the city as well. Mr. Perdue wanted to rush his beloved wife and daughters away to safety. But where did safety lie with the Yankees so close? And even if he found sanctuary, how would he provide for his dear ones? The money with which the government paid him was worthless. If an officer on leave was lucky enough to find a pair of secondhand boots these days, he would buy them for fifteen hundred Confederate dollars and tip the clerk another five hundred.

  It was January, the coldest in Lonzo Perdue’s memory. The upper crust, a section of the social pie in which no one had ever placed Mr. Perdue, even by mistake, continued to hold parties, which the papers dutifully reported. They were called “starvation parties” now. The nobs attending drank lukewarm dandelion coffee and munched bits of James River ice served on dessert plates.

  Not only were there snow flurries in the freezing air, there was despair. The brigand Sherman was loose in the Carolinas, burning, raping, and pillaging as he had done while crossing Georgia. Admiral Porter had closed on Fort Fisher with a Union flotilla and would soon force a surrender, if he hadn’t already; lately the war news traveled like corn syrup left outdoors overnight.

  Mr. Perdue decided this was because all the news was bad and that egotistical, half-blind bungler Davis didn’t want any more of it to reach the people than was absolutely necessary. In his bureaucratic post, Mr. Perdue naturally heard rumors. The principal ones concerned the President, who was said to be madly suing for peace in secret. As well he might. The Enquirer scathingly asserted that, come spring, not one man in two would be left in the trenches at Petersburg.

  There were harbingers of collapse everywhere. Mrs. Perdue, ever a champion of good works, divided her time between the Soup Association, whose kitchens dispensed a watery potato-flavored liquid to the starving, and a ladies’ circle from St. Paul’s Church that located old pieces of carpet, then sectioned and packed them for shipment to the lines. Each carpet square was intended as a blanket.

  On his way to his daily job, Mr. Perdue no longer stopped to visit with acquaintances encountered on the street. His only overcoat had been donated—foolishly, he now realized—to army collection agents last fall. His only pair of woolen gloves, riddled with holes, kept him about as warm as no gloves whatever.

  Of course he didn’t bump into many acquaintances these days. Wounded soldiers—oh, yes, plenty of those. And roving niggers. But the decent people had deserted the streets. Mr. Perdue no longer ventured out after dark, for those hours now belonged to the sharps who ran the faro banks that were still booming and the pluguglies who made brawls and robberies commonplace and the carriages of the few speculators still enjoying champagne and foie gras—the damned traitors.

  An upright and sober man all his life, Mr. Perdue had now become a suspicious and embittered one who whiffed betrayal and conspiracy everywhere. He was sick of a diet of white beans and a once-weekly portion of slightly gamy sliced turkey washed down with a tiny amount of apple brandy. He loved oysters and hadn’t tasted one for a year, though he presumed King Jeff still dined on them regularly.

  He hated the unseen, unknown powers who had reduced his poor wife and daughters to shabbiness. When they needed pins, they settled for slivers of palmetto. When they needed dress buttons, they dyed small bits of gourd. For his daughter Clytemnestra’s eleventh birthday in December, the only present he had been able to find—and afford—angered him and broke his heart, too. It was a cheap little necklace of silvery iridescent flowers made from fish scales; price, thirty dollars.

  The newspapers confirmed the approaching end in other ways. Theatrical performances were advertised as sold out, the mobs enjoying a final orgiastic revel. Advertisements for runaway slaves appeared infrequently; some days, there were none. Owners knew they had little chance of recovering their property, thanks to the looming military disaster and the wicked pronouncements of the Original Gorilla.

  Mr. Perdue’s ears also told him the end was near. It was an unusual day or night that didn’t include at least one interval of artillery fire from the defense lines to the south. The cannonading had become such a fact of life that it was worrisome if a day or a night passed without any.

  On this particular morning, sunnier than most but still very cold, Mr. Perdue had left his wife in tears. For their daughter Marcelline’s thirteenth birthday two days hence, Mrs. Perdue had struggled to find enough scrap satin to re-cover the girl’s last pair of shoes. That would be her gift. At half past twelve last night, Mrs. Perdue had broken a needle, then broken down when she realized that her estimate of the amount of material needed was wrong. Half of one shoe could not be finished, and she couldn’t buy any more satin to match.

  H
is wife’s plight was another stimulus of Mr. Perdue’s anger. He looked even sourer than usual when he reached Goddin Hall, the four-story brick structure at Eleventh and Bank streets, just below Capitol Square. The first-floor post office shared the building with the Confederate patent office and various army functionaries. Mr. Perdue stuffed his three-fingered gloves in one pocket and started work next to his old post office colleague, Salvarini, the middle-aged son of a noted meat market proprietor who had lately closed his doors, refusing to butcher and sell dogs and cats.

  Salvarini had already dumped two large pouches of incoming mail on the work counter, to be sorted into other crates or cloth and canvas bags lying about. There was little order in the post office anymore and no uniformity in what its employees did or how they did it.

  “My wife’s jaundiced color is worse,” Salvarini said to his friend as they began sorting letters written on brown paper, wallpaper, newspaper—all kinds of paper. “I’ve got to find a doctor.”

  “They’re all in the trenches,” snapped Mr. Perdue. Hands warming at last, he began to whiz letters to the crates and bags or to various Richmond pigeonholes in front of him, with his usual dexterity. “Best thing you can do is consult a leecher.”

  “Is it safe? Are they clean?”

  “I can’t answer either question, but I know they’re available. Read the papers. Dozens of them advertising. I did hear Mrs. Perdue remark that the one opposite the American Hotel is considered among the more reliable—here, what’s this?”

  He held up an envelope distinguished by the fact that it was exactly that—a genuine envelope, properly sealed with a blob of dark blue wax and addressed in a bold hand. The correspondent had identified himself in the upper corner as I. Duncan, Esq.

  “The addresses are getting vaguer by the day,” Mr. Perdue complained. “Look.” He handed the envelope to Salvarini, who studied what was written on it. Maj. Chas. Main, Hampton’s Cavalry Corps, C.S.A.