Light blazed at him. All the fliers he hadn’t been able to find packed the inside of the tent. They lacked only a coating of olive oil to be sardines in a can. Tom Innis pressed a pint of whiskey into Moss’ hand. “Congratulations!” everybody shouted.
Moss stared in astonishment. “What the devil-!” he blurted.
Laughter erupted and rolled over him in waves. “He doesn’t even know!” Dud Dudley hooted.
“Clear a space and we’ll show him, then,” Captain Pruitt said.
Clearing a space wasn’t easy. A few people, grumbling, had to go outside. When Moss finally saw Pruitt’s desk, it was for once clear of papers. A cake sat on top of it instead, a rectangular cake with white frosting. A big chocolate symbol turned it into an enormous playing card, with chocolate A’s at the appropriate corners.
“My God!” Moss said. “Was that my fifth?” He counted on his fingers. “Jesus, I guess it was.”
“Here we have something new,” Pruitt observed: “the unintentional ace.”
More laughter rang out. Dud Dudley said, “It’s a good thing you finally showed up. We were going to eat this beauty without you in a couple of minutes, and then spend the next five years gloating about it.”
“Give me a piece,” Moss said fiercely.
“You want a piece, go to the brothel,” Innis told him. “You want some cake, stay here.” A bayonet lay next to the cake. He picked it up and started slicing.
Cake and whiskey wasn’t a combination Moss had had before. After he’d taken a couple of good swigs from the pint, he didn’t much care. The hooch was good, the cake was good, the company was good, and he didn’t think at all about the man he’d killed to earn the celebration.
IX
Jake Featherston went from gun to gun, making sure all six howitzers in the battery were well positioned, supplied with shells, and ready to open up if the Yankees decided to pay the trenches a call. He didn’t think that would happen; the drive through Maryland had taken an even crueler toll on U.S. forces than on those of the Confederacy, and the latest Yankee push had drowned in an ocean of blood a couple of days before.
All the same, he made sure he hunted up Caleb Meadows, the next most senior sergeant in the battery, and said, “You know what to give the damnyankees if they hit us while I’m gone and you’re in charge.”
“Sure do.” Meadows’ Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he spoke. He was a scrawny, gangly man who spoke as if he thought somebody was counting how many words he said. “Two guns sighted on that ridge they got, two right in front of our line, and t’other two ready for whatever happens.”
“That’s it,” Jake agreed. “I expect I’ll be back by suppertime.”
Meadows nodded. He didn’t say anything. That was in character. He didn’t salute, either. How could he, when he and Featherston were both sergeants? Jake had commanded the battery ever since Captain Stuart went out in a blaze of glory. He was still a sergeant. He didn’t like still being a sergeant.
He went back through Ceresville, past a couple of mills that had stood, by the look of what was left of them, since the days of the Revolutionary War. They weren’t standing any more. U.S. guns had seen to that.
The bridge over the Monocacy still did stand, though the ground all around both ends of it had been chewed up by searching guns. Military policemen stood on the northeastern bank, rifles at the ready, to keep unauthorized personnel from crossing. Jake dug in his pocket, produced his pass, and displayed it to one of the men with a shiny MP’s gorget held on his neck by a length of chain. The fellow examined it, looked sour at being unable to find anything irregular, and waved him across.
He had to ask several times before he could find his way to the headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia. They were farther back toward Frederick than he’d thought, probably to make sure no long-range U.S. shells came to pay them a call. Once he got into the tent city, he had to ask for more directions to get to Intelligence.
A corporal who looked more like a young college professor was clacking away on a typewriter inside the flap of the tent, which was big enough to be partitioned off into cubicles. He finished the sentence he was on before looking up and saying, “Yes, Sergeant?” His tone said he outranked Featherston regardless of how many stripes each of them wore on his sleeve.
“I have an appointment with Major Potter.” Jake displayed his pass once more.
The corporal examined it more carefully than the military policeman had done. He nodded. “One moment.” He vanished into the bowels of the tent. When he came back, he waved for Jake to accompany him.
Major Clarence Potter was typing, too. Unlike the corporal, he broke off as soon as he saw Featherston. “Sit down, Sergeant,” he said, and then, to the noncom who’d escorted Jake back to him, “Fetch Sergeant Featherston a cup of coffee, why don’t you, Harold? Thanks.” It was an order, but a polite one.
“Good coffee,” Jake said a minute or so later. You couldn’t make coffee this tasty up near the front, not when you were brewing it in a hurry in a pot you hardly ever got the chance to wash. Jake realized he couldn’t complain too much, not when the infantry hardly boasted a pot to their name, but made their joe in old tin cans.
“I’d say you’ve earned good coffee,” Major Potter said equably. “Glad you like it. We get the beans shipped up from a coffeehouse in Washington. But enough of that.” He glanced down to whatever paper he had in the typewriter. “I’d say you’ve earned any number of things, but my opinion is not always the one that counts. Which is, I suppose, why you asked to see me today.”
“Yes, sir,” Featherston said. And then, as he’d feared it would, all the frustration came boiling to the top: “Sir, who the devil do I have to kill to get myself promoted in this man’s Army?”
Potter frowned at him. The major didn’t look like much, not till you saw his eyes. Sniper’s eyes, the soldiers called a glance like that: they didn’t necessarily mean the fellow who had them was good with a rifle, only that you didn’t want to get on his bad side or he’d make you pay. But Jake was also frowning, too purely ticked off at the world to give a damn about what happened next.
And Potter looked down first. He fiddled with some of the papers on his desk, then sighed. “I’m afraid killing Yankees doesn’t do the job, Sergeant. I wish it did. It’s the criterion I’d use. But, as I told you, my views, while they have some weight, are not the governing ones.”
“I been running that battery every since Captain Stuart went down, sir,” Jake said, and Clarence Potter nodded. “We’ve fought just as good with me in charge of things as we did with him, maybe better. Besides”-he had enough sense to hold his voice down, but he couldn’t keep the fury out of it-“that damned fool would have got every man jack of us killed for nothin’ better than him goin’ out in a blaze of glory. We would have lost every man and every gun we had.”
“I don’t doubt it for a moment,” Major Potter said. “But you asked whom you had to kill to get a promotion, Sergeant?” After waiting for Featherston to nod in turn, he went on, “The plain answer is, you will never be promoted in the First Richmond Howitzers, and you are most unlikely to win promotion anywhere in the Confederate States Army, for the simple reason that you killed Captain Jeb Stuart III.”
Jake stared at him. Potter was dead serious. “I didn’t, sir, and you know I didn’t,” Jake said, holding up one hand to deny the charge. “When I was starting to move the battery out, I did everything I could to get him to come along. He stopped me. He stopped the whole battery. If the damnyankees hadn’t shot him, he would have kept us there till they overran us.”
“‘If the damnyankees hadn’t shot him,’” Potter repeated. “And why, Sergeant, did he put himself in a position where the Yankees were able to shoot him so easily?”
“You ought to know, sir,” Jake answered. “On account of the trouble he got into with you for keeping that snake-in-the-grass nigger Pompey around and not letting anybody find out the son of a bitch really was a
Red.”
“That’s right,” Major Potter said. “And, having fallen under a cloud, he did the noble thing and fell on his sword, too-or the modern equivalent, at any rate.” His nostrils twitched; by the way he said the noble thing, he meant something more like the boneheaded thing. “But now we come down to it. Who was it, Sergeant Featherston, who first alerted Army of Northern Virginia Intelligence to the possibility that there might be something wrong with this Pompey?”
When a heavy shell landed close to the battery, it picked you up and slammed you down and did its level best to tear your insides out right through your nose and mouth and ears. That was how Jake Featherston felt now, sitting in a wood-and-canvas folding chair in a tent too far back of the line to have to worry about shellfire. “Christ,” he said hoarsely. “They’re blaming me.”
“Of course they are.” Major Potter’s manner was as mild as his appearance; to look at him or listen to him, you’d peg him for a schoolteacher-until you noticed what he had to say. “You wouldn’t expect them to blame Jeb Stuart III, would you? All he did, Sergeant, was cause the suppression of an investigation. If some low, crass individual hadn’t mentioned this Pompey’s name, no one would have needed an investigation in the first place, and Captain Stuart could have continued on his brave, empty-headed track toward a general’s stars and wreath.”
Featherston stared at the Intelligence officer again, this time for an altogether different reason. Once he’d drunk the stuff the Russians cooked up from potatoes. It didn’t taste like anything, so he hadn’t thought he was drunk-till he tried to stand up and fell over instead. Potter’s words were like that. They unexpectedly turned the whole world sideways.
“That’s not fair, sir,” Jake said. “That’s-”
“Shooting the messenger for bad news?” Potter suggested. “Of course it is. What do you expect? That they should blame their own? Not likely, Sergeant. You must know the First Richmond Howitzers are a blue-blood regiment if ever there was one. You must know Jeb Stuart, Jr., has a fancy office in the War Department down in Richmond, from which he sends eager young men out to die for their country. I’ve done everything I can for you, Sergeant. I know your record. I’ve urged your promotion. Set that against the traditions of the First Richmond Howitzers and the animus of Jeb Stuart, Jr., and it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. I’m sorry.”
“If I transfer out, I’ll be-”
“A sergeant, I’m afraid, till your dying day,” Major Potter interrupted. “Jeb Stuart III blighted his career by being wrong. You’ve blighted yours by being right. Sergeant Featherston, I am sorry. I feel I ought to apologize for the entire Confederate States of America. But there’s not one damned thing I can do about it. Have you got any more questions?”
“No, sir.” Jake got to his feet. “If that’s how it is, then that’s how it is. But if that’s how it is, then something stinks down in Richmond. Sir.”
He figured he’d said too much there. But Clarence Potter slowly nodded. “Something does stink down in Richmond. If we try to root it out now, we’re liable to lose the war in the confusion that would follow. But if we don’t try to root it out, we’re liable to lose the war from the confusion it causes. Again, I have no good answers for you. I wish I did.”
Featherston saluted. “Thank you for trying, sir. I hope you don’t end up hurt on account of that. All I’ve got to say is, sooner or later there has to be a reckoning. All these damn fools in fancy uniforms who let the niggers rise up without having a notion they were going to, all the damn fools who can’t think of anything past promoting their friends and relations-they ought to pay the price. Yes, sir, they ought to pay the price.”
“That’s a political decision, not one for the military,” Potter said.
“If that’s what it is-” Jake broke off. He saluted again and left the tent, heading back to his battery. All right, he wasn’t going to be a lieutenant. He had a goal even so.
Major Abner Dowling hurried into the fancy house on the outskirts of Bowling Green, Kentucky. “Here’s the motorcar, sir, come to take you back toward Bremen,” he called loudly-you had to call loudly, if you expected General Custer to hear you.
Libbie Custer heard him. She was sitting in the parlor, reading Harper’s. Her expression became remarkably similar to that of a snapping turtle on the point of biting. Back in Bremen was Olivia. She didn’t know-Dowling didn’t think she knew-about Olivia, not in particular, but she knew there was someone like Olivia back there, and she didn’t like it for beans. But the car had been laid on not at General Custer’s instance, but at that of the Secretary of War, and she couldn’t do anything about it. No wonder she looked ready to chomp down on a broom handle.
And here came Custer, looking no happier himself. “This is all a pack of nonsense and idiocy,” he said loudly. “Why don’t they leave a man alone so he can run a proper campaign? But no, that doesn’t satisfy them. Nothing satisfies them. Pack of ghouls and vultures is what they are back in Philadelphia, crunching the bones of good men’s reputations.”
At first, Dowling thought that soliloquy was delivered for Libbie’s benefit. But Custer kept on grumbling, louder than ever, after he went outside and waddled toward the green-gray-painted Ford waiting for him in front of his residence. The driver scrambled out and opened the door to the rear seat for him and Dowling. Neither of them was thin, which made that rear seat uncomfortably intimate.
As they rattled off toward the northwest, Custer leaned forward and asked the driver, “What is this stupid barrel thing you’re taking me to see? Some newfangled invention, I don’t doubt. Well, let me tell you, Lieutenant, I am of the opinion that the world has seen too many new inventions already. What do you think of that?”
“Sir,” the driver said, a gloriously unresponsive but polite answer. Dowling didn’t know whether to wish the First Army commander would shut up or to hope he’d go on blathering and at long last give the War Department enough rope to hang him.
A couple of miles later, Custer ordered the driver to stop so he could get out and stand behind a tree. Along with so much of the rest of him, his kidneys weren’t what they had been forty years earlier. He came back looking even more dissatisfied with the world than he had when he’d scrambled up into the motorcar.
The road ran roughly parallel to the railroad line. Every so often, it would swing away, only to return. At one of the places where it came very close to the tracks, the driver stepped on the brake. “Here we are, sir,” he said.
Here was a meadow that had been part of the Confederate line defending Bowling Green, about halfway between the tiny towns of Sugar Grove and Dimple. But for wrecked trenches and dozens of shell holes big enough to bury an elephant, the only thing to be seen was an enormous green-gray tent with a couple of squads’ worth of soldiers around it. Why the driver had chosen to stop at this particular place was beyond Abner Dowling.
It was evidently beyond Custer, too. “We aren’t even halfway back toward Bremen,” he complained. Olivia had been on his beady little mind, then. Libbie Custer knew her husband well.
“If you’ll just come with me, sir.” The driver got out of the automobile and handed down Custer and Dowling as if they were a couple of fine ladies. He headed for the tent. The general and his adjutant perforce followed: it was either that or be left all alone by the motorcar. At every other step, Custer snarled about what the mud was doing to his boots.
A man came out of the tent. He was wearing ordinary Army trousers, but with a leather jacket and leather helmet that put Dowling in mind of flying gear. With a wave, he hurried toward Custer. As he got nearer, Dowling saw he wore a major’s oak leaves on that jacket, and, a few steps later, that he had the eagle-on-star badge of a General Staff officer.
“General Custer?” he said, saluting. “I’m Ned Sherrard, one of the men from the Barrel Works.” The way he said it, you could hear the capital letters thudding into place. The only trouble was, Dowling had no idea whether or not whatever he was describi
ng deserved those capitals.
Custer had evidently formed his own opinion. “And when do you and the Barrel Works go over Niagara Falls?” he inquired with acid courtesy.
Major Sherrard’s smile showed white, even teeth, as if Custer had made a good joke. “We can’t quite manage that yet with our barrels, sir, but we’re working on it.” He stuck out his hand to Dowling, a greeting of equal to equal. “Major, I’m pleased to meet you.”
“Pleased to meet you, too, Major,” Dowling returned. “So what are these barrels, anyway? I’ve heard the name a few times the past couple of weeks, and I’m curious.”
“I wish you hadn’t heard it at all,” Sherrard said. “Security, you know. But it can’t be helped, I suppose. We’ve got one inside the tent, and you can see for yourself. We’ll even put it through its paces for you. We want the commanding generals on all fronts familiar with these weapons, because they will play an increasing role on the battlefield as time goes by.”
“Newfangled foolishness,” Custer said, not bothering to keep his voice down. But Sherrard’s cheerful smile didn’t waver. He was made of stern stuff. Turning, he led Custer and Dowling toward the tent. Some of the soldiers outside came to attention and saluted. Others ducked into the tent ahead of the officers.
Sherrard held the flap open, but not wide open. “Go on in,” he said invitingly. “You can see what barrels are like better than I could explain them to you in a month of Sundays.”
Custer, of course, went first. He took one step into the enormous tent and then stopped in his tracks, so that Dowling almost ran into him. “Excuse me, sir, but I’d like to see, too,” the adjutant said plaintively.
As usual, Dowling had to repeat himself before Custer took any notice of him. When the general commanding First Army finally did move out of the way, Dowling stared in wonder at the most astonishing piece of machinery he’d ever seen.
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