Unholy Fire

by Robert J. Mrazek

  I had never seen him look so defeated.

  “Anyway, Kit, I put you in for another commendation. A great number of men owe you their lives.”

  “Billy made the difference,” I said. “He was the one who actually recovered the files.”

  The young Seminole had gone to one of the windows facing the river and was staring into the fog. Hearing his name mentioned, he glanced over at us. Sam shook his head in a kindly way.

  “Billy told me how you managed it all, and I know it could not have been easy for a combat soldier. In the last year I’ve learned that wars aren’t just fought with rifles and cannon. With men like Congressman Hawkinshield running things back in Washington, we must learn to fight on their terms.”

  The rattle of federal drums echoed toward us from across the river.

  “Our attack is set for eleven,” he said, looking toward the mantle clock. “This fog should actually help us, but knowing Burnside, he will probably wait for it to burn off before sending the boys up to attack those heights. It wouldn’t comport with his sense of fair play.”

  The bitterness in his voice was tangible.

  “When did we finally get across?” I asked.

  “He ordered the pontoon bridges to be deployed two days ago. Of course, by then they were dug in over there and waiting for us … Barksdale’s Mississippi boys. They had a turkey shoot for most of the first day. Burnside then ordered the waterfront leveled with artillery fire. That didn’t drive them off either. It took a river assault to finally dislodge them. Your old regiment was part of it.”

  “The Twentieth Massachusetts?” I asked.

  He nodded and said, “They took heavy casualties like all the other regiments. Several hundred, at least.”

  I thought of the friends I still had in the Twentieth and wondered whether they had survived the assault. A wave of raw anger swept over me at the waste of so many men when the army could have crossed the river weeks earlier with no opposition at all.

  “I need to find Val,” I said.

  “He is already across the river. We’ve had serious problems with looting, even with veteran soldiers. The army is turning into a mob, Kit. Many of the regiments haven’t been paid in months … at the same time, men like Hawkinshield steal millions. On top of it all, the men know that their lives are being spent like donkeys.”

  I looked away from the implacable fury in his eyes.

  “Is there a chance today?”

  “If you are prone to believe in miracles,” said Sam.

  I left to look for Val, walking down to the riverbank, which was only a hundred feet below the house. Two artillery batteries were deployed in the terraced gardens, the guns aimed toward the town. Their caisson wheels had churned the flowerbeds into muddy paste.

  At the foot of the hill was one of the new pontoon bridges. The boats that supported it were about twenty feet long. They had been set in position side by side across the width of the river and then covered with sections of rough planking.

  The lead element of an infantry brigade was moving across the bridge in two files. The rest of it snaked all the way back up the hill past the mansion house. A brigadier general stood at the foot of the bridge, calling out to his men to keep moving. Thick fog hung over the Rappahannock, masking the other side of the river from my view.

  I heard the rattle of hoofbeats on the timber planking and saw a rider cantering toward us from the other side, his horse smartly picking its way between the two files of infantry. He reined up a few feet away from the brigade commander.

  “General French sends his compliments, sir,” he said, raising the flat of his hand to his cap. “He asks that you move your brigade through the town as quickly as possible and form up with the rest of the division on the plain below the heights.”

  Without waiting for a reply, the courier saluted again and urged his big horse forward, leaping it across the bank and heading up the hill toward the mansion. I glanced at my watch. It was already nearing ten. Showing my provost marshal’s identification to the officer controlling the bridge, I started across toward Fredericksburg.

  What remained of the waterfront buildings on the other side of the Rappahannock began to materialize out of the mist when I was halfway across. Our guns had done a remarkable job of battering what had once been imposing brick dwellings built during the earliest colonial times into piles of rubble.

  A steep, slippery bank awaited me on the other side of the river. Army engineers had strung ropes down to the edge of the pontoon bridge so that the troops could pull themselves up to higher ground, and I used one to gain purchase. From the fog-shrouded plain off to the left, I heard the familiar metallic snap and locking noises of men fixing bayonets to the barrels of their rifles. In the distance a Confederate bugle sounded, sharp and clear.

  A cobblestoned street led toward the city, and I followed it into the mist. The first buildings I passed had all been hit hard by our guns across the river. In the business district, the buildings were still intact, but every door had been smashed in and most of the windows were gone.

  A little farther on, I was brought up short by what appeared to be a small mountain rising from the middle of the street. It extended fully ten feet into the air and boasted half the colors of the rainbow. The swirling mist dissipated long enough for me to see that the mountain was made up of household objects, including beds and tables, gilt-framed oil paintings, clocks, chairs, mirrors, and great heaps of clothing of every hue and description. A grand piano with elephant-sized legs was resting on its back along the nearest edge.

  “All looters are to be arrested on sight, Lieutenant,” came a familiar voice through the mist on the other side.

  “How will we know which ones they are?” echoed a younger voice, plaintively.

  “If a soldier is carrying a Chippendale chair in his arms and is wearing women’s undergarments over his uniform like this man, he qualifies.”

  “Yes, sir,” conceded the younger voice.

  I stepped around the edge of the little mountain to see a detachment of provost guards surrounding several dozen disarmed infantrymen. One of them was wearing a woman’s brassiere over his uniform blouse. The one next to him had on a fur coat and a feathered hat. They were both helplessly drunk.

  Towering above them all was the vast bulk of Val Burdette, his tangled mane of ash-colored hair giving him a visage akin to the Gorgon Medusa. A lieutenant stood next to him, watching as one of the arrested soldiers relieved himself in the street. Hearing my boots on the shattered paving stones, Val looked up and saw me. For a second I thought his face revealed a look of relief or even pleasure. If so, it was gone a moment later.

  “Take over here, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” said the young officer.

  “So your neck …” I began as he came toward me.

  “Is still connected to my head, no thanks to you,” he said coldly. “I was incarcerated in that torture harness for eighteen hours.”

  “But the doctor said …”

  “The doctor is a fraud. He knows as much about the medical arts as you do about love,” he said without a pause.

  “Love?”

  “Yes, you have fallen, I see. Its fatuity is stamped on your face.”

  I had no response.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “I left her with a friend of mine … one of the journalists billeted in the stables.”

  “At least that was intelligent. Does anyone else know she is here?”

  “Not officially,” I said, as we began walking back across the pontoon bridge. “But she draws notice wherever she goes.”

  A squadron of cavalry came clattering across the bridge from the opposite direction, making the rough planking under our feet rock back and forth like a floating cork. The riders stared incredulously at Val as they rumbled past us.

  “Just as you do,” I added, as he scowled back at me.

  “You did a good job in Washington, Kit,” he said next. “Just
continue to think with your head instead of that brain between your legs.”

  “That is not a brain,” I said.

  “We shall see.”

  On the way back to the stables, I brought him up to date on everything I had learned in Washington, including the fact that Congressman Hawkinshield owned the club where Anya Hagel had worked.

  “So the investigations do intersect,” he said, after I told him of having seen Hawkinshield in the coach with General Sickles, and that Sickles had appeared terribly angry with him.

  “Friends in feast, enemies in famine,” he added, as we passed through the oncoming ranks of Meagher’s Irish Brigade. They were marching in parade step, as if heading up Broadway in the middle of the Independence Day parade.

  “Sam has made an important breakthrough in the corruption investigation,” said Val. “After we took Major Duval, two colonels in the Quartermaster General’s Corps began to cooperate. They have directly implicated Hawkinshield in three fraudulent schemes, including the one involving your friend Simon Silbernagel. If Hawkinshield is still here, we will arrest him.”

  When we arrived at the stable block, Phil Larrabee was standing guard in front of his stall, his nose encased in a white plaster patch. Seeing Val coming toward him out of the shadows, he pulled a derringer from his greatcoat pocket and pointed it at him.

  “It’s me, Phil,” I said, coming up behind.

  “You have to cock that weapon before you can fire it, young man,” said Val, stepping past him into the horse stall.

  Amelie was sitting on Phil’s cot with one of his books open on her lap. She smiled when she saw me coming in after Val. He stared down at her for several seconds without saying a word. In the six months I had worked for him, I had seen powerful men wilt under that stare. Amelie returned it in kind, her large brown eyes unwavering. Finally, he sat down on the stool next to the bed.

  “This is no time for formalities,” he said, speaking so softly that I could barely hear his words. “You were brought down here three nights ago to attend a party. Who made the arrangements for your … services?”

  Her eyes strayed from Val’s to mine. I could feel someone breathing on the back of my neck, and turned to find Phil peering over my shoulder, his eyes filled with curiosity.

  “Perhaps you gentlemen would allow Miss Devereaux and me a few minutes alone,” said Val, with a glare.

  Phil and I walked outside to the rumble of more ammunition wagons coming up the drive. We watched as they tore up the formal gardens on their way to the artillery emplacements that ringed the estate. In the apple grove behind the stables, a cooking tent had been set up next to the field hospital. Soldiers in white aprons were boiling coffee in vats over open fires. Off to our right, another of Hooker’s infantry divisions slowly inched its way across the grounds toward the pontoon bridge below the mansion house.

  When Phil removed a cigar from the leather case in his coat, I saw that his hand was shaking in barely suppressed excitement. Taking care not to dislodge the plaster on his nose, he carefully lit the cigar and took a long puff.

  “She is the most wonderful girl I’ve ever met, Kit,” he suddenly blurted, the words pouring out in a rushing stream. “And certainly the loveliest. I have to assume she went to finishing school in Paris, her French is impeccable. Is she eligible?”

  Phil Larrabee was the scion of a prominent Boston family. One of his ancestors had supposedly drafted the Magna Carta. The first question he always asked after meeting a woman who captured his imagination was about her bloodlines—whether she was blue-blooded enough to measure up to becoming a Larrabee. Of course, her finishing school pedigree was important, too.

  I wondered what his reaction would be if I had told him then that her finishing school was a Washington whorehouse. But knowing the generosity of his spirit, I concluded that he might have taken her home to meet his mother anyway.

  Before I could reply, an errant shell from one of the Confederate batteries on the heights across the river came whining over and smashed with a great explosion in the grove of apple trees behind the stable. Phil took no notice of it.

  “Well … is she spoken for?” he asked.

  When I turned to look at him, I saw that he was waiting on my next words as if his future happiness depended on them.

  “No,” I said. “Not by me.”

  “Well, wish me luck, Kit,” he replied, with an ebullient grin.

  • • •

  Val and Amelie emerged out of the shadows through the stable door behind us, his massive body dwarfing hers.

  “We’re going to see your favorite general,” he said to me.

  From the look on Amelie’s face, it was clear she wasn’t thrilled at the prospect. Phil looked devastated at the thought of even temporarily parting from her.

  “I hope to see you again very soon, Miss Devereaux,” he said, extending his hand. “Guarding you has been an honor.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Larrabee,” she said, accepting it in her gloved one.

  Val shook his head disdainfully before calling out to one of the grooms to bring a coach around. By then it was almost ten-thirty, and the pale, watery sun was finally burning off the morning fog that swirled across the Virginia plain.

  The three of us remained silent during the ten-minute carriage ride to General Hooker’s headquarters. We rolled to a stop behind a caravan of other vehicles that crowded the lane in front of the three-story white mansion house. The cold wind cut through me as I helped Amelie down from the coach.

  As we approached the front door, it swung open and a young woman dressed in pink taffeta came out onto the veranda. She appeared very tired and looked neither right nor left as a young sergeant escorted her to a waiting coach. The hint of a smile appeared on Amelie’s lips as it rolled away down the lane.

  Inside, the center hall was large and lofty. Its wainscotted walls were covered with paintings of family ancestors. The beautiful parquet floors were tracked with mud. In the dining room, four members of General Hooker’s staff were sitting under a massive cut-glass chandelier, logging in messages from an unending stream of couriers. They stopped to stare at Amelie as we went past them down the hall. Val intercepted an officer who was limping toward us with a dispatch case in his hands and asked where we could find General Hooker’s chief of staff.

  “Colonel Sloat is along there at the end,” he replied, pointing down a dark corridor.

  The room at the end of the hall had formerly been the plantation office. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were filled with agricultural tomes on livestock breeding and soil replenishment. A harried captain was standing in front of a slant-top desk, reading out the disposition of a reserve division to two lieutenants, who were laboriously hand copying the required orders.

  “Colonel Burdette to see General Hooker,” said Val.

  “I’m afraid that is impossible,” said the captain, without looking up from his sheaf of dispatches.

  “Impossible or not, I will see him immediately,” replied Val.

  The two lieutenants looked up for the first time. Their gaze first went to Val before shifting briefly to me, and finally resting on Amelie. One of them appeared to recognize her. He poked his comrade and whispered something into his ear as another officer stepped out of the adjoining room and came toward us.

  Like Val, he was a full colonel, but the similarity ended there. About half Val’s height, he had wide bovine hips that gave him the physical appearance of a pear. His eyes were sharp and calculating.

  “I am Colonel Sloat,” he declared in a smooth baritone. “What is this all about?”

  “We need to see General Hooker on a confidential matter,” said Val.

  The lieutenant who had appeared to recognize Amelie gave his friend a leering grin. I was tempted to go over and remove it with the back of my hand.

  “Whose command are you attached to, Colonel?” asked Sloat. Although he was facing Val, his eyes had come to rest on Amelie, too. There was mutual recognition in her eyes
before she averted them to the floor.

  “I report directly to Marsena Patrick, provost marshal general,” said Val.

  Sloat’s eyes conveyed a flicker of surprise before he said, “Whatever the matter involves, I’m sure it can wait until after the battle. We are expecting to begin the major bombardment any minute now.”

  “It cannot,” came back Val. “General Hooker will want to see us immediately.”

  Colonel Sloat removed a watch from his breast pocket and briefly glanced at it before raising himself to his full height.

  “Perhaps you are not aware that General Hooker is commanding the army’s center. I can assure you that he has no time for disciplinary issues right now. Let me make you a promise,” he said, with a smug grin. “I will personally make time to see you after the battle is won … perhaps in a day or two.”

  “Thank you for your kind offer,” interrupted Val, “but it will be General Hooker, and it will be now.”

  The muscles in Colonel Sloat’s face contracted.

  “This interview is over,” he said. “If you don’t leave immediately, I will have you arrested.”

  Val gave him a condescending stare and said, “A sagacious decision, I’m sure, but please inform our beloved Fighting Joe that I will be swearing out an order for his own arrest as soon as I return to my office, that action to be carried out immediately.”

  “On what charge?” demanded Colonel Sloat.

  Val glanced at the two lieutenants, and then picked up one of the dispatches from the desk. Turning it over, he wrote one word on the paper before handing it back to Colonel Sloat, who stared at it for several seconds.

  “Leave us,” he said to the two young officers.

  “You cannot be serious,” he said, when the door closed behind them.

  “Of course I am. Ignore this at your own peril.”

  In the ensuing silence, I wondered which man would buckle first.

  “Time is running out,” said Val. “I would suggest you give General Hooker the opportunity to decide for himself whether he wants to face a court-martial on that charge.”