by John Jakes
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 some 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 w
as 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 lobstermen? 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.
Charles heard that the surgeons didn’t think they could save Calbraith Butler’s foot. So much had happened on Fleetwood that day—deaths and small heroisms, some noticed, some not. Charles had given up his only good friend and regained something that he had lost.
He rubbed Sport down and fed him and stroked his neck. “We made it through once more, old friend.” The gray gave a small shake of his head; he was as spent as Charles.
Brandy Station made the reputation of the Union cavalry. It tarnished Stuart’s. And, belatedly, it showed Charles the sharp accuracy of his fear about the relationship with Gus. Such an attachment was wrong in wartime. Wrong for her, wrong for him.
Charles had been observed in action during the assaults on Fleetwood. He received a commendation in general orders from Hampton and a brevet to major. What he got with no official action was a new direction for himself. He must think first of his duty. He loved Gus; that wouldn’t change. But speculations about marriage, a future with her, had no place in a soldier’s mind. They dulled his concentration. Made him more vulnerable, less effective.
Gus would have to know how he felt. That was only fair. Questions of how and when to tell her, he was too tired to confront just now.
83
“PACK,” STANLEY SAID.
Sticky and ill-tempered from the heat of that Monday, June 15, Isabel retorted, “How dare you burst in on me in the middle of the day and start issuing orders.”
He mopped his face, but the sweat popped out again. “All right, stay. I’m taking the boys to Lehigh Station via the four o’clock to Baltimore. I paid three times the normal price of the tickets, and I was lucky to be able to do it.”
Uneasy all at once—he never spoke sharply to her—she moderated her tone. “What’s provoked this, Stanley?”
“What the newsboys are shouting on every corner downtown. ‘Washington in danger.’ I’ve heard that Lee is in Hagerstown—I’ve heard he’s in Pennsylvania—the rebs might have the town encircled by morning. I decided it’s time for a vacation. If you don’t care to go, that’s your affair.”
There had been rumors of military movement in Virginia, but nothing definite until now. Could she trust his assessment of the situation? She smelled whiskey on him; he had begun to drink heavily of late.
“How did you get permission to leave?”
“I told the secretary my sister was critically ill at home.”
“Didn’t he think the timing—well, a bit coincidental?”
“I’m sure he did. But the department’s a madhouse. No one is accomplishing anything. And Stanton has good reason to keep me happy. I’ve carried his instructions to Baker. I know how dirty his hands are.”
“Still, you could damage your career by—”
“Will you stop?” he shouted. “I’d rather be condemned as a live coward than perish as a patriot. You think I’m the only government official who’s leaving? Hundreds have already gone. If you’re coming with me, start packing. Otherwise keep still.”
It struck her then that a remarkable, not altogether welcome change had taken place in her husband in recent months. Stanley’s survival of the Cameron purge, his increasing eminence among the radicals, and his newfound wealth from Lashbrook’s combined to create a confidence he had never possessed before. Occasionally he acted as if he were uncomfortable with it. A few weeks ago, after gulping four rum punches in an hour and a half, he had bent his head, exclaimed that he didn’t deserve his success, and wept on her shoulder like a child.
But she mustn’t be too harsh. She was the one who had created the new man. And she liked some aspects of that creation—the wealth, the power, the independence from his vile brother. If she meant to control him, she must change her own style, adopt subtler techniq
ues.
He postured in the doorway, glaring. With feigned meekness and a downcast eye, she said, “I apologize, Stanley. You’re wise to suggest we leave. I’ll be ready in an hour.”
That evening, after dark, a curtained van swung into Marble Alley. The driver reined the team in front of one of the neat residences lining the narrow thoroughfare between Pennsylvania and Missouri avenues. Despite the heat, all the windows of the house were draped, though they had been left open so that gay voices, male and female, and a harpist playing “Old Folks at Home” could be heard outside. The establishment, known as Mrs. Devore’s Private Residence for Ladies, was doing a fine business despite the panic in the city.
Looking like a moving mound of lard in his white linen suit, Elkanah Bent climbed down from his seat beside the driver with much wheezing and grunting. Two other bureau men jumped out through the van’s rear curtains. Bent signaled one into a passage leading to the back door of the house. The other followed him up the stone steps.
The detectives had debated the best way to take their quarry. They decided they couldn’t snatch a noted journalist off the street in daylight. His boardinghouse had been considered, but Bent, who was in charge, finally came down in favor of the brothel. The man’s presence there could be used to undermine his inevitable righteous protests.
He rang the bell. The shadow of a woman with high-piled hair fell on the frosted glass. “Good evening, gentlemen,” said the elegant Mrs. Devore. “Come in, won’t you?”
Smiling, Bent and his companion followed the middle-aged woman into a bright gaslit parlor packed with gowned whores and a jolly crowd of army and navy officers and civilians. One of the latter, a satanic sliver of a man, approached Bent. He had mustaches and a goatee in the style of the French emperor.
