by Max Hennessy
Near the head of the table was a group of men and women listening to a banjo. Alongside the player a skeletal, white-haired black man rattled a set of bones in time to the music. From among them a squarely-built soldier with a high forehead, deep-set eyes and a huge cinnamon-coloured beard rose to his feet. Like most of his officers, he wore a neat uniform, with the addition of a yellow sash and a general’s stars.
‘Who have you there, Micah?’ he asked.
Love shrugged. ‘Says he’s a British soldier, General. Got a fancy name long as your arm.’
The other man frowned. ‘We’re not over-fond of Britishers with fancy names,’ he said slowly. ‘What might it be?’
‘Colby William Rollo Goff,’ Colby said. ‘Watching the war for the Morning Advertiser.’
‘Not fighting in it?’
‘It’s not my war, sir.’
‘He was writing it up for the other side, General,’ Love said. ‘We picked him up near Magruderville. We did a mighty good job there but we didn’t find Cluseret.’
The general considered for a moment. ‘We’ve had Vizetelly of The London Illustrated News and Colonel Garnet Wolseley,’ he said. ‘Good soldier that. Do you know him?’
‘Yes, sir.’ It wasn’t hard to recall Wolseley. He was only small, with one eye and a limp, but there was something powerful about his personality. ‘I met him in Washington. I heard he bribed a Federal officer with a cigar and a fisherman with a boat with a sovereign to carry him across Potomac.’
The general smiled. ‘Slipped into the States from Canada, I believe. What do you say to joining us and writing up our side for a change?’
‘All the same to me, sir,’ Colby said cheerfully. ‘The Morning Advertiser might even be pleased.’
The general put out his hand. ‘Stuart,’ he said. James Ewell Brown Stuart, major-general; Confederate Southern Army. You must forgive me if I don’t join you in a drink but I’ve been a lifelong teetotaller.’
Someone pushed a punch into Colby’s hand and the banjo player struck up again. One of the men began to sing ‘Lorena’ and two more joined him in a shaky trio.
One of the girls approached Colby. ‘We’re havin’ a ball here soon, Mr Goff. The General likes dancin’ and it sure enough looks as though the army will be movin’ north again soon. So we thought it might be a good idea. Everybody helps. I hope you-all will stay. I’m Hannah-May Burtle. My brother’s with General Lee.’
She had a pale pretty face and a bosom that reminded Colby of Georgina, and she delivered her chatter in a breathless rush. None of it seemed very interesting or important but, he thought, her features and her shape were all right and he decided if he got to go to the ball she talked about, he’d make a point of seeking her out.
Two days later, dressed in a blue serge coat and trousers and with an oilcloth cape against the rain, Colby rode out with Love’s regiment of Stuart’s cavalry towards the Rappahannock, where Union troops had been seen. He was armed with nothing but the Colt revolver he carried for self-protection, but Ackroyd had added a sword.
‘If I’m going near a battle,’ he said, ‘I want a weapon in me fist.’
There was a cheerful air as they left camp with the men singing as they went.
‘If you want to see the Devil…have a good time –
Jine the cavalry.’
The song was light-hearted and there was an air of gaiety about the files as they thudded down the road. But to Colby there was an air of desperation, too. Issue clothing was in rags and half of them wore trousers and hats stripped from dead Northerners. Most of the horses were captured mounts and most were gaunt. Colby’s was a raw-boned mare and Ackroyd straddled a minute animal so swamped by its heavy saddle, only its ears and tail appeared to show.
It was a mixed command. After three years of war, the old district regiments had been split up and there were even Germans from Bavaria, Baden and Wurtemburg who sympathised with the South, and French mill-workers from Roswell in Georgia. Like the wagons, the guns that jolted and rolled at the tail of the column all bore the letters ‘US’ to show they had been captured from the Northern army.
They were short of everything, even officers. Instead of being commanded by a full colonel, the regiment was run by Love who hadn’t long been promoted from major, and instead of three majors there was only one. The squadrons – or companies as they were called, because they were used to fighting as infantry – were run by captains or lieutenants and instead of the eighty-odd officers there were only fifty, most of them mere boys. Love’s sole major was a short grizzled man with the accent of a backwoods farmer whose uniform was wrinkled and covered with dust.
‘Ed Farley,’ he introduced himself. ‘I ain’t no soldier. I just learned to shoot straight, that’s all.’
‘Don’t you take any notice of him,’ Love grinned. ‘Ed’s a dab hand.’ He jerked a hand to where one of the captains was riding on the flank with a troop of men, a long, lean figure whose heels seemed almost to trail on the ground. ‘We’re luckier than most. We’ve got some know-how in this regiment. That’s Jabez Jenkins. He was a builder who gave it up to become a horse-doctor. He isn’t so good with a gun but he sure knows what to do with horses and bridges.’ He gestured towards the guns bouncing behind their limbers. ‘We’ve also got Sigsbee who was with Pelham until he was killed. Pelham was the best artillerist in the South.’
As darkness came, clouds crowded across the thin moon and the rain came down. Within an hour, under the dozens of hooves, the dusty road became a quagmire, the wagons sinking up to their axles, the horses up to their hocks, and, huddled under his oilcloth cape, Colby noticed it was growing colder. But the men around him didn’t complain and even tried to be cheerful, though there was a kind of numb heroism about them, too, a dumb sense of fatalism because they were as aware as the Northerners that the tide had started to run against them.
The following morning they moved on again, heading north-west. Love was in the lead with Colby alongside him. He had studied history at Charlottesville University before joining the army and had gained his experience on the frontier against Indians.
‘It was the silence was the worst,’ he said. ‘You’d be waitin’ with your heart thumpin’ and your breath caught in your throat, then suddenly they’d be all round you, whoopin’ and shootin’ and cuttin’ and stabbin’ and wantin’ to rearrange your hair and insides. You sure needed strong nerves.’
He was silent for a while then he turned in the saddle. ‘I guess things have changed some since then. This war’s not only different, it gets more different every day. Once we could stampede the Bluebellies at will. Now they’ve found their courage and it gets harder. You ever see anythin’ of their cavalry?’
‘I met Custer in Washington.’
The thin-featured, sharp-nosed Northerner had been ambitious and full of confidence, a curious mixture of disciplinarian and insubordinate subordinate. Colby hadn’t liked him much but it had stuck out a mile he was a cavalryman to his fingertips.
Love was nodding. ‘Sure is a good soldier,’ he said. ‘How about Sheridan?’
‘I met him too. Typical Irishman. Willing to fight anyone – even his own side. He’s transformed their horsemen. And he’s got a lot of good men like Custer round him.’
A bleak expression crossed Love’s face and he began to talk, almost as if his worries were crowding in on him and he needed to tell them to someone and had chosen Colby because what he had to say might be considered defeatist by his friends. ‘We whipped ’em in the spring at Chancellorsville,’ he said. ‘And when their cavalry tried to get into Georgia we wiped ’em up and captured the lot.’ He sighed. ‘Things have changed since Gettysburg, though, and we’re fast runnin’ out of horses. With the blockade we can’t get any more, while they can import as many as they want. We’re losing ’em all the time, from disease and lack of forage. The men aren’t much better. There’s scurvy in Lee’s army and they’ve just reduced the rations again. I reckon we’re the longest, le
anest soldiers in the world.’
He was silent for a while. ‘The way they run things is crazy,’ he went on after a while. ‘Richmond’s supposed to provide feed, shoes and smithying and pays us forty cents a day for our horses, and their value if they’re killed. But if they’re lost any other goddam way – captured or worn out or break a leg – we have to find another ourselves or transfer to the infantry. It takes away half our strength, because there’s always a horde of men away tryin’ to find a new horse. I once saw one of our farriers leadin’ a string of limpin’ nags with greased heel, and slung over the saddles were the hooves of more dead ones. They’d cut ’em off for the sake of the shoes. That’s no way to fight a war.’
As he became silent again, a horseman appeared in the distance. Immediately, Love’s hand went up and the column scattered into the trees on either side of the road. Colby’s horse, which had a habit of neighing at every mount she met, lifted her head and he hit her quickly about the ears with his gauntlet to stop her.
Love watched the approaching rider from the undergrowth. ‘In a darned hurry,’ he observed.
The approaching horseman was almost on top of them when he swung his mount out. ‘Halt!’ he roared.
The rider turned out to be a boy, pink-cheeked, excited and ragged. ‘Colonel,’ he said, ‘the Yankees–!’
‘What about the Yankees, boy?’ Love’s eyes narrowed as he leaned forward from the saddle.
‘Five miles away, sir! At Parks Bridge! It’s Sheridan. I saw him myself. Custer’s with him. I saw his yellow hair.’
‘Go on, boy! Go on!’
‘They’re searching for the army, Colonel.’
‘Whose army?’
‘Our army, sir! Your army! My army! The Army of Northern Virginia! They’re heading south-west, sir, towards Charlottesville.’
‘Are they, by God?’ Love swung his horse round. ‘Then it’s our job to warn the General and get between ’em to hold ’em off.’
‘Colonel–’ the boy’s voice cracked and rose to an excited squeak – ‘that’s not all!’
‘There’s more?’
‘Yes, sir. There sure is! They’ve left their wagons behind ’em alongside the railroad at Marble Stop. There’s trains there and only a small guard.’
Love leaned over and grasped the boy’s coat. ‘How do I know you’re not lyin’ to get us ambushed?’
‘Sir, I wouldn’t lie! I lost my Daddy at Chancellorsville and two of my brothers with General Pickett at Gettysburg. I’m all that’s left.’
Love released him. ‘I think you’re tellin’ the truth, boy.’ He gestured to one of his soldiers. ‘Find him food and drink, Henry, and water his horse! Curtis, take six men and ride back at the gallop to the General and tell him what the boy says. He’ll want to move across to cover the army.’ He swung round and slapped at Farley with his gloves, raising a puff of dust. ‘Ed, split the command down the centre! Tell Jabez to take one half to watch Custer. We’ll take the other half and drop on the wagon train.’
They found the wagon train alongside the railway track at Marble Stop, just as the boy had warned. The vedettes came tearing back, pointing and grinning.
‘They’re still unloadin’, Colonel,’ one of them chirruped. ‘They ain’t even got outposts in place.’
Love’s raised arm swept forward and the whole column, its bouncing guns cutting deep grooves in the turf, cantered forward. Reaching a belt of trees, the pace slowed and they began to pick their way through. At the far side, Farley was waiting.
‘Right in front, Micah,’ he said. ‘An’ a nice slope down, to give us weight.’
They were at the top of a meadow that ran downwards to the railway track without any impediment of fences, ditches or brushwood. A cold sun was shining on the twin rails running north-west from Richmond to the curve of a hill in the distance, where they disappeared between the trees. A huddle of wooden sheds and a line of poles indicated a telegraph, and two trains of freight and flat cars were watering their engines from a high tank. In the fields alongside there seemed to be hundreds of tents, wagons, horses and men.
‘Jesus Christ in the Mountains!’ Love was staring through his glass. ‘Sheridan must have brought ’em down for a drive on Richmond, and as usual that hothead Custer was in such a goddam hurry, he’s moved off without ’em.’
‘It’s perfect cavalry country,’ Colby observed.
‘Sure is. And they’ve laid it wide open for us.’ Love grinned.
‘Custer’s reputation,’ he pointed out. ‘He reckons it’s enough to keep away marauders. We’ll show him he’s wrong. It isn’t often the Lord God gives us a chance like this these days.’
He rode back to his command, waving his arm. ‘Column into line,’ he called and the column broke up into companies which moved away among the trees, swinging to face the slope in front until there was a grey line of horsemen waiting just out of sight on the reverse slope of the hill, silent except for the soft snorting of the animals and the jingling of bits. There was a low hiss as sabres were drawn.
‘Shove those things away,’ Love said contemptuously. ‘We aren’t going to fight with carving knives. Draw your pistols.’
He reached into a saddle holster and thrust an enormous revolver at Colby. ‘It’s a Le Matt,’ he said. ‘Nine chambers and an over-and-under barrel. Fires .52 bullets and a charge of buckshot.’
‘I’m not fighting your damned war,’ Colby said hotly.
‘Maybe you’re afraid of bangs,’ Love grinned. ‘That guy, Fremantle, who came over – he’d never seen a shot fired in action in his life.’
Colby frowned. ‘Perhaps he hadn’t,’ he said. ‘But I have.’
‘Where?’
‘Light Brigade, Balaclava, for one.’
Love’s eyebrows almost disappeared under his hairline. ‘You were in that?’ he said.
‘And a few more.’
‘Then what in tarnation are we waitin’ for?’ Raising his sword, Love let out a shrill yelp and kicked his horse direct from a standstill to a gallop. Colby was caught by surprise as the rest of the horsemen hurtled past him, yelling shrilly, and poured down the slope.
He looked at Ackroyd and shrugged. ‘Seems we’re going to war, Tyas,’ he said and kicked at his horse’s flanks.
Love’s yell had set the blue-coated soldiers swarming about like ants in a disturbed nest. As the horsemen approached there was a movement away from the rails and, in a moment, the Federals were streaming towards the woods at the far side of the valley, led by a colonel.
‘Political,’ someone yelled delightedly. ‘See him go!’
No more than a few shots were fired, then the Confederates were pouring over the rails and swinging round the freight cars in grey eddies like water from a broken dam. The engineer of one of the diamond-stacked locomotives attempted to get his engine moving and a jet of steam shot into the air with a shower of sparks, cinders and clinker, but a sergeant rode alongside and pushed his gun into the engineer’s face, and the steam hissed out.
There was no fighting. The Federals had all disappeared, and when Colby arrived, Love, his hat gone, was swinging his horse in circles, foam spraying out in all directions, looking for someone to kill.
‘Sutlers,’ he said furiously. ‘Goddam supply troops! Not worth shootin’!’
Already the whole camp was ablaze, hundreds of tents burning together. The freight cars were on fire too, now, with the buildings, all going up in one vast conflagration. A trooper started to swarm up one of the telegraph posts and was called down again by a young officer with a shrill voice.
‘Come down, George, you darned fool!’ he yelled. ‘There’s an easier way than that!’
He gestured and one of the troopers ran towards the hut where they heard him smashing the equipment. Then another man found an axe, and the poles came crashing down across the burning freight cars.
The smoke was lifting into the sky in a brown rolling column and the din was tremendous as excited men yelped with glee
or fired off their pistols into the air. Then the yells changed to laughter as a load of champagne was found, and corks began to pop until Love dashed among the yelling men, swinging his fists.
‘Cut that out,’ he roared. ‘Any man who gets drunk gets left behind!’
But there was no stopping them where the fruit and vegetables were concerned, or among the canned meat, oysters, lobsters, cases of beer, barrels of sugar, and eggs packed in salt, all in danger of being roasted. There was clothing, too, and the siding was converted in a moment into a vast dressing-room as yelling, laughing men supplied themselves with overcoats, blue trousers, woollen socks and boots, dragging them on, one on top of another, so that there would be spares not only for themselves but also for their friends.
A man with a beard and long hair was hopping about one-legged, trying to heave a pair of trousers over the grey rags he already wore. An officer was smashing kegs of spirit and soldiers on their knees were trying to lap it up, indifferent to the whacks delivered across their backs by the flat of the officer’s sword. More ragged men were swallowing pickled oysters and potted lobster, others were hacking at an enormous cheese or emptying bottles of wine, while still more were snatching up blankets and even lowering and rolling tents to carry them away. Yelling like madmen, the officers were trying to preserve order and a whole flood of captured horses was being driven up the slopes to the trees, ridden bareback by ragged riders leading their own mounts.
As the ammunition and powder went up in a colossal explosion, they all ducked and ran, clinging to rearing, frightened, white-eyed horses. Planks, wheels and timbers soared into the air with pieces of metal, sacks and boxes of food, to come thudding down in a shower. By a miracle nobody was hurt.
