Cradle of Solitude

by Alex Archer

  She parked in the parking lot outside the visitor center and then spent a few minutes just standing outside, staring off into the distance. It was hard to look out on these grassy fields and rolling hills and realize that one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on U.S. soil took place here. Annja closed her eyes, listening, and slowly the sounds of the conflict fell over her—the neighing of the horses, the cries of the men, the crack of the muskets and the boom of the cannons. The shouts of the Yankees in those hard Northern accents were eclipsed by the ululating cry that was the famed Rebel yell.

  A hand gripped her shoulder, pulling her out of her reverie.

  “You all right, miss?” a kindly voice asked, and Annja opened her eyes to find an elderly park ranger standing at her elbow. “You seemed to be lost there for a moment.”

  “Oh, yes,” she replied, smiling genuinely for the first time in days. “I was just trying to imagine what it would have been like.”

  He glanced out over the field and the same wistful look that Annja was certain was in her own eyes crept into his. She realized she had found a kindred spirit. The ranger knew what she was talking about; she didn’t need to specify that she’d been trying to imagine what it would have been like on the day of the battle.

  “Hell on earth, I suspect, miss—hell on earth.”

  That was as good a description as any, she supposed.

  He shook himself, as if clearing away the vision, and turned back to her with a smile. “Charlie Connolly,” he said, extending his hand.

  She shook. “Annja Creed.”

  “I thought I recognized you. Planning on doing a show on the ghosts of Antietam?”

  The question caught her off guard and the only thing she could think to say in response was to ask, “You’ve got ghosts?”

  “Even if we didn’t, would that stop that show of yours?” he asked, and then laughed aloud at his wittiness.

  Annja had to admit that he had her there.

  After laughing with him for a moment, Annja asked, “Can you tell me where I can find a listing of all the graves in the park?”

  “Looking for someone in particular or just doing research?” he wanted to know, once he stopped chuckling and had wiped the tears of merriment out of his eyes.

  “Does it make a difference?”

  He shrugged. “If you’re looking for general information, I can probably help you out myself, but if you’re looking for a certain grave, you’ll have to use the computers in the main wing of the visitor’s center.

  He took a map out of his back pocket, opened it so Annja could see the small jumble of buildings at the west entrance and then circled one of them with a felt-tip pen he took out of his pocket.

  “That there’s the visitor’s center and it should have what you need.”

  Annja thanked him for his kindness and headed in that direction.

  The visitor’s center was a granite-fronted single-story steel-and-glass building. Inside were historical exhibits, a theater, a series of public computers for learning more about the site and a park store. Annja paid for a half hour of time on the computer and went right to work.

  The records system was straightforward and easy to use. All she had to do was put the soldier’s name into the system and it would tell her if, indeed, he was buried at the park and what section and row his marker could be found in if he were.

  Eager to get on with finding the treasure, Annja typed William Parker, Captain into the search field.

  The machine clanked and whirred for a second and then spit out a reply.

  No information found.

  That’s strange, she thought.

  She tried again, this time typing slowly and being certain she’d spelled things correctly.

  Still nothing.

  She tried without the captain. And finally another time with the last name first, followed by the first name.

  The computer just didn’t want to take it.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said to herself.

  The clue instructed her to find Parker’s doppelgänger’s grave. That seemed straightforward enough. A doppelgänger was a German word that meant, literally, body double. A mystical creature that looked precisely like the original and had a tendency to try and take over the other’s life.

  Obviously mystical creatures didn’t exist, which meant the word needed to be read in a more realistic sense. To Annja’s way of thought, that meant someone with the same name.

  But she’d been through the database a couple of times and there wasn’t anyone buried in Antietam National Cemetery with the name William Parker. There was a Corey Parker, and a Parker Blue, but no William Parker.

  She didn’t understand. The grave should be here!

  Unless you’re in the wrong place.

  The thought loomed up suddenly from the depths of her mind, but once it had surfaced she couldn’t dismiss it as easily as it had arrived.

  Was that it? Had she chosen the wrong place?

  Annja sat back and mentally reviewed the choices she’d made to arrive at this particular place over some other. She felt like her reasoning was sound. Antietam had been a major turning point for Lee and for the South, as well. Some historians even called it the beginning of the end. Never again would Lee’s precious Army of Northern Virginia invade Union soil. Never again would Lee have the chance to disrupt the organization of the North on such a grand scale. By failing at Antietam, Lee had determined the final course of the war. It had just taken a few more years for that course to play out.

  So what had she missed?

  She took a moment and wrote out the clue on the piece of scrap paper she had in front of her.

  The minute she did so, she saw her mistake.

  In deciding that Antietam was the right place, she’d skipped an entire line of the verse.

  “‘Where the Peacock freely roamed…’” she said softly.

  What the hell does that mean?

  It had to be significant; it wouldn’t be there otherwise.

  She got up from her seat and wandered over to the information desk, where the fussy secretary had been replaced by the kind old park ranger who’d asked over her welfare earlier.

  Seeing her, he asked, “Find what you was lookin’ for, miss?”

  “Not quite. Does the name ‘the Peacock’ mean anything to you?”

  He laughed, “You mean other than the name of the bar I used to frequent in Bangkok during the war?”

  Annja smiled. “While I’d love to hear your reminiscences, and it sounds like a fascinating place, I was thinking more in direct relation to the Civil War.”

  He nodded. “I reckon you’re talking about General Stuart, then.”

  “Stuart?” She was familiar with most of the war’s central figures, and while she recognized the name, she couldn’t put a finger on who he was or why he might have been called the Peacock.

  “General James Ewell Brown Stuart. Commander of the cavalry under Robert E. Lee. Known as ‘the eyes of the Army’ as well as ‘the Peacock.’”

  Now she could place him. Here at Antietam he’d ridden completely around General George McClellan’s Union Army undetected, not a small feat for a force of that size on horseback.

  “I understand the ‘eyes of the Army’ reference, but why ‘the Peacock’?”

  “Stuart had a habit of dressing, shall we say, a bit flamboyantly. One of his favorite outfits consisted of a bright red cape, a yellow sash and a jaunty little cap with a peacock feather stuffed in the hatband. Because of that feather, and his tendency to puff up over his accomplishments whenever he had the opportunity to talk about them, his many detractors labeled him the Peacock.”

  The Peacock. How funny, she thought, and how fitting.

  Stuart had been here. “The Peacock” had roamed free at Antietam. It seemed as if her decision to come here had been correct. So what was she missing?

  “One more question for you. What battle would you label General Lee’s greatest error?”
/>   He didn’t hesitate. “Gettysburg.”

  “Gettysburg? Really?” She was surprised. She’d fully expected him to say Antietam. “Why, if I may ask?”

  It was as if Annja had just said the magic words. Charlie’s face lit up, like a junior scholar who’d just been asked by the king for his opinion on an important matter of state.

  “Lee shouldn’t have lost at Gettysburg. He had the Union Army in retreat to the north and west of town on the first day of battle. He understood the tactical advantage of taking the high ground and, had he done so, the Rebels most certainly would have won the day.”

  “So why didn’t he?” Annja asked.

  “Well, that’s where folks’ opinions tend to differ a bit. Lee did order General Ewell and Second Corps to take Cemetery Hill that first day, but he did so in the form of a discretionary order. Take the hill if its practical, you see. Lee was used to relaying orders like that to Stonewall Jackson, Second Corps prior commander. The discretionary nature of the orders allowed Jackson great flexibility, increasing his usefulness in the overall command. Lee always knew he could count on Jackson to attack, so even if an order was discretionary, more often than not it was carried out with aplomb.”

  Charlie sighed. “Unfortunately, while a good general, Ewell was no Stonewall Jackson. The heights looked difficult to take and the orders had given him leeway not to risk his men if he didn’t have to, so he made the decision to stay put, never realizing that he was dooming his men to a suicidal attack the next day, long after the Union troops had dug in.”

  “Where was General Stuart during all this?”

  Charlie grimaced. “Now there’s the true culprit of the battle, if you ask me. The Peacock was out and about with his three cavalry brigades, “roaming around the Rebels,” as he called it. He didn’t arrive at Gettysburg until midafternoon of the second day and his men didn’t even see action until day three. It was a travesty.”

  Charlie’s turn of phrase echoed in her ear. Stuart had been roaming around.

  Where the Peacock freely roamed…

  She was in the wrong place.

  A glance at her watch told her it was almost eleven. She’d been there for almost two hours.

  Two hours wasted.

  Two hours closer to Garin’s execution.

  She had to hurry.

  “You’ve been very helpful. Thanks, Charlie!” she said as she turned and headed for the door, leaving the park ranger standing there, shaking his head and wondering just what it was that he had said.

  Ten minutes later Annja was back behind the wheel headed toward Pennsylvania and Gettysburg National Military Park. Thankfully, the two battlefields were less than an hour away from each other. She could be in Gettysburg just after lunch. That should give her time to locate the doppelgänger’s grave and figure out what to do from there.

  She wondered how Garin was doing and if he was all right. He was tough—of that there wasn’t any doubt—so she wasn’t as concerned as she’d been when Bernard was in the hands of that madman Michaels.

  When she first realized that Garin had been taken, she’d thought about calling in Griggs and the rest of the Dragontech Security team. No doubt there was some rapid-response system worked out if Garin ever went missing, but she’d ultimately rejected the idea because she realized she didn’t know how to get in touch with Griggs directly. She’d never had reason to, until now.

  Sure, she could call the company and ask for him, but if Dragontech was run anything like the other security firms she’d had the dubious pleasure of dealing with in the past, they wouldn’t even acknowledge that he worked there, never mind connect her call to him. By the time she patiently worked her way through the various layers of security that isolated frontline men like Griggs, her deadline would be up and it would be too late to try and rescue Garin, anyway.

  She was going to have to handle this one on her own.

  34

  Just as was the case at Antietam, the visitor’s center at Gettysburg National Military Park had a room containing a series of public computers that could be used to learn more information about the battlefield and the monuments that now marked it. Annja immediately called up the catalog of the more than six thousand souls interred in Gettysburg National Cemetery.

  This time, the name came up on the first try.

  Captain William Parker, Thirteenth Massachusetts.

  She printed out directions to the grave marker and drove over to the site. The cemetery had started atop Cemetery Hill, the site of the Union’s fierce resistance against Pickett’s Charge, and slowly spread down the slopes of the hill until it almost reached the road that wound its way slowly through the rest of the park.

  Annja parked in the designated area and then climbed the hill, wandering amid the markers until she found the section she wanted. The graves had been grouped by units, so that made it easier to find the individual grave marker she was searching for.

  It was set off slightly from the others, resting in the shade of a nearby maple tree on the downward slope of Cemetery Hill. It was a simple granite marker, like many of the others, but where so many of those were rectangular with rounded tops, this one was in the shape of a cross.

  The words William Parker, Captain were etched into its surface, but that was all. No birth or death dates. No epitaph.

  It was almost as if someone wanted to be certain that it wasn’t confused with any of the other gravestones.

  She looked closely at the marker, but did not see anywhere that the metal “key” from the Marietta could be inserted or used in any fashion. Not that she expected some hidden trigger to reveal a secret passage as in the movie National Treasure, but it would have been nice to have some indication as to what it was used for.

  I’m going to have to do it the hard way, as usual, she thought.

  The final verse of the puzzle Parker had left told her to “Disburb him in his slumber, wake him from his rest; To find that which you are seeking, use the key to unlock the chest.”

  Unless she was recalling it incorrectly, it was telling her to disinter the grave and open the casket. She didn’t see any other way of interpreting the need to “disturb him in his slumber.”

  So she got to add grave robbing to the list of things she’d had to do to try and unravel this mystery and save Garin’s life. Her critics would have a field day with that one if it ever got out.

  Even worse, Doug would probably want to have an episode revolve around it.

  Annja turned in a slow circle, making note of the surrounding landmarks and firmly setting the location of the marker in her mind. She was going to have to find it again later in the dark and didn’t want to be stumbling about, which would increase her chances of being caught.

  From the map she’d seen in the visitor’s center, she knew that the cemetery wasn’t far from the edge of the park. Since she couldn’t just waltz in the front gates with a shovel over her shoulder, she was going to have to find an alternate means of entry. Looking down from the top of the hill at the trees marking the park’s perimeter, Annja thought she might have found her solution.

  She looked around, making certain that no one was particularly interested in what she was doing, and then slipped off down the back of the hill toward the trees. She kept her attention focused ahead of her, as if she had every reason to be there, and when she reached the tree line she didn’t stop but strode right in among the trunks. Only then, when she was out of sight from the hilltop, did she stop and look back.

  There was no one there.

  Satisfied her little side trip hadn’t been noticed, Annja turned around and moved deeper into the woods. Less than ten minutes later she emerged from the trees and found herself looking at a chain-link fence that stretched in both directions. Just beyond that was a single-lane road that looked like it hadn’t seen much use lately; weeds were growing through cracks in the pavement and there were a few fallen tree branches visible from where she stood.

  It was exactly what she was lo
oking for.

  In order to make it easier to find the proper position from the other side, Annja broke a leafy branch from a nearby tree and jammed it through one of the holes in the fence so that it stuck there. When she returned later that night, she’d just have to look for the branch in order to know she was adjacent to the cemetery.

  Satisfied with her arrangements, Annja turned around and worked her way back through the woods to the base of Cemetery Hill. She was halfway up its slope when a horse and rider came around the side of the hill, startling her.

  “Everything all right, miss?” the rider asked. As he was dressed in a gray shirt, dark green pants and a tan Smokey the Bear hat, Annja felt fairly confident labeling him as a park ranger.

  “Just fine, thanks,” she said, smiling at him.

  He looked at her and then down the slope of the hill in the direction she’d come from, a puzzled expression on his face.

  He knows, she thought, and waited for him to ask what she’d been doing down there in the woods. She already knew what she would say; she just had to make the excuse about an urgent call of nature sound genuine and was trying to come up with a way to do just that when a smile broke out across his face.

  “Will ya look at that?” he said, and pointed over her shoulder back down the hill.

  Annja turned around and saw a doe and her fawn standing very close to the spot where she’d exited the trees. They stepped hesitantly out on the grassy slope, eyeing the clovers mixed into the grass nearby, no doubt, and Annja felt a smile of her own cross her face.

  Thank you, Bambi.

  “Beautiful, aren’t they?” the ranger asked.

  Annja agreed that they were.

  “You don’t usually see them out this late in the day. During the early-morning patrol, sure, but by the time the park opens they’re usually long gone,” he told her.