The Blue and the Gray Undercover

by Ed Gorman

  Above the twin doors with their imposing brass handles was a fan window with some of the glass missing from its leaded frame.

  Logan knocked loudly on one of the doors.

  Matoon glanced at him.

  Logan shrugged and tried the door handle, then stepped ahead of Matoon into the dimness.

  The inside of the house was as Roache and young Jensen had described it. Cobwebs, covered furniture, layers of dust. Add to that the scent of rot and mildew.

  “Looks like whoever lived here was run out long time ago,” Matoon observed.

  “Looks like,” Logan agreed. He walked about with his heavy limp, his leg aching, his cavalry boots thumping loudly on the wood floor.

  The faint but unmistakable sound of glass breaking in an adjoining room made him stop and stand still.

  He and Matoon exchanged looks, then drew their Colt revolvers and moved toward the arched doorway to the room where the sound had originated.

  Logan motioned Matoon to stand back, then edged around the corner of the doorframe, Colt at the ready.

  It was a spacious room, and much brighter light streamed through tall windows. The furniture was covered but for a large, plushly upholstered chair and a grand piano with a raised lid. An ornate wood music stand was in a corner near the windows. Bookcases lined one wall, containing stacked and leaning books and sheet music as well as busts of the great classical composers. Obviously the music room, thought Logan, who himself played the banjo and sang.

  “I do seem to have dropped a glass,” said a woman’s voice in a rich Georgia drawl.

  Logan wheeled to see a tall woman with long dark hair. She’d been standing out of sight at the near wall, next to a massive mahogany sideboard. She was holding a crystal wine goblet, and at her leer broken glass glittered with diamond brilliance in the stream of sunlight.

  She seemed to glitter herself, with her flawless complexion and large dark eyes, her slender waist and pristine white dress with its draped lace and wide hoop skirt. The dress had a low neckline that allowed a glimpse of ample bosom beneath a lace modesty shawl. The brilliant light that another woman might have found harsh and revealing was her friend.

  Logan holstered his revolver and was aware of Matoon entering the room behind him.

  “I was about to partake of some wine the Yanks overlooked,” the woman said with an easy, lustrous smile. “I was not aware that I had guests.” She turned toward the sideboard. “There are more glasses. You must join me.”

  Logan bowed stiffly at the waist. “Captain Jedediah Logan of the Tennessee Ninth Cavalry, ma’am. And this is my adjunct Sergeant William Matoon.”

  “It is a pleasure, Captain,” came the honeylike words through the perfect smile. “And Sergeant. I am Mrs. Amanda Lucinda LeGrande. Mrs. Gerald LeGrande until six months ago, when I heard of my husband’s death in battle last year at Gettysburg.”

  “We are truly sorry for your loss,” Logan said. He felt ill at ease in the face of such beauty, as he’d seen only ugliness and death for the past months.

  The woman acknowledged his condolences with a sad smile and a nod, then turned to get down more glasses from the sideboard.

  “You, uh, don’t seem surprised to see us,” Logan said.

  Amanda LeGrande smiled. “You are not the first Rebs to come here. Ours is the same cause. Several times in the past month men have stayed here, some of them wounded. We’ve treated their wounds as best we could, and bid them stay. But they never stayed long, knowing they endangered our lives.”

  “‘Our lives’?” Matoon asked, before Logan could speak.

  “My servant Hampton and myself.” She shrugged. “Everyone else is gone or dead. I stay on, as does Hampton because he refuses to leave his master’s wife. His own dear wife, rest her soul, was treated vilely by the Yanks and died some months ago.”

  Matoon cleared his throat. “Why is it, ma’am, you appear to be dressed for a ball?”

  Her laugh was clear as the breaking crystal. “I am not that gaily adorned, Sergeant. But I do dress for what passes for dinner now. To keep up appearances as well as my spirit.”

  Logan stared at her. “‘Appearances’?”

  She melted him with a smile. “Why, in case unexpected guests might come calling. As indeed they have.”

  Logan returned her smile. “I’ll have Sergeant Matoon instruct the men to bivouac outside, then he and I would be honored and pleased to join you for a glass of wine.” He turned toward Matoon. “And Sergeant, do see if you can find some spare salt pork and hardtack to make something of a meal.”

  “Your men and yourselves are more than welcome to stay indoors,” Amanda said.

  “Only if the weather turns inclement,” Logan said. “We’ll all be safer if a force is outside and pickets have been posted. Sherman has passed through here, and Yankee patrols still roam the area.”

  “Roam it like packs of wolves.” Amanda said, shuddering. “I will not soon forget Sherman’s army. They were not gentlemen.”

  Logan drew himself to full height. “They abused you?”

  “Not in the way they might have. But there were women of lesser standing who did not fare so well.” She shrugged her dainty shoulders again beneath white lace. “Men are men, and war is war.”

  “Men do not have to be brutes,” Logan said, “even in war.”

  “Unfortunately, Captain, that is not true.”

  “I meant in regard to women, ma’am.”

  “There, Captain Logan, we agree.”

  Matoon returned from outside, and Amanda, carrying the delicate stemmed crystal, led the way into a spacious dining room with a beamed ceiling.

  Near the head of the table, she turned and motioned for them to be seated.

  And frowned for the first time since Logan had laid eyes on her. “Why, you are wounded yourself,” she said in a distraught voice.

  “Some grapeshot in my thigh,” Logan said. “Not serious. Some of my men are more gravely injured. One is carrying a bullet or minié ball in his shoulder. And we’re without a doctor.”

  “I have some meager but useful skills in that regard,” Amanda said. “As does Hampton.”

  As if at the sound of his name, a middle-aged, broad Negro of medium height entered the dining room. Beneath his shabby white serving uniform his shoulders were bunched and muscular, his stomach flat. Only the gray at his temples prevented him from passing as a much younger man.

  “Hampton,” Amanda said, “do take this food and put it in a proper serving dish, then please pour the wine.”

  Hampton muttered a “yes’m” and did as instructed. It was obvious from his actions that he was fond of Amanda and felt honored by his position.

  “He has always been a house slave,” Amanda explained, as Hampton adroitly arranged their humble food and drink before them.

  The largest portions, Logan noticed with approval, went to Amanda.

  After the surprisingly good meal, with his men outside and guards posted, Logan sat in an uncovered chair in the music room and sipped port wine that Hampton served in etched crystal. He glanced about him at the sweeping staircase to the second floor, the marble floors, and arched windows. Taste and elegance as well as onetime wealth. This would all be gone soon and forever if the war was lost. All this graciousness and tradition. The Southern way was something the Yanks held in disdain because they couldn’t understand it.

  For hours that seemed minutes, Logan and Amanda talked about the South before the Yanks had invaded, the long, hot afternoons, the endless tobacco and cotton fields, the sunlight bright on magnolia leaves so green as to be black at a glance. A lazy, beautiful, and safe world. Gone.

  “I noticed after our meal that your limp was worsening,” Amanda said. “Do bring in your man with the shoulder wound, and we will tend to him and then to your leg.”

  Logan was hesitant, but he knew his wounded trooper Clay Banning might soon be taken by infection. And he might lose his own leg to the rot. To let even a minor wound go days w
ithout treatment often ended in only one option other than death—the amputation of the limb.

  “I was a volunteer nurse,” Amanda assured him, smiling over the rim of her glass.

  The smile made up Logan’s mind for him. He rose and limped from the room and to the front doors that were open to the night breeze.

  “Sergeant Matoon!” he called out. “Bring Banning here. Along with a bottle of whiskey.”

  Five minutes later Matoon, with Clay Banning, who was nineteen and afraid, were upstairs in what was once a library but would serve as a makeshift operating and sickroom.

  Banning knew what was going to happen and gladly took what fortification and pain-deadener there was available.

  When the whiskey bottle was near empty and the young trooper had finally passed out, Logan watched as Amanda, aided by Hampton, set to work. Hampton fitted a piece of leather tack in Banning’s mouth to bite on so he wouldn’t break his teeth clenching his jaws from the pain. Then Amanda, with instruments from a doctor’s bag, parted the wound and probed for the bullet. Hampton deftly sopped blood with a folded cloth while she bent intently to her task. Logan watched her face, the beautiful sympathy and passion he’d seen only in likenesses of great European paintings.

  What seemed five minutes passed before she drew the bullet from Banning’s shoulder. Banning moaned, as did Amanda. She sat back and used a delicate wrist to wipe perspiration from her forehead. Hampton poured what remained of the whiskey over the wound, and Banning cried out, the toothmarked leather dropping from his mouth.

  Amanda held his hand. “That was necessary. We’re sorry. It is as much pain as you will feel. The worst is behind you and it is time for you to heal.”

  Banning couldn’t have heard her, but he relaxed and his features became peaceful but for his eyelids fluttering.

  Amanda looked at Logan. “We will move him to a room downstairs with good ventilation, where we can watch him easily and tend to his recovery.”

  “We can’t be in this place long,” Logan said. “The war.”

  “Yes, the war,” she said bitterly. “In the morning we can tend to your own wound, Captain Logan. It seems minor enough that you’ll be able to travel soon afterward.”

  “Tonight would be better, to save time,” Logan said. “We can leave Banning here until he’s well enough to ride south by himself.”

  “If you are game for such a thing so soon after watching,” Amanda said, “we can attend you.” She glanced to her left. “Hampton, go downstairs and fetch a bottle of good bourbon from my husband’s private stock.”

  Hampton seemed surprised by the instruction. Then he shrugged his broad shoulders. “The master won’t mind now,” he said sadly.

  After Banning was carried downstairs on a furniture cover used as a stretcher, Logan lay down on his back on the bed. The bourbon was a brand he’d never heard of, but one taste and he knew it was made for sipping, not guzzling as he was doing. He guzzled nonetheless.

  Hampton refilled his glass from time to time, while Amanda sat next to him, holding his hand. She was talking to him softly and caringly, almost crooning. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  Maybe this is all worth it, Logan thought, as the liquor took him. He vaguely recalled seeing Hampton use a large knife to cut off another few inches of leather strap. At the same time the strap was wedged between his teeth, Logan felt Amanda’s hand slip gently from his. There was a distant sound, material being cut then ripped. His pants leg.

  The numbness in his leg was almost immediately replaced by a sharp pain.

  He passed in and out of consciousness as the pain came and went.

  “The wound is more serious than I thought,” he heard Amanda say.

  “Poor man needs more bourbon, ma’am.” Hampton’s deep voice.

  The strap was removed from Logan’s jaws as liquid trickled down his throat. He coughed, then began to swallow. The strap was not replaced.

  * * *

  And it was morning.

  A bird was singing. Logan opened his eyes. Sunlight Jay in a warm rectangle over the same bed he had lain in the night before. When he tried to move his right leg, a jolt of pain made him gasp.

  “I would recommend at least a day of rest,” Amanda said from behind his head. “The grapeshot went deeper than we thought.” She came into view, holding in her hand the black, jagged iron that had penetrated Logan’s flesh.

  “There isn’t time to rest,” Logan said. There was a terrible taste in his mouth, and when he tried to sit up his head pulsed with pain. He fell back.

  “You must find time. Your weakened condition is obvious.”

  “I am only in the condition of men who’ve drunk too much the night before,” he told Amanda.

  “In the condition of men with battle wounds in their legs,” she said. She moved closer to him and sat on the edge of the bed, then rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You need care, Captain Logan. I want to care for you.” And she bent low and kissed him on the forehead. On his cool flesh her lips were like fire. “I would like you to survive,” she said. She seemed about to cry. “A gentleman could hardly refuse such a request.”

  He reached up and ran the backs of his knuckles along her soft cheek. “I’ll stay.”

  She smiled and kissed him again, this time lightly on the lips.

  He reached for her but she stood up. “Sleep, Captain. You need rest.”

  Logan closed his eyes, enjoying the scent of her and the rustle of her skirts as she stood and walked toward the door. She was a woman whose presence remained in a room long after she had left it.

  * * *

  When he awoke, the room was dim. A form was standing over him.

  Sergeant Matoon.

  “How’s the leg, sir?” Matoon asked.

  “Better. Where’s Amanda?”

  “Downstairs in the music room. I wanted to talk to you alone.”

  Logan struggled on the bed so that he was supported on his elbows, halfway sitting up. His leg still hurt badly. His head ached, but not so severely. The bitter taste still lay along the edges of his tongue. He didn’t like the expression on Matoon’s broad, sunbaked face. “What is it, Sergeant? Has something happened to Amanda?”

  “No. It’s Hampton, sir. Late last night one of the men saw him saddle a horse from a stall behind the house, then ride hell-for-leather away to the north.”

  “Hampton?”

  “Roache and I mounted up and followed him along the main road,” Matoon said. “Hampton didn’t see us. We saw him meet with three Union officers. They talked awhile, and Hampton handed the Yanks a folded sheet of paper, accepted a drink from them, then got back on his horse and returned to the plantation.”

  Logan blinked and shook his head, trying to clear his mind and grasp what he was hearing. He recalled the leather being removed from his mouth as more liquor was poured down his throat. What might he have babbled in his drunken stupor as Amanda was removing the grapeshot and Hampton was listening?

  “The men think he’s Hobson the spy, sir,” Matoon said. “I do, too.”

  Logan managed to sit up all the way on the edge of the sagging bed and place both bare feet on the floor. “Where is Hampton now?”

  “Outside in a grove of elms, sir. We arrested him as a spy.”

  Hobson the spy, a slave? A Negro? Maybe it shouldn’t be so unbelievable. Why wouldn’t he be a Yankee sympathizer? It was possible. Logan had learned that almost anything was possible.

  “My God! Does Amanda know?”

  “She does, sir. She’s distressed.”

  Logan swallowed. Sighed. The war … duty …

  His voice was jagged with pain and weariness. “Hand me my boots, Sergeant.”

  * * *

  Amanda insisted on coming with them to the elm grove. She walked silently, well off to the side by herself.

  Hampton stood beneath the largest of the elms, his wrists bound behind his back. A rope had been tossed over one of the tree
’s branches. On the end of the rope was a noose, looped loosely around Hampton’s neck. His head was high, his gaze fixed above the dozen men surrounding him, as if he might be staring at something off in the distance. Amanda stood nearby, leaning with one hand against a tree trunk for support. She looked at Logan, then away.

  Logan stood before Hampton, the man who the night before had tended his wounds, and spoke softly. “Is what I heard true, Hampton?”

  The slave glanced over at Amanda, who was looking at him with a stricken expression, her dark eyes moist.

  “Hampton,” Logan said, “you understand the situation, what happens to spies in this war. But I need to know from you if it’s true.”

  Hampton’s chest heaved as he took a deep breath. “True, Captain Logan,”

  Logan heard Amanda give a faint cry and turned to see young Jensen catch her arm and prevent her from dropping to the ground.

  “We got no choice in what we have to do, sir,” Matoon said beside Logan.

  Logan didn’t answer. He was looking at Amanda, who’d gained her balance and was standing firmly. Her graceful hands were at her sides now, balled into fists.

  “Amanda…” Logan said helplessly.

  She regarded him coldly. Then she walked over to look at Hampton. They stared at each other, their faces grim.

  “It’s true, ma’am,” Hampton said.

  Amanda nodded, looking ten years older. Her gaze remained fixed on her old friend and servant though she spoke to Logan. “It’s a hard war, Captain Logan.”

  “It surely is that, ma’am.”

  “Do what you must.”

  She looked away from Hampton and strode toward the house.

  Logan nodded and walked after her, limping on his wounded leg. Behind him Hampton gasped harshly as the noose tightened and he was raised off the ground.

  On the wide, pillared porch Logan caught up with Amanda. “I am truly sorry.”

  “I know you are, Captain Logan. You have your duty, as we all do.”

  “I know Hampton was with you for a long time.”

  “Forever.”

  “Can you forgive me?” he asked.