[Concluding chapter fifteen]
Stewart found himself smiling again once he’d located Colonel Goodall. That man, it turned out, commanded the 4th Virginia Dragoons—cousin Will’s regiment. Even better, Will was in the squadron Colonel Goodall took with him to perform General Lee’s reconnaissance. Stewart hoped he and his cousin would get a chance to talk before the assignment was over; for now, though, he could only wave to Will from his position beside Colonel Goodall as the squadron cantered east from Oak Springs.
“We can expect to find Federal cavalry out here,” Goodall told him as they rode. Someone had provided Stewart with a saber and carbine, and he was trying to figure out the carbine’s mechanism as he bounced in the saddle. “We’ve already had a scrap today, south of Yellow Bluff.”
“Is that far from here?”
“Maybe ten miles from our current station,” Goodall said. “That was at first light, mind. The Federals have moved south and west since then.”
“Where will we go?” Stewart dropped a percussion cap, cursed under his breath, and gave up for the time being.
“Our best bet is to turn north at Milburn. There’s a road from there to Lovelaceville that’s perpendicular to what we think is the right of the Federal line. We’ll ride a couple of miles north on that road, then turn west and go into the woods looking for bluecoats.”
“Do you think we’re likely to fight?”
The corners of Goodall’s mouth twitched upward briefly. “I think there’s a pretty good chance of it. Kearny’s no fool. Even if his flank is in the air, he won’t have left it unguarded.”
They hadn’t been riding long—well under an hour, Stewart guessed— when one of Goodall’s scouts came galloping back to the main party. “Blue-coats up ahead, sir,” he puffed between breaths. “We think a couple dozen, but there could be more behind ‘em.”
“All right,” Goodall said, turning to Stewart. “Here’s where it gets messy. We don’t want them to know what we’re up to. So, Captain Stewart, you’re going to take a single trooper and head west from here. Find a safe place to tie up your horses, and then go and find that flank. We’ll keep the Yankees off your back.”
Stewart’s mouth was suddenly dry. Not knowing what else to do, he saluted. “Yes, sir.” From the west the sound of gunfire diminished, as if by mutual agreement both sides had stopped fighting. It seemed to Stewart too quiet now. Surely those Federal horsemen up ahead could hear them talking.
When, at the colonel’s signal, a trooper cantered up beside them, Stewart was grateful for the distraction. He looked carefully at the man, wondering if in the next hour or so he was going to be putting his life directly into those crudely gloved hands.
Whatever people had said last year about the cavalry being the aristocrat of the military was no longer true if Trooper Bynum was any indication. His smell, this close, was almost overpowering, and clearly detectable over the scent of his horse; the man had neither bathed nor cleaned his clothes in weeks, it seemed. Bynum’s uniform was in the last stages of disintegration, and only a couple of buttons remained to hold his coat together. The trousers were in even worse shape, with underwear or skin showing in several places. The threads holding leather reinforcements to the insides of the pant-legs had begun to give way, as had those holding the soles to his boots.
Bynum’s carbine, though, was clean and in perfect condition. Clearly, these men were paying attention to what mattered.
“Off you go,” Colonel Goodall said to Stewart. He pointed to the woods off to their left. “The Yankees are somewhere in there, probably not more than a thousand yards from here. Don’t ride too far though. You don’t want them to know you’re coming.”
“They won’t know until long after I’ve gone,” Stewart said, hoping he’d sounded confident.
* * * *
“Keep your head down.” Stewart glared at Bynum, who had raised himself up on his elbows to look over the fallen log behind which they were hiding. He couldn’t stop his shoulders from twitching and it seemed to him that every Federal in Kearny’s army was gathered on the opposite edge of the clearing and staring directly at them.
“Sorry, Captain,” Bynum said. “Just wanted to see ‘em, is all. Ain’t seen many Yankees lately who wasn’t shooting at me.”
“Well, these ones will be shooting at you too if you don’t stay hidden.”
Stewart was soaked and miserable, his uniform a blotchy, muddy mess and his face a stinging, bloody mess, torn by branches he hadn’t been able to avoid. He hadn’t counted on scouting being quite this filthy a job. On their way to this clearing, he figured, he and Bynum had found every single puddle and mud-hole left by the recent rains.
Across the clearing he’d seen a group of pickets who must have come from one of the regiments on Kearny’s left flank. He’d actually heard them long before seeing them, because they’d been—and still were—arguing amongst themselves.
“I say this is as far as we need to go,” a flat, nasal voice said. “No rebs here, and this clearing’s good a spot as any to set up.”
“Colonel said to find the road,” a second voice said. This one was nasal too, with a whining tone that Stewart took an immediate dislike to. The crackling of shrubbery suggested someone stepping into the clearing.
“God damn it, we know where the road is,” the first voice said. “It’s just through those trees. Do you hear any rebs out there?” Stewart held his breath.
“No.” The whining man didn’t sound too sure.
“Course not. ‘Cause they ain’t there. We outnumber ‘em, remember. They can’t have come out this far. That’s why we’re out here. We’ll go around them when the rest of the regiment comes up.”
Stewart stiffened behind his log. Well, it only makes sense, he thought. If Lee wants to go around a flank, presumably Kearny’s had the same idea.
We’ve got to beat them to it.
But how? What had been a perfect vantage point was now a trap. He couldn’t leave without being spotted. Worse, if the Federals worked up their courage and crossed the clearing, he and Bynum would wind up prisoners, or dead.
“Time to go, Captain?” Bynum’s voice was so low Stewart could scarcely hear it.
He pitched his own voice to match. “Yes. Can we do it without being seen?”
“Want me to check on ‘em?”
“No. Wait a minute.”
Stewart felt—was sure he could hear—his heart hammering. His right hand edged toward the holster, found the hand-grip of his revolver. For a moment, the only noise Stewart could hear at all was the sound of his and Bynum’s breathing, and Stewart was sure that the Federals would have to be deaf not to hear it.
A clatter of musketry broke the silence. “What’s that?” one of the Federals asked, his voice pitched high in fear. “Jesus Christ, they’re behind us!”
“You idiot,” the first voice replied, “that’s coming from up the road. I bet there’s cavalry out there.” Stewart heard the jingling of equipment. “Whatever it is, it’s miles from here. Let’s get back and report, quick.”
Stewart counted to a hundred before raising his head to look. The clearing was empty, the Federals long gone. “God damn Yankees,” he said, struggling to his feet. “They’ve made me ruin my uniform.”
Bynum laughed. “Least that’s all that’s ruined, Captain.”
Stewart nodded. “Would have been embarrassing if they’d caught us, Bynum; you’re right. Come on—we’ve got to get back to General McKee, and fast.”
“What about the Colonel,” Bynum asked. “You think that noise is them?”
For a second Stewart thought he could hear shouting, borne on the wind, over the popping of carbines and pistols. “I’m sure of it,” he said. “But they can look after themselves. They’ll have to. If this really is where the Federals are going to try to out-flank us, then General McKee has to get his brigade here first.” He ignored the branches lashing his face, running as fast as he dared through the muddy woods.
* * * *
The rest of the day passed in a red haze. General Lee found it nearly impossible to see how the battle was progressing, so his couriers went in and out of the lines on a steady basis, attempting to be the commander’s eyes and ears. Stewart saw trees blasted into sawdust and kindling by cannonballs—and saw men reduced in similar, industrial fashion. He had thought himself immune by now to the sight of death, but an afternoon in western Kentucky proved him wrong. The deaths of a few men by pistol-shot were peaceful, even merciful, when set against the dismemberment and corruption inflicted by a modern battlefield. Some had suggested that a battlefield was like an abattoir, but by the time the last of the Federals had fled or surrendered, Stewart knew that even this comparison failed when measured against what war had become in the year since he’d been wounded. Abattoirs didn’t do to animal carcasses what grapeshot or canister did to men.
Stewart was sitting on a camp stool near General Lee’s tent, fussing while the general’s surgeon bound a minor wound Stewart hadn’t even realized he’d received, when a lieutenant he recognized from the reserve park rode up. “Captain Stewart,” the lieutenant said. “Colonel Goodall’s compliments, and could you come with me? It’s fairly urgent. In fact, it may already be too late—I’ve been trying to find you for nearly an hour.”
Tired and numb as he was, Stewart felt himself go colder at the courier’s words. Such a request could only mean one thing. “General?” Stewart asked Lee. “Do I have your permission to go?”
“Yes,” General Lee said. “It sounds as if you must. But please come back as quickly as you can, Captain Stewart. I have a special task that I think you uniquely qualified to perform.”
“Sir?”
“You’ve just come from New Orleans, have you not? Well, I have a Canadian—policeman, I suppose is the word—just arrived here. He is looking for a fugitive, one he thinks may be a prisoner here. I’ve sent him to the provost marshal, but I’d like you to act as my liaison to the gentleman. We can’t afford to have anything go amiss with our Canadian friends just now.”
Stewart felt himself sinking even lower. I thought I was done with the Canadians, he thought. Except for Pauline.
Thinking about Pauline, he started to shake. How close had he come to dying today, and how many times? Eventually the surgeon forced him to take a draught of whiskey in order to keep him still long enough that the man could finish dressing his wounds.
“How bad is he?” Stewart asked the lieutenant as they rode to the 4th Virginia’s camp. Poor Will. I never even had a chance to say hello to him.
“It’s pretty bad, they say. Shot in the thigh. They took his leg off a couple of hours ago, but he didn’t look too good when the colonel sent me out to find you.”
“God preserve him until I can see him, then,” Stewart said. If it was Will’s fate to die, Uncle James would want to know as much as possible about how it had happened, and what Will had said.
A man with less experience than even Stewart possessed would still know that Will was dying. He lay on a bed of straw outside a smokehouse that—long since emptied of hams and bacon—was being used as an impromptu surgery. The cutting had ended for now, but Stewart could still hear crying, moaning, and calls for mothers, sisters, wives, from the men in and around the place.
Will’s face, in the fading daylight, was so pale it looked like candle-wax. He was shivering when Stewart reached him, though the day had been and still was pleasantly warm; Stewart looked about in the hope of finding a blanket but saw nothing. In his desire to do something he took off his mud- and blood-spattered jacket and lay it over Will’s shaking chest, squatting down beside him. Menard was like this, too.
“Charles,” Will said, recognizing him at last. “I’m glad to see you.”
“Sorry it took me so long,” Stewart said. “How do you feel?”
“I’d like to say I’ve felt worse,” Will said, “but I’d be lying.” He tried to laugh; it came out as a series of coughs. Stewart finally leaned forward, kneeling in the mud and straw, and grabbed Will’s shoulders to steady him—again, not so much because he thought it would help as because he felt he had to do something.
“If it’s any consolation,” Stewart said, “know that you’re going to a better place, Will.”
“I know that. I believe that I have earned forgiveness for my sins, Charles. I’m not upset.”
“Is there anything I can tell your father?” Stewart asked.
“Yes.” Will suddenly reached up and grabbed Stewart’s vest. “Tell him to go to Hell. Stewart, I have to know. Did Thomas get away safely?”
“Thomas?” What happened between you and Uncle James? Stewart wanted to ask. Why this concern about Thomas? “Thomas—Thomas didn’t come north with me, Will.”
“Of course he didn’t,” Will said. He fought for breath, his eyes closed and the lids twitching horribly. “I wanted to know that he was safely away to—oh, no. You didn’t know, did you?”
Good God. “You mean you did? Will, you were a part of this plan? This conspiracy?”
“Oh, Charles. I’m sorry. I just assumed that”—Will’s voice trailed away.
Stewart rocked back on his haunches, pulling away from his cousin. He wanted to throw up, to purge himself. I thought that Menard recruited Thomas. Apparently someone else did. He wouldn’t be going back to New Orleans, apparently. Not just yet.
“Will,” he said, trying to keep the despair from his voice, “what did you do? I have to know.”
“I’m sorry,” Will said. His voice was very faint. “Good-bye, Charles. Give my love to your parents.”
For a long time after Will died, Charles stood and stared at his body. He had, he realized, never really known his cousin. Apparently he hadn’t known too many people as well as he ought to.
He felt a trickle of moisture on his cheek. He looked up.
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