North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  The delicate blue plates and cups and saucers and bowls began to slide. Ashton screamed again as the Wedgwood pieces dropped, Greek heads exploding, Greek arms and legs breaking. Lightning shimmered. The cabinet fell onto the dining table, where its weight proved too much. The table legs gave way at Huntoon’s end. He shrieked as broken jasperware and candle holders and the flower bowl rushed toward him.

  The flowers spilled onto his waistcoat. The water soaked his trousers as he kicked and pushed, sliding the chair away, out of danger, while two housemen joined Homer and wrestled the cursing, ranting Cooper to the front door. There they flung him into the rain.

  Ashton heard the door slam and said the first thing that came to mind. “What if he tells what he knows?”

  “What if he does?” Huntoon snarled. He picked blossoms from his wet crotch. “There was no law against what we did. And we’re out of the trade now.”

  “Did you see how white his hair’s gotten? I think he’s gone mad.”

  “He’s certainly dangerous,” Huntoon said. “We must buy pistols tomorrow in case—in case—”

  He couldn’t finish the sentence. Ashton surveyed the Wedgwood all over the floor. One cup had survived unbroken. She wanted to weep with rage. Lightning flashed, thunder shook the wet windows, and her mouth set.

  “Yes, pistols,” she agreed. “For each of us.”

  81

  AT SEVEN THAT SAME night, Thursday, in the first week of June, Bent reported to Colonel Baker’s office as ordered. Baker wasn’t there. Another detective said he had gone to Old Capitol Prison to conduct one of his interrogations of an unfriendly journalist who was under detention. “He’ll go from there to his hour of pistol practice. He wouldn’t let a day pass without that.”

  Bent settled down to wait, soothing his nerves with one of several apples bought from a street vendor. After two bites, he looked again at a small silver badge pinned to the reverse of his lapel. Baker had awarded the badge, which bore the embossed words NATIONAL DETECTIVE BUREAU, after Bent’s return from Richmond. His success there had earned him the token of official acceptance into Baker’s organization. The colonel had been especially pleased by the return of the money paid to the albino. Bent stated that he had rendered the spy harmless because he was no longer useful, but he was vague about details and didn’t specifically say he had killed him. Baker asked no questions.

  Despite the acceptance that the badge signified, Bent had been feeling bad for the past few days. He had caught the moods of the town—apprehension, despondency. Hooker’s fighting spirit had proved as substantial as the contents of a glass of water. And while Lee had lost a mighty ally when Jackson fell, he had won not only a splendid victory at Chancellorsville but an ominous supremacy over the minds of many Northerners in and out of the army. There were now daily rumors and alarms out of Virginia. Lee was moving again, but in which direction, no one knew.

  Bent was masticating his third apple when Baker reined up outside a window overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. An orderly took Baker’s horse, an unruly bay stallion the colonel had nicknamed Slasher. Humming cheerily, Baker strode into the office. He handed Bent a crudely printed broadside. “You may find a chuckle or two in that, Dayton.” Fancy type on the front announced that this was the menu for the Hotel de Vicksburg. When he opened the piece, he understood the joke. The broadside contained the menu of a city under siege.

  Soup: mule tail

  Roast: saddle of mule, à l’armée

  Entrees: mule head, stuffed à la Reb;

  mule beef, jerked à la Yankie

  Pastry: cottonwood-berry pie, à la ironclad

  Liquors: Mississippi water, vintage 1492, very superior

  Any diners not satisfied with the starvation fare are welcome to apply to

  JEFF DAVIS & CO., PROPRIETORS

  “Very amusing,” Bent said because Baker expected it. “Where did this come from, sir?”

  “O’Dell brought it back from Richmond last night. He saw large masses of troops moving west of Fredericksburg, by the way. There’s truth in those rumors. Lee’s up to something—ah!” Among some mail, he found a piece that he immediately tucked in his pocket. “A letter from Jennie.” Baker’s wife was living with her parents in Philadelphia for the duration.

  The man Baker had mentioned, Fatty O’Dell, was another agent. “I didn’t realize we had someone else on a mission down there.”

  “Yes,” Baker replied, but didn’t elaborate. That was his style. Only he knew all the operatives and what each was doing.

  Baker leaned back and clasped hands behind his head. “That broadside is enlightening about attitudes toward Jeff Davis. It helps corroborate something Fatty got wind of from third parties. A Richmond speculator named Powell is agitating very openly against Davis.”

  Bent picked a bit of apple from his lip. “That sort of thing’s been going on for a year or more, hasn’t it?”

  “Absolutely right. This time, however, there’s an unusual wrinkle. Fatty said Mr. Powell’s pronouncements include talk of forming an independent Confederate state at some unspecified location.”

  “God above—that is new.”

  “I wish you would not take the Lord’s name in vain. I like it as little as I liked those filthy yellow-backed books I confiscated and burned some months ago.”

  “Sorry, Colonel,” Bent said hastily. “The information surprised me, that’s all. What’s the speculator’s name again?”

  “Lamar Powell.”

  “I never heard it mentioned when I was in Richmond. Nor any new Confederacy, for that matter.”

  “It may be nothing more than street gossip. If they impeached Davis, it would help our cause. It would help even more if they strung him up. And I’d be the first to applaud. But it’s probably a vain hope.”

  He opened a lower desk drawer and. produced one of the folders that contained personal dossiers. Inscribed on the front in a beautiful flowing hand was the name Randolph.

  Baker passed the folder across the desk. Bent opened it and discovered several pages of notes in a variety of handwritings, plus a number of news clippings. One of the dispatches carried the words By Our Capitol Correspondent Mr. Eamon Randolph.

  He closed the folder and waited. When Baker began to speak, he did so in a tone that took Bent into his confidence. Bent’s gloom lifted.

  “Mr. Randolph, as you’ll discover when you read those scurrilous articles, is not a partisan of those for whom we work. Nor is he fond of Senator Wade, Congressman Stevens, or their rigorous program for rehabilitating our Southern brethren after the war. You will find Mr. Randolph’s paper, the Cincinnati Globe, to be strongly antiadministration and pro-Democratic. Further, only the peace wing of that party earns its admiration. Randolph doesn’t go so far as some in the same camp—no advocacy of removal of Mr. Lincoln by violent means, nothing like that. But he definitely favors noninterference with slavery even after the South capitulates. We cannot tolerate the promulgation of that view in a period of crisis. I have been urged by certain administration officials to—shall we say—” Baker stroked his luxuriant beard “—chastise him. Silence him briefly, not only to remove an irritant but to warn his paper, and others of the same persuasion, to have a care lest the same fate befall them. Your work in Richmond impressed me, Dayton. That’s why I’ve chosen you to handle the case.”

  82

  THE THREE CONTRACT SURGEONS in filthy uniforms sat around a rickety table. Their hands were filthy too, stained with dirt and blood, as they were whenever the surgeons examined wounds.

  One of the three picked his nose. The second surreptitiously rubbed his groin, an oafish smile spreading over his face. The third doctor drained a bottle of alcohol meant for the wounded. One of these, limping pitifully, was shown in by an orderly, who acted like a mental deficient.

  “What have we here?” said the surgeon who had been swilling the alcohol; apparently he was the chief.

  “I’m hurt, sir,” said the enlisted man. “Can I go h
ome?”

  “Not so fast! We must conduct an examination. Gentlemen? If you please.”

  The surgeons surrounded the soldier, poked, probed, conferred in whispers. The chief stated the consensus: “I’m sorry, but your arms must be amputated.”

  “Oh.” The patient’s face fell. But after a moment, he grinned. “Then can I have a furlough?”

  “Definitely not,” said the surgeon who had been rubbing his privates. “That left leg must come off, too.”

  “Oh.” This time it was a groan. The patient again tried to smile. “But certainly I can have a furlough after that.”

  “By no means,” said the nose picker. “When you get well you can drive an ambulance.”

  Roars of laughter.

  “Gentlemen—another consultation,” cried the chief, and back into a huddle they went. It broke up quickly. The chief said, “We have decided one last procedure is necessary. We must amputate your head.”

  The patient strove to see the bright side. “Well, after that I know I’ll be entitled to a furlough.”

  “Absolutely not,” said the chief. “We are so short of men, your body must be set up in the breastworks to fool the enemy.”

  Out of the darkness, massed voices roared again. Seated cross-legged on trampled grass, Charles laughed so hard tears ran from his eyes. On the tiny plank stage lit by lanterns and torches, the soldier playing the patient shrieked and ran in circles while the demented surgeons pursued him with awls, chisels, and saws. Finally they chased him behind a rear curtain rigged from a blanket. Applause, yelps, and whistling acknowledged the end of the program, which had lasted about forty minutes. All the performers—singers, a banjo player, a fiddler, one of Beverly Robertson’s troopers who juggled bottles, and a monologist portraying Commissary General Northrop explaining the healthful benefits of the latest reduction in the meat ration—returned for their bows. Then came the actors from the skit, who got even louder applause. Some anonymous scribe in the Stonewall Brigade had written The Medical Board, and it had become a favorite on camp programs.

  Shadow masses stood and separated. Charles rubbed his stiff back. The mild June evening and the campfires shining in the fields away toward Culpeper Court House brought images of Barclay’s Farm to mind. Barclay’s Farm and Gus.

  Ab was thinking of less pleasant subjects. “Got to find me some Day and Martin to shine my boots. Damn if I ever thought when I joined the scouts that I’d have to get so fancied up.”

  “You know Stuart,” Charles said with a resigned shrug.

  “On some occasions I wish I didn’t. This is one. Goddamn if I want to go paradin’ for the ladies on Saturday.”

  The two men crossed the railroad tracks, retrieved their horses from the temporary corral, and started for the field where they had pitched their tents with Calbraith Butler’s regiment. A massive movement of forces was under way below the Rappahannock; Ewell and Longstreet were already at Culpeper with infantry. Charles knew nothing of the army’s destination, but lately there had been much talk of a second invasion of the North.

  Somewhere above the river there were certain to be Yanks. Yanks who would want to know the whereabouts of Lee’s army. So far as Charles could tell, no one was worried about the Yankee presence or its potential threat. Stuart had settled down at Culpeper with more horsemen than he had had in a long time—close to ten thousand. Some of those were on picket duty at the Rappahannock fords, but most were being allowed time to prepare for Stuart’s grand review for invited guests on Saturday. Many women would be coming by rail and carriage from Richmond, as well as from the nearer towns. Charles wished he’d had time to invite Gus.

  The review was certainly typical of Stuart, but it struck Charles as inappropriate when mass movement of the army was under way, and that army was not in the best of condition. These days he saw many sore, swollen backs among the horses; sixteen or seventeen hours a day was too long for an animal to be saddled. In Robertson’s brigade he had seen horses frantically chewing each other’s manes and tails—starving even in the season of growth. In the brigade of Old Grumble Jones, the slovenly general whose liking for blue jeans and hickory shirts earned him the dubious honor of being called the Zach Taylor of the Confederacy, Charles had only yesterday spied half a dozen men riding mules. The best replacements they could find, he supposed.

  Sweet clover scented the June night. The fires shone along the whole southern horizon. In camp, a few men were resting, writing letters, or playing cards with decks in which the court cards were portraits of generals and politicians. Mr. Davis, popular in the first year of the war, was seldom seen in the newer decks.

  Most of the troopers had no time for recreation, however. They were sewing and polishing because Stuart had ordered every man to find or fix up a good uniform for the review. Much as Charles disliked the whole idea, he intended to look as presentable as possible and even unpack the Solingen sword. If Jeb wanted a show, he would do his best to contribute.

  Brandy Station had been named for an old stagecoach stop famous for apple brandy served to travelers; the apples grew in orchards close by. Now the Orange & Alexandria line served the place. On Saturday the special trains started rolling in early, the cars packed with politicians and gaily dressed ladies, most of whom would attend both the review and General Stuart’s ball at Culpeper that night.

  In open meadows near long and relatively flat Fleetwood Hill, just above the village crossroads, Stuart’s cavalry performed for the visitors. Columns of horse charged with drawn sabers. Artillery batteries raced, wheeled, loaded, and fired demonstration rounds. Flags and music and the warm smell of summer moved in the breeze that brushed over vistas of tasseled corn and flourishing wheat. Charles and the rest of Hampton’s scouts took their turn galloping past the guests and reviewing officers gathered along the rail line. Speeding by, Charles saw the black plume on Stuart’s hat dip and flutter; the general had bobbed his head when he recognized his old West Point acquaintance.

  After the long and tiring review, Charles returned to his encampment, anticipating a good meal and a sound sleep. Tomorrow he had to scout the river near Kelly’s Ford. He was putting up Sport when an orderly appeared.

  “Captain Main? General Fitzhugh Lee presents his compliments and requests the captain’s company at his headquarters tent this evening. Supper will be served before the ball, which the general may not attend.”

  “Why not?”

  “The general has been sick, sir. Do you know the location of his headquarters?”

  “Oak Shade Church?”

  “That’s correct, sir. May General Lee expect you?”

  “I don’t plan to go to the ball either. Tell Fitz—the general I accept with pleasure.”

  That’s a damn lie, he thought as the orderly left. Everyone knew Fitz was Stuart’s favorite and still jealous of Hampton outranking him because of seniority of appointment. Hampton’s partisans, in turn, sneered at Fitz, saying he had risen rapidly solely because he was Old Bob’s nephew. Might be something to it. Two of the five brigades of horse were led by Lees—Fitz and the general’s son, Rooney.

  Uncomfortable about the invitation, Charles spent the next couple of hours cleaning his uniform. At least he had the gift sword to smarten his appearance. Presently he mounted Sport and rode down a lane flanked by fields where bees hummed in the white clover blossoms. The sun was sinking. Northward, the heights of Fleetwood swam in blue haze.

  Wish I could get out of here and see Gus, he thought. Something’s mighty wrong about this campaign.

  “Glad you accepted the invitation, Bison. I’ve been feeling poorly of late. Rheumatism. I need some good company.”

  Fitz did indeed look pale and unhealthy. His beard was big and bushy as ever, his uniform immaculate, but he lacked his customary vigor; he talked and moved lethargically.

  He expressed surprise that his old friend didn’t intend to enjoy the company of the ladies gathering at Culpeper. To which Charles replied, “I have a lady of my own n
ow. I’d have invited her, but I couldn’t get a message to her soon enough.”

  “Is it a serious affair of the heart? Going to settle down when this muss is over?”

  “Could be, General. I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “Let’s dispense with general and captain for one evening,” Fitz said. He gestured his friend to a camp chair. “The old names will do.”

  Charles smiled and relaxed. “All right.”

  The fireball of the sun rested on the low hills in the west. The open tent was breezy and comfortable. One of Fitz’s officers joined them for whiskey served by a Negro body servant. Colonel Tom Rosser, a handsome young Texan, had been ready to graduate in the class of May ’61 when he resigned to fight for the South. The three cavalrymen chatted easily for fifteen minutes. Rosser twice mentioned a cadet in the later, June, class of ’61 who was with the Union.

  “Name’s George Custer. He’s a lieutenant. Aide to Pleasonton. I used to consider him a friend, but I reckon I can’t any longer.”

  Thinking of friendships and Hampton, Charles cast an oblique glance at the general. Why had Fitz invited him? For the reason he gave—company? Or another?

  On the subject of Custer, Fitz said, “I hear they call him Crazy Curly.”

  “Why’s that?” Charles asked.

  Rosser laughed. “You’d know if you saw him. In fact, you’d recognize him instantly. Hair down to here—” He tapped his shoulder. “Wears a big scarlet scarf around his neck—looks like a damn circus rider gone mad.” Softly, more reflectively, he added, “He doesn’t lack courage, though.”

  “I’ve also heard he doesn’t lack for ambition,” Fitz remarked. “On the peninsula they called him Pleasonton’s Pet.”

  In the universal fashion of cavalrymen, the three officers fell to discussing the strong and weak points of other opponents. Pleasonton got poor marks, but Fitz and Rosser were impressed by the exploits of a heretofore unknown colonel, Grierson, of Illinois. In late April, to divert attention from Grant at Vicksburg, Grierson had led seventeen hundred horse on a daring ride from LaGrange, Tennessee, to Baton Rouge, tearing up railroad tracks and killing and imprisoning Confederate soldiers along the way.