Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures)

by Terry Kroenung

  Coughing and waving my hands, I said, “Nice place. Come here often?”

  “Never been here,” Ernie answered. “But we knew about it, just like we know about all of the others.”

  Romulus hopped down the hole and vanished. I poked my nose in to see where he’d gone. His head lay only three feet below. Holding his hands up, he invited me down. When I’d landed beside him, fall broken by his brawny arms, I saw a tunnel full of goodies, just like the one beneath the house that had burned. Ernie dropped onto my head, then slid onto a shoulder. With a snap of a match Romulus lit a lamp.

  “Boy, the Equity sure does believe in bein’ prepared,” I breathed. “Is this another Underground Railroad depot?”

  “Sometimes they gets used fo’ that,” Romulus said, hunting around as if looking for something in particular. “Equity’s friendly wit’ the Railroad. But this here’s intended as a bolt hole fo’ the Marshals. Like dat other house.”

  “Wait a minute. That house we stayed in, the one that the Legion attacked, that was an Equity hideout?”

  Ernie poked me in the ear. “Hey, you’re smart for a human puppy, ain’t yer?”

  “And you knew it the whole time?”

  “Sho did,” Romulus admitted, rifling through a big oilskin wallet.

  “Couldn’t let on with that Reb there,” Ernie said, sliding down my arm and diving into a barrel of hardtack crackers.

  Romulus pulled out a printed map. “Why you think they tar an’ feather them folks? Merchantry saw to it that our agents paid fo’ helpin’ us. Just our good luck they hadn’t got ‘round to cleanin’ out the tunnel yet.”

  I munched on a cracker that the mouse offered me. Well, not so much munched as worried at till a tiny sliver came off. The sliver might’ve been part of my tooth instead. Always tough to tell with hardtack. It came by its name honestly. Soldiers would break them up with their musket butts and soak them in boiling bacon grease to make them edible. “So you have lots of these places around?”

  Ernie nodded, chewing on something he’d found. “All over the world, mate. Every city, large town, important road, river crossing, wherever we think we might need help in a pinch. Come in real handy, long as the Merchantry ain’t watchin’ the one you’re usin’.”

  I thought of the ravens, and the snake that Herbert had caught. Who knew what else might be keeping an eye on us. Earthworms? Snails? The Stone wouldn’t alert us unless they used dark magick. “In that case, let’s grab what we need and go.”

  Romulus was ahead of me there. He had two haversacks around his neck already and filled them with hardtack, salt pork, apples, whatever he could find. I did the same with my own sack, grabbing a spyglass, compass, more soap (yes!), and several other handy items.I handed Romulus a big Bowie knife. That was all the weapon he dared carry. In the South a colored man with a gun soon swung from a tree.Grabbing a pair of woolen blankets, we rolled up stuff like spare socks and towels into them and wrapped the fuzzy sausages around us like Reb soldiers did. There was a well with a pump handle down there, too. The Equity thought of everything. We topped off our canteens and climbed out of the tunnel. After replacing the hatch careful-like and scuffing the floor nice and even so as not to give the entrance away, we headed back out to the road.

  It was no ordinary chart that Romulus had found. Much more detailed than my Harper’s Weekly map, somebody had lovingly printed it from meticulous notes. It looked to have every individual outbuilding marked. Not even the Army’s engineer maps had so much detail. Neither did Jasper’s general knowledge of the land. Ernie explained that Equity birds with scribe spells had made them from the air. The one we had covered every square inch of ground from Richmond to the mouths of the James and the York. Without a doubt it’d help us choose a safe route to the ship.

  But the map couldn’t tell us where Confederate forces would be. All the rest of the day we hid from them in ditches, holes, and hedges. While I still had my cover story about my imaginary brother, and had come up with a variation of it where we were hunting for his regiment since he hadn’t been in the hospital, I wanted to avoid people altogether. No telling who served the Merchantry and who didn’t. Plus, it wasn’t likely that they’d let us into a CSA regiment with a big attack going on. Probably just arrest us or send us away. Or shoot us, nervous as they’ll be.

  So it took till nightfall just to get a couple miles northeast of Richmond. There were hordes of Confederate troops around, all on the move in the same direction we were. Every road, trail, and Injun path had cavalry, artillery, and infantry on it. White powder smoke lay low to the ground everywhere as thick as cotton. We also saw black plumes of smoke farther away, beyond the trees, the kind of smudge caused when something other than powder burned. A hard fight boiled in the woods in front of us, though we hadn’t laid eyes on a single blue-coated soldier yet. Lee must be pushin’ ‘em back like he planned. Followin’ his ‘Merchantry orders. We ended up in a tiny limestone cave under the bank of a shallow creek. I hoped that the rain didn’t come back or we’d be flooded out of our hidey-hole. It made for a long cold night. No fire, no hot food, not much talking above a whisper. Like newborn puppies we all clustered in a heap to stay warm. A pair of thin blankets covered us all. I was the last to fall asleep, because Roberta snored.

  My dream came back, just like the night before. The writing lady’s face stayed unseen. None of the words made any more sense than they had before. But this time something had been added. A cemetery, full of open graves. Not graves waiting to receive the dead. These had been in use, but their occupants seemed to have crawled out from the inside. I hoped with all my heart that it’d turn out to be symbolic of something else and not literally true.

  The next day, Thursday the 26th, was more of the same. We’d walk a while, hide a while, walk some more, cower again. I must’ve sprawled my poor self in every ditch in Virginia. It got powerful tiresome. At least I’d learned my lesson and now walked shoeless. The high point was finding a broad ragged straw hat that just fit my head. It wasn’t stylish, but it kept the sun off my fair skin and out of my eyes better than my old cap did. This day, though, I used my witched ears to listen in on Reb conversations. We needed to know what went on and what might lie ahead. Piecing together bits and pieces, I got as good an idea of the situation as we were likely to get in the chaos of a battle.

  The day before Lee had waited all morning for his great fighting general, Stonewall Jackson, to attack McClellan’s right flank from the north. That would’ve forced the Federals out of their defensive positions to meet a threat that headed for their rear. But Jackson’s men, the famous Foot Cavalry that had just whipped three different Union generals in the Shenandoah Valley, didn’t show. Cursing his name, another general had sent in a frontal assault on his own, which had failed with many dead Rebs as a result. That morning the blue troops had pulled back to another hill, behind Boatswain Swamp, just as Lee had hoped to hit them hard. Jackson still was nowhere to be seen. Lost on the wrong road, some said. Plain worn out from all that Valley fighting and then dashing to Richmond, others thought. Anyway, that explained why it was past noon and we’d heard little firing but had seen lots of men marching. Both armies were readying themselves for a huge battle that’d make the two days before seem like church picnics.

  We gathered our group under a mulberry tree in some low ground away from prying eyes. I wanted to look at the map and see what our wisest course might be. Then Roberta could fly ahead and see what the armies were up to and report back. So many soldiers had trudged past us that I wanted to avoid the battle zone like the plague. Romulus spread out the map, which looked like it had been painted on tough parchment instead of paper, across a flat rock so we could all examine it and pitch in our two cents.

  We saw no good choice. From where we sat, maybe four miles north and east of the capital, Confederate brigades were visible in every direction. If we tried going farther north, then cutting back east and south, we’d be blocked by both armies: Lee’s flanking move
ment and McClellan’s long line that occupied the whole peninsula between the two great rivers. On top of that, we’d be walking right into the worst fighting, as Lee sent everything he had at the Union forces. But backtracking would be worse. It would add untold days to our journey, days Eddie couldn’t afford us to lose. And at the end of the detour we’d still be faced with the same problem, getting through McClellan’s army to find the Penelope’s Kiss on the coast. By then the entire battle might’ve shifted south if things went well for Lee. We could be walking straight into an unforeseen nightmare.

  “I prefer goin’ straight ahead,” I told Romulus. “Quicker, and we’ll have more accurate information about what’s ahead of us.”

  Roberta flapped her wide colorful wings. “”That’s the way, matey! Crowd on all sail and full speed ahead!”

  Ernie wasn’t so sure. Gobbling a half-ripe mulberry, he shook his furry little head. “Have yer seen what’s comin’? Have yer seen every man with a musket movin’ up that way? There’s a terrible fight about to happen.”

  “Verity’s right,” Romulus rumbled, pointing at Boatswain Swamp on the map. “Bad as today might be, we cain’t sit and wait out this battle. Way things been goin’, there could be another one tomorrow, and the next day. We could be here a week. Lose as much time as we would turnin’ round. I say go now.”

  So that’s what we did. Just as we’d been doing all along, we dashed from tree to tree, from ditch to ditch. As the afternoon wore on and Roberta made countless trips back and forth to tell us about conditions at the front, I started to think that we’d guessed wrong. Lee probably felt the same way. The Federals had built themselves a mighty fortress on a hill behind Boatswain Swamp. Tens of thousands of Union infantry, backed by their fearsome guns and protected by trenches and logs, all but dared the Rebs to attack. Reckless Southerners had taken up the gauntlet. Waves of graybacks charged into the trees and into the swamp, bound and determined to take the hill. All of the attacks came back, missing hundreds of the troops they’d taken in. Now Lee had finally found Jackson, given him every available regiment, and planned one mighty push to throw the enemy off that hill, come hell or high water.

  And we’re strollin’ right into that hornet’s nest. Lucky us.

  Late in the day, as the sun was setting, we almost blundered straight into a clump of Rebel officers watching the proceedings from a low rise. They peered through binoculars, surrounded by their staffs. A couple of sergeants held their horses nearby. Must rank pretty high if they’re not leadin’ the charge. One of them, kepi pulled down so low you couldn’t see his eyes, looked more like an orderly than a high-ranking soldier. Covered in dirt, with mismatched coat and trousers, bushy beard a tangled mess, he held one arm over his head and sucked on a lemon. A lemon? I motioned my friends back. Nobody could hear us crashing around in the undergrowth, the noise of the guns grew so great. We hunkered down behind a log.

  “Do you know who that is?” I asked Romulus, pointing at the grimy fellow.

  “Just ‘nother Reb sergeant.”

  “Oh, ‘tain’t neither. That there’s Stonewall Jackson, terror o’ the Valley. What we got here is a chance to watch a battle with the great man himself.”

  And before he could object I was climbing a tall oak tree, my spyglass in hand.

  27/ Boatswain’s Swamp

  Great. Evil demon birds from the bowels of hell are tryin’ to rip me to shreds and I’m stuck alone in a tree.

  “Oh, this is real smart,” Jasper sneered in my head as minie balls whizzed past my head. “Why don’t we just paint a big bull’s-eye on your head while we’re here?”

  Taking deep breaths to control my panic, I snapped, “Are you gonna help or just be a wiseacre?”

  “Hey, I live to serve. Command me, O Great One.”

  “I take it this counts as imminent peril and not a special favor?”

  “Trust me, girlie, this is as imminent as it gets. Even worse, those are Northern bullets. Nothin’ says ‘civil war’ like gettin’ shot by your own side.”

  I didn’t wait to make a snappy comeback, but sent him a mental picture of what I wanted. The tin cup spread out into a broad curved shield with a hole in the middle. Now I had some protection from bullets to the front and shell fragments above and to the sides. It’d keep me safe for a few minutes. Slipping the spyglass through the front opening, I squinted into the eyepiece to watch the charge.

  The Federal army had set itself up on a hill, protected by some trees. They’d dug themselves in and sat pretty. Tens of thousands of blue-uniformed infantry ringed the crest in three curved lines about a mile across, bayonets glinting orange in the light of the dying sun. Their proud colors, national and state, waved in the air over their heads. In between the brigades sat dozens of artillery pieces, 12-pound Napoleons for the most part, spitting white smoke like angry bronze dragons. Officers on excited horses danced just behind the lines, shouting orders and encouragement I couldn’t hear over the mind-boggling noise. At the bottom of the barren slope lay a mess of scrubby bushes and mud, like a ready-made moat. Must be Boatswain Swamp. To my right ran Chickahominy Creek, wide and woody enough to prevent the Rebs from flanking that way. Beyond the swamp stretched a wide grassy field with no cover at all. Any troops advancing on the hill would be sitting ducks for all of the lead that McClellan’s men cared to throw.

  They’ve been chargin’ this position all afternoon? Are they crazy?

  I could see the pitiful evidence of those earlier attacks. The ground seemed as if it were coming to life. It crawled. Creepy. A closer look through the telescope showed that nearly every square yard of the turf from the Union lines to the base of the hill Jackson stood on was covered in dead or wounded men, thousands of them. Patches of gray and butternut wiggled, rolled, and crept as the injured writhed in misery. Now the noise of battle became my friend. Remembering my stay in the hospital, I felt glad I couldn’t hear the sounds of agony they must’ve been making. Shrieks of pain, moans for water or stretcher-bearers, cries for their mamas.

  Lee had managed to get all his men around the hill at one time. I couldn’t believe there were any troops left in Virginia. A great semicircle of Confederate soldiers, maybe three miles wide, had started creeping toward the swamp from three directions. Regimental flags in every color of the rainbow bobbed up and down as they were carried forward. Behind the lines marched clumps of drummer boys, keeping time for the fighters ahead of them. Just like their counterparts above, the officers rode with their men. But since it was an advance, they stayed in front, leading by example as all marched up that awful hill.

  It’s a terrible thing to say, but it was a beautiful sight. Close to a hundred thousand souls were near to blowing one another to perdition in every gruesome way that modern man could devise. Solid shot would tear off arms and legs, heads would burst from jagged chunks of shrapnel, musket balls would shred flesh and bone. Boys in their teens would spit up blood as they tried to hold their bowels in their slashed bellies. Old men who should’ve been playing with their grandkids would gasp out their lives, vainly clutching severed arteries that stained the Virginia grass. All that would happen any second. But in that one last heartbeat before the Federals opened up with all they had, it seemed to me the grandest, most glorious parade that ever was.

  This must be why they all do it. Why men go to war. They don’t remember the butchery, just this heavenly spectacle right before.

  Just as the gray line got to the swamp, which slowed them or even stopped them in places, the top of the velvety green hill exploded like a volcano. A giant white thundercloud of gun smoke boiled out and up. I’d thought the sound had been bad before, but this smacked me in the head like a brickbat. Stray bullets—all soldiers tended to fire high-- rattled off of my shield. Boy, I’m glad I thought of this thing. Though I knew I was as safe as I could be in such a situation, I flinched and shut my eyes anyway. When I opened them again I saw that the front ranks of the Rebel line were gone, as if they’d been a pencil draw
ing rubbed out by a great gum eraser. But they sucked closed again, like a wound magickally healing itself. Those mad soldiers kept on up the hill, despite knowing that every step narrowed the distance between them and their enemy, making them an easier target. As if in a cold driving rain, they hunched their shoulders and bent their heads. Surely they know that won’t help any? I shook my head at myself, applying logic to this insanity.

  Strange to say, but as the flanks melted away and broke from the fire, the center ranks kept up their advance. They didn’t stop to fire, which would’ve meant pausing in the midst of that rain of death to aim up the hill. Those troops just put one foot in front of the other and maintained their steady relentless push. Bayonets fixed, they ignored all that hot lead. Near dark now. The Union line must’ve been shooting blind, aiming at where the enemy ought to be. I had no trouble seeing everything, thanks to the Stone. My eyes could even make out the blue star on one of the center flags. Texas. Boys from Texas led the way in the center. Valiant, loony, or both. Maybe that’s what it takes to do this every day.

  With each passing second the Rebs lost more troops, melting like snow in August. But enough weight remained for the rest to push their way to the crest. Amidst all the noise I swear I heard that high-pitched battle yell the Southern boys loved so much. As if that alone made the difference, they hit the first of the three lines. Gray and blue mixed in the twilight. The smoke blocked my view of a lot of the action then, but I did see the top line of Federals back away and move down the far side of the hill. This was no skedaddle. They didn’t throw away their rifles and flee, but stayed in neat order as they retired, taking most of their artillery with them. So did the second rank, the middle of the Federal lines. While the remnants of the first line followed their comrades, the Rebs who’d sent them packing stopped to cheer their victory, then resumed their advance. But they looked played out from the climb, the fight, the embrace with death. Their climb to the top of the hill became a crawl. When they arrived at summit and occupied the shallow entrenchment from which their friends had been killed, they all stopped. In a few moments the remnants of the wings arrived, but they, too, had no stomach for pursuit. Red and blue flags sprung up all across the hill. Full dark now. The main fight was over.