Down the Sky: Volume Three of the “Strike The Tent” Trilogy

by W. Patrick Lang

  After an hour or so, another group of Confederate Zouaves arrived. When they were dismissed, they walked around the grove inspecting the prisoners. The white Union prisoners tried to talk to them but had little success. The dark faces stared at them. When they reached the black Yankees, the Zouaves stood rooted to the earth, staring at them, saying nothing, just looking.

  The Negroes shifted uneasily, squirming in discomfort at the malevolence in the attention they were receiving. Some among them began to sing.

  “There is a balm in Gilead

  to make the wounded whole.

  There is a balm in Gilead

  to heal the sin-sick soul.

  Sometimes, I feel downhearted…”

  A Zouave sergeant spoke to several of his men. They began pointing to individual black prisoners, calling them out of the group, making them stand to one side.

  As he looked at them, Farinelli realized they were all light skinned Negroes. He inspected them closely looking for the sergeant he had noticed on the way into the clearing. He was not there. He was still sitting while trying to hide behind another man’s broad back.

  What is this? Farinelli thought. Ah! This is death coming… Now, I see. The Italian got to his feet stiffly; one leg was asleep from sitting on it. He hobbled across the open ground. He walked straight forward and did not turn or seem to notice any of the Confederates in the clearing. Because of this, they looked away, unsure of the right response to a senior enemy officer. He elbowed his way through the guards around the blacks. The Rebels turned to Miller, the provost officer. He seemed paralyzed as he watched Farinelli’s progress across the grassy space. The Italian reached the mulatto sergeant. “Rinaldi!” he said aloud with exasperation in his voice. “What you are doing here? You must sit with all of us together, there!” He pointed a stick he had been carrying at the white prisoners from Kautz’ division.

  The cavalry sergeant looked at him in confusion. The other blacks scrutinized the two of them, turning from one to the other. “Come now, come at once!” Farinelli whispered as he bent close to the man, reaching for an elbow.

  “Go, George, get out of here! Go with him, you fool!” urged a dark skinned infantryman seated next to the sergeant.

  The cavalry sergeant stared, uncomprehending, for an instant and then scrambled to his feet. They walked away from the blacks, headed for the barrier formed by the Louisiana soldiers. “You are Giorgio Rinaldi, from Palermo,” Farinelli whispered. “You are of the 5th New York Cavalry. You were captured yesterday with us at a bridge, understand?”

  The sergeant said nothing.

  They reached the line of Zouaves, one of whom held up a hand for them to stop. “Qu’est que c’est, mes petits?” he asked. “Vous êtes, peut être, des amants?”

  The other Zouaves laughed.

  Farinelli found this to be unacceptable familiarity on the part of a private soldier. “Mais, non, tu cherches un nouveau?” he asked, expressionless.

  A moment’s surprise was followed by an even louder peal of laughter. The Zouave shifted his grip on his rifle.

  Lieutenant Miller stepped between the big, dark, Creole and Farinelli’s slight figure. “What are you doing here, Major?” he asked. I left you with your people over there. You must obey our instructions or you lose whatever protection you have as a prisoner. You know that.” Annoyance showed in his face. He looked as if he would like to let the Zouave have his way with the two prisoners.

  Farinelli looked him in the eye. He had to tilt his chin up to do so. He still had the mulatto sergeant by the arm. “Sergeant Rinaldi, he is tired,” he said. “He sat in wrong place…”

  Miller switched his attention to the enlisted man. He looked at him for a long moment, then back at the Italian. He looked at the group of fair skinned prisoners that the Zouaves were carefully selecting. “What’s your regiment?” he asked.

  “Fifth New York, sir,” was the answer. “What do you do in that regiment?” “I am a squad leader in ‘E Company’.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Giorgio Rinaldi. I am from New York City.”

  “But you are Italian?” Miller asked.

  “I was brought from Sicily when I was very small, lieutenant.”

  “You look like nigger to me,” the Zouave interjected.

  “I’m as white as you are,” the almost white sergeant said.

  The rifle butt came up to head level.

  “Come on, sarge!” yelled one of the white cavalry prisoners. “Get over here where you’re supposed to be. Leave them niggers alone. They’re dead meat…”

  Miller stepped around Farinelli to address the black prisoners. He turned “Georgio” around by the arm. “Do you men know this fellah?” he asked them.

  They looked back at him silently.

  The Zouave captain called Miller to his side, listened to him for a moment, and then looked at Farinelli and the mulatto sergeant. He bowed slightly to Farinelli who returned the gesture.

  Miller returned to Farinelli. “Take this man to your group, and stay there! Do you think we are fools?” He wheeled and snarled “out of the way!” at the Zouave.

  The Confederate soldier slowly lowered his rifle without taking his eyes from the cavalry sergeant’s face. He stepped aside and the two federal horse soldiers walked back to the white side of the clearing.

  When they had assembled all the fair skinned Negro prisoners, a group of Zouaves led by a corporal marched them out of the grove on a track that led north.

  Farinelli looked for the captain in charge, but the man had disappeared. He beckoned to Lieutenant Miller.

  The tall, thin man ignored him for a time, but in the end approached. “What do you want now?” he asked.

  “Where they are going?” Farinelli asked.

  “Who”

  “You know who. You know very well. Where they take them?”

  “To the rail head, for shipment south,” he said turning away.

  Farinelli grabbed him by the sleeve. “Why the pale ones, why them?” he insisted.

  “Because they are worse traitors than the rest,” Miller snarled. “That’s why. They are our blood. The Zouaves feel that more than most.” Miller realized what he had admitted. “Damn you! Let go of me!” he cried, pulling his arm away. Several of his men started toward them.

  “You are officer! You must stop this! Now!”

  Miller walked away from him.

  Farinelli followed him. “What will your government say?” he yelled at Miller’s back. “What will your President Davis say? Does he know you let them kill the blacks?”

  One of the remaining Confederates raised his rifle, taking aim at the Italian.

  “No!” Miller screamed, waving his arms at the figure in brown. “No! You get back to your troops!” he said to Farinelli. “We have had enough of you, understand? You sit there, next to him!” He pointed at the ground next to “Georgio Rinaldi.”

  “Come here, sir. Sit by me,” the mulatto said. “Don’t make any more trouble for them.”

  The sound of firing in the south died away about sundown.

  “Major, I think we should escape,” ‘Rinaldi’ whispered after darkness had covered the clearing.

  Farinelli had begun to feel a deep exhaustion. His head was hanging down, but he glanced at his protégé and said, “Yes, I do not wish to go wherever they have in mind. Do you have a plan?”

  “I have been watching the sentinels. They change reliefs every two hours. When they do this they all end up bunched together over on the right there for about a minute. He pointed with his nose at the place where the trail to the north left the glade. “I say we work our way to the back of this group and when they are over there we roll out into the woods behind us. Can you crawl, major? You look mighty tired.”

  Farinelli looked at him in the wavering light of a large fire the guards had built in the center of the clearing. “What is your true name?” he asked.

  “George White, Second U.S. Colored Troops Cavalry
.”

  “Ah. You said ‘White?’”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I met your kinsman last night.”

  White was taken aback by that statement. “Which one?” he asked.

  Farinelli searched for the name in his fatigue numbed brain. He had been napping earlier and for some reason dreamt of the bay gelding again. “Jake,” he said.

  This can’t be… White thought. “Do you mean Jake Devereux?” he asked.

  “A lieutenant?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Yes, that is who I mean. No.”

  “Then, you met my brother Bill.”

  “He was there as well, and a black named Davis.”

  “Snake.” White sat quietly for a moment deciding how much to say.

  While he was so engaged, a fight began between the Negro prisoners across the way and three guards. The Zouaves had begun to pick men out of the mass again. This time, the selection was being made in favor of corporals and sergeants. A Zouave got too close and was grabbed and dragged into the center of the group of prisoners where he disappeared. Two of his friends waded in to retrieve him and were surrounded by blue uniforms. Guards ran to the site of the fight from all over the grove. Rifle butts rose and fell. The dull, heavy sound of metal on bone was unmistakable.

  “This is it! Let’s go now!” White said. He took Farinelli by the hand, and pulling him to his feet, backed away into the midst of the white prisoners. The standing soldiers around them were focused on the fight and took little notice of them as they moved back through the crowd. At the edge of the wood, they dropped to the ground and crawled away into the Virginia Creeper and Sumac saplings.

  The tobacco smell of broken Sumac filled White’s head. His feet kept tangling themselves with the Creeper’s tendrils.

  Farinelli crawled along behind him.

  White began to hear cracking noises to the right and stopped to listen. Someone else leaving. Someone standing!

  “Halt! You, Yankee! You there!” a voice shouted.

  George White’s guts turned to water. He fought down an almost uncontrollable wave of fear and a deep desire to stand up and beg for forgiveness.

  Farinelli crawled to a position beside him. “They go to right,” he whispered. “We must go to left, now!”

  White listened. The Italian was correct. Both heard the crackling, running, tripping sounds that must mean Union prisoners in flight as well as other sounds that were the Rebels in pursuit.

  They crawled to the left. After another hundred feet the ground sloped down into the bottom of a small creek. The brush got thicker and the small animal smells stronger as they approached the bank. Something hissed at them from nearby. They lay quiet for five minutes, and then crawled on.

  White reached the edge of the creek bed. He reached down and found the surface of the water. He could hear Farinelli gasping like a dying fish. Real bad. Awful tired! I may have to carry him… The sound of men thrashing around in the dark wood was still loud to the right. He could not hear anything behind them. He pulled himself over the edge with his elbows and slid into a foot of cold water. He could hear the sound of the stream running over deadfalls, and gurgling to itself. The current ran to the left. Well, that’s the right way, away from the people making noise, he thought. Too bad we don’t know if that’s toward the James… It should be. He reached for Farinelli and pulled the officer over the bank and into the water. He smiled in the dark as the Italian sucked in air between his teeth at the shock of the cold wetness. White got to his knees, and then stood in the creek bed. He pulled Farinelli to his feet and wrapping one of his arms around his own neck staggered off to the left following the creek’s winding path. After a quarter of a mile, he stopped to rest. He was breathing hard.

  “You mus’ leave me,” Farinelli whispered. “It is too much.”

  White shook his head in the dark. “You think I don’t know what I owe you?” he whispered back. “I wasn’t raised like that. You met them. Do you think they would leave you? Hell, major, you haven’t met the really hard man, my lovely cousin…”

  Through his exhaustion and the cold, Farinelli heard the words and tried to remember. “The mystery man,” he whispered. “Carlo, Clarence, Charles. I cannot remember…”

  “Good,” George said. “You be quiet.”

  At dawn they reached a junction with a larger stream. From the rising position of the sun, they knew that the rivers were running to the east. Unable to go farther, they climbed out of the creek to lie in the underbrush alongside. Sleep came at once.

  George White woke to find the sunlight slanting through the tree tops from the west and Farinelli sitting beside him. The officer’s kepi lay on the ground full of mushrooms. Beside it was a foot high stack of black mussels. White looked at the mushrooms.

  “They are safe,” the Italian said. “I know things like this. There is no sound except the animals. I listen for hours now.”

  “Do these come from the creek?” White asked about the mussels.

  “Yes. I feel for them. There are many. They are quite good.” The open shells strewn in a pile in front of him showed that he had eaten. There was a buckskin cavalry gauntlet on the grass next to the mussels. An expensive looking clasp knife lay open beside it.

  White put on the glove, picked up a mussel in that hand and the knife in the other and expertly pried open the shell. The mollusk’s pink flesh looked firm and healthy. With the point of the blade he cut under the meat to free it from the shell and tilting back his head slid the little creature into his mouth. It was cold and a little sweet. When he had finished them all, he looked at the officer.

  Farinelli was half watching him, half listening to the forest.

  “How do you feel now, sir?” he asked.

  Farinelli smiled. “I am fine, just fine. I was… tired. We should go now.” It was not a question. It was an announcement of the professional’s resumption of command.

  They slipped back into the icy water and followed the stream to the southeast, hidden from the surrounding countryside by the ever deepening banks. As darkness fell once again, the stream emerged from the trees to run through meadows. Peering cautiously over the banks they saw houses in the distance and cows in the foreground, but no people. All through the night they followed the stream to the east. It became so deep that they could not walk in it any longer. They climbed out to walk along the edge. The second dawn found them sitting together unhappily, wondering how much farther they would have to go.

  A steamboat whistle blew somewhere nearby. Without a word, they scrambled to their feet and moved on along the bank. They came out of the trees on the bank of a big river into which the creek emptied, and saw that they had been a few hundred feet away all night.

  “The James?” Farinelli asked.

  “Without a doubt,” George answered. “Richmond is about ten miles upstream. We used to fish along here when the Devereuxs came to visit their Mayo kin.”

  A steam gunboat came into view around a tree covered downstream bend five hundred yards to the right. Sloping sheet iron covered her above the water line. Two black funnels spewed smoke into the air. A U.S. Navy jack flew at her bow. Her whistle blew again. Farinelli and White danced on the little bluff on which they had emerged from the forest. They waved their arms and yelled for attention.

  The ship glided to a halt in mid-stream near them. An officer stepped out of the armored pilot house. “What’re you?” he yelled across the distance to the riverbank.

  “Escaped prisoners, come get us!” White yelled back. The naval officer waved and two sailors emerged from a deck hatch. In a few minutes a small boat which had been in tow brought them aboard U.S.S. Staten Island, a converted New York harbor ferry.

  They sat together in the little warship’s saloon. The crew had wrapped them in blankets and provided hot coffee. They watched through side ports as a second gunboat came abeam of Staten Island.

  Farinelli asked an ensign what was happening, and was told that the n
avy patrolled every morning up to this place in the river. Now that the second boat had come forward to join them, they would go downstream to Bermuda Hundred. Bermuda Hundred. How long has it been? He tried to think. Four days… Just four days? My God.

  Brigadier General August Kautz was almost demonstrative in his happiness when his friend appeared at division headquarters. “I never thought to see you again, Marco,” was all he could find to say. He held out a hand to Farinelli. “Who is this?” he asked of George White.

  “That is Sergeant Giorgio Rinaldi, Generale, from Palermo and New York. He is escaped with me. I think it is a good thing to have him with us. Yes, I do. He does not wish to return to…”

  Kautz looked at White. He was not deceived. “Yes, I see what he does not want to return to. Where are you from, Rinaldi, really?”

  White could see that this would not be a good man to fool with. “I’m from Virginia, General, from Alexandria, really, but I’ve been all over the state, a lot down here in fact.”

  “Slave?”

  August V. Kautz

  “No! No, sir. I’m free, always was. I grew up in a very decent house, with very decent folks.”

  “That’s why you’re educated, isn’t it?”

  White frowned. “Yes, and this is how I have repaid them, if that is how you mean it.”

  Farinelli was alarmed. “Generale…” he began.

  Kautz’ initial anger at the impertinence turned to amusement as the irony of the situation sank in. “No, I did not mean it that way, but no matter. If Major Farinelli thinks you are worth keeping, then so be it. Marco, get the adjutant to pick him up in one of our regiments. I am going to find you a good position and when you have it, you will take him with you. All right?”

  “Yes, Generale, thank you.”

  “Come back for supper.”

  From Kautz’ headquarters they went to Colonel Samuel Spears’ brigade. Spears expressed his happiness at Farinelli’s safe return but they had never been friendly and he was puzzled about the visit until the Italian asked for his horse. A few minutes later, he and Spears came out of the tent to find George White talking to the trooper with whom Farinelli had left the bay on the battlefield at Flat Creek.