Balthazar stared at the man, seeking the meaning of these words.
Jenkins still had him by the hand, and did not let go. "No. No,” he said. “Her husband was my classmate at the Military Institute. I remember dancing a waltz with her at a ball when we were cadets. You are like him in some ways. Good luck, colonel. You are in many respects a fortunate man. Good night."
The following day they walked up to the capitol and sat in the gallery to listen to Congressional debate on a number of subjects including an army pay bill in which Balthazar found he now had more than a passing interest. After a while his interest in this faded and they went back to her rooms.
Seated beside her for tea, he glanced up in the midst of their conversation and decided to take the plunge.
"I know it is not right to speak to you of my feelings... It is too soon, but these are exceptional times. I do not know when I will see you again. I, I must tell you. I love you, and would be deeply honored if you would be my wife. To care for you and my cousin's sons would be, for me, all that life could promise. Please do not be offended."
He looked at her anxiously, hopeful for something, something…
Victoria inspected him silently for a few seconds. A knight from a girl’s dream… Of course I want you, she thought.
"Yes, John,” she said at last. “It is too soon, and I will still grieve for my husband, and love him forever, but you are right. These are not normal times. We do not have much time, perhaps no more time at all." While these words rattled in his head, she walked to the door, turned the key in the lock, and returning sat in his lap with her arms around his neck. "I asked Claude to come as courier so that I could know if my heart had deceived me, if your letters were just cleverness. Now I know. We will go see Bishop McGrath in the morning." She kissed him, warmly, sweetly and then with the insistent passion of a mature woman.
He wrapped his arms around her, settling her in a more comfortable position.
She laid her head on his shoulder as his lips found hers.
Even at this moment his soldier's instinct listened for danger. Outside the door he heard Joe murmur to someone. "I don't think so, sir. Colonel Balthazar is out and will be back in the morning."
The Bishop of Richmond married them in Saint Peter's Cathedral at noon the following day. Harry Jenkins and Harrison stood up with them. The bishop, as good a Confederate as Jefferson Davis, abandoned any number of strict interpretations of canon law to get the job done in the interest of wartime romance and his long friendship with the Devereuxs.
The only awkward moment in the church was the suggestion by the new Mrs. Balthazar that her husband should have his cross blessed by the bishop.
After a small hesitation he opened his tunic and removed the silver chain on which this object hung against his chest.
Bishop John McGrath held it in his hand. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger over the surface.
"It is so beautiful," Victoria gushed, caught up in her happiness. "I've never seen anything like it."
Jenkins and Harrison peered over the bishop's shoulder.
It was only an inch high. There was no cross; only the living Christus suspended from the top of the head, fully robed with his arms held up in greeting and his legs separated so that he looked like an animate "X". The bearded face was slightly oriental in its features with the mouth open in a warm smile.
McGrath looked at Balthazar.
The bridegroom appeared ill at ease. "It is very old," he offered somewhat uncertainly.
"How old?" Jenkins asked.
"Ah, perhaps six hundred years... It is passed in my family from father to son."
He looked hopefully at the bishop.
"You are from the South of France, my son?" McGrath asked. "Yes, your grace."
"This is Albigensian I believe. I studied them in Ireland, at Trinity College. It is a beautiful thing. They would not accept the thought of Christ's suffering. They said it was, too much… You are Catholic, aren't you my son?"
"Certainly, your grace, it is a memento of my family... Only that."
McGrath and Balthazar faced each other, then the clergyman nodded, moving to the font where he blessed Balthazar's ancient Cathar symbol of resistance to tyranny.
The lovers passed the rest of the week in a dream of peace and repose. There was so much to say. Things could be said now that were impossible to say before. There was so much of family history and secrets to share. She told him everything she could think of. She talked for hours about the Devereux and the Whites, of the ties among them all. She told him of George White, Junior's service in the Union Army.
"Not surprising, given the family history," he said. In her arms he found that she was, in many ways, the lover he had always wanted. She was passionate, untiring and affectionate. He was a little ashamed to admit that his beloved wife had not been so ardent.
The night before he had to return to the army, he invited Joe in for a drink at her suggestion. Glass in hand they stood at the round table.
"John, Joseph has something to tell you." She waited for Joe to speak.
He raised his chin. "Sir, I have decided to stay with you as your valet. Mrs. Balthazar agrees that I should do this. I would hope that you could make the necessary arrangements at the War Department for my employment."
Balthazar inspected the bottom of his glass, and reaching for the decanter poured Joe another shot. "Are you sure about this? Is this your fight? You will be with me in the front line."
Worry lines appeared on Victoria's pretty face.
"We are free men, sir," Joe answered. "I am sure that slavery will end no matter who wins the war. This is a family matter and we stand together, all but my brother who has taken his own path. I hope you accept my offer."
Balthazar took him by the shoulders. "Of course, of course I accept. We will speak of it no more. Now, I wish to have Christmas dinner with this lovely person...
Cold filled the R.F. &P. shed as the train backed away in the grey morning light. Balthazar stood on the platform in his beautiful grey uniform with Joe behind him. Soldiers passed, saluting respectfully, but he had no thought for them.
Victoria leaned from the window, one hand pressed to her bosom while she waved with the other. A smile was fixed on her face in what he knew was a heroic attempt to send her soldier back to the war with that picture in his mind.
Balthazar felt some comfort in knowing that Harrison would see her back to the Northern lines. Claude's name would insure her safety after that. In spite of that, he felt a great echoing emptiness opening in his chest. With tears in his eyes he saw her small figure slipping away. Her hand was still at her throat. The Frenchman took out his handkerchief to wipe his eyes. He knew why she held her hand so. Between her beautiful breasts lay his ancient cross.
He turned to find Joe holding two carpet bags. One had his saber strapped to it. "Well, Joseph, we must find our freight and return to the battalion. Your friend Smoot is waiting for our return...”
Chapter 13
Winter Quarters
(Orange, Virginia)
The seemingly endless time of cold darkness crept past in a succession of grey days and long nights. In its camps, the Army of Northern Virginia once again experienced the religious fervor that came to them when they were not busy. At such times, men of all faiths sought solace in prayer and gathered in revival meetings where many found the inner peace that war denied them.
Families came to the winter camps to spend the season with their men. Most boarded with local families. Bearded warriors held in their arms for the first time tiny folk who had not yet been seen. The children brought joy to them all, but in the evenings the soldiers brooded over their families, their thoughts unreadable in the light of the fireplaces.
Amateur theatrical productions were a natural gift of this army, something so familiar from home that the men expected them. Wooden theaters sprang up in the snow and frost caked mud. These were crude structures of field sawn boards, each with its glowing p
ot bellied iron stove. The programs were filled with familiar plays, but some of them were only a year or so old in London or New York. One of these was entitled "Our American Cousin."
Balthazar was fond of the theater. At school in England he had been prominent in Christmas pantomime and Shakespeare alike. Now, he did all a commander properly could to interest his men in this activity, thinking it a healthy diversion from the boredom of the winter. The Stephen Foster songs he had heard in Richmond appeared on the boards as renditions by his battalion chorus. Soldiers' singing groups were a tradition in the French Army. He followed the custom in America. The foreigners in the battalion made up the backbone of the soloists and Joseph White played the piano to accompany. His skill was yet another of Clotilde Devereux's gifts to the Whites. Balthazar played the role of Falstaff in a Second Corps' officers’ production of "The Merry Wives of Windsor." His English accent and baritone were praised around sentry fires for weeks after the play's run.
At Christmas Balthazar’s battalion chorus presented a program of carols. His rendition of “Oh Holy Night” in French was well remembered.
Food was short that winter, but the Commissary Department managed to deliver just enough to give everyone a chance to rebuild strength worn down by years of deprivation.
Sick and run down horses and mules were sent to the big veterinary hospital at Lynchburg. Cynics laughed at the possibility of seeing them again, knowing that the army supply system would somehow send those beasts who recovered to some other home. Well-loved mounts and the odd artillery horse lucky enough to have a friend were nursed in secret by men who hid them from the veterinary service.
Smoot came back from leave bringing with him his family. He had found that life in western Prince William County had become too hard. They could not be left behind. The Yankee army had learned of his new rank and his wife could not stay with her people any longer.
Balthazar was surprised by Smoot's wife.
In the crucible of war Smoot had become a worldly person, a man at home in all surroundings and circumstance, a man who looked natural with his feet under Clotilde Devereux's table.
His wife was not like that. She remained the simple country woman he had left at home in 1861 when he joined Turner Ashby's cavalry. Balthazar could not but wonder how she would adapt to the life of an officer's wife if they managed to gain the South's independence.
Balthazar now understood that Isaac Smoot’s personal world had been forever altered by life in the Devereux household and that the memory of Hope Devereux was lodged in a special place in his inner being. How that would end he could not imagine.
All winter Balthazar trained the battalion, working them hard the whole day long. In the time available he did what he could to transfer to them the knowledge he had gained in a lifetime of active soldiering. Everything he had to give, he gave them, for he felt deep in his bones that the fight coming in the spring would be the greatest fight of the war, perhaps the greatest fight of all time. He continued to teach them battle drills of various kinds, seeking through the inculcation of rote reaction to command to make them into a force more effective than mere numbers would suggest. He also continued to receive reinforcement in the form of individuals that no other command was well suited to absorb. After interviewing them he decided whether or not they were acceptable for inclusion in what he was building. By the middle of February, he had three hundred and fifty men in the battalion.
In the evenings he devoted many hours to instruction of his officers. He found that many of them had soldiered a great deal but there were bad habits to be undone and his own way of doing things to impress on them.
In early March the army began to think of the possibility of spring. It was still cold. The wind howled miserably some nights, but just occasionally, you could feel a hint of something different in the air, something almost warm.
At that time there occurred one of those events which seem momentary in meaning but which later can be seen to have been truly important.
On the first of the month yet another big Union cavalry raid reached the outer defenses of Richmond. Raids of this sort had been made by the Federal horsemen with some regularity throughout the war. They never accomplished very much, but the Union cavalry appeared to think them necessary as a justification for their existence. The price in men and beasts was always high.
The current commander of one of the divisions of the cavalry corps of the Army of the Potomac led this expedition. He was called Judson Kilpatrick, a young man vaguely remembered by old soldiers among the Confederates as a junior officer of no great promise in the "Old Army.”
The Richmond garrison of War Department clerks, Virginia Militia and convalescents kept Kilpatrick outside the city by pretending to be more than they really were. They made him think they were too strong and that he could not break in. This was foolish. He could easily have entered the city, but he did not believe he could and that was the end of it. As is often the truth in such events, a lack of confidence was equivalent to a lack of capability. In Kilpatrick’s mind, there was then nothing to do but go home. The mounted blue horde turned away from the Confederate capital.
The long ride to the safety of Union lines north of the Rapidan was hard and bloody for they faced the resistance of Jeb Stuart's men all along the way. The road home was richly marked with the blood of yellow legged troopers and the hundreds of dead and dying horses shot at Kilpatrick's order as they broke down in the forced marches needed to escape. The horse bodies and wounded beasts were everywhere along the dusty roads.
Cavalrymen from the Carolinas and Virginia cursed Kilpatrick and swore they would give him no more mercy than fate allowed them to give his animal victims. For these men, the unavoidable destruction of those poor creatures which tried to join the Confederate columns of march brought tears of rage. Wade Hampton, the Low Country grandee who commanded one of Stuart's brigades, said he would follow Kilpatrick to hell itself to make him pay.
With the Union cavalry's departure from Richmond, the militia defenders came out through the trench lines to search for the enemy’s leavings. Near Mantapike Hill they found the body of one legged Colonel Ulric Dahlgren, killed while leading 500 of Kilpatrick's raiders in a flanking column. He had been ambushed while trying to enter the city of Richmond from the south. Dahlgren was twenty-four years old, the son of a Union admiral and himself a fervent abolitionist. He lost a leg at Gettysburg. In his pockets they found papers which he had used to brief his men. According to these notes, his troops were ordered to free Union prisoners of war, capture and hang Jefferson Davis and his cabinet without trial and burn the city.
The resulting furor in the newspapers in both the United States and the Confederacy was impressive.
General Meade denied any knowledge of such orders. His denial was accepted by Davis and Lee. They had known him too well in the old days to think he would have been behind such a thing. He was too sober, too sensible a man for such foolishness no matter what the present political disagreement might be.
Judah Benjamin, the Secretary of State, and Samuel Cooper, the Adjutant General, eliminated this feeling of reassurance by explaining that there was a separate line of political communication that ran from Dahlgren to Kilpatrick to Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War and on to the radical wing of the Republican Party in Congress.
The implication was clear. Meade's disavowal meant nothing. He might not have known what Kilpatrick's real instructions had been. Lincoln might not have known. Men who would have died kicking at the end of a rope, and whose families would have been driven from their homes by fire brooded long over this development. Gradually, the sound and fury of the columnists died away, but the damage was done. The belief was established in the Confederate government that their enemies had marked them for death without trial. What the consequences of this might be no one could have said, but the idea was established in Richmond that old, unspoken rules no longer applied and that political murder was acceptable in the North.
&n
bsp; Balthazar read of this in the newspapers, and tried to learn more from recent visitors to Richmond. He wrote Colonel Jourdain a report in which he said that the Republican leaders had made a terrible mistake, that now the Confederates would stop at nothing.
--------------------------------------------------------------In the middle of the month Ulysses Simpson Grant took command of the armies of the United States. He came east to receive his commission as Lieutenant General, came to Washington, to a city which may have held more of his enemies than Richmond. Neither the radical Republicans nor the deeply imbedded Confederate underground meant him any good.
Grant and Lincoln did not appear to like each other much. They were rarely seen together. This was noted by all concerned, but the new generalissimo made a quick start in planning for the spring campaign and that made a good impression.
Devereux suggested to Stanton that it might be a good idea for the War Department to be represented by an observer in Grant's planning staff. Stanton liked the possibilities in this, liked the thought of keeping Grant "in his place," but Colonel George Sharpe and Devereux's old adversary, Lafayette Baker, talked him out of it, pleading that Grant would think that a War Department "spy" showed a lack of confidence in him. These arguments probably would not have dissuaded Stanton but some unknown also raised the matter in private with the president. He sided with the "naysayers.” This meant that Devereux had to settle for the information which Grant's staff chose to give the War Department concerning his plans. From these tidbits, Devereux learned that Grant would seek to employ the armies of the United States simultaneously in the belief that the Rebels would not be able to deal with all of them at once. He did not find this to be surprising. The man's record in the West pointed to the likelihood of such a campaign.
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