Devereux continued to live a life which pulled him in many directions. His wife held his devotion and was the object of his deepest desires. She was a woman beyond praise. He could not explain to himself why he could not rid himself of the desire for Amy Biddle. His hunger for her only grew with the passage of time. He found himself spending ever more time with her in the little room behind her office at the "Soldier's Rest" convalescent camp. He wondered what her staff thought of their association. To compound his foolishness, he asked for and received the assignment of Amy's nephew, now a captain, to his office staff as an assistant. The young man occupied an outer room and guarded Devereux's door with the immense sergeant, John Quick.
The nephew's presence was a convenience. Colonel Edouard Jourdain, the French military attaché, had become a nuisance in the last months. Devereux had known for some time that he was using Biddle as a source of information. With the young fool just a few feet away it was much easier to use him as a conduit to the French embassy.
Jourdain himself was a difficulty. He reacted with outrage to news of Balthazar's promotion, saying "This rogue is like all the wild men of Africa. He is without discipline!" The marriage reduced him to smoldering impotence, unable to speak out in this family matter, but certain that his authority had been flouted in some way. In February he showed Devereux a dispatch freshly arrived from the Quai D'Orsay, saying "I would not have you read this under normal circumstances, but…" In the letter the Foreign Minister praised Balthazar's reports, congratulated him on his command and offered best wishes on the occasion of his marriage.
Devereux looked up from the paper. "Perhaps Jean-Marie will choose to remain with us after the war. He would have a place of honor in our army."
Jourdain said nothing, but made a note on the margin of the dispatch. Sour disapproval of his loss of control over Balthazar warred in his face with the need to stay on good terms with Claude.
-------------------------------------------------------------Turning his naked back to her Devereux rolled away from his wife’s embrace and began to dress while sitting on the edge of the big walnut bed. “I’ll be home early, home in time for dinner,” he said. “I have to talk to Fred Kennedy about something he must do tomorrow for, our work.” Behind him, she contemplated the possibility that this statement might be true. She was still flushed prettily from the intensity of her passion and not sure that she had heard him correctly. Her blonde hair was spread across a pillow and the perfection of her creamy skin and pink nippled breasts were a reproach to any man who would leave her bed. “Where are you going?” she asked again.
“I’ll be back in an hour.” With that he was out the door buttoning his blue tunic. She could hear his boot heels on the stairs from the ell’s second story. Then the garden gate opened and closed.
She rolled away from the door, placed a pillow over her face and wept.
------------------------------------------------------------------On the 20th of the month Sergeant Quick appeared at Balthazar's log hut in civilian clothing carrying a letter from Victoria. Smoot, Harris and Sergeant-Major Roarke sat in front of the fireplace with Quick talking about Washington and the Devereux kin. Balthazar stood to one side while he read the letter by the light of a lantern.
"What is it, sir? Not bad news we hope?" asked Roarke. The battalion's new first soldier had written from hospital in January asking to serve with the friend who had carried him off the battlefield, with a deep wound in the side. Balthazar moved quickly to bring him to the battalion. It had not been easy to arrange. The assignment was evidence of Early's continuing favor. General Hays was not happy with the loss of one more of his precious “Tigers,” but had put the best face possible on the situation and yielded gracefully in the end, saying to Balthazar, "you owe me." Roarke now sat on a three legged stool with the yellow flames outlining him. His right hand cupped the still tender place where the bayonet had gone in at Rappahannock Station.
Balthazar's features lit as he turned to look at them. "They have decided to read the banns of our marriage in the parish church!"
They looked at each other, puzzled at his happiness with this seemingly superfluous bit of Catholic Church administrative business.
Joe White had just come in, his arms filled with wood for the fire. He smiled at the news, grasping its true significance.
Quick looked smug in his knowledge. "Your colonel is going to be a father!" he cried while raising his glass to the burly, mustachioed figure standing in the light of the lantern.
Raphael Harris crossed the room to offer his hand and congratulations.
They all did, one by one with Joe White the last.
After dinner, Balthazar wrote a reply while his friends drank and talked before the fire.
"Boys!" Smoot finally interjected to stop the stream of repartee. "We need to talk about something. You fellahs know something that you should not."
Harris nodded. "We must all remember this! If captured we know nothing of these Devereuxs and their secrets, nothing!"
On the 27th of March Lee went to Gordonsville in the Piedmont country to review Longstreet's First Corps, just returned from five months away. Two of the divisions had spent the fall and winter in Tennessee where the great victory at Chickamauga had been in no small part a benefit of their presence. After that, they had been at Knoxville where things had not gone as well, but now they were back. The third division of the corps, Picketts', was still in Carolina rebuilding in strength since their near destruction at Gettysburg. Pickett's men were absent from Virginia but not from Lee's thoughts. The 17th Virginia Infantry Regiment was there with them. This was the “Alexandria Regiment” and his hometown friends and neighbors were never far from Lee’s thoughts.
The troops at Gordonsville knew well in advance that General Lee was coming to look at them. They drilled for days, shined whatever there was to shine, and mended their disintegrating tents and canvas wagon covers. They tried to make some improvement in their appearance with rough haircuts and repairs to clothing.
Many of them joked about "Marse Robert," his odd looking hat, and the grey horse that was the same color as he looked to be. With the shyness of a display of their feelings so common to their kind, they tried not to seem too eager for him to come.
On the day of the inspection, they formed in a big field outside the town. The two divisions of infantry and the corps' artillery were drawn up in long, straight lines of ragged, faded men. The browned and bearded faces peered out from beneath floppy hats. The difficulty of their lives showed in the hollow eyes, sunken cheeks and the bagginess of their clothing. Only the weapons looked new, bright and shining with the long bayonets making a hedge of steel. Behind the infantry, the corps' trains were aligned in ranks of wagons, the drivers standing by their animals talking and soothing against the unexplained presence of so many others. The artillery waited at one end of the line. The guns, teams, and wagons were arranged by battalions as they stood in the early spring sunlight.
Lee rode out of the trees, and they fell silent. The whispering leaves were the only sound on the field. The grey old man halted Traveler in the middle of the grass in front of them.
Stillness covered the multitude, for there was between him and them something extraordinary. Generals are seldom loved by their men. This is particularly true of generals whose fate it is to send so many to their deaths. Some are respected. Some are hated. Some are despised, but few are loved.
When Lee looked at his 10,000 veterans, come back to him, the men of Malvern Hill, Sharpsburg, and Manassas, he wept.
As they looked at him, sitting there on the grey horse, the men wept, wiping their eyes on their brown sleeves. Then they began to cheer, and cheer and cheer as he rode down the line holding the funny hat outstretched to them.
Chapter 14
The Wilderness
Figure 1 - The Overland Battlefields
Figure 1 - The Overland Battlefields (Clark's Mountain)
The height of land stood 600 feet abov
e the south bank of the Rapidan River. Dense green covered it except for a small meadow at the northeastern end. In this space the high command of the Army of Northern Virginia gathered to see the enemy spread across the land to the north. Lee, his generals and the staff sat their horses in the bright sunshine and spoke of the omens.
The tent camps of the enemy were stretched out before them. They reached in some directions to the horizon. The smoke of cooking rose in the blue sky. The Rebels thought they could smell the wood fires. Miniature blue men lounged around the tents. In one opening in the forest a brigade review was in progress. The troops stood at "Present Arms" while a band played. The music reached to the mountain top.
Lee waited quietly, listening, watching. "Oh say does that star-spangled Banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of The brave?"
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Marshall glanced at the army commander's back, wondering what was in his mind. At moments like this, Marshall always felt sympathy for the former United States officers among the Southern leaders.
There had been a great deal of talk in the last hour. The conversation had circled and worried at the subject of Grant's plan. To the east and west the forest of The Wilderness extended to the several fords which made the rivers passable.
At the same time, the Union army spread so far across the landscape that its disposition gave no real hint of the probable direction that an advance might take.
Would it be to the left or the right of Clark's mountain?
Does it matter? Marshall asked himself. Surely we all know what the end will be. Surely he knows. Perhaps it does not matter any longer. Something odd has happened to us all. No reasonable man would have any doubt about our fate. Ah, that is it! We are no longer reasonable men. We have 45,000 men here. There must be 100,000 over there, and how many behind?
Lee shifted in the saddle, feeling in a pocket for a handkerchief, wiping his face.
It is all about him now, Marshall thought. He has become our father, the chief of our clan, the best of our people, the best a man can be. So long as he continues, we will continue. So long as he stays we will be at his back, to the last man.
Lee pointed to the right. "They will cross there, over the Germanna and Ely fords. He will seek to march past us to the open ground beyond the Wilderness, to Spotsylvania, to bring us to battle where his numbers will bear, but it is too far. He will have to spend at least one night extended along the roads in the forest. We will march to him from Orange and Gordonsville. We will strike him in the flank in the forest. We will break his line into pieces, and destroy him."
Longstreet was at the army commander's right hand. He looked unhappy. He cleared his throat. "Sir, perhaps he will see the danger and hurry through the jungle in one day."
Powell Hill spoke in agreement. He looked better than usual today. His long auburn hair framed his pale face. He looked almost healthy. "Yes. It could be done if he marches his infantry and guns straight through and sends the wagons around by Fredericksburg."
Lee pondered this, chin on chest. He shook his head. "No. General Grant is filled with the confidence of his victories in the west. He thinks the reports of our powers of resistance are over drawn. Because he does not fear us, he will wish to bring his trains with him through the narrow roads. Perhaps he will have them march to the east, away from our approach. They will slow him." He pointed. "He will halt just along there, along the Brock Road."
Behind his back the generals looked at each other.
A hope, Marshall thought, a wish, or maybe more. God knows he has been right so often.
Lee turned the horse's head away from the enemy, turned the animal so that he could face his officers. "Gentlemen, prepare your commands. Those people will move soon. Pray for your country." With that he rode down the mountain, back to the tent in which he would wait for Grant to move.
- 3 May – (The Headquarters of the General in Chief ))
Devereux arrived at Grant's Headquarters near Brandy Station to find that with the exception of a few officers whom he had met in the last month in Washington, nearly all were strangers. They had all come from the west with the new General in Chief. They did not seem to know how to deal with someone like him. Clearly the western commanders had been held on a much longer leash than those in the east.
Devereux had tried without success to be sent to the front throughout
April, but the problem was solved when “someone” remembered that he had been with the Army of the Potomac in Pennsylvania and had reported from the field to the War Department. This had made Stanton and Halleck real participants in what was happening there.
Devereux had always suspected that his "ring" was not the only Confederate "apparatus" in Washington. This new and mysterious intervention increased his belief that this must be true.
The trip up the railroad line from Alexandria to the front was depressing. From his post in the War Department headquarters on 17th Street in Washington, he had known intellectually of the vast strength of the force that Grant had at his disposal, but to know this was one thing. To see it was another. Despair settled in his heart, gripping him in a fist of iron, and raising the level of his desperation.
Sergeant John Quick watched this mood settle on him and tried his best to lift it, joking privately of the big but useless Yankee Army. This did not have much effect. He had returned from Balthazar's camp most unwillingly, having seen in the Frenchman a leader to his taste. It was only Claude's many difficulties that had kept him from refusing to return to Washington.
One of these difficulties weighed heavily on Quick. He had responded to a question from Balthazar by joking about Claude’s way with the ladies. Smoot asked what he meant. He told them of the amount of time that Devereux had been spending with Amy Biddle. He had not become close to the family as Smoot had, and it had not occurred to him that Smoot might not find this story and his innuendo amusing.
Smoot rose and spoke with Balthazar in a corner. Quick watched with growing unease as Balthazar stood with his back to the room, hands behind his back, shaking his head as his second in command whispered to him.
The next day Smoot took Quick aside after breakfast. “Hope Devereux is ten times the woman that prune faced Yankee biddy will ever be,” he began. His face was red with anger.
For Isaac Smoot, Hope’s origins in Boston no longer had meaning. “You tell him,” he said, as his face darkened steadily, as the terrible scar throbbed with his anger. “You tell him, that if he hurts her...”
He had not seemed able to complete the thought, but John Quick grasped the idea. In Ireland he had seen men so enraged by insult to a sister or sweetheart that they were incapable of speech. He held up a hand to hold back this strange officer who knew the Devereuxs so well. “But, Lootenant, I don’t rightly know that he has touched her, much.”
Smoot stared for a moment and then walked away.
Quick watched him go with mixed feelings; admiration for his loyalty to Hope and worry at what would happen when next the two men met.
----------------------------------------------------------------In his first meeting with Grant, Devereux presented his credentials, and hoped for an enlightening conversation, hoped for a talk that would tell him something significant about this new opponent.
The general was living in a regulation tent. There was a field desk in the tent, a cot, a few chairs and a wash stand and basin in a corner. An aide de camp waited outside, waited for a signal as to what to do about this unexpected newcomer.
Devereux looked Grant over, inspected him, seeking clues to the riddle of his success. There was nothing much to see, just a thin little fellow with a sandy beard dressed in a private soldier's uniform. There were three stars on the shoulder straps. The general looked at the papers, handed them back and asked where he intended to be during the advance.
Devereux said that he would follow the lead corps across the river. Grant looked at him for a moment, chewing on a cigar the while. He finally took it out of
his mouth and spoke. "Colonel Sharpe thinks there is something funny about you. Do you know that?"
Devereux was angry, frustrated and fearful, and all at the same time. The desire to lash out was strong. He shoved the emotions back down into the place he thought of as a "strongbox,” locking them in with so much else that disturbed his peace. "I thought it was Baker who believed me a Rebel spy," he responded with a smile. "We went through that last year. He had me investigated extensively I believe. We discussed it at the War Department. That was before I took a commission."
Grant grimaced in what was supposed to resemble a smile. "Oh, yes. I have heard all that, colonel, and I know about your many friends and admirers, including the most important ones. Please don't believe I am in any way prejudiced against Southern men. My wife is Southern. My closest friend on earth is Pete Longstreet, over there somewhere." He pointed with his chin. "He was an usher at our wedding. I have owned a few slaves...” He waited for Devereux to say something.
"I have not,” Claude replied, “but then I have always lived in my father's house, and never in the country."
Grant twitched slightly and stared at him through the cigar smoke, obviously irritated at the reply.
Devereux thought how stupid it had been to needle him in that way. He expected some sharp answer.
Death Piled Hard: A Tale of the Confederate Secret Services Page 19