The original idea had been to acquire a peripatetic military schoolmaster, a tutor for citizen soldiers. What had developed had been unexpected, but welcome. Marco Farinelli was a soldier's soldier, someone whose presence made it possible to sleep at night without fretting over the details of basic soldiering. Kautz would not have traded him for a battalion. The two of them were the only professional soldiers in the division. Kautz was impatient for an opportunity to give his friend a regiment to command.
The wind blew from the southwest. Because of that, the first shots announcing that Spear's force had made contact with the enemy came to the general as a distant sputter, an almost inaudible rattle. He paid little attention.
Farinelli was struggling with his English as he tried to explain to the officers the criteria by which one decided to fight dismounted.
Kautz half listened to this, and half watched the progress of the track wrecking. His big, black horse pulled hard at the small tree to which the general had tied him. The animal yanked again and again at the thin leather straps. Kautz found hobbles in a saddlebag and released the horse to forage in the deep grass.
Five minutes later the dull thud of the mountain howitzer he had sent with Spear echoed in his skull.
"Marco!
The Italian looked up.
"Go remind Colonel Spear that it is not my intention that he should become decisively engaged, that we are, in a word, in a hurry." Sarcasm colored his words.
The junior officers around Farinelli stared at the heavy browed, black bearded figure with fear and surprise.
He hated their awe. He was a man who did not worship idols. He had no regard for those who did. He knew how much they wished to please him. He hated that too and for the same reason. It diminished them as men in his eyes.
Careful, he thought. Much more of that and they will start avoiding you. We can't have that.
He wrote out an order on the message pad he carried in a coat pocket.
He carried the little piece of paper to Farinelli. The circle parted before him like the waves before Moses.
"Give this to Colonel Spear, at your discretion. It directs him to withdraw to this position."
Farinelli stuffed the paper into the cuff of his blouse. He saluted, perfectly erect, his uniform improbably neat. "By your leave, Generale.”
Kautz returned the salute.
Mounting the bay, the cavalryman rode to the north.
It was little more than a mile. The sound of the action grew in volume with his progress. The gelding had good legs, and a sound wind. Farinelli could feel the animal's barrel swell with the fullness of his breathing. He would go the distance. The horseman heard cheering, and frowned. Of the troops in the division, only the 11th Pennsylvania had the habit of cheering in action. An early commander had taught them to do this in the charge.
The trees flashed by. A riderless horse passed him headed away from the sounds of battle. Two more crashed out of the underbrush fifty yards away. A fourth horse dragged a bloodied, limp blue figure down the track toward a collision with the Italian. The bay swerved from its path. The crazed horse fell to its knees and then onto a side. There was a gaping wound in its flank.
Farinelli pounded past, driven onward by the sound of the guns. The mountain howitzer spoke from nearby. Turning in the saddle, he saw the little gun, surrounded by its crew. It stood in the center of a small clearing, smoke still drifting in the space forward of the muzzle. Crew drill went on; sponge! load! ram!
The bay carried him past the gun into the dense forest. The mixed noise of cavalry carbines and infantry rifles swelled rapidly. The piney woods smelled of gunpowder and horses.
At the top of a tiny rise, he found Colonel Spear's orderly. The soldier waited in the road with a pack mule and the extra horses of Spear's saddle string.
"Where would I find the colonel Spear?"
The man pointed forward down the road in the direction of the fighting. "There! He went in with the 11th! They charged the highway bridge. The Secesh drove 'em back. So, the Colonel went back in with both regiments on foot. They're gonna push 'em off the bridges and then burn 'em! Like always!" He grinned confidently. "Like always."
The intensity of the firing to the front rose steadily. It began to sound like cloth ripping, one continuous tearing noise.
The blue soldier frowned slightly, worry wrinkles appearing between his eyes, just visible behind a lock of yellow hair hanging below the bill of his kepi.
Farinelli dismounted. "Keep him good!" he told the orderly. "Good horse! You keep him. I come back for him. Understand?" He handed the soldier the reins. "You keep him no matter what! Yes?"
The trooper looked at the sweating bay, then at Farinelli. "I'll have him, major, no matter what." With a brusque nod, Farinelli strode away, going downhill into the trees. He drew his revolver as he went. He went down, and down into the shallow valley of Flat Creek. To his left he saw the dirt track which led to one bridge. To his right lay the right of way and ballast stone of the Richmond and Danville. Along both lines of advance dead and wounded men and beasts were scattered. Here and there injured soldiers had managed to take shelter behind the bodies of their mounts. He had done his best to teach them to kill the horses to make a barricade if they must.
A gut shot sorrel raised its head on top of the highway grade to stare at him with pain filled eyes. He shot it in the forehead and walked on through the brush and pines. Walking wounded passed him on their way to the rear. He stopped counting them after twenty.
He heard Samuel Spear bellowing orders in a high pitched voice. The sound guided him to a small rise in the ground on which the brigade commander stood, his red and white swallow tailed flag planted nearby.
Twenty yards of bog to the front, Flat Creek flowed past. An insignificant stream, dignified for history only by the two bridges, it ran sluggishly north toward the Appomattox.
On the far side Spear's men clung to the three foot bank which held the rivulet in check when flood water came. They fired their weapons across the ground beyond at someone unseen. Several blue clad bodies lay in the water.
Farinelli stepped up on the mound at Spear's side. Rifle bullets hummed overhead, passing above them by some accident of topography.
Spear turned to look at him, staring coldly for a moment before returning his attention to the action before him. "Get moving! Push the damned militia out of the way!" he yelled.
A sergeant that Farinelli recognized turned from the bank. "God damn you!" he roared. "If you think these are militia, come try them yourself!"
High pitched cackling laughter reached them from the unseen enemy.
Farinelli considered the number of dead bodies in sight. He looked at the men on the bank.
Far too many were looking behind them, judging the distance to the nearest tree.
The volume of fire from beyond the bank was very steady.
He decided. "Colonel Spear!
The blond young man swiveled toward him, anger in his face.
Farinelli pulled the folded message form from his sleeve, saluted, and handed over the order.
Spear's features twisted in frustration and humiliation as he read. He turned from Farinelli to the bugler standing beside his standard bearer. "Sound Recall," he snarled.
Farinelli raised a hand to stop him, to counsel a withdrawal by bounds, but the first notes flashed out before he could say anything.
Soldiers immediately turned away from the firing line. Some broke back across the run.
In the unknowable territory of the foeman, drums began to beat the charge. The command "Forward!" ran up and down the hidden line of battle beyond the stream.
The shrill, keening war cry of the Confederate Army ripped through the forest. Grey brown shapes hurtled through the underbrush into the recoiling cavalrymen.
A man bearing a square red flag splashed down into the water.
On the far side of the creek, a tall, dark haired officer appeared. He held a pistol in one hand, and a s
traight, basket hilted sword in the other.
Arthur Herbert had followed the color bearer through the brush, knowing the distance was not far to the stream. Behind him he could hear the reserve companies tearing vines apart as they ran forward. Suddenly he was on the bank. Men fought in the hip deep water at his feet.
Jesus! We are going to bag the lot, he thought.
Across the creek, a little knot of enemy troops stood on a rise in the ground. A cavalry flag was planted among them. He looked right and left. His men fought with clubbed muskets and bayonets for as far as he could see. As he watched, they surged forward again.
The Rebel infantry stabbed, butt stroked and screamed their way across Flat Creek. Farinelli watched, astonished as the earth colored figures killed all who could not escape. Federals who fell were bayoneted repeatedly by all who passed.
Immediately to the front, a small group of blue troopers grappled in the water with the madmen.
"Take the flag!" the bearded Rebel officer roared.
The charge rolled toward the high ground. The wings of the assault passed the little knoll.
Farinelli emptied his revolver at a group closing from the right. Spear yelled "Standard to the rear!"
The soldier with the banner backed off the rise with Spear.. A bullet hit the bugler in the neck. Dark red blood bubbled out in a
pulsing stream. The man fell to his knees clutching his throat with fingers through which there was a steady flow.
Farinelli grabbed him by the arm, intending to drag him to safety.
The bugler continued his collapse, losing consciousness as he fell to the ground.
His empty revolver in one hand, the dying man's arm in the other, Farinelli saw that the Union troops were falling back away from him.
The horns of the Confederate attack were now far beyond his position.
The fight in the creek ended. Wild eyed warriors in brown swarmed up over the bank. Some had lost their hats. The pale white of foreheads contrasted sharply with the weathered tan of their cheeks.
His back to the Rebel advance, Farinelli shook his empty weapon at Colonel Spear's retreat. Federal wounded lay thick on the earth around the swell in the ground. Passion filled him at this abandonment.
"Che cazzo fa!" he screamed in his wrath. He had cheated death many times, and now he knew the time had come to settle his account. He thought of Solferino, of his father's house in Rome, and waited for the end.
Nothing happened.
Heavy breathing behind him interrupted his wait.
He turned slowly to look.
Three riflemen stood in a semi-circle surrounding him and the wounded
bugler. The two on the flanks still held their weapons at the ready. The man in the middle stared at him. "Tu sei Italiano?" he rasped. The shock of the moment clouded the ability to respond. " Si", he managed at last.
The bugler moaned.
"Help me, please help with him." Farinelli entreated them.
The fire began to ebb in their faces.
The soldier in the middle handed his rifle to another, then went down on one knee beside the stricken man.
The counterattack whirled out of sight up the slope across which Farinelli had reached this spot.
The bugler died quickly. They looked in his pockets for his name, but could find nothing. His body lay on its side four feet away. They covered the side of his face with his cap.
The Southern infantrymen gathered their prisoners near the mound. Perhaps they were unwilling to make the Yankee major move. They had seen him stay for a wounded enlisted man. He had been willing to die for one such as they. That made him worth considering.
After a time, a prisoner asked to see the body on the hillock. "Israel Cook," he said. "He's from Albany". He went back to the dejected group of men sitting on the ground.
Farinelli wrote the dead soldier's name and put it in one of his pockets. The sound of fighting died away. He knew that August Kautz would not repeat Spear’s mistake. The division would move farther south seeking a return to the Bermuda Hundred lines.
He was alone on the mound with the dead man and the three Rebels. "How is it you speak some Italian?" he asked one of them.
"My father and mother are from Venezia, and you?"
"Roma, and what are you when you are not soldier?"
"I work on the docks with my father, and my uncle. In Alexandria," he added as an afterthought.
"My name's Kemper," a big, blond soldier announced without being asked. "I'm a farmer, down near Mount Vernon. You know, Pres'dent Washinton's place. You should go home, Major. You got no business in our war. This isn't no game."
"Alexandria, Mount Vernon, you are far from home."
"You don't want to remind us of that," interjected the third, yet another giant blond man. "We might stick you yet."
"Sir, Private Colonna was most good to me. Nothing would have save this poor fellow." Herbert had come to talk to him. He was still sitting next to the bugler’s body.
"Would you like to wash?" Herbert asked. He was looking at the sticky brown mess that coated Farinelli's hands.
They walked together to the creek. The Union officer knelt upstream of a corpse not yet removed from the sluggishly flowing water. Farinelli wanted to get the bugler’s blood from under his fingernails. Herbert watched him for a moment and then found a piece of soap in his haversack.
A steadily lengthening row of Federal bodies grew on the gravel ballast of the railroad nearby as the Confederates lined them up.
"How many you think, Colonel?" Farinelli asked from his crouching position in the stream. He pointed with his chin at the dead.
"Thirty five, maybe forty. It was very lucky for us that you blew "Recall" like that. I had just about made up my mind, but that made the timing..." Herbert watched him closely; curious to know what had happened.
"Some things not a matter of luck."
"Our surgeon is doing what he can for your wounded. I am going to leave the less serious cases here on the track with several unwounded prisoners and a horse. They ought to be able to find help. I presume that General Kautz will not have gone very far?"
Farinelli raised his eyebrows in surprise at this heavy-handed attempt to get him to reveal something of value. "That was impressive attack, colonel,” he said. “These men have something strong in them."
Herbert frowned slightly, and then crooked his head a little in acknowledgment of his failure to learn what he wanted to know. "We are fighting for our independence, major. We want to be free of people who yearn to tell us how we should live. We are not children."
"Where you learn all this?" Farinelli's sweeping arm took in the whole scene.
"I could ask the same of you.”
An arrogant little bastard, aren’t you, the colonel thought to himself.
Farinelli shrugged expressively. "Ah! Me! I was born to fight someone's war. I am sure you know that my poor Italy has been cursed by war these past fifteen years." He glanced at Herbert to be sure he knew. "I was officer in the Papal Army. Then, I was officer in Garibaldi army. After, I served Savoy. Now, I am here. Perhaps I will stay here."
Herbert stared at him, his features hardening in disapproval. "You will be welcome in their country I am sure."
A stooped, black bearded major walked down the hill from the south. Beside him strode a short, slender man with the three bars of a captain on his collar. "Sir, Kautz' force has gone south, away from the railroad. We pursued these fellows until they reached the main body."
"Thank you, Robert." He turned to Farinelli. "I won't ask you where they are going."
The Italian bowed from the hips.
"A train will come tonight to carry my men to Richmond. We have an old score to settle with your General Butler. Captain Fowle has the best cooks in the regiment. I presume that he will invite you to dinner."
Fowle said nothing.
At least I won’t have to eat with you, Herbert thought with amused satisfaction. Bill will have that privile
ge.
. "We'll take your wounded to Richmond. After all, that's where they wanted to go."
Farinelli bowed again.
Herbert turned and walked away.
The rickety, neglected string of freight wagons and flat cars rolled on and on in the perfumed air of a Virginia spring night.
Farinelli sat cross legged with his back to the open boxcar door smoking a blackened, knobby briar that his grandfather had given him while he was at cadet school. Clouds of bluish smoke enveloped him in the dim light.
The Rebels more or less filled the large space within the car. They sat in small groups. Some played cards, dealing hands of poker from worn, brown, well weathered decks. Others slept with their heads propped up on blanket rolls. He marveled that the sleepers persisted in spite of the engine noise and the rowdy commotion of their comrades.
It did not escape his attention that only one officer had chosen to enjoy his company in the passage to Richmond. This was the blond lieutenant who had watched him so closely at dinner in Captain Fowle's mess, saying nothing, merely listening to their somewhat strained conversation.
Farinelli studied the men. He had never seen this enemy so near before. They were subtly different from the Union soldiers he had known so well. There was about these men a quality of loose jointedness, of playfulness. In America, he had become accustomed to his own veterans, the dour, faithful citizens of upstate New York and western Pennsylvania. These were different. They had about them a natural gaiety, a relaxed openness which showed in their brown faces, and which made their shabby, dull clothing seem appropriate, a reflection of their relationship to the soil. Their horseplay and lively talk had little calculation in it.
Death Piled Hard: A Tale of the Confederate Secret Services Page 31