DECEMBER 20, 186
Frost coated Gallant’s whiskers. A scarf knitted by Di-Peachy was wrapped around Geneva’s throat to ward off the cold. The regiment rode on the Leesburg-Alexandria Pike toward Dranesville. Wagons were spread out along the road like square pearls in a long, frozen necklace. Food supplies had become so scarce that Brigadier General Stuart was ordered to cover this foraging expedition to the west of Dranesville, a small town about seven miles inland from Coon’s Ferry on the Potomac and fifteen miles west of Washington, D.C. The land, good for cultivation, yielded results even when the army couldn’t pay for the hay and supplies.
About sixteen hundred infantry troops, one hundred fifty cavalrymen, and four field pieces protected this vital chain of food. Mars wanted to bring his entire regiment, but higher powers deemed it unnecessary.
As the sun heralded the day at 7:10 Geneva and her company were ordered toward Dranesville. The Yankees were reputed to have set up advance posts there, and if they got wind of the forage wagons, they would try to steal them for themselves. Winter was impartial as to its victims, and the Yankees were hungry, too.
Banjo rode on one side of Geneva; Nash was on the other. On the east side of the little town the two turnpikes, the Leesburg-Alexandria and the Georgetown, intersected. As the regiment neared the town, Geneva saw that Dranesville was a cavalryman’s nightmare. High hills, a spur before the Blue Ridge mountains, blocked the south side of the town. Much of the ground was covered in thick woods. Banjo was first to see that the Yankees already had the ridge. “Look,” he said, “caissons moving up one of the pikes.”
Nash pulled on his cigar. “We can’t charge in this terrain.”
“No,” Banjo said, fingering his card deck, “but if they’ve got cavalry, we could be back and forth all day.”
“Why?” Geneva wanted to know.
“To draw them off the wagons.”
Mars ordered his small detachment of one hundred fifty men to ride back on the Leesburg Pike. The bugle sounded, and the detachment split as neatly as if cut by a wedge.
Four artillery pieces, twelve-pounders pulled by draft horses, roared by. “Make way! Make way!”
“We’re gonna hit them,” Nash said.
“Off the road!” ordered Mars again. Again they moved out of the way as the infantry ran forward on the double-quick.
“Halt,” a major called.
The infantry stopped, removed their blankets and personal effects, each laid neatly on the ground like rows of large cotton.
“Forward, double-quick!” he shouted again.
The sound of feet on the frozen road sounded like thousands of walnuts being crunched underfoot. Despite the cold, these men were already sweating.
Geneva heard the first cannon fire. This was followed by rhythmic bursts from the other three. Company after company of sober infantrymen hurtled forward. She thought that the artillery boys were wizards the way they could limber guns, get their angle, and fire. Sumner taught her that a twelve-pounder had a maximum range at 50° of 1,700 yards. They used ball for the long range, cannister for shorter range, and grape against infantry at two hundred yards. Geneva didn’t mind artillery duels, but she thought the antipersonnel cannister and grape horrible. She’d seen horses and men disemboweled by the stuff.
Boom. The deep-throated Federal guns began to answer the South. One after another, they sang like murderous children. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Their register increased.
“How many batteries do you think they’ve got?” Geneva asked.
“I counted twelve guns,” Nash answered.
“Either that or some Yankee genius devised a new firing pattern,” Banjo said.
“We only sent up one battery,” Geneva called to him.
Mars, riding back to check his rear, heard her. “We can make hell with what we have.” The sound of battle gave Mars a wild energy. He was larger than life and utterly fearless.
Once Banjo asked Mars if he was ever afraid. Mars replied that he was afraid of disease, insanity, the terrors of the hearth, but not battle. He knew he wouldn’t die on the field.
Banjo allowed that whether that was true or not, worrying wasn’t going to do him much good, so he might as well soldier on. If nothing else, it gave his companions courage.
“Close up!” Mars bellowed. “The infantry is through. Close up! We’ve got to get to the wagons.” He wheeled and came alongside Banjo. “Cover the rear, Banjo. If you see any Yanks, tell Mandy here to blow.”
The bugler came alongside Banjo, too. “We’ll do what we can.”
For two hours, they heard the cannon fire and rifles crackle. The sound grew more tinty as they turned the wagons and nudged them back toward Leesburg. The cannon stopped.
By late afternoon every wagon was accounted for and secure in camp. Mars and his men waited, but the Yankee cavalry never showed its face. Men attended to their mounts, and Mars paced, but no further orders came. Finally the men dismounted at sunset.
An hour after sunset a courier arrived. The cavalry was to advance upon Dranesville at daybreak and harass the enemy’s left flank.
Mars read the dispatch and said to Sam Wells, “We might be able to do some damage on the left. The right’s impossible. The men have withdrawn to the railroad station, and Stuart’s at Frying Pan Church. What do you think?”
“I’ll tell the men to cook up a day’s rations, just in case.”
“Sam, they were unusually clairvoyant knowing where our supply wagons were heading.”
“It wasn’t us. Goddamned Richmond cabinet leaks like a sieve.”
Mars folded the dispatch and slid it into his breast pocket. “Not a happy thought. Soldiers take the risk, and politicians reap the rewards. I think I’d rather sit in a room full of maggots.”
DECEMBER 21, 1861
Dawn hovered on the eastern horizon. Deep frost covered the fields. Every sense alert, Mars and his men rode into Dranesville. The Yankees evacuated. Dead bodies from yesterday’s fighting randomly covered the ground. Neither side got all their dead off the field, although they did take care of their wounded.
The lone artillery battery took a beating but the surviving men withdrew the guns, in good order, to shelter.
The small cavalry detachment walked over the broken ground, regrouped on the Georgetown Pike, and trotted east to see if they could pick up the enemy. The infantry was left with the task of burying the dead which did not further endear the cavalry to them.
As Mars questioned people along the Georgetown Pike he learned that the Federals had withdrawn fifteen regiments of infantry and seven companies of cavalry along with several batteries. It was a godsend that the Federal cavalry did not flank Dranesville and come out on the Leesburg Pike. Mars began to wonder about their leadership.
Badly led or not, they had retreated in fairly good order. No signs of panic, discarded clothing or goods, cluttered the road.
Around three in the afternoon, the Virginians turned back toward their camp. If they didn’t have to give up the roads for infantry or artillery, they would make it in two hours.
Riding back, Mars wondered what would happen when the first twelve-month enlistments expired. The war was far from over, and it had not proven to be a glorious game. Men were often hungry and cold. Those that were not from Virginia grew increasingly nervous about military activities in their own states and desired to return to protect their homes. Pay appeared like roses in December. Mars didn’t worry about the cavalry. Their esprit de corps would hold them together. They were mostly rich boys, and they had a lot to prove. The infantry and artillery were another question.
A biting northwesterly wind prickled his cheeks. The landscape, stripped of foliage, looked desolate, and even the comforting roll of rich meadows could not compensate for the barrenness of winter.
He thought about Kate and her cobalt blue eyes. No doubt she was unbuttoning Baron Schecter’s impeccably cut trousers. He no longer cared. What he wondered about these days was not so mu
ch Kate but himself. Could he ever love again? Would he know it if he did? He feared that he had grown away from that part of himself. He had hardened his heart to women. Well, no one ever died of lack of love, he thought.
DECEMBER 22, 1861
Having written a letter to both Lutie and Di-Peachy, Geneva read Matthew, chapter 3. She learned that John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey. If she got hungry enough, she’d try it, too.
The flap of the tent opened and Nash, his face drawn, entered and sat next to her. “I have bad news.” He handed her a folded paper spattered with blood.
She unfolded the paper. It was Sumner’s drawings for Lutie’s fountains.
“Your brother couldn’t stay out of the fight. He went forward with the horse artillery commanded by Cutts. The fire raked them for two solid hours, and they were severely outgunned.”
“But we beat them!” Geneva shook.
Nash touched her hair. “We beat them, but Sumner’s gone.” He did not tell her that when they reached Sumner’s body, the grass around him was torn up. The man died in hideous agony.
Sobbing, she put her head on Nash’s chest. “Not my big brother!”
She cried for hours. Banjo quietly came in bringing Sumner’s guns, sword, articles of clothing, and his engineering books. He sat beside Geneva and patted her hand, but she sobbed uncontrollably.
That night, Banjo motioned to Nash to come out. “The little fella’s takin’ this powerful hard.” Banjo squinted.
“Death’s etched the first wrinkle on his skin.”
Banjo appreciated poetry but would have preferred a solution. “He’ll make hisself sick, and that’s dangerous in this wicked cold. You think some whiskey would stiffen him?”
“I tried that. He throws it up.”
“I’m gonna get the colonel. He’ll know what to do.”
“He’ll come in here all gunpowder and bluster,” Nash flared.
“I know you don’t like the colonel, but Jimmy does. He’ll know what to do. You can’t let him carry on like this.”
Nash reluctantly agreed. “It’s worth a try.”
When Mars turned up the tent flap, he saw Geneva lying facedown on her cot, Nash sitting helplessly next to her, his hand stroking her hair.
Mars knelt on one knee next to the cot. “Jimmy, I’m very sorry to hear about Sumner. He was everything a young man should be. The best blood is poured in the ground.”
She turned over. “I hate them. I’m gonna find the men who killed my brother and kill them. I want to make them bleed, damn their black hearts!” Her eyes were glazed.
“Jimmy, war is nothing personal. Those Yankees were doing their job, just like we’re doing our job. The selection of victims is impersonal.”
Geneva sat upright, breathing convulsively. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m not arguing for it, but that’s the way it is. It’s not a duel. It’s business.”
“I don’t want to live,” she wailed and bent over, her head in her hands.
“You have to live. You’ve got a mother and a father that love you, and they’ll need you now more than ever. You’ve got Nash.” That was hard to say. “You’ve got Banjo. You have to live.”
She looked up at him.
“Come on, now. Pull yourself together. The regiment needs you. I need you.”
Her sobs slowed, but her body still shook.
“You need some sleep. It’s a terrible thing to lose someone you love. You’ll come through.”
“Do I have to write Mother and Father?”
“No, I’ll write them both. Will you go to sleep now, soldier?”
“Yes, sir, I promise.” She crawled under the covers and fell asleep before the tent flap closed behind Mars.
Mars and Banjo walked down the quiet rows of tents, white ghosts in line after line.
“We’re just bloody cards tossed on the table,” Mars said. “That’s all a soldier is, a bloody card.”
III
THESE
BLOODY
CARDS
JANUARY 20, 1862
“Most merciful Father, who hast been pleased to take unto thyself the soul of this thy servant, John Tyler: Grant to us who are still in our pilgrimage, and who walk as yet by faith, that having served thee with constancy on earth, we may be joined hereafter with thy blessed saints in glory everlasting; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Henley, in full dress uniform with Kate Vickers next to him, watched as the body of the tenth President of the United States, John Tyler, was borne out of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. The “Dead March” from Saul mournfully played.
Baron Schecter, sitting to Mrs. Vickers’s right, wore the blazing white tunic of imperial Austria. The fringe on his gold epaulets swayed as he breathed. Schecter, a bold Adonis with a thin blond moustache, accompanied Kate everywhere, as did Henley.
Henley could no longer ignore the condition of the Confederacy whose great victory last summer evaporated like a venomous vapor. The news, unilaterally bad, added to the depression that the funeral of this eminent man produced.
John Tyler died at seventy-two. His coffin was followed in the blasts of icy wind by his second wife, the former Julia Gardiner, and his nine-year-old son, Lyon Gardiner Tyler. Mrs. Tyler held her head up. She knew many a widow’s eye was upon her, and she had no right to falter. Lyon held his mother’s hand; taking his example from her, he did not cry.
As Henley, in the third column of official mourners, marched with Kate and the baron, he noticed that the sidewalks were crowded with people in obvious distress. The path, lined with mourners, wound the entire distance from Ninth and Grace streets to Hollywood Cemetery. One hundred and fifty carriages followed the body. The people mourned not just the passing of an ex-President but of an era. There were no more John Tylers left in political life.
Henley wondered how many people also knew of the unseemly squabble over presentation of the casket. Should it be draped with the flag of our present enemy, our former nation? Some members of the cabinet, with disregard for the grieving widow, said absolutely not, his casket should be covered with the flag of the infant Confederacy. This display of smallness continued until Julia Tyler told them in so many words to go to hell. So President Tyler rolled to his freshly dug grave, a feat in itself since the ground was frozen, with a bare casket, save for his dress sword in remembrance of the company he raised in 1813 for the defense of Richmond against the marauding British. Before his casket, a single horse was led, boots reversed in the stirrups, the only sign that the leader of a nation was passing.
Tyler had done what he could to prevent the bloody rupture, but once it occurred, he served the Confederacy and his native Virginia literally until his last breath. He gave us Texas, Henley thought, an icon of independence. John Tyler kissed nobody’s ass, Democrat or Whig or the brand-new Republicans. He was able to disagree with a man as formidable as Andrew Jackson as well as make common cause with him when his conscience permitted him.
What troubled Henley was his own shyness about public life. It wasn’t just himself, he knew, but a generation of Virginians abdicated public life, leaving it to the second-raters and ultimately to the younger, radical elements of the Delta and coastal South. Virginia had a lot to answer for and so did Henley. Perhaps the richness of Virginia’s drowned river valleys from four great rivers, the Potomac, the Rappahannock, the York, and the James, invited people to wealth, not public service.
Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison had wealth, although they squandered much of it. After that triumvirate passed, Jackson and Tyler, both Virginians, took over. And then nothing. The youngbloods drove west because the valleys were tied up by rich and comfortable men, men like himself, Henley realized. Rash temperaments superseded temperate judgments, and slavery sucked away the talent of men of genius like John Calhoun of South Carolina. The effort spent in justifying slavery, the foundation of rural economy, sapped people. They began to look to the past instead of to the future, and Henley cursed h
imself because he looked only to Chatfield. He abandoned the great issues of the day to become the best breeder of horses in the country. While it was a worthy achievement, it wasn’t enough. Now he, like thousands of others, was paying in blood for his complacency.
In meeting after meeting Henley marveled at the infinite capacity of the human brain to withstand the introduction of useful knowledge. Looking ahead as the six perfectly matched black horses pulled Tyler to the beyond, he wondered, how did the old man do it? How did he sit in endless meetings, listening to people avoid problems or puff themselves up like broody hens. In order to be successful in politics, one must suffer fools gladly. The Richmond soldier killed more enemies sitting around a conference table than in battle. Hell was a bureaucracy with twelve devils arguing at a conference table. Henley renewed his efforts to achieve the uptown of afterlife as opposed to the downtown.
As the procession passed by, Henley thought of Sumner’s funeral. They couldn’t have a graveside ceremony for Sumner, but the Very Reverend Manlius had arranged a service at the church. Henley and Lutie were gratified at the number of people who came to pay their last respects. Jennifer Fitzgerald had one of her servants, a man highly skilled with marble, carve a beautiful cenotaph with Sumner’s name, dates of birth and death, his regiment and brigade numbers. Over this were two crossed sabers.
Lutie had amazed Henley. He worried that she’d fall to pieces as she did when Jimmy died. Instead she bore it like a Roman matron of the Republic. Her only comment was, “If my son can die for Virginia, I can live for Virginia.”
Sin-Sin covered her face in ashes and kept to her house for two days. Di-Peachy cried continually. But Ernie had surprised them all. The enormous cook went down like the crumbling of a seawall.
Kate Vickers had come from Richmond. Henley was touched by Kate’s concern for himself and his wife. Kate was particularly solicitous of Di-Peachy who was wont to break into tears.
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