“A.P. Hill,” the Major commented.
“I need a courier,” called out Charles Venable, an aide-decamp to General Lee.
“I can take that.” Henley stepped forward.
“Colonel Chatfield, I’m sure one of the boys will be up in an instant.”
“An instant might be too late.” Henley smiled.
The general noticed this exchange. “Never was a message in such capable hands.” A fleeting smile crossed his bearded face.
“Find A.P. Hill at the Meadow Bridges, Colonel, and wait for him to reply, if you will. Oh, Colonel Chatfield, take this extra paper and pencil. The officers have a habit of losing them.”
Henley carefully slid the material into the inside pocket of his tunic. He gracefully swung onto a big gelding and moved off toward the roar of the guns.
By the tollgate he had to decide whether to press on the Mechanicsville Turnpike or to cut over on one of the side roads and take his chances. If he pushed straight ahead, he’d smack into the Yankees eventually. If he rode off to the side. perhaps he could circle them without losing too much time.
The rich fragrance of June filled his nostrils. He asked the gelding for a strong canter.
The sounds of battle grew louder. His heart raced. He thought to himself that his daughter had faced this as had his son. For a second, Henley felt his heart might burst with fear, excitement, grief, and pride. Those emotions, for himself and his children mixed together, stirred in him as he swept closer to danger.
Cutting across a meadow, a swarm of milk-white butterflies appeared out of the grasses, hesitated, and then darted off, a parasol of winged happiness. Henley noticed them out of the corner of his eye. Immediately up ahead was Meadow Bridges Road. Once on a solid road, he urged the gelding to a gallop.
As he cut across a meadow, noise burst in his ears. He began passing over bodies. Ahead of him he could make out the last of a column of infantry moving up double-quick, discipline holding tight.
He clattered over the bridge, slowing the horse. He couldn’t charge by the column. He held a fast trot on the outside of the men. Most of them were looking at some point off in the distance. Their energies focused on what was about to happen. Each man seemed absorbed in his private world.
The horse snorted and reared. A disemboweled corpse frightened the animal. For the first time in his life, Henley smelled hot blood. The odor was strong. He’d smelled it when pigs and cattle were slaughtered, but he’d never smelled human blood. It smelled sweeter. For a moment he felt woozy. He shook his head vigorously and passed along the moving brigade. A stern infantry colonel rode ahead of his men.
“Colonel.” Henley saluted smartly. “Where might I find A.P. Hill?”
“Up ahead, sir. The fat’s in the fire!”
A ball whistled overhead, exploding about fifteen feet away. The men didn’t flinch, but pressed on.
Henley now heard shouting and screaming. The fire grew hotter. His heart pounded so hard he thought his ribs would break.
The late afternoon heat caused moisture to glisten on bayonets, on foreheads, on the flanks of horses.
Ten minutes later under heavy fire, Henley found A.P. Hill, a handsome man in his late thirties who was eager to fight.
Henley dismounted, handing the reins of his lathered horse to a placid sergeant. “From General Lee, sir.” Henley saluted.
Hill read the note. A lieutenant handed him a small lap board. Hill wrote a reply, put it in an envelope, and gave it to Henley.
Henley saluted and ran toward his horse. He felt himself float up in the air and then crash to earth. A cannonball removed his right kneecap from his outstretched leg, passed between his legs, and blew off his left leg completely from the knee down. He was tossed in the air, then dumped like a doll.
“Colonel Chatfield! Colonel Chatfield!”
Henley pushed up on his elbows. He struggled to clear his mind.
“You are hit, sir.”
Another voice leaned over him. “I’ll take the message, Colonel.”
“Yes, of course.” He handed the envelope over. “Take the horse, too. Headstrong. Belongs to Mrs. Vickers.”
“Yes, sir.” The man vaulted into the saddle and spurred away.
“Stretcher!” the first voice shouted.
Henley saw his boot about eight yards from him. “That is my leg, is it not?”
“I’m afraid it is,” replied the sergeant who had held his horse.
He looked down and saw his legs. He trembled violently for an instant, then forced himself to be calm. “Sergeant, carry me to that tree, will you? And bring me a lapboard.”
“A stretcher will be here in a moment, Colonel.”
“I’ll bleed to death before they get me to the field hospital. Please do as I ask.”
Two men carried him to the tree. The hum of bullets darted around them.
“The lapboard, sir.”
“May I ask you, young man, to do me one last favor? Will you see that these letters reach my wife in Richmond?”
“I will do that, Colonel.”
“You are most kind.” Henley, wishing to make use of what energy he had remaining to him, pulled paper out of his tunic. He wrote quickly.
My Dearest Wife,
I never knew what I had in you. Forgive me. Until we meet in heaven, I love you.
Your husband,
Henley
He smoothed out another piece of paper on the board.
Dear Geneva,
Remember, the mare is sixty percent of the horse. The speed comes from the stallion, but the heart comes from the dam. Carry on our breeding program. Take care of your mother. You are all she has now. I live in you, my child.
Your loving father
Hands beginning to tremble, he wrote another letter.
Dear Di-Peachy,
You brought me only joy.
Love,
Your father
He forced himself to write one last letter.
Dear Baron Schecter:
I regret not being able to give you satisfaction. It seems I satisfied a Yankee first.
June 26, 1862
Colonel Henley Chatfield, C.S.A.
Ebbing fast, he handed these folded papers to the sergeant. He watched men hurry past him with slight interest. A locust sputtered for an instant. The boom of another cannon convinced the insect she couldn’t outsing that roar.
He thought of Chatfield and the seventeen-year locusts. Once every seventeen years, each tree, bush, and building would be crawling with the large green-black bugs, their eyes popping. Harmless, the cacophony of those millions of joined locust trills was enough to drive him crazy. Yet he looked forward to each seventeenth year. Next one would be in 1877. He had seen the seventeen-year locusts three times in his life. When he sold Di-Peachy’s mother, in ’43, translucent tan locust shells were everywhere. Like a dead soldier, a locust shell, the essence is elsewhere. “Did she love me? Did she ever really love me?” He felt pain, but no self-pity. Rousing himself for one last look at the world, he noticed the lacy pattern of the leaves, the handiwork of a master. “Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will—”
“Curious,” Kate remarked to Lutie. The cannons belched for two days, but few wounded filtered into Richmond. Every now and then an ambulance cart would clatter past the house, but an odd silence prevailed.
“I think this battle may not be fully joined,” Lutie said.
“Yes,” Kate replied. “My husband once said that danger has a bright face. I expect he’s seeing it now.”
“Ever notice how in times of trouble, people invent reasons for it?”
“Such as?”
“A woman loses a valuable shawl. She says to herself, ‘This is my punishment for being short with dear Aunt Helen.’ ”
Kate chuckled. “I do that all the time.”
“Humans are unwilling to believe that great suffering and disaster can be inflicted without moral justification.”<
br />
“I usually have the strength to bear great suffering, someone else’s great suffering.” Kate smiled.
“Where is the baron these days?”
Kate’s eyebrows twitched upward. “I do hope, Lutie, that is a non sequitur.”
“Well, of course it is, Kate.”
“Miss Kate, someone is here to see you,” Evangelista softly interrupted.
“At eleven-thirty? It must be the wounded at last. Let’s see.
“Miss Kate, Miss Lutie should stay inside for a minute.”
A cold spear burrowed in Lutie’s stomach. Kate put her hand on Lutie’s shoulder. “Let me go first. Wait here with Sin-Sin.”
Kate nervously hurried outside. The ambulance cart had one body in it, Henley. A blanket covered his wounded right leg and his severed left. His face was completely white. “Oh, no!” She buried her face in her hands.
The ambulance driver was distressed to see such a beautiful woman in tears. “Fine-looking man. The general told us to bring him here soon as we could get away. Terrible fight today, ma’am. Couldn’t go out for the wounded ’til long after sunset.”
Kate composed herself. “I thank you for bringing him here. If you wait a moment, I shall have him carried in.”
Jensen and the stable boy quickly ran to the wagon. Kate instructed them. “Put the colonel in my room. We may need the other rooms for wounded. Jensen, find some ice if you can. We’ll pack him in it.”
She squared her shoulders and walked into the house. Lptie and Sin-Sin, motionless, waited. Di-Peachy had joined them.
“My dearest Lutie—”
“It’s Henley, isn’t it?”
Kate broke down and cried. She had so wanted to be a source of support for Lutie. “Yes. But wait, let us get him upstairs before you look at him.”
“Lord God, no!” Sin-Sin’s throaty voice shook.
Di-Peachy remained silent. A father found and a father lost.
“Please step into the kitchen until Jensen prepares him.”
Twenty minutes later, Lutie, Sin-Sin, and Di-Peachy followed Kate upstairs.
Lutie walked into Kate’s bedroom. Aside from his marbled whiteness, he didn’t look that bad. Silvery curls framed his face.
“He looks like the boy I married,” she whispered. “Death stole his years.”
“Don’t lift up the blanket, Lutie.” Kate moved between her and the body.
“What happened?”
“Lost his left leg and part of the right. There’s no need to look.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“Yes, but those men weren’t your husband.”
Lutie leaned forward and ran her fingers through his curls. Sin-Sin came behind her to catch her if she fainted.
“The ambulance driver also handed me these letters,” Kate gently informed Lutie.
“He wrote one to Baron Schecter, too. The driver told me that half the army is talking about it. The other half will find out tomorrow.”
“What?” Lutie forced herself to stay reasonable.
“Schecter is with A.P. Hill. Henley couldn’t have known that the baron was perhaps two hundred yards from him. His letter was delivered minutes after he died.”
“What did it say?”
“ ‘Dear Baron: I regret not being able to give you satisfaction. It seems I satisfied a Yankee first.’ ”
Lutie laughed until her laughter turned into tears. “He never broke stride.” She placed her face next to his cold cheek and sobbed.
Even The New York Times carried Henley Chatfield’s obituary. They called him “the greatest horseman of modern times.” The London Times, Le Matin de Paris, the St. Petersburg paper, and papers throughout Europe noted his passing. But the event in his life that passed through time was his note to Schecter. Whenever an outsider would ask what it meant to be a Southern gentleman, inevitably the story of Henley Chatfield writing a note while he lay dying on the Mechanicsville battlefield would be recounted.
JUNE 27, 1862
Old Cold Harbor Road, deeply rutted, was intersected by numerous farm roads in equally deplorable condition. Geneva rode toward the noise in front of her. A hot battle raged and cavalry was not a part of it.
Stuart’s force, spread out, was sweeping a wide front from Old Cold Harbor Road as far north as Old Church Road, almost to the Pamunkey River.
Mars cast his men out like a net, and they picked over the fields, each man within sight of the other. Occasionally an overturned wagon would break the monotony, but the Federal cavalry eluded them. So did the Federal infantry who had withdrawn in the night to superior defensive positions.
Geneva tried to put together the pieces of this scattered puzzle based upon what she had seen with her own eyes and what she had heard from others. Used for information and to screen Jackson, the cavalry hadn’t been assigned a combat role. This infuriated Geneva. She also knew Jackson lagged behind. The guns barked perhaps three miles distant from where she rode. Someone was mixing it up in the direction of the Chickahominy. Why didn’t the Yankees come out into the open fields where everyone could maneuver? The temperature in the swamps was five to ten degrees hotter than on the meadows. Artillery men nearly fried, for their guns also produced heat. Vines grew thick amidst the trees, choking movement in swamps and bogs.
The gentle farmlands along Old Cold Harbor Road would make an excellent battlefield as well as a splendid place for cavalry to wheel, clash, wheel, and clash again. A cluster of woods or a glistening pond added interest to the rolling wheat fields and corn. She passed a lovely peach orchard and was sorry it was too early in the season for the gnarled trees to bear fruit.
“What’s he doing up there?” wondered Geneva aloud, to herself. Mars was about two hundred yards ahead of the thin line.
“Ants in his pants,” Banjo declared.
Nash, riding on the other side of Banjo, was less kind. “Wants everyone to notice him, the conceited ass.”
Geneva, accustomed to Nash’s consistent antipathy to Mars, said nothing.
“Good land,” said Banjo. “Appears the farmer built himself a spite fence.” He pointed to a stone fence about six feet in height. The gray fieldstones, carefully positioned, fit into each other like interlocking fingers.
A sheet of flame startled them. Federals appeared from behind the fence. More Yankees, mounted, spun around outbuildings and the farmhouse.
Mars grabbed his left arm.
“Colonel!” Geneva screamed.
“Stay back here!” Nash ordered.
Geneva spurred Dancer with Banjo right beside her.
Another burst of fire hit Mars’s horse. A bullet passed about one inch below the animal’s eyes. Crazed and dying, the animal charged the fence, then surged over the high barrier. More gunfire spit.
Geneva and Banjo were now fifty yards behind Mars. “I’m going over!” Geneva shouted to Banjo, her head resting low near Dancer’s outstretched neck.
Banjo nodded, wondering how the hell she could clear that stone fence. Colonel Vickers’s horse had done it only with a burst of superior, final strength.
“Dancer can clear anything! Cover me!” With that she grabbed Dancer with steel calves, leaned forward with her seat deep in the saddle, and fed the bay the bit. Dancer, ripping huge hunks of earth as she ran, gathered her bulky hindquarters under her and shot over the solid fence with a foot to spare. Banjo’s jaw dropped on his chest. He skidded to a stop at the fence, tucked his feet on his saddle, and sprang to the top of the fence as gracefully and economically as a gray cat. He fired both pistols into the scattered Yanks, oblivious to his exposed status.
Mars was stumbling away from his dead horse who collapsed on the other side of the jump. His mare’s feet didn’t touch the ground, she folded like an accordion. Blood covered Mars’s left side.
“Swing up, Colonel.” Geneva leaned over and helped him up. Banjo cursed the Yanks and continued to cover them.
“You can’t jump back over with me. Save yourself, Jimmy,” Mars
commanded.
“Can’t hear you, Colonel.” Geneva galloped along the wall looking for a way out. Bullets slammed into the stone.
“Get back, you walleyed sons of bitches!” Banjo screamed. A bullet tore his cap off. He didn’t miss a beat.
“Flaming hell!” Nash jumped up beside Banjo. The two men ran rightward on top of the wall, firing and cursing together.
Out of the small, enclosed apple orchard, a Yankee captain ran forward, waving a white handkerchief. He stood still and motioned with his left hand that there was a turn up ahead.
As she approached him, Geneva slowed.
The Federal captain, clear green eyes, called up to her, “Anyone who can jump like that deserves to live! Get out of here!”
“Jimmy Chatfield, Charlottesville, Virginia. Find me when this war is over!” She dug into Dancer’s flanks and barreled through the small opening in the wall where a portion had fallen into disrepair.
Banjo and Nash, seeing the escape, vaulted off the wall.
“By God, you’re a fine fellow!” Banjo slapped Nash on the back, exuberant at their exploit. Banjo ran underneath the wall until he found his cap. Jubilantly he picked it up and stuck his finger through the hole. “Those factory boys are improving their marksmanship.”
Geneva thundered to a nondescript little crossroad, then cut hard left toward the sound of artillery. She knew a field hospital would be stationed somewhere behind the main line of infantry dispute.
Mars’s head leaned on her back. She glanced down. Dancer’s left flank was deep red with the Colonel’s blood. She felt hot liquid soaking through her left side where his arm swung up and back as they flew onward.
When she saw the yellow hospital flag, she sent up a silent prayer. Arms and legs lay outside the tent. The earth was slippery with blood. She reined in her grateful horse, slid down, and gently pulled Mars off. He was conscious but foggy.
Two orderlies met her and put Mars on a litter. She followed them to where they laid him. For a moment she didn’t notice her surroundings. The screams and sobs meant nothing to her. She leaned over Mars, tears splashing on his face. “Don’t die, Colonel, please don’t die! I love you! I never knew how much I loved you!”
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