The Damned of Petersburg

by Ralph Peters

  Looking around at the other officers who had come out for the welcome, he asked, “Does this headquarters have no work to do?”

  The crowd disassembled itself. His other son, Preston, trailed after his brother, bound to be disobedient again. Preston, uncanny reminder of Hampton’s adored first wife.

  He went into his tent. He, too, had much to do, but he felt the need to sit on his cot for a bit, to discipline his emotions.

  When might they all be together again? At Sand Hills? Anywhere? His children and his new wife, his sisters and brothers? There was nothing more important on this earth than a man’s family.…

  He longed to return to Sand Hills, to see Millwood again. He had expected Atlanta to fall, but the news still had come as a shock. Now Early had been beaten, badly, at Winchester. Rimmed by his well-groomed beard, Hampton’s lips curled. The praise for his own little triumph had been brief. His “Beefsteak Raid,” as the men had already dubbed it, had been a grand caper, showing him the equal of Stuart in the art of raiding. He and his men had slipped behind Grant’s lines, riding halfway around the Union army to appropriate twenty-three hundred beeves on the hoof and drive them back inside Confederate lines. The men had been delighted; even Lee had expressed his pleasure. And the Army would eat. But the glory had turned to gloom at the news from the Valley.

  His men seemed refreshed and newly determined, though. And Hampton refused to accept that he, Wade Hampton III, would be defeated by anyone. But sitting there on a mild September day, thinking of home and kin, of a future opaque and a past gone like a vapor, he wondered:

  How will it end?

  September 24, 1864

  Boston, Massachussetts

  Barlow brayed with laughter. He didn’t mean to offend the girl, but he simply could not restrain himself. Sitting nobly at the foot of his sickbed, doing her part for the war by bearing his stink, she had begun her charitable reading with “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

  When he mastered himself at last, he rubbed tears of hilarity from his eyes, looked down his long, smothered body at the dutiful amber-haired wisp, and said, “I’m sorry, Miss Shaw … forgive me…”

  Helpless, racked, ribs hurting, he laughed again, though the bout was shorter this time.

  The poor child looked bewildered. Left alone in a room with a reeking madman.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “It’s … simply not like that, war isn’t. It’s never like that at all.”

  The girl showed rather more gumption than he expected.

  “At least, I made you laugh,” she told him. “I wasn’t sure it was possible.”

  Thinking again of the poem’s absurdity, he succumbed to a last fit of laughter. He hoped the squirts would not be one result. His condition remained wretched, with the best Boston doctors bewildered. The past weeks had quite surprised him. The military doctors he’d long derided had surpassed the learned sages of medicine: If the butchers in uniform had been of little help, the august physicians ministering to Beacon Hill and Brookline were none at all.

  “Well, then,” the girl said primly, “not Tennyson. We’ll try something else.” She chose another volume from the little pile she’d drawn out of her bag.

  She was game, he had to give her that. And fond-looking out of mourning. Fresh, unsullied. His mother’s behavior was untoward, of course. She’d probably bullied the girl into this nonsense, convincing her that sniffing his waste was her patriotic duty, a tribute to her brother Bob, dead in a ditch with his darkies.

  Why was the Shaw girl back in Boston, anyway? Her family had moved to Staten Island so her mother’s eyes could be treated. Of course, the girl had relatives aplenty: If the Channings and Barlows were related to half of New England’s best families, the Shaws were related to all of them.

  In a voice not too afflicted with flint, she tried again:

  Five years have passed; five summers, with the length

  Of five long winters! and again I hear—

  “Oh, God,” Barlow interrupted, “please, not Wordsworth. ‘Pansies, lilies, kingcups, daisies, / Let them live upon their praises’ … He can’t even get the rhymes right.” Almost in rancor, he added, “All poems about flowers are insufferable.”

  The girl’s posture never faltered. But her eyes grew moist. Blue eyes, as clear and acute as Bob’s had been dull.

  His temper had surprised him, and he subdued it. “I’m afraid poetry’s wasted on me. I … fear I’m not in good form.” He attempted a smile. “Never had the bent for verses, really.”

  But he remembered: Brook Farm, sunlight, childhood. And, later, the way Arabella had recited Wordsworth. And Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whom she adored.

  “But you know poetry,” the girl said.

  “I memorized it for a penny a go.” With a smirk he could not resist, he added, “I still have my mother’s promissory notes, I should call them in.”

  No quitter, she reached for another book, a small one bound in red.

  “Your mother says you were always fond of Shakespeare.”

  He managed to raise a hand and wave that off. “My mother isn’t au courant, Miss Shaw. My tastes aren’t what they were.” He snorted, at once sorry for the rudeness. “Really, I’m not sure I have any tastes left.”

  “Surely—”

  “Miss Shaw … don’t you find this irregular? Not to say compromising? Left alone in the bedchamber of a man you barely know? No, that’s not right. A man you don’t know at all.”

  To his surprise, she met his eyes directly, her look as spunk-laden as the stares he’d gotten from very unhappy Southern belles.

  “I hardly think, General Barlow, that you’re in a state to threaten a lady’s virtue.”

  He blushed, almost laughed, faltered. Then smiled despite himself.

  “No, I expect not.” Serious again, he said, “It’s the appearance of things, though.”

  “I don’t care a whit about appearances.”

  “You should. This world is unforgiving.” He gestured feebly at the bedcover, his shrouded person. “And this can’t be pleasant.”

  “I do not intend to live my life amid primroses and celandines.”

  Surprising and disappointing himself, he answered:

  Long as there’s a sun that sets,

  Primroses will have their glory …

  It was her turn to laugh, mercilessly.

  “Well, General, it appears you earned your pennies. Really, is Wordsworth so awful?”

  “Unspeakably so.”

  She smiled, as if she believed she was gaining ground.

  “I think you’re just being a bear. To taunt me. You still think I’m that child hunched on the stairs, listening to you berate Bob about calculus. I’ll bet you read Wordsworth in secret. And Tennyson.”

  “Assuredly not.” At a sudden loss for words, he stumbled on. “Some Shakespeare. Now and then. Not much. Not the sonnets.”

  Belle had loved the sonnets.

  “‘When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,’” she tried.

  “Appropriate, I grant you.”

  “Hardly. You’re quite the hero. In men’s eyes. And I think you know it. Revel in it, in fact.” She smiled with good teeth. “I might advertise my privilege in the papers, to make all the other girls jealous. ‘Lately admitted to the Homeric presence of Brigadier General Francis Channing Barlow, who lies in cruel repose after war’s fatigues.…’ I do think I’ll take out a notice. I shall be the envy of every well-bred demoiselle in the Union.” She cocked an eyebrow. “And some of lesser pedigree, I suspect.”

  Of a sudden, he found her tiresome and presumptuous.

  “Best not mistake impertinence for charm, Miss Shaw.”

  Her lower lip dropped.

  Recovering, she said, “You really are a beast. Aren’t you? And purposely rude.”

  “Rude enough to tell you that, whatever nonsense my mother’s put in your head, you really mustn’t—”

  “I don’t need anyone’s mother to pu
t anything in my head. And I will not be bullied by an ill-mannered invalid who can’t … who…”

  “Can’t what, exactly? Can’t even control his bowels? Ah, yes. There we have the essence of heroism, the scent of glory. The disgusting body … how much better to read Wordsworth and pretend we all drowse amid flowers.” Coldly, he added, “You might go now, Miss Shaw, and spare yourself.”

  Fighting back tears with all the determination Lee had shown to hold on in the Wilderness, she stood up, her posture that of a sergeant of Regulars, gripped her skirts, and marched toward the door.

  “Your books,” he called after her.

  She turned, slender and ablaze. Better suited to Naples and Vesuvius, to Pompeii, than to Back Bay, she announced:

  “They seem to have no value.”

  Then she was only footsteps descending the stairs.

  Why did I do that? Barlow asked himself. For all his mother’s harebrained schemes, there was no reason to take his annoyance out on the girl. She really had done her innocent best to be pleasant.

  He longed to be well again, hated this confinement, this inability to see to his own necessities. One doctor had thrown up his hands and said his only chance was bed rest, if he hoped to live.

  Boston clattered past outside the window, each sound familiar, and yet he was as much a stranger here as any Turk.

  He had been cruel these past years. War demanded cruelty, heartlessness. But cruelty without purpose … if he’d ever had a soul, he seemed to have lost it. Not Caesar, but Caligula.

  He whispered to his pillow, “‘Take physic, pomp; / Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel…’”

  Well, he felt wretched enough. He longed for the war, his war, loving it for its ultimate simplicity, its beauty, the random clemency. Atlanta had fallen, and Sheridan had won two smashing victories in the Valley. And he was here, befouling his sheets in Boston.

  His mouth wrinkled. If Ellen Shaw wanted to experience rudeness, she needed to meet Phil Sheridan.…

  Astonishing himself, he began to weep. The fit lasted only a moment, but it shook him, loosening something deep, and not in his bowels this time.

  He had just brushed the wet from his face when the girl reappeared in the doorway. She looked as though she had been crying fiercely, but that magnificent grenadier’s posture, that impeccable haughtiness of carriage, had not relented.

  She held a single book.

  “If not poetry,” she said, “then prose, perhaps? Hawthorne? The Marble Faun?”

  Gads. Smelly old Hawthorne, ever pawing his mother in the old days.

  “I’m fond of Hawthorne, actually,” he said.

  * * *

  After the girl had gone, his mother visited him, smug as the cat that finished all the cream. His mother. Even though there was money now, she’d finagled the loan of a fine house on Beacon Hill—if not on the best street—from one of her former beaux. The woman couldn’t do without adoration. Or the sense that she’d been clever.

  “Really, Mother.”

  “Francis! You stink. Why didn’t you pull the bell cord?” She paled. “You didn’t … while Miss Shaw…”

  “I’m not certain. Do you think she’d mind?”

  “Francis, you’re taunting me.”

  “Ecce homo, Mater dolorosa.”

  “That’s blasphemous. But I don’t mind. If you think you can shock me…”

  Despite the stench, she sat.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask…,” he began.

  “I’ve always disliked that construction, it seems weak and indirect. And grammatically awkward.”

  “Not my academic strength, grammar. Mother, I’ve had some news. Courtesy of a friend. It seems that my father is somewhere around Philadelphia.”

  Instantly cold beyond all arctic wastes, his mother said, “We will not discuss that subject. Not now, not ever.”

  “I only thought—”

  “You should concern yourself with your own recovery, nothing else.” Ever a master tactician, she turned the subject to one he could not evade. “Francis, whatever did you do to Ellen Shaw? You had her in tears like a serving girl turned out.”

  “Perhaps she found all the perfumes of Arabia insufficient?”

  “You’re such a little beast.”

  “That’s what she said, coincidentally. The beast part. Not little, though, I don’t think.”

  “She’s very fine, Francis. Incomparable, in fact.”

  Applying a tactic of his own, he said, “I believe the male of the species only applies ‘incomparable’ to you, Mother.”

  She sat up with all the grace of Ellen Shaw. “More than one man has deemed me incomparable. From an appropriate distance.” She smiled as if they shared a splendid joke.

  He smiled, too. “Please be serious for a moment. I mean it. You can’t go on pressing that girl into fruitless service. Spare her your intentions, whatever they may be. It’s … unseemly to have her in.” He recalled her fineness vividly. “Her reputation, should word get out…”

  “I don’t see that at all,” his mother said. “The times have advanced while you’ve been away, my dear. Even in Boston.” She shook her still-lovely head. “A girl of excellent family, who’s lost a gallant brother … why shouldn’t she take pity on—”

  “I will not be pitied. That’s the first thing. I will not have it.” He flared still hotter, almost able to rise from his bed and pound the walls. “Second … Arabella hasn’t been dead two months. It’s indecent.…”

  His mother’s face turned as solemn as Hancock’s had been when he’d issued the orders for the assault on the Mule Shoe.

  “Francis,” she said at last, her calm imperious, “I’ve lived more years than I care to admit. Certainly, I’ve seen much more of life than you. Be quiet, don’t you mock, or I shall slap you. And one thing I have learned is that death is final. Two months, two years, or twenty … the dead are dead.” Her features tightened in sudden curiosity, perhaps in wonder. “Didn’t the war teach you anything?”

  Ten thirty p.m., September 25

  City Point

  Grant sat alone in his cabin, weary. The light of the oil lamp painted the raw wood orange.

  He’d issued orders to George Meade by cipher. The next offensive, to start in a matter of days, would follow the same pattern: a blow on the right and a blow on the left, stretching Lee ever thinner. He meant to punch through on the Richmond front, or to cut the Boydton Plank Road behind Petersburg. Or both.

  Still dressed, he closed his eyes. One of his headaches threatened. So much to get through, ever more to be done. Sherman needed a better general of cavalry, one who could command infantry, as well. Send him Gregg? Wilson? One of Meade’s sons was gravely ill, but Meade could not be spared even for that. Nor would Meade ask. Stanton wanted a new command for Hooker in the West, but which one? Replace Heintzelman or Rosecrans? Neither had been effective. And Julia still hadn’t chosen a Philadelphia house. He’d just written her a letter meant as a nudge.

  The good news was that Sheridan’s twin victories in the Valley had filled the Northern papers, first the triumph along Opequon Creek, outside of Winchester, then, three days later, the smashup at Fisher’s Hill. Shame about Russell, though. His loss would be felt. But atop the news from Atlanta, Little Phil’s successes had changed politics across the Union. The election remained in question, bitterly so, but Lincoln had a chance now.

  Bill, his manservant, eased in like a cat.

  “Where’ve you been?” Grant said.

  “Just doing my doings. Following my orders from Miss Julia.”

  “That excuse won’t play many more hands.”

  Bill knelt before him, taking up the heel of one of Grant’s boots and beginning to tug. Muttering. Pure Bill.

  “So … what do you think of General Sheridan now? What did you call him? ‘Devil man,’ was it?”

  “He still wicked as Pharaoh. Man a sinner, he just born that way. Any soul looking on knows it, take one look. That man the D
evil ’carnate.” The first boot came off and Bill went to work on the other. “Feet of yours,” he said disdainfully.

  “Maybe it takes a devil to beat devils.”

  “Don’t want no truck with no devil, speak for myself.”

  Grant’s other foot came free. Bill wrinkled his nose. “Wash them socks.”

  “Have a washerwoman in mind? That filly you’ve been romping after?”

  “Just seeing to her protection. All these bad men around.”

  Grant couldn’t help smiling. Bill was a treasure. “Well, what about General Sherman? Seeing him in a better light these days?”

  “Naw, suh. Naw. That man. He eat the flesh of chillun, nobody looking. Then suck on they bones.”

  “I’ve always found Sherman a tenderhearted man,” Grant said, lying merrily. “You’re a mighty hard fellow to please.”

  “Folks says the same about other company right here in this room.”

  “Sherman’s freed your brethren from captivity. Thousands of them.”

  “Ain’t my brethren. My people civilized. Good Missouri people. Anyhow, that man don’t take to dark folks anytime. Run ’em off, just drive ’em back to the Rebs. Said so yourself.”

  “He can’t let his army be overwhelmed with contrabands.”

  “None of my business, nohow. You going to get undressed, or you sleeping like that?”

  Reluctantly, Grant rose. He tugged off his coat.

  “We getting ready to try Bobby Lee again?” Bill asked, slapping the garment.

  Grant looked at Bill in surprise.

  “You hearing rumors?” If so, it was unacceptable. The plan had to be kept secret, its details withheld until the movements began. He fumbled out of his trousers.

  “Naw, suh. We just due for another go at things, way you are. Any fool know.”

  “If I were about to do anything, foreknowledge would be a military secret. And hollering out secrets gets a man hanged.”

  Bill took the trousers and folded them. “Who I going to tell?”

  “All right, then, General Bill…”

  “You set to have your fun with me, calling me ‘General Bill’ way you do, just deviling. Ought to ’least call me right, call me ‘General William Barnes.’ You wouldn’t call that Sherman ‘General Bill.’”