On Secret Service

by John Jakes

  The reconnaissance detachment of thirty-five men was half the squadron normally led by Captain Calder, who must have known someone influential in Richmond, because he didn’t know a damn thing about horses. Calder’s black stallion had collapsed and died when he overfed and overwatered him after a hot march from Williamsburg covering Joe Johnston’s retreat. Calder was presently away in search of a remount. That each trooper had to supply his own horse was one of the idiocies of the Confederate government Fred served with a mixture of pride and guilt. He’d have no problem with remounts so long as the family horse farm near Front Royal remained in Confederate territory. His horse, Baron, came from there. Baron was a huge and intelligent gelding with flanks as shiny as coal; the kind of animal that terrified the Union soldiers at the battle of Manassas, sent them running from the “black horse cavalry.”

  Fred’s commander was Brigadier General James Ewell Brown Stuart, whom he’d known and admired back at the Military Academy. Fred had enlisted with Stuart at Manassas, before Joe Johnston pulled back to the Rappahannock. Without making anything special of it, Fred understood that Stuart liked him personally and trusted him professionally. For that reason Stuart had sent him north of the Pamunkey River, to look for signs of a McDowell advance.

  Fred rode beside Jonas Eberhart at the head of the column of twos. Eberhart was one of Calder’s second lieutenants. He was earnest but untrained. His experience consisted of occasional work at his uncle’s livery stable. Not your typical, bred-to-horse Confederate cavalryman.

  Butterflies swooped in bars of sunlight between the trees. Mockingbirds and jays sang and scolded. Fred had three scouts well ahead of the column, and eight men riding single file on each flank. The whole detachment could swing right or left quickly in case of attack.

  The column advanced in silence except for the jingle of bits and the clop-clop of hooves. Yellow dust sifted upward as the riders passed, coating flanks and faces. Each man carried rations in his saddlebags but no bedroll. Fred didn’t plan to stop for a night’s sleep.

  A Richmond-built copy of a Sharps breechloader hung from his shoulder sling. A pair of new LeMat .40-caliber over-and-under revolvers from Belgium jutted from his saddle holsters. The LeMat’s upper barrel fired from a nine-shot cylinder; the lower was smoothbore for shotgun pellets. So far he’d only fired the weapons twice, in a skirmish at Dranesville, and while covering the retreat from Williamsburg.

  Sweat gathered in his curly red hair and trickled from under his forage cap with its bright yellow crown. His two-day growth of beard itched. He craved a swig from his canteen. He knew he was drinking too much. His consumption had increased after he left Washington.

  A horseman trotted up. It was the courier, John Mosby. Private Mosby was a slight, stooped young man with strange, disturbing eyes that never seemed to stay still. A lawyer by training and a former adjutant to the irascible Grumble Jones, Mosby resented discipline and displayed a recklessness that ran counter to Fred’s careful professionalism. For some unfathomable reason, Jeb Stuart liked Mosby and was seeking a commission for him.

  Fred studied the sun. About an hour until noon, he judged. They’d been advancing at an alternate trot and walk since daybreak. Time soon to unsaddle the horses and cool their backs. Make sure saddle cloths were smooth when they resumed the—

  The sound of a rider broke his thoughts. He raised his hand to halt the column and trotted forward, past Private Mosby slouching in his saddle. One of the scouts came charging through a sunlit dust cloud.

  “Captain, sir.” The breathless private saluted as he reined in. “Yank infantry column about four miles up the road. We saw a second column five or six miles east.”

  “McDowell?”

  “I’d say almost surely, sir.”

  “Good work. Go back and keep watch but retreat ahead of them. We don’t want to be seen.”

  The scout galloped away. If they had indeed bumped into the vanguard of McDowell’s corps moving south, Stuart and the high command wanted to know. Undoubtedly the Yankees were marching to link up with McClellan for the assault on Richmond. Fred trotted back to Lieutenant Eberhart.

  “There’s Yankee infantry coming down this road. We’ll divide the column. Take half the men west, keep the enemy under observation, but stay hidden. I’ll take the other half east. No firing unless you’re discovered. Do you have a watch?”

  “Right here, sir.”

  “Stay abreast of the Yanks until five o’clock. If they’re still marching, leave them. You remember where we watered horses last night?”

  “The creek east of the Snell crossroads.”

  “We’ll rendezvous there. If either party doesn’t show up within thirty minutes after sunset, the other goes on and reports to General Stuart. Get going.”

  The column split. Unlike some of his aristocratic brethren in the cavalry, Fred didn’t consider the average Yankee to be stupid. The foot soldiers would see and understand the meaning of hoofprints and horse apples on the road. It couldn’t be helped. He doubted they’d break formation and search the woods if their orders said to join up with McClellan with all due speed.

  He led his men off the dusty road, picked up his flankers, and headed into the forest. After a half mile, with the road still in sight, he ordered the men to dismount. He cautioned them to keep their horses under control. Most of the animals in the First were well trained, but not all. Sometimes green mounts reared and nipped and behaved like circus horses.

  “If you have to piss, do it quickly and quietly.” That said, Fred untied his canteen from a saddle ring and walked off. He batted insects as he uncorked the canteen with his teeth. He took a generous swallow of the popskull. Awful stuff. God knew what the sutler put in it.

  He corked the canteen and returned to the line, feeling better. Private Mosby leaned against a tree, chewing on a twig. Mosby watched Fred as though he knew Fred’s secret.

  Forty minutes later they glimpsed the column, videttes riding well out in front. Blue-coated boys and their mounted officers advanced at a walk. Mosby stroked his beard. “Sir, hadn’t we ought to burn them down?”

  “Take on a few hundred infantry? I don’t think so, Private. Our objective’s to observe and report.”

  “Yes, sir. Is that West Point strategy, sir?”

  “No. Orders.” They stared at each other. Mosby looked away first.

  A harmless green snake slithered underneath a corporal’s horse. The horse shied and whinnied. Other horses snorted and stamped. The frantic corporal soothed his mount with a combination of whispering and stroking. On the road a few heads turned. The horse quieted. The Yanks kept marching.

  Fred and his men followed the infantry column at a safe distance. A little after four, Fred turned them southeast. They lost sight of the road. Ten minutes later he ordered the troopers forward at a trot.

  They reached the rendezvous point on the creek as a molten sunset burned through the western trees. Lieutenant Eberhart arrived soon after, flushed and happy that he’d come through without incident. They rode south at full gallop, covering eight miles in a half hour, then relaxed to a slow trot, doing three miles in the next thirty minutes. Fred ordered a walk and gave permission for the men to sleep in the saddle.

  He couldn’t, though he hooked his knee over the pommel, dropped the bridle, and folded his arms on his chest. His nerves were wound up tight. More than once, he saw Private Mosby’s sardonic eyes glinting in the moonlight. Mosby struck Fred as unreliable; potentially violent, if not deranged.

  Baron walked steadily and dependably. Fred’s thoughts turned back to the wellspring of his guilt, the Military Academy.

  He remembered vivid scenes and moments, starting with his first long climb from the Hudson steamer pier to the heights of the Plain. He remembered beast barracks that summer, the upperclassmen screaming that he wasn’t a human being, he wasn’t even a plebe, he was a low, vile, scrofulous, abominable thing. One of the most joyfully abusive of the upperclassmen was Jeb Stuart of Virginia,
class of ’54. Every cadet had a nickname, bestowed by others. Stuart’s was Beauty, precisely because he was far from that.

  Fred recalled long nights of study by lantern light, and even longer ones standing guard in bitter weather to work off demerits. He remembered friends, two of the best being a young Pennsylvania cadet, Billy Hazard, and another from South Carolina, Charles Main. Relatives of both had gone through the Academy and fought in the Mexican War. Charlie Main gave Fred his nickname, Carrots, in honor of his hair. Maybe he’d bump into Charlie in one of Stuart’s six regiments of horse. He supposed Billy served the Union.

  One of the clearest and most painful memories took him back to a chapel at which the new Academy superintendent, Colonel Robert E. Lee, addressed the cadet corps and faculty. Lee quoted Henry V and called the cadets a band of brothers. He said they owed their loyalty not to any state or region, but to the nation which had educated them; the nation they swore to serve loyally after graduation.

  Like the nation, the band of brothers was broken. And what of the brothers themselves? Were some of them broken? Fred shook his head, angry over the morose and unmanly thought. He had many of those lately.

  They reached Stuart’s headquarters on the Pamunkey after daylight. The twenty-nine-year-old general, spruce as ever in his polished thigh boots, gold-tasseled sash, and marvelous full beard, was eating breakfast with Colonel Fitzhugh Lee and the burly Heros von Borcke, who’d landed at Charleston on leave from his Prussian dragoon regiment. Stuart had taken a fancy to von Borcke’s outlandish pink and white riding costume and added him to the staff.

  Fitz Lee was West Point ’56, a year ahead of Fred. His beard was as splendid as Stuart’s and helped conceal his youth. A genial hell-raiser at the Academy, Fitz had nearly been dismissed by the superintendent, his uncle. Men respected Fitz because he’d campaigned with the regular Army in the West and been wounded. There was another Lee serving with Stuart, Robert’s son Rooney. Though a competent horse soldier, he was a Harvard man, hence not part of the West Point circle.

  Stuart waved Fred to a camp chair. Fred reported on what they’d seen. Stuart was pleased. “We’ll dispatch a courier to General Johnston at once.”

  Fred knew he shouldn’t bring up Mosby, but he did. “I don’t know what to make of the man. I don’t think he’s Army material.”

  Stuart’s teeth gleamed in the middle of his russet-brown beard. He was a short, powerfully built man who exuded both good cheer and absolute authority. “I admit he’s an odd bird, but I have a hunch he’s a devil of a fighter. The challenge is to find the right place for him to fight.”

  Fitz Lee and von Borcke asked permission to leave. Stuart signaled his orderly to refill Fred’s tin cup with hot coffee. “Permit me an observation, Captain. You’re not looking too chipper. Did you encounter problems other than Private Mosby?”

  “Not really, sir. It’s just that, all last night, I kept remembering the Academy.”

  Not unkindly the general said, “It’s a problem for you, isn’t it?”

  “Sometimes, yes.”

  “You’re not alone in having regrets, and a measure of guilt. We all left the Army we loved. I saw my wife’s father choose to stay with the other side”—Stuart smiled—“which he will have cause to regret continuously. Fitz was a tactical officer at the Academy when the war started. I should imagine many others have divided feelings—General Longstreet, General Johnston, certainly President Davis. But once you stand at a fork in the road, and you choose the way, it’s senseless and dangerous to look back constantly.”

  “I tell myself that. The guilt comes anyway.”

  “Because you’re a decent man who took an oath and hated to break it. We have no time for guilt. We have one duty—to carry out every mission zealously, despite what it costs, despite who gets in the way. Now to matters at hand. I have three other detachments scouting near Fredericksburg, but I want yours there too. We don’t dare lose sight of McDowell for one moment. You don’t mind being absent from the staff?”

  “Truthfully, sir, I prefer being in the field.”

  “How do you get on with Calder’s men?”

  “Some of them lack experience, but they follow orders and learn quickly. They’re a good lot.”

  “Except Private Mosby.”

  “I didn’t mean to raise—”

  “Never mind, I’ve heard the complaint from others. We’ll find the proper slot for him. Catch what rest you can, and remember what I said.” The general leaned forward, his brilliant blue gaze unwavering. “Once you stand at the fork and choose the road, you can’t afford a backward glance. You might miss an enemy waiting to ambush you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fred stood, saluted, about-faced. As he left, Stuart summoned his orderly. “Find Mosby. He’s to carry a signal to General Johnston.”

  Fred tramped along the riverbank. How he wished it were easy to follow the general’s advice, forgive yourself for a decision that carried elements of doubt, a haunting sense of a trust betrayed. When he was a boy, his mother had taught him the meaning of honor, the importance of a promise. Sometimes he’d resented her righteousness, as he resented all the preachers and schoolteachers who hammered rhetorical nails into his conscience to make it stronger. His canteen held the only reliable medicine for the pain and doubt. He’d only drunk half of it on the scouting expedition. Before noon, in the privacy of his tent, he helped himself to the rest.

  Thirty-six hours later, on the afternoon of May 27, Fred’s detachment discovered Union troops on the march again—north, toward Fredericksburg. Fred and his men scouted to determine that it wasn’t an isolated retreat, but a movement of the entire corps. For whatever reason, McClellan would not be reinforced by McDowell. Fred led his troopers back to Stuart at full gallop with the news.

  32

  May 1862

  Visitors regularly brought war news to the Old Capitol. Confederate sympathizers gleefully reported the repulse of five Federal gunboats on the James. Confederate artillery at Drewry’s Bluff had turned them back eight miles below Richmond. The city was temporarily safe from a river attack.

  The outlook on land was less sanguine. McClellan’s mighty army was poised for what would surely be the biggest battle since Manassas. Southern partisans hoped Joe Johnston would launch a ferocious offensive to drive the enemy off the Peninsula.

  At the start of the third week of May, Margaret was surprised to be visited by an elderly Episcopal priest she didn’t know. Warden Wood had moved her to the relative privacy of Rose’s old room, where she received the caller. He sat so that his back blocked the view of anyone looking in. As he chattered about the sins of the Lincoln government, he slipped his hand under his black rabat and gave her a letter. She wasn’t surprised by the priest’s opinions; Washington’s Episcopal congregations were notorious for harboring Southern loyalists.

  At the end of the visit she thanked the priest and saw him to the door. A guard loitered outside, a man relatively new to the prison. His name was Hodges. He was not merely old—sixty, sixty-five—but repellently so, with a sagging paunch and false teeth that gleamed like china when he grinned, which was every time he encountered Margaret. He made her flesh crawl.

  She closed the door partway and tore the envelope open. She recognized Rose’s handwriting. Rose was in Richmond.

  Little Rose and I received a tumultuous welcome, far beyond my expectations. The city is in a perfect state of terror, with McClellan’s mongrel horde of Germans and Irish and God knows what else no more than twenty miles away as I write. Mrs. Davis and the President’s four children have fled to Raleigh. The government will ship its treasury to South Carolina if it appears the city will fall. Our nigger houseman has laid in pouches of tobacco to use as currency with an occupying Army. I have even heard that Davis will burn Richmond before letting it be conquered.

  Here is happier news for my dear friend. Though I have not seen your brother, Cicero, I have reliable word that he is alive, and attached to the
provost marshal’s department, though in what capacity I do not know.

  Margaret sobbed with relief. She heard noises outside, stepped to the door, and immediately stepped back at the sight of Hodges’s china grin.

  “Anything wrong, miss?”

  She slammed the door on him.

  Lon lost weight. He let his beard grow longer. It gave him a coarse, rustic look that might be useful if Pinkerton ever sent him behind enemy lines. McClellan’s Army camped along the lower Pamunkey, between White House, a sprawling plantation owned by the Lee family, and Cumberland Landing farther south. Lon interrogated prisoners, deserters, and contrabands and daily grew more disturbed by the discrepancy between figures he turned in and those reported to the general.

  Little Mac used Pinkerton’s estimates to delay his advance on grounds that he needed reinforcements. Phil Kearny, the one-armed brigadier who’d distinguished himself at Williamsburg, snidely referred to McClellan as the Virginia Creeper. A drinking companion of Sledge’s, a civilian operator in the Army telegraph service, said he’d decoded a War Department message in which the President bluntly told McClellan that he must move on Richmond or give up the job and return to defend Washington.

  “They’d hang my pal if they knew he passed such stuff,” Sledge said. “’Course, he was drunk when he told me. Do you ’spose the general’s got a yellow streak?”

  “I imagine he’s careful because he doesn’t want to lose men needlessly.”

  “Or maybe lose his reputation? I hear he may run for president as a Democrat in two years. I think he’d beat Lincoln easy.”

  Lon confessed his own doubts about the general, particularly McClellan’s well-known and frequent protests that Stanton and Lincoln were undermining him by withholding troops.