The Titans

by John Jakes

  A year earlier, when he had been chosen as one of the twelve hundred men to ride with Stuart to scout McClellan’s Peninsular army, he’d nearly lost his life at Tunstall’s Station. He’d been leading a detachment burning the rolling stock on the York River Railroad. Some of his men had started firing revolvers to celebrate. Some corporal’s careless shot had blown Gideon’s beloved roan Will-O’-the-Wisp out from under him.

  Stunned, he’d lain unnoticed while the freight cars crumbled around him like fiery waterfalls, setting his uniform afire. Somehow he’d found enough strength to crawl to a ditch and roll frantically until he’d put out the flames. He’d spent the night in that ditch, half conscious and hurting. At dawn he’d discovered that Stuart’s horsemen had all ridden on and the district was swarming with Yanks.

  He’d crawled out of the ditch, limped into some trees, and hidden out all day, delirious with pain. After dark he’d managed to rouse himself and move on, finally blundering into the dooryard of a small tobacco farm. The farmer had put him to bed, and the farmer’s wife had dressed the worst of his burns with poultices.

  The family tended him for over five weeks. At last the itching tissue had sloughed off his arms and chest, leaving only faint scars.

  Then Gideon had disguised himself in country clothing and slipped back into Richmond to find his wife—who had feared him lost forever.

  That sort of brush with death—his first had come at Manassas in ’61—had relieved him of all conviction that this war was glorious. Stuart still fought with zest, and Gideon still joined the cavalry’s singing as they rode. But his emulation of his commander’s spirit was forced. He now found the war a necessary but filthy business. He wanted it over, settled with as much advantage to the South as could be gained.

  Perhaps that was why he felt so strangely euphoric just now. If a victory could be wrenched out of the night’s confusion it might lead at long last to the European recognition Jeff Davis sought for the government. It might lead also to a negotiated peace, with the South once again prospering as a separate nation on the American continent. But most importantly, it might lead him home to Margaret and little Eleanor.

  Gideon’s head jerked up. Musketry rattled ahead. He reined Sport to a dead stop. The fire-reddened moon hung above the trees but did little to relieve the gloom on the turnpike.

  The firing died away. Gideon scratched his nose. The air stank of powder—and worse. Hoof thrush wasn’t his mount’s only affliction. Too many hours of a saddle on Sport’s back had opened one of the familiar and nauseous sores that plagued cavalry horses. Gideon could smell the fetid ooze beneath him; the sore ran constantly. It pained him to think he was only worsening it by riding his spunky mount so hard.

  But he only had one horse. And he also had a very important dispatch in the pouch thrust into his frayed, dirty sash.

  Now that the muskets were silent, he could hear a party of horsemen approaching. He quickly swung the stallion to the north side of the road. The moon glinted cold and hard in Gideon’s blue eyes as he scanned the turnpike.

  The small arms fire from the direction of Chancellorsville started again, then gradually died away beneath the rhythmic plopping of hoofs. The horses were coming up the slight incline from the low place.

  Next he heard voices. Did they belong to friends, or to enemies?

  iii

  Gideon drew his Le Mat. He thought briefly of heading Sport into the brush beyond the flinty shoulder. But then he heard more sounds of movement and decided against it.

  Dry-mouthed he waited. Should he hail?

  No, better wait and see whether the broken moonlight revealed gray uniforms—or blue ones.

  A horseman materialized, followed by several others. The leading rider, thin to the point of emaciation, turned his head at the sound of another shell bursting south of the road. Gideon saw the rider was wearing gray. The man had a straggling beard, eyes that glittered like polished stones, and an unmistakable profile.

  Relieved, Gideon holstered the revolver. He’d found Jackson.

  He touched Sport gently with his spurs. The stallion started forward. Behind the general, Gideon thought he saw six or eight mounted men in a double column. There could have been several more; it was impossible to be sure in the bad light. He headed the stallion back across the turnpike, moving toward the general at an angle.

  As he opened his mouth to hail, someone hidden in the woods to Jackson’s left let out a shout. From the same spot a horizontal line of flame flashed. Rifled muskets roared, volleying at the road.

  iv

  The general’s horse reared. Gideon crouched over Sport’s mane just as a ball whizzed past his ear. To Jackson’s rear, men yelled out as he fought to control his alarmed mount.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Damn Yanks!”

  “No, those have to be our men, Morrison.”

  “No firing! Cease firing!”

  In answer to the last cry from the road, the unseen riflemen volleyed again.

  Sport shied, neighing frantically. Over the roar of the guns, Gideon heard a fierce, familiar wail from the dark trees—

  The Rebel yell.

  The men in the woods weren’t the enemy. Perhaps they were from A. P. Hill’s division. The officers Gideon had met earlier had told him the division was supposed to be advancing somewhere in this area. With visibility so poor, Jackson and his party had been foolish to push out so far ahead of the Confederate lines.

  Gideon kicked Sport forward, realizing from the rising clamor of voices that soldiers were crashing through the trees on his side of the road as well. He’d evidently escaped an attack because he was a single rider, proceeding in relative quiet.

  The voices on the turnpike grew louder, creating confusion as horses screamed and reared: “Who are you men out there?”

  “Hold your fire! You’re firing at your own officers!”

  “Damned lie!” a Southern voice howled from the blackness. “It’s the Yank cavalry we was warned about, boys. Pour it to them!”

  “General!” Gideon shouted, riding toward Jackson, who in turn was spurring his horse toward the side of the road Gideon had just left. Gideon let go of the reins in a desperate attempt to reach for Jackson’s shoulders and drag him out of the saddle. He touched the fabric of Jackson’s uniform. Then his hands were pulled away as Sport’s right foreleg went into a hole.

  The stallion careened sideways, almost fell. Gideon tumbled from the saddle, landing hard as a new volley boomed from the thickets toward which Jackson was riding.

  Sport clambered up, apparently unhurt. On hands and knees Gideon blinked and gasped for breath. He saw Jackson’s tall figure stiffen, heard him cry out.

  Jackson’s right hand flew upward as though jerked by an invisible rope. Then his left arm flailed out. Gideon scrambled to his feet, realizing from the way the general was swaying that he’d been hit. And not just once.

  Another howl of pain from the tangle of men and horses told him someone else had taken a ball. “Boswell’s shot!” a man cried, just as another volley roared from the road’s north side.

  The turnpike was bedlam. Wounded men slid from their saddles. Terrified horses bolted.

  Gideon staggered toward Jackson. The general was still in the saddle. With both arms dangling at his sides, Jackson had managed to turn his horse’s head away from the direction of the last volley. Gideon still hoped to reach the commander and pull him down before the concealed soldiers fired again.

  A riderless horse crashed into him from behind, spilling Gideon on his face. A rock raked his cheek. He yelped as a hoof grazed his temple. Instinct made him cover his head with both forearms.

  Just as he did, he had a distorted view of the bearded general being carried forward by his plunging mount. A low-hanging branch bashed Jackson’s forehead, knocking him to the ground.

  Still more shouting.

  “Sergeant Cunliffe?”

  “He’s down too. Dead, I think.”

  From s
omewhere in the trees, a strident voice: “Who’s there? Who are you?”

  An officer bent low and running toward the fallen general screamed, “Stonewall Jackson’s staff, you goddamn fools!”

  Gideon heard Jackson’s name shouted out in the dark on both sides of the road. Then he heard cursing, accusations. Finally a voice identified the unseen marksmen as part of the Thirty-third North Carolina—General Hill’s division.

  On his feet again, Gideon lurched toward the half-dozen shadowy, figures clustering around the fallen commander. A sudden memory gave him a sick feeling.

  The sword fell.

  No one touched it.

  A hand seized his shoulder. Whirled him. A revolver gouged his chin. “Who the hell are—?”

  “Major Kent, General Stuart’s staff,” he panted. Shock became rage. He slammed a fist against the revolver muzzle and knocked it aside without thinking that a jerk of the soldier’s finger could have blown his head off. “I’ve dispatches from—”

  The man paid no attention, spun back toward the general.

  “How is he?”

  “A ball through his right palm.”

  “He took another in the left arm. No, looks like two.”

  “Don’t move him!”

  The voices sounded childish in their hysteria. In the woods on both sides of the turnpike, men began to hurry toward the road, heedless of the noise. An officer in gray confronted one of the first infantrymen to emerge from the trees. With a slash of his revolver muzzle, the officer laid the soldier’s cheek open. Moonlight shone on running blood as the rifleman reeled back. The officer brandished his revolver at the other ragged figures beginning to creep into sight.

  “Fucking careless butchers! You shot Stonewall!”

  Somewhere a boyish voice repeated the name. Someone else began crying.

  How many Confederates had been hit in those volleys? Gideon had no idea. He counted three sprawled bodies on the turnpike—perhaps a fourth partway down the slope of the little hill. A party of riders clattered up from the west, was challenged, then told the news. The new arrivals joined the men already kneeling around Jackson. One bearded fellow with a heavily braided sleeve thrust his way through the group. With a start, Gideon recognized A. P. Hill, three staff officers right behind him.

  The stunned Hill dropped to his knees, gently lifted, and cradled Jackson’s head in his arms. One of Jackson’s aides pulled a knife and began to slit the general’s left sleeve from shoulder to cuff. Blood leaked out of both of the general’s gauntlets.

  Like most of the rest, Gideon stood staring, overwhelmed by the tragic accident. He caught an occasional glimpse of Jackson’s stern face. The eyes were open, shining in the moonlight. The branch that had struck the general’s forehead had opened a cut. Trickles of blood ran in his eyebrows.

  Beyond the southern shoulder of the turnpike a tumultuous shouting had started. Men relayed word of the shooting. Even further out, Gideon caught the sound of horsemen cantering. More Confederates moving up? Or the enemy cavalry for which Jackson and his party had been mistaken?

  A man who identified himself as Morrison, the general’s brother-in-law, crawled to Hill’s side.

  “For God’s sake, sir, let’s get him into the shelter of a tree.”

  General Hill raised an anguished face. “Send a courier for the corps surgeon.”

  No one moved.

  “Do you hear me? Fetch McGuire at once!”

  “And an ambulance!” a second voice bawled.

  “We’ve got to move him,” Morrison insisted. “Captain Wilbourn?”

  “Here.”

  Another man pressed through the group around the fallen general. Laboriously, Wilbourn and Morrison lifted Jackson and dragged him toward the shoulder, ignoring the protests of several others about possibly worsening the injuries. In the forest the shouting and the drum of hoofs intensified.

  Gideon wrenched his head around and called, “They’re making so damn much noise, the Yank outposts will hear!”

  No one heard him. Everyone was shouting at once. Wilbourn and Morrison seemed the only men sufficiently self-possessed to do what had to be done; the others kept yelling warnings, orders, questions.

  Someone ran up to report that at least two men were dead for certain. A courier snagged the reins of a horse—Sport, Gideon saw with consternation—mounted, and galloped off before he could protest.

  He turned back, tense and still shaken. Wilbourn propped Jackson against a roadside tree, gently pulled off the blood-soaked gauntlets, then carefully unfastened the general’s coat. Jackson was still conscious. He groaned when Wilbourn found it difficult to free his right arm from the sleeve.

  “Kerchief!” Wilbourn demanded.

  A. P. Hill produced one. Wilbourn knotted it around Jackson’s upper left arm, then asked for another. He used it to tie a crude sling. Gideon thought he saw bone protruding through the mangled flesh of the general’s arm.

  Breathing hard, Wilbourn leaned back on his haunches.

  “General? We must see to your right hand.”

  Jackson’s lids fluttered. His voice—so often stern—was a mild whisper. “No. A mere trifle—”

  General Hill stamped a boot down, hard. “It’s too dangerous to wait for an ambulance here. Rig a litter. Use my overcoat. Branches.”

  Trying to banish the persistent image of the fallen sword, Gideon darted toward the brush on the north side of the road. A private, a starved-looking boy whose ragged gray uniform was powder stained, leaned on his rifled musket, staring at the wounded man. In the smoky moonlight the boy saw Gideon’s enraged face. He seemed compelled to plead with him.

  “Don’t blame us, Major. Jesus, please don’t blame us. We heard the Yankee horse was movin’ this way. We thought it was them—”

  “You didn’t think at all!” Gideon cried, raising a fist. The boy cringed away. It was all Gideon could do to keep from hitting him.

  Finally, muttering a disgusted obscenity, he shoved past the boy, dragged out his saber, and began cutting a low branch. More of the damn fool North Carolina troops were drifting out of the woods. They stood like silent, shabby wraiths, gazing at Jackson. Gideon hacked at the branch with savage strokes, as though it were a human adversary.

  When the branch dropped, he started to chop off a second one. He grew conscious of a faint whistling, coming from the east and growing louder. He glanced up, his palms cold all at once. Whether it was coincidence or the result of all the noise in the wood, the Federal gunners had chosen that moment to open a new bombardment.

  He flung himself forward against the trunk as the Tarheel soldiers scattered. The shot burst at treetop level, almost directly above him. The shock wave slammed his cheek against the bark.

  Bits of metal and wood rained down. None struck hard enough to hurt him. But the explosion and fall of debris touched something raw in him—something abraded by the months of separation from his wife, by the wretched conditions of the winter camp where the brave songs had begun to sound hollow and infantile. He was suddenly gripped by a paralyzing panic.

  He broke it with an enraged yell. He snatched up the first branch, yanked the second off the trunk by sheer force, jammed his saber under his arm, and stumbled back toward Jackson.

  A shell exploded close by. The road lit up momentarily. Crouched over with the branches in his hands and the saber jutting from his armpit, Gideon dodged a shower of burning twigs while his mind reproduced the dreadful image again: the untouched sword scabbard slowly, slowly toppling—

  At First Manassas, Jackson had stood like that stone wall and earned his famous nickname. He was more than a master tactician. He had become a legend to thousands of Confederate soldiers who’d never even seen him, a name in newspapers that gave hope to those at home when hope seemed futile. He was the supreme example of the South’s one matchless weapon—raw courage in the face of superior numbers and industrial strength.

  Gideon’s panic became almost overwhelming. The Confederacy cou
ldn’t afford to lose Stonewall Jackson. General Lee couldn’t afford to lose him. The survivors on the road had to save him!

  Even if they died doing it.

  v

  The Yank bombardment became almost continuous. Shells were being lobbed in every few seconds. Exploding shot spattered the turnpike like metal rain. Gideon reached the group of men around Jackson and began to jab the two branches into the sleeves of Hill’s gray overcoat. He worked with desperate haste, driven by the conviction that Jackson was the only man who could execute Lee’s most daring strategies and win victories that textbooks said were impossible.

  “He’s not that badly hurt,” Morrison breathed. Whether it was true or only a prayer, Gideon didn’t know. But he tended to believe Morrison was right. The greatest danger to Jackson at the moment was the shelling.

  An eighth of a mile east, another charge blew a huge pit in the turnpike, raising a cloud of dirt that sifted down on the men a moment later.

  Captain Wilbourn leaned over Jackson’s head to shield him from the falling earth. As the upper limbs of a nearby tree caught fire, he jumped to his feet. “Get that litter up and carry it out of here!”

  Gideon and three other men grabbed the cut limbs with the coat stretched between. The men at the bottom end had the hardest job—holding the branches and the skirt of the coat to keep it taut. Jackson was lifted onto the litter, then cautiously raised.

  Gideon tried to walk steadily—ignoring the detonations, the glaring lights, the flaming trees, the hissing grapeshot. Through the woods on both sides of the highway, bugles pealed, officers bellowed orders, men crashed through the thickets. Occasionally a piercing scream signaled the killing or wounding of one of those men by artillery fire. Gideon breathed hard, the dispatch from Stuart entirely forgotten as he concentrated on one simple but immensely important task.

  Getting Jackson to the rear. Out of the shell zone. Getting him to a place where he could be treated. Saved.

  He’s only wounded in the forearm, Gideon thought. If he doesn’t bleed to death—if we can reach the surgeon in time without all of us getting blown up—he’ll be all right.