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Nathan pulled her to him and she slid across his lap. Her arms went about his neck and they kissed with an intensity that astonished both of them. They broke free and stared at each other. Then they laughed softly.

“Like young adolescent children, aren’t we?” Nathan grinned.

“But alone,” she whispered. She recalled her brothers taking young girls into the shed behind the house and returning later all disheveled and flushed. She laughed inwardly at the memory. None of her brothers friends had tried to take her into the shed.

They kissed again and Nathan felt himself getting aroused. For a moment he felt embarrassed, then reminded himself that Rebecca’d been married for several years and doubtless knew what was happening to his body.

She pulled her lips away. “Do you know what the future will bring, Nathan?”

“I don’t have a clue,” he said hoarsely. “But I hope and pray that a large part of it will be with you.”

“As do I, dearest Nathan. But we are alone for the first time since we met, although it’s likely to end at any moment. So let us take advantage of it while we might and, yes, like adolescent children.”

Again they kissed. Nathan’s hand cupped her breast. She withdrew it, smiled, and unbuttoned the top of her dress so he could slide it in and caress her bare flesh.

She groaned as the feel of his hand on her nipple erased any other memories. “Whenever you want me. I’ll be your lover.” she said. Their caresses were more actual lovemaking than she’d had in three years of marriage.

“You already are my lover,” he muttered as he nibbled her ear. Both knew their culmination wouldn’t be this afternoon or even in the foreseeable future. The house, however large, was too small for them to be unnoticed, and it would not do for them to attract attention. They would wait for the right time and place.

Hannibal Watson fired his shotgun directly at the oncoming horse and rider. Both buckled and fell heavily as the shotgun pellets shredded their skin. The horse scrambled to its feet blind and screaming like something demented. One eye hung from a socket. The rider, a white man in his early twenties, was on his hands and knees and covered with blood. Hannibal drew his knife and slashed across the man’s neck. He slumped and lay still as his blood gushed out onto the ground.

All around Hannibal, a dozen other skirmishes were taking place as black man and white man hacked and shot each other. The battle had been accidental. The two groups had blundered into each other while moving down the same trail. In neither case was there time to deploy or withdraw. In seconds, they were all fighting for their lives.

The freed slaves were winning, although a number of black bodies lay on the ground. They outnumbered the white riders about two to one, and, while the surprise had been mutual, Hannibal’s men had reacted more quickly and with a ferocity born of desperation.

In a moment, it was over and a half dozen riders flew for safety down the trail. Once again, Hannibal groaned, they had left survivors who would bring still more riders back down on them. Hannibal thought they were close to the Tennessee border, but he wasn’t sure. Having to avoid towns and roads made telling distance a good trick.

It also looked like his earlier fear that they would never see freedom in the North was coming true. The Emancipation Proclamation had resulted in a doubling and redoubling of Confederate patrols in an attempt to catch slaves fleeing north. The lure of freedom and the promise of money, some said a thousand dollars while most thought it was a hundred, was virtually irresistible, especially to those slaves who were young and strong. Older slaves might be afraid of the effort needed, or be too sickly to try, but a large number of young slaves were more than restive. They wanted their freedom, and they wanted it now.

“Gather everything,” Hannibal yelled. His people, those who were left, were too busy celebrating. The fools. The time for celebrating would be later, if ever. Once he’d had more than a hundred people, but constant skirmishing and marching had whittled that down to half and this days fighting had further depleted his numbers.

“They’ll be back,” Hannibal hollered again and saw that he’d finally gotten their attention. “And this time there’ll be more of them. That was militia we fought and not just red-neck slave catchers. Where there’s some militia
,
you’ll find a lot more. Let’s go!”

Buck kicked and cajoled some of the more tired onto their feet. They’d just fought a hard battle. They were exhausted and many were wounded, some badly. These could not be taken on the retreat, as they would slow down the healthy. Those who could not get up and who did not look like they could keep up, were quickly dispatched by Buck, who was not deterred by their feeble cries of protest. It had to be done. One of them was Bessie, who’d been with them since the first day and who had pretended to be a lost slave on more than one occasion. Her arm had almost been severed by a sabre slash and her blood puddled beside her.

“Ah’m sorry,” Buck said and killed her as quickly as he could. It was a mercy. If she didn’t bleed to death, she would have been captured, tortured, and hanged by the white men.

They had collected a bunch of horses whose riders were dead or dying. Hannibal asked for and got a volunteer to take them off in a direction opposite of where he planned to head. He hoped their pursuers would think that the horses were being ridden by the escaped slaves and follow their tracks. If he was lucky. Hannibal thought, it might buy them a day or two’s head start. It upset him that the ruse would also cost him another good man. Once the Negro leading the horses had gotten far enough, he was to turn them loose and then be on his own. There wasn’t a chance in a million that he’d be able to find Hannibal since Hannibal had no exact idea where they were going and couldn’t tell him where to meet up.

The boy with the horses clattered off. Hannibal counted his “army.” He now had fifteen men and six women, and a couple of each were barely more than children. He wanted to weep but he couldn’t show weakness. He was now sure that the only place he would see his beloved Abigail would be in heaven, and he wasn’t at all certain he’d be going there when he died.

* * * *

“Seems like old times,” Nathan said. He and John Hay were enjoying another informal lunch at Harvey’s Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue. For this occasion, Nathan wore civilian clothes even though he was still a colonel. Hay had brought him a note from President Lincoln confirming him in that rank and further authorizing him to function either as a civilian or an officer at his discretion.

“I love clandestine meetings like this,” Hay grinned. “I get to eat like a hog and charge the cost of this meal to the government.” Nathan arched an eyebrow in amusement. “You mean there’s money left? I thought Mrs. Lincoln had spent all of it.” Hay sighed. “She’s trying her damndest, Nathan. Her absolute damndest.”

There were numerous rumors in Washington that the nervous and insecure Mary Todd Lincoln had tried to calm her fear that she didn’t belong in the White House by grossly overspending the allowance provided for the Lincolns by Congress. The money was to cover the living expenses of the president and his family as well as the costs of running the White House. As a result of her profligacy, Lincoln was finding it necessary to pay bills out of his personal resources. Lincoln was far from poor, but he did not have the wealth to support both the operations of the White House and his wife’s expenditures.

The result of all this was that the unnerved Mrs. Lincoln was even more insecure than ever.

“Fortunately,” Hay continued, “there are some other accounts the poor lady doesn’t know about.”

“I hope you can keep it that way,” Nathan said. “Now, what does the president wish to know that is so important as to result in this meal? May I presume it’s about Canada?”

“You may, or more precisely, it’s about General Grant.”

“I never saw him take a single drink,” Nathan said, anticipating the question.

“Wonderful,” Hay said with such evident relief that Nathan was surprised.

“What had you heard that was different?”

“It appears that General Halleck is not General Grant’s greatest supporter. He’s hinted very broadly that General Grant was intoxicated on several occasions and that the battle of Dundas Street was really won by Sherman and Thomas. It’s said that Grant sat and did nothing while the battle raged.”

Nathan shook his head. “John, did you ever shoot an arrow?”

“A couple of times,” Hay said, puzzled. “And with astonishing lack of skill. I’m not too certain I even hit the ground.”

“Skill doesn’t matter for this example. Once you’ve aimed and let the arrow fly, what can you do about it?”

“Nothing. What’s your point?”

“Simply this. Once the battle’s planned and joined, it is up to subordinates to carry out their orders, and to anticipate and resolve problems in their areas. Thus, there truly is very little for a commander to do when the fighting starts except to remember that no battle ever goes as planned. Therefore, a general like Grant has to have faith in his subordinates to make the adjustments necessary once the fighting commences. The arrow has flown once the battle begins and there’s no way it can be retrieved. All a commander can do is wait until and if his intervention is needed. In the Battle of Dundas, it wasn’t needed. General Thomas held like he was supposed to, so did Baldy Smith. General Sherman’s flanking movement went off pretty much on schedule. He met stronger resistance than he thought he would from the Canadians, but Sherman solved that problem himself. There was no reason to involve the army’s commander in a decision that affected one corps. Same with Thomas and Smith when the Brits started to move out. They began to push them on their own initiative and both men simply kept Grant informed to the best of their own abilities.

“I don’t want to say that the outcome was foreordained, John, but the British had very little chance of winning the battle. It was great skill and bravery on their part that prevented their annihilation, although it only delayed the inevitable.”

“It is a far different picture from the one Halleck painted,” Hay said.

Nathan laughed. “Methinks General Halleck is very jealous of Grant’s abilities.”

“So I’ve heard.” Hay said sheepishly.

“I seem to recall General Scott saying that very same thing. Old Brains will never be half the fighting general that Grant is and it must gnaw at him. Halleck has an enormous ego. Unfortunately, it’s far greater than his skills. I would strongly suggest that Mr. Lincoln not worry about General Grant. In my opinion, he is the perfect man for command in this new and modern kind of war. He understands it, which is more than I can say about poor General Cardigan.”

“So it was all right for Grant to do nothing during the battle?”

Nathan finished his mug of beer and wiped the foam off his lip. “Actually, he didn’t sit and do nothing. He was quite busy.”

“Oh, really. That’s good news. What was he doing?”

Nathan couldn’t resist. “Actually, he was smoking cigars and whittling.”

   Benjamin Disraeli had been chosen by Palmerston to represent Great Britain’s interests in discussions with the Confederate government. It was a mistake. Although brilliant intellectually, the fifty-eight-year-old novelist-turned-politician had proven to be too flamboyant in his clothing and speech for the conservative and nearly puritanical Jefferson Davis and his government to stomach.

Davis met briefly with Disraeli and, after determining that he didn’t want a second meeting, left Disraeli to discuss Palmerston’s concerns with Judah P. Benjamin, the secretary of state of the Confederacy. It was presumed that the two would hit it off because both were Jewish. This was both wrong and a mistake. As each had converted from Judaism to Christianity, they were both distrustful of the others motives for doing so. However, the major problem with any relationship between the two men was Disraeli’s arrogance and, for Benjamin, the British emissary’s wild dress and behavior.

“It only proves,” said Brigadier General Garnet Wolsey, “that our beloved prime minister is not omniscient.” Wolsey had arrived with Disraeli to augment the small military staff in Richmond. His presence brought it to a total of three officers: General Napier, Major Knollys, and himself.

Within days of the surrender at Hamilton, Wolsey had been exchanged for the officers of the American frigate
St. Lawrence,
sunk by the Royal Navy so many months before. Generals Gough and Campbell still awaited their turn, while the other officers and enlisted men languished in a prison camp near Sarnia.

“Not only didn’t the two men see eye to eye as Jews,” Wolsey said to Napier and Knollys, “but Disraeli was overheard saying that Richmond is a stagnant sewer of a town, and that the people are all illiterate and unwashed savages.”

Napier chuckled. “I believe we all think that; however, we do not run around saying it where it can be heard.”

“Hear, hear,” said Knollys.

Wolsey winked at Napier. “Major Knollys finds Richmond quite charming ever since he bagged the lovely Miss DeLisle.”

Knollys was unabashed. “It makes many things palatable, General. Including, I might add, Miss DeLisle.”

Napier and Wolsey laughed. “But still, there will be an invasion northward,” said Napier. “Won’t there?”

Wolsey had been functioning as Disraeli’s military adviser during the abortive negotiations. What had finally been agreed on had not yet been transmitted to Lord Lyons or the rest of the British delegation.

“Quite possibly,” Wolsey said with a sly smile.

“Excellent,” said Napier.

“Wait for the other shoe to drop,” said Wolsey.

“What did we promise now?” muttered Napier while Knollys kept prudent silence.

“Weapons and ammunition for one thing. We will be stripping British armories for Enfields and cannon to send over. What we have been sending will not be enough to prepare for a battle.”

“Acceptable,” said Napier, “and not at all surprising.”