1862 (45 page)

Cleburne knew that Flynn’s actions also served another purpose in that he was laying the groundwork by building the history of a blood debt the American government and people owed to the oppressed men and women of Ireland. The debt might be fictional, but the people of the North seemed to be enamored of men travelling from far-off lands to help preserve the Union. It also helped that the men of Ireland spoke a kind of English, unlike the more numerous Germans who, it was told, couldn’t be understood by their mothers. It was something the devious Flynn hoped would be collectible from the U.S. government at a time in the very near future.

“Always planning ahead, aren’t you?” Cleburne jibed. He no longer detested the angry Fenian leader, although he couldn’t yet quite bring himself to like the man.

“One has to. And that is why I left those fools up in London to keep raising the flag every day on our new Irish Republic in Canada. That place is now a political backwater, although its presence and continued existence serve a purpose. For instance, as a hemorrhoid for Palmerston.”

“Not a bad thought,” Cleburne conceded. “And where are you off to now? Washington?”

“You don’t want me tenting with your army?”

Cleburne laughed. “Not for one second. Winter’s coming and I don’t want to be held responsible for your freezing to death, which I am confident you’d manage to do in the middle of summer if forced to live outdoors.”

“You are correct, of course, both as to my destination and my abilities in the wilderness. I am off to Washington, where I am confident I will receive a better welcome than the last time. I have, for instance, been corresponding with Secretary of State Seward.”

“Ah, but has he been responding to you or are you just pelting him with letters?”

Flynn smiled. “Let’s just say the correspondence has been one-sided; however, I attribute that to the confusion in the mails as caused by the war.”

“Of course.” Cieburne said drily.

Of course, Flynn thought. His smile and comments hid a growing desperation that nothing was going to happen to help free Ireland. He had to gain access to Seward, had to convince him that Ireland’s cause was the Union’s cause as well.

Abigail Watson was usually required to work on Sunday mornings, which meant that she could not go to church until well after any services were over. Her current owners, the Haskills, were decent people, but there were too many breakfasts to make and rooms to clean at the Haskills’ small but tasteful hotel where she worked to permit her to leave until her tasks were done. Besides. since when did Negroes have to go to church? Their needs were supposed to be taken care of by their owners.

Abigail had to admit that her owners didn’t even have to permit her to leave at all. Most Southerners didn’t agree that blacks had souls, so how could they be in need of salvation? What the Haskills thought about Abigail’s salvation didn’t matter. At least they were decent enough to permit her a degree of privacy, and time to pray, and she appreciated that.

All the while, however. Abigail prayed not for salvation but for a means to betray the Haskills and every other slave owner in the Confederacy.

A few of Richmond’s churches tolerated the presence of Negroes so long as they didn’t disrupt proceedings or didn’t sit where they weren’t supposed to. Abigail knew of several in the neighborhood who would let her in and let her sit in the back. She chose one. sat in the darkness, and made herself small. It didn’t matter to her which church she was in, as the differences in Christian beliefs meant nothing to her. She believed in salvation and a God who would someday make things right for people like her. She believed in a God of justice. And of vengeance.

Hannibal Watson’s sudden reappearance in her life and his equally sudden and brutal demise had brought feelings of rage to the surface, emotions that she had almost forgotten she’d had or was capable of.

Some people thought that most slaves were happy with their lot and used that as a reason for perpetuating slavery. What fools, she thought. How could someone who was owned by someone else ever be happy?

Oh, there were those slaves who knew no other life and were owned by fairly benign owners who treated them well. Those slaves had a level of contentment simply because they could comprehend no other way. Kind of like a blind man who had never seen a sunset, she thought. And there were those slaves who realized that the world outside slavery could be savagely hostile to anyone with a dark skin and who wished to improve themselves. For them, freedom was frightening.

Freedom, shed decided, was like that blind man getting sight. Once perceived, it could not be replaced, and a real human would never let anyone take it from them.

Abigail Watson had never known freedom, but she knew people who had. One was her son. She had just received a letter from him up in Boston. It thrilled her that he was able to read and write and be able to do so openly. Abigail was self-educated, but since teaching slaves to be literate was generally illegal, she had prudently disguised the fact of her learning. Why, she wondered, did anyone have to hide the value of their mind?

But, more important, how soon would God’s righteous wrath bring down the Confederacy? How could she help? Could she kill someone important? Wealthy and influential people frequently stayed at the Haskills’ hotel, but certainly no one whose loss would end slavery. Worse, any act like that on her part would result in her own execution, and it would be just as dreadful as Hannibal’s. What kind of civilization would treat its people like animals and then destroy them as if they were even less than animals?

She would pray. Maybe the God who delivered the Israelites from captivity would have an answer for her.

“I am flat damned exhausted, and I don’t even have to do a lot of the work,” said Billy Harwell as he sat on the ground in front of his and Olaf’s campfire and waited for dinner to cook. Tonight it was a kind of stew. Olaf cooked, and Billy didn’t want to know too much about what went into Scandinavian specialties. If they tasted good, then that was fine with him.

When word first reached them that Lees army was headed north and across the Potomac, there had been a lot of marching and countermarching until fear that the Confederate army was hiding over the next hill had subsided. Then, however, General Meade had taken a page from Grant’s book and decided that the soldiers under his control should be worked hard and thus be in shape to fight a coming battle. As a result, the marching back and forth had continued until the men’s blistered feet subsided into calluses. Now they could march barefoot on coals if need be. Billy wondered why, since right feet and left feet were shaped differently, shoes or boots didn’t reflect that. Instead, shoes were shaped the same, and only continued painful wear served to shape a boot into the shape of the foot. It worked, but it took so much time and hurt like the devil until the shoe was gotten under control.

“At least marching is better than digging,” Olaf said. Since Billy was a sergeant, he supervised the digging: besides, Captain Melcher didn’t want him hurting his shooting hands. Olaf got out of digging since he was the company clerk.

Billy conceded the point. Another brilliant idea had been to take men from regular units and put them to work strengthening the defenses of Washington. It also served to familiarize them with the places where they might just be fighting someday. But did they have to familiarize themselves by using shovels? Hell, he thought, the forts were so large, so heavily gunned, and so numerous that not even a mouse would be able to sneak in.

Of course, he knew that wasn’t true. Most of the forts in the thirty-seven-mile-long perimeter were garrisoned by full-strength units called “heavies,” to differentiate themselves from combat units that had lost men and were at far less than full strength, The heavies had never fought, never seen men killed, and some of them were overweight, out of shape, and looked like pastry, They had never fought in the war and had never left Washington City. Billy wondered just what they’d do if a horde of rebels ran at them, screaming and shooting. Piss their pants and run off was the unpleasant thought.

The men in the heavy units had responded to not-very-gentle questions from the regular troops by proclaiming their bravery and the fact that the forts and outer defenses were so strong that no Johnny Reb would even get close enough to cause damage,

They had a point. Billy conceded, Earthen walls, ditches, and obstructions like
chevaux-de-frise
would keep attackers at bay,
chevaux-de-frise
were interlocking rows of large pointed stakes that were laid in rows or angles, Billy had to admit they were fearsome and effective, An army caught up in their entanglements could be shot to pieces before they could finagle their way through,

In the distance some men started to sing. “Someone’s cat’s dying,” Billy said with a grin. Olaf laughed. Singing in the evening was a common recreation when it got too dark to read or write letters. Singing took no talent, and the men in the distance were proving the point. Songs by Stephen Foster were favorites, but so, too, were songs that lamented the war. “Lorena” was a favorite on both sides, and the men of the North liked “Camping Tonight” and a handful of others.

“I think it’s ’John Brown’s Body,’“ Olaf said.

“Yeah, but it’s with the new words. Remember, now it’s the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’“

“I liked the old words.” Olaf sniffed. “Why change it?” Billy yawned. It had been a long, tiresome day and he was getting sleepy. “Because nice people don’t like to think about people’s bodies moldering in a grave, even though John Brown sure as hell deserved it.”

“John Brown was a madman.” Olaf said.

Billy picked up his gear and crawled into the small tent he shared with Olaf and two other soldiers. “Yeah, he was crazy and killed people, and now all of us have got the crazies and are killing a lot more people. Christ. I hope Lee stays away. I hope he believes our ditches and shit are all too much for him.”

Olaf was puzzled. “They are, aren’t they?”

Billy thought about the men in the untried, untested heavy companies. They were the weak link in the chain, not the fortifications. “Sure.”

Nathan closed the window softly. The air was temptingly fresh, but there was a chill in the night. The distant sounds of hundreds of men singing was haunting, as was the sight of so many campfires twinkling like stars that had landed on the ground but stayed alive. He knew what the men were doing. They were lonely, far away from home, and scared half to death. Singing and having others join in was a way of chasing away the demons. Sing tonight, for tomorrow we may die. As an officer, he hadn’t sung with the men much lest he lose some of his precious dignity, but he’d listened to his men sing on many an occasion and often sang along in silence.

“What are they singing?” Rebecca asked. She was propped up in their bed and wearing, for the moment at least, a demure nightgown. “Anything they wish,” he grinned, “and all at once.”

He sat on the edge of the bed beside her and took her hand in his. She had given up any pretense of living with her brother’s family and had moved in with him a couple of days earlier. So far, Washington society was preoccupied with the advent of the invasion of the North and hadn’t noticed their scandalous breach of decorum. Bridget Conlin was delighted at the turn of events, and the two women had become close friends, with Bridget conspiring to do little things to pretend that Rebecca wasn’t spending the night. Sergeant Fromm was discreetly silent, while General Scott appeared not to notice. Nathan thought he understood full well and that his silence meant tacit approval.

Nathan had asked Rebecca to marry him, but she had demurred. She loved him, but she felt that he would sooner or later be back in uniform and leading troops. She felt it would be tempting fate and just plain bad luck to get married on the eve of a climactic battle. Besides, she’d added only half in jest, she’d already been widowed once and had no wish to be one of those old women who collected dead husbands. They would marry, but not until the time was right.

Nathan agreed, and he understood that she was also giving him a chance to back away from the relationship if he wished, and he loved her all the more for it. “Any more news?” she asked. He had begun to discuss the days reports with her, but earlier in the evening they had both been overcome with the urge to make love. “Nothing of consequence. Lee is heading north and appears to be veering westward, which means that neither Baltimore nor Philadelphia is his target.”

“Then we are not in any danger?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Then let’s enjoy the moment.”

Nathan turned and watched as she slipped out of the nightgown and lay full-length on the bed. She was every bit as breathtaking and gorgeous as the first time he’d seen her naked. He stripped off his pajamas and lay down beside her. Their hands began the now-familiar ritual of exploration and arousal.

“What’s your pleasure this evening?” he asked.

“Everything,” she answered huskily. “Remember what we did last night?”

“I’ll never forget,” he whispered. He lowered his head beneath her breasts and her belly. He began to caress her moistness with his tongue and felt her quiver in response. What a wonder she was, he thought. Rebecca Devon was every bit as sexually spectacular and adventurous as his late Amy had been. Why did so many men feel that women were sexually inhibited and didn’t enjoy lovemaking?

Rebecca groaned and arched her back in pleasure. She twisted her body and took his manhood in her mouth. God, he thought, what an utter fool her late husband must have been to have mistreated her so. Then Nathan was suddenly incapable of thinking coherently of anything.

Jeb Stuart had chased the fox. and then the fox had turned and caught Jeb Stuart. At least that was what an observer from the Prussian army, one Wolfgang Kraeger, had said to John Knollys as they watched the brutal tableau unfolding beneath them.

Wade Hampton, at the head of Stuart’s cavalry, had flushed out a small division of about a thousand Union cavalry and had given chase. It was a trap. Within minutes, additional Union cavalry had surged from one of the many shallow valleys that were part of the normal landscape of southern Pennsylvania and had surrounded Hampton’s men. This had forced Stuart to send in more troops to rescue his second in command, and this resulted in still more Union cavalry until the largest cavalry battle ever fought in North America ebbed and flowed. All the while, Knollys, Kraeger, and a handful of others watched in morbid fascination through their telescopes.