The Bride of Texas (10 page)

“Gentlemen,” said Ambrose desperately, “I’m looking for advice, not —” He fumbled for words.

Lieutenant-Colonel Taylor broke the silence. “It’s going to be murder, not warfare.”

“Gentlemen, counsel, not —”

I honestly don’t know what Ambrose would have done if an old hand, the fifty-year-old General French, hadn’t lost patience and spoken up. In the language and images of cheap, heroic adventure tales, he expressed full confidence in the soldiers of the Union army and predicted that they would wipe out Lee’s army in a couple of days. Then he called for three cheers for Ambrose. The younger officers had all been taught at West Point by the great opponent of frontal attacks, Dennis Hart Lahane; the good-looking General French was challenging their sober judgement with some old-fashioned Napoleonic spirit. In the face of Ambrose’s visible gloom, his desperate but still loyal staff officers mumbled agreement.

Ah yes, the art of war. A miracle almost took place: by sheer coincidence, Meade attacked at a spot where there was a gaping hole between the rebel units and managed to penetrate to Jackson’s rear. But Franklin sent no reinforcements through the gap, and the rebel counter-attack forced Meade’s troops back down the hill to the river. At half past two in the afternoon, Ambrose, half crazed, ordered a new attack. He used the telegraph this time, but there were such discrepancies between his first and second sets of orders that the flustered Franklin, having lost what little confidence he had left in Ambrose’s ability to command, simply ignored him.

Meantime, a dance of death was going on below Marye’s Heights. The northern flank, following the plan, waited until the battle to the south seemed to be in full swing — seemed,
because the entire battlefield was wrapped in fog. The telegraph was working but the situation wasn’t clear even in Franklin’s headquarters, and at eleven o’clock General Sumner issued the order for a frontal attack. All afternoon unit after unit was thrown into the fray. Some got to within a hundred feet of the breastworks of the rebel position, but they were relentlessly and ruthlessly mown down. As evening fell, thirteen thousand dead and wounded lay on the hillside while the living pushed forward in that
danse macabre
— or, if you prefer, marched valiantly to their own execution. They must have known that they were no longer on a battlefield, that they were advancing into the path of a huge, mechanical, thundering scythe — but they advanced all the same. It was incomprehensible. At least, I can’t comprehend it.

Ambrose? After the war, they wrote that this battle had been a clear demonstration of his stubbornness. I’m not so sure. I think that his brain, never quick at the best of times, was inhibited even more by his intense desire not to disappoint the president. It was a fear that came not from rebel guns but from his soul. A loyal soul, but unendowed with the attributes of a successful general.

The night after the battle was a dark night indeed for that soul. Ambrose wandered from commander to commander, a stiff smile between his splendid sideburns. Towards dawn, he assembled his staff and announced that the attack on Marye’s Heights would continue. With one difference. He would lead it himself, not from his command post, but at the head of his troops.

The fact is, Ambrose was born too late. He should have come into this world when kings still rode off to battle on armoured
horses at the heads of slow processions of mounted warriors in coats of mail. In those days a general could be a simple soul. He only had to be brave. And he could never have found himself in the situation Ambrose got into in Chicago, soon after Fredericksburg, when he capped a military débâcle with a political one.

On that morning of December 14, they finally dissuaded him from leading a new attack on Marye’s Heights. He executed the final manoeuvre of the Battle of Fredericksburg — a complex retreat — and he did it magnificently. It was straight out of the textbook; Ambrose had always done his homework. Late that morning, when the fog lifted and General Longstreet looked down from his position on top of the heights, there wasn’t a living federal soldier in sight. In my parlour in Cincinnati, perspiring as though he were living it all over again, he told me why he hadn’t joined his fallen troops back in Fredericksburg.

“Later, some people claimed I’d wanted to commit suicide,” he said. “Perhaps I had, but it wasn’t a conscious thought. I kept seeing those soldiers, Lorraine, those dead soldiers, and I had sent them out there to die. I still see them now, at night, often at night. Back then, I felt that the only place left for me was among them, among the dead. But then —”

He fell silent and stared into the distance. His eyes were probably seeing that hillside again.

“But what?”

“Then I — simply —” He paused, and his eyes returned to the room. He smiled sadly at me. “At least I conquered my own arrogance.”

“You were never arrogant, Ambrose,” I said.

“Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t,” he said bitterly. He placed his finger on his temple. “Thirteen thousand men had to die before the light went on inside this foolish skull. It was a terrible price, Lorraine, a terrible price to pay just so a man could come to his senses. But then I realized that this gesture — dying at the
head of my troops — would have cost — what? Another thousand? Another five thousand? So I called off the attack.”

“Oh, Ambrose, dear Ambrose,” I said, because there was nothing else I could say.

“I could always have used my pistol,” said Ambrose. “But that would have been too easy an escape — from the troops and from the responsibility. It would, in fact, have been a cowardly act, Lorraine. And I’m not a coward. I may be a fool, but —”

“Ambrose!”

“— I’d rather be a fool than a coward and a traitor. So I took it all upon myself. I was in command. I was responsible for everything.”

After that disaster and its complicated aftermath, the president sent Ambrose to the Midwest to organize an army to pull a thorn out of Grant’s paw, for Grant was stranded at Vicksburg. In addition, he was given the job of maintaining order in the civilian sector of Ohio, for it was bubbling with discontent with the war and dissatisfaction with Lincoln, and there were dozens of newspapermen clamouring for peace at any price.

He came like a bull in a china shop, and that afternoon in my parlour he started to say, “Halleck thinks —” and then stopped himself.

“What does Halleck think?” I asked, when Ambrose had remained quiet for too long.

“What I meant to say,” he said awkwardly, apparently realizing the indiscretion of divulging to a woman what one general thought of another general. I didn’t press him. I was sure I could piece together what Halleck thought from Ambrose’s
clumsy questions. “What I meant to ask was — do you know Congressman, or rather ex-Congressman, Vallandigham?”

“Comely Clem?” I did indeed. He was a charmer, and among women the most popular Ohio congressman. Women may not have the vote but, once charmed, they can certainly influence their husbands.

“Comely Clem?”

“That’s what they sometimes call him here. He’s a handsome man.”

“He’s critical of the government,” Ambrose said. “Sometimes, in a way, that amounts to aiding and abetting the rebels.”

“That’s natural. He’s angry at the government,” I said. “He lost the October election because the Republicans ran General Schenck against him. Clem was a general in the militia before the war, besides holding many other functions. After Fort Sumter, he pretty much lost interest in military matters and threw himself into politics.”

“You say he was in the volunteer militia? A general?” Ambrose mused with interest.

“You can be sure they brought it up,” I said. “But he still didn’t have a chance against Schenck. Schenck was a hero. In the second battle of Bull Run, a piece of iron from an exploding canister nearly sliced his hand off at the wrist; he dropped his sword, but he got his aide to improvise a bandage, picked up his sword with his left hand, and charged the rebels at the head of his troops. Clem’s babbling in Congress didn’t amount to much beside that.”

“That explains a lot,” remarked Ambrose, stroking his sideburns with satisfaction. “Did you hear about the speech he made last week in Hamilton?”

I shook my head. “I’m not particularly interested in Vallandigham,” I said, “though I probably should be. He wouldn’t make a bad —” “character in a novel” was what I’d started to
say, but I suddenly remembered that Ambrose didn’t know about this other part of me, or at least he hadn’t asked about it yet. Either my pen-name had protected my secret, or he had forgotten what I’d said at the Connersville station. It also struck me that Ambrose would make a far better character for a novel than Vallandigham. Fortunately, he was so preoccupied with framing his questions discreetly that he never noticed my sudden silence.

“In that speech he denounced General Carrington’s order prohibiting civilians from carrying weapons.”

“Ah,” I said, “so Clem invoked the Constitution.”

“How did you know?”

“I inferred as much,” I said. “Thanks to Miss Wright, the Constitution is one of the few things I remember from school:
‘the right of the people,’ ”
I recited solemnly,
“ ‘to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed
.’ ”

Ambrose gave me a look that may have been one of admiration. I had the feeling he was measuring the circumference of my head with his eyes, which of course would deceive him, for I was wearing a fashionable hairpiece.

“Precisely,” he said. “Of course, Carrington had a damn — a darned good reason for issuing that order. Besides, he’d talked it over with Ollie Morton. He got a report from Sergeant Perkins, who was in charge of an eight-man detail that was supposed to arrest deserters in Franklin. When word got out that Perkins and his men were there, a mob of at least two hundred horsemen gathered in the town square, all of them armed, and not only did they stop Perkins from carrying out his orders, they even cheered, ‘Long live Jefferson Davis!’ That traitor and leader of traitors, Lorraine!”

“Are you sure it happened?” I said. “Don’t forget, Carrington’s notorious for his vivid imagination — especially after he’s had a few too many.”

“Ollie confirmed it. And it wasn’t an isolated instance. The day before, another armed mob stopped them arresting some deserters in Putnam County.”

“But that’s —”

“Treason!” he said, looking straight at me. It suddenly dawned on me that my friend was rushing headlong into a new catastrophe.

“It could hardly be called anything else,” I said.

“In the face of treason, all available means must be used. That was why General Carrington issued the order,” he said stiffly.

And I could see where the rub was. “But there’s the Constitution,” I said.

“Well — yes, there is,” admitted Ambrose. “Of course —”

“Didn’t General Carrington declare martial law?” I interrupted.

“Well — no, he didn’t.”

“That was a mistake.”

“Maybe so,” said Ambrose. “No! It
was
a mistake. But treason
was
committed, and treason is treason!”

“But the Constitution is the Constitution.”

Ambrose’s brow furrowed. He crossed his legs — his shiny boots and the gold tassel of his sword glinted in the afternoon sunlight, the scabbard rang against the Chinese vase beside the armchair. I imagined him running along the hill at Marye’s Heights in those polished boots, his sword drawn, the boots spattered with blood.

He recited, “
‘On the orders of the United States and the people of the United States, George Washington, Commander.’
Now, whom do we obey: Carrington or Washington?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That was the question Vallandigham posed at the town meeting in Hamilton.” He was looking straight into my eyes.

There was a long pause, then I said, “What do you think, Ambrose?”

“What do
you
think, Lorraine?” He looked at my sizeable coiffure.

“I don’t know.” Outside the window, a cool spring rain had begun to fall. Raindrops trickled down the windowpane, picking up the occasional ray of sunlight. “But I do wonder,” I said slowly. “Suppose George Washington had found himself in a situation like that of the sergeant who was sent out to arrest deserters, and a mob of armed men had started cheering General Cornwallis —”

“Precisely, Lorraine,” said Ambrose gratefully.

Not precisely. Analogies like that can be dangerous.

But they needn’t be.

Not if they’re applied by someone like Ambrose.

It wasn’t precise, but there was something to it.

“What else do you know about Vallandigham, Lorraine?”

I
T WAS SNOWING
on the Congaree River. In this war, anything is possible, the sergeant thought. A sharp north wind was swirling snowflakes at the far end of the pontoon bridge, but they hadn’t reached his end yet. They soon would, though. The staff officers were riding onto the bridge almost at a gallop, to keep up with Sherman’s mount, Sam. A strange creature, that horse. Its natural pace was so fast that Howard, Logan, and Colonel Ewing kept falling behind and had to spur their horses on to keep up, so they moved across the bridge to Columbia in surges, falling back, catching up, falling back.