The Bride of Texas (50 page)

“In New York. Or was it Chicago? I’m not certain. Somewhere.”

Somewhere? Anywhere! As long as she’s alive!

His heart took off at a joyful gallop. Boldly he asked her, “Was her husband killed? Hauptmann von Hanzlitschek?”

She hesitated. “Did you know her?” she asked. “I mean — did you know her well?”

“A little,” he said
.

“Hmmm.” She stared at Kakuska, who was riding off with his new spurs flashing
.

“Every soldier knew her a little. By sight, I mean. After all, she was an attractive woman and she was married to the most obnoxious captain in the Sixth Regiment,” he explained
.

She looked him square in the eye. “The most hated captain. Or were you fond of him?”

He couldn’t help hearing the sarcasm in her voice. He felt a twinge of worry, but only for a moment. They were standing in front of her white house, now yellow in the fires of Columbia — thousands of miles from Helldorf, seventeen years from the moment von Hanzlitschek’s bullwhip had branded the emblem of his jealousy into Ursula’s back, in the rage of a man deprived of his property
.

“I wasn’t,” he said. “And Ursula” — he hurried to correct himself — “Frau von Hanzlitschek —”

“Ursula,” she said, smiling
.

Years of living with his fears made him cautious even now. “Ursula — I knew her — quite well. We’d speak sometimes. She — well — I was in the infirmary once and she — she used to bring me ointments —”

Madam Sosniowski looked deep into his soul again. “So you were the one. My late husband mixed those ointments for her. He never asked her who they were for. The first time she came for them, he told me they couldn’t be for the Hauptmann because they weren’t for piles.” She smiled at him. “I had known her since she married the Hauptmann. She’d never been happy. She didn’t marry for love. It was” — she made a face — “arranged. And then suddenly she was radiant with happiness. But when von Hanzlitschek was killed” — she caught his eye again — “she almost fell apart. I’d never seen her so miserable.”

He said nothing
.

“Nothing is so bad that it doesn’t bring some good with it,” said
Madam Sosniowski. “There were certain suspicions, but everyone could see how badly Ursula was taking it. True, that might have reinforced the suspicions. But Ursula had a convincing alibi. The maid — do you remember her? She was very pretty. Heidemarie.”

He nodded
.

“She testified that Ursula had been at home all day, writing letters.”

Another squad of Kil’s cavalry was approaching from Columbia. From the east came the boom of cannon-fire, and the sergeant was suddenly alert. They were about a mile from Cox’s Bridge and General Howard’s camp, but still twenty miles from Goldsboro, where they were to meet Schofield the following day. Bentonville, source of the ominous rumble of artillery, was ten miles to the east. The air was fragrant with cherry blossoms, the spring breeze rippled through the grass, and the sun, now low in the west, still filled the air with bright spring light. But the countryside was echoing with the eerie, mechanical roar of cannon.

They sat still on their horses, their field-glasses trained on Bentonville. No one said a word. They were waiting for the general to speak.

Yesterday he had said, “Only a few squadrons of cavalry.” Could a small battery of light cavalry artillery be making that much noise? Kapsa looked at the general. His aides, Audrey and Dobson, exchanged glances over their field-glasses. Their thoughts were not hard to read.

The burden of decision lay, as always, on the general’s shoulders. Not long ago, he had asked his staff a rhetorical question: “What is strategy?” They had been complaining about how unreliable their maps of North Carolina were. “Strategy is common sense applied to the art of war.”

The sergeant recalled that General Howard’s eyebrows had
risen sharply, a disciplined display of disagreement. The general went on, sounding more like a farmer than a soldier: “You have to do something. You can’t go around asking corporals and sergeants what to do. You have to make it up out of your own mind, and then give the order. If things don’t work out, you can attribute the disaster to anything you please; the blame will still fall on you, no matter what.”

“And if things do work out, what then?” asked Captain Williams.

The general laughed. “No matter what they attribute the success to, the laurels will land on your head. And quite rightly so. It was your decision, after all.” The general looked around at his regiment resting among the trees. “A halo doesn’t give you much protection, though,” he said. “You issue another order, everything seems to fall apart deliberately, and in a few days the reporters wash your head in a cesspool and the laurels float away, never to be seen again. That’s what glory’s like.” He glanced at a young second lieutenant in a stained uniform who was trying to cultivate a moustache. “Fame —” said the general thoughtfully. “You get killed on the field of battle and your name is spelled wrong in the newspapers. That’s fame.”

“Not all heroes get killed,” said Captain Williams.

“No,” conceded the general. “But in the end they all die. After that, they can’t give evidence about how they saw things, and the journalists have a field-day.” He laughed. “They’ll make me out to be a holy terror whose only excuse was being crazy, and they’ll explain away my modest successes by attributing them to the luck of the Devil. They’ll turn Grant into a drunkard, and how will they explain a drunkard doing anything right unless they call it the luck of the Devil? You, Oliver” — he turned to Howard — “you’re the only one who’ll come out of it smelling like a rose. They wouldn’t dare connect the Devil with your good fortune.”

General Howard scowled, apparently displeased by the trivializing tone of Sherman’s monologue, and reached for his Bible, which, as usual, was right there in his coat pocket. Sherman added quickly, “And still, no matter what we are, I have to issue an order, Grant has to issue an order.” The general’s gaze drifted from Howard, whose expression was returning to normal, to his troops, who were taking up their positions. He added, “Without orders it wouldn’t work. Even the president has to give orders. Without them America would be lost, and would earn the contempt of all mankind.”

Captain Williams raised his field-glasses, and the sergeant looked in that direction. A solitary rider was galloping towards them out of a grove of apricot trees. “It’s Burton, of Slocum’s staff,” said the captain.

Later, when Captain Burton was returning west, growing smaller as he rode, they moved east as the apricot orchard darkened in the twilight. The columns of smoke before them came from Howard’s camp. The courier’s welcome dispatch now lay folded in the sergeant’s knapsack. “The Twenty-second Wisconsin came into contact with units of Rebel cavalry and taught them a lesson,” Slocum had written. So Sherman had been right: there were only a few squadrons of horsemen to harass them. But was that unceasing din coming from a few squadrons of horsemen? Still, the general was reassured by the dispatch and rode swiftly towards Howard’s campfires, his staff keeping up as best they could. The sound of cannon faded in the distance and soon the sergeant was surrounded by the twilight songs of spring, the crickets and the bird-calls. For the first time in many days, the twilight was sprinkled with stars.

“There were bound to be suspicious at first,” said Madam Sosniowski. “Everyone knew that von Hanzlitschek had a mistress in
Neuhausen. She admitted it after he died. They used to meet up on Gottestischlein — you remember it?”

He nodded
.

“There’s a little house up there, a love-nest,” she said. “Von Hanzlitschek furnished it for his own purposes, and they met there on Tuesdays and Fridays. He did everything according to a schedule.”

“But he died on a Wednesday —” He stopped short, too late
.

She smiled at him. “Yes, I believe you’re right! Ursula had her alibi from Heidemarie, and then von Hanzlitschek’s mistress — who, by the way, was governess to the young Countess Schoenheim, the family with the castle in Neuhausen — you surely recall?”

“Yes, but what about her — the mistress?”

“She had an attack of hysteria in front of the General Commission of Inquiry. It turned out she was expecting von Hanzlitschek’s child,” explained Madam Sosniowski. “And in her fit of hysteria other things came out as well.”

“What sort of things?” It was hard for him to imagine it now, so far away and so long ago
.

“I can’t tell you and I don’t want to. My husband only hinted at what they were. Simply, it came out that Herr Hauptmann von Hanzlitschek had demanded services of his mistress that gentlemen generally don’t presume to ask of their wives. Or they may presume, but Ursula would hardly have complied. She did not love him.”

Ursula and he had never talked about von Hanzlitschek and he knew nothing about him. But Ursula had come to him of her own free will. That was why it had been such a miracle. Far greater than anything he had ever expected to experience in this world. The sergeant shook his head
.

Burning cotton was falling all around them
.

“Naturally, such revelations did not make a good impression on General Graetz, who didn’t care for von Hanzlitschek in the first place, and who did? So Ursula had all his sympathy. The mistress had an alibi too, and when they looked at the evidence — the
slippery moss, the sharp stone — everything looked convincing. The only thing they couldn’t explain was what he was doing up there that evening. After all, he was as regular as clockwork, Tuesdays and Fridays.”

He gazed right into Madam Sosniowski’s dark eyes, and saw showers of burning snow
.

“It was the Devil who brought him there,” he said. “To give him his due.”

Sherman stood in front of the tent with Howard. They were both facing east and listening intently. Darkness had fallen some time ago, the stars were out, but the cannon were still rumbling. This was more than just a skirmish. The two generals conferred in low, inaudible voices far into the night. Artillery sounded sporadically. Slocum had written his reassuring dispatch that morning; now it was night. The decision lay with Sherman. But no more couriers came. The only message lay in the continuing cannonade. An owl hooted. The general threw up his hands, turned, and went into his tent. Howard followed. The sergeant watched their moving shadows on the sides of the tent. Then the lamp was put out. He stretched out on the ground beside the dying campfire, stared up at the stars, and remembered the burning snow.

“I agree,” said Madam Sosniowski. “The verdict was ‘death by misadventure’. Ursula” — she looked him straight in the eye, and by now she knew everything — “I had never seen her so unhappy.”

“I loved her,” he said. “I still love her.”

“Well, that explains everything, then,” said Madam Sosniowski
.

He was awakened by the pounding of horses’ hoofs, and jumped up. The stars were still out and two riders were approaching from the east. One of them was Captain Farmer, commander of Howard’s guard. The second rode a horse that was foaming at the mouth. A courier.

They went into the tent, and a carbide lamp was lit. The sergeant could hear excited voices.

“I wrote her, but she never answered,” said the sergeant
.

“She left for Vienna right after the verdict,” said Madam Sosniowski. “She married again in less than a year. Naturally, there was talk in Helldorf. But Baron von Hofburg-Ebbe is a diplomat, and a month after the wedding she went with him to Stockholm, I think.”

He wanted to ask how she could have done such a thing, but then he realized it was a foolish question. What else could she have done? Accepted his wild invitation to America? Besides, his letter had probably gone astray — which was just as well. He shook his head
.

“Some wishes come true only in books, sergeant,” said Madam Sosniowski. “And some people only belong together in books too — you know?”

That annoyed him. Why just in books?

But perhaps she was right. It was all so long ago. More like a dream. Not much of a reality any more
.

The general came tearing out of the tent, looking like a demon in long red underwear, barefoot, charging into the dying embers of the campfire, yelling, “Where’s Williams? Report to me! The whole staff! Wake them all up!”

General Howard emerged from the tent stuffing his empty sleeve into his empty coat pocket. In the starlight an officer dashed towards the general’s tent, buckling on his sword as he ran.

Under Shake’s impatient guidance the Readers’ Circle, all of them schooled to read Czech in German Gothic script, was gradually learning the Latin alphabet. The only one to have mastered it with
any ease was Molly Kakuska, and while the others were still making laborious progress syllable by syllable, she sat in a corner weeping over a popular Czech novel. Padecky wanted to quit. He was furious to find himself illiterate again, after he’d put so much effort as an adult into the Schwabach Gothic script back home. He cursed the Austrian emperor for introducing the Latin alphabet in the first place. In a democracy like America, he insisted, the government would never dare
.