The Seeker (31 page)

Of course he drew her into many of his pictures when she was nowhere near. She was the young lady sitting in the shadows deep in her carriage while her servant unloaded baskets of food for the soldiers. She was the lady dipping her full skirts out of a soldier’s way as she walked down the street. She was the girl peeking around the curtains in the townhouse on the square to watch the soldiers go through their drills. She was the face in his dreams.

That didn’t mean he had to chase after her with letters that might not even find her. Or be welcome if they did. Mellie had claimed Charlotte loved him, but even if that was true, would that be enough to pull her away from her beloved Kentucky? He couldn’t settle in one place. No matter how grand the house or how beautiful the woman. The desire to capture the truth in pictures burned too strongly inside him. He had to be where things were happening and not tied to hearth and home. So he told himself it was better if she didn’t write. Better for him to burn his own words to her. He had to follow the army. He had no time for love. At least not now. Not until after the war was won.

Then Sam Johnson’s messenger came to pick up Adam’s sketches and brought his mail. He sifted through the pile. Copies of
Harper’s Weekly
and other newspapers. Letters from his mother and Phoebe. He didn’t have to open them to know they would be more of the same words they wrote every time, telling him to send Jake home. A waste of ink.

There was the usual hastily scrawled and barely legible letter from Sam asking for this or that illustration. Adam flipped through half a dozen envelopes from other editors with checks for illustrations he’d sent them. And there, mixed among those letters, was the small envelope with the handwriting he’d never seen but that his heart recognized at once. His name formed by Charlotte wearing Shaker blue.

He swept his eyes over the words of her letter, swallowing it whole, and then let his eyes go back to the top to read it again slowly, savoring each pen stroke. Her words revealed little. But she had written. She was at the Shaker village. She wanted him to write again. The letter said the Shaker elders wanted him to write of the war, but he wouldn’t be addressing the letters to them. He’d be addressing the letters to Charlotte. And even if his words revealed no more than hers, they would still be read by her eyes. Her hand would write the response. And that seemed to be enough. For now. He wondered if she would think the same.

How could he know? He’d only talked to her those few times, and while he’d thought he was seeing the girl she was, he could not imagine that girl wearing Shaker dress by choice. And yet she was. The letter he held proved it. He read the words again.
I have lost my place at Grayson.
No explanation. Just a statement of fact. He saw Selena’s hand in that. And Selena’s only. The senator thought his daughter in Virginia.

Or did he? Perhaps he had lied because he feared his constituents knowing his daughter had gone to the Shakers. The Shakers’ worship was considered at best odd and, at worst, heretical. Not something a politician with his eye on the governorship would want to be tied to in any way. The senator had enough problems already with the divided feelings over Union or Secessionist in his district.

Adam decided not to mention the senator or the school in Virginia in his return letter. Instead he would do as Charlotte asked and send news of the war. The answers to their personal puzzles would have to wait until they were once more face-to-face. He could get a train and be there in two days. He could run after her if she ran from him again.

But the war might not wait for his return. Rumor had the army moving south within the week to strike at the new Confederate capital at Richmond. One swift thrust and the rebellion would be ended. So he wrote of the soldiers and sent a sketch of President Lincoln reviewing the troops and another of a soldier polishing his rifle stock. Not a picture the peace-loving Shakers might want to see, but they’d asked for news of the war. War meant weapons. At the end of his letter, he wrote,
I remember the garden. No puzzles there. With fondest regards, Adam.

The next day General McDowell sent down orders for the army to pack up their gear, load up the tents and camp stoves, hitch the horses to the artillery pieces, and head south to end the rebellion. Spirits ran high among the men. A few rounds of artillery and Johnny Reb would hightail it for home before the soldiers much more than had time to ram in their second load. Then the Union would be restored, and they could march home to a hero’s welcome. Thoughts of maybe falling in battle were pushed aside on that July day as they fell in line to begin the assault on Richmond.

Adam didn’t dwell on what the next few days might hold either. At least not unless he was talking to one of the Mexican War veterans. Then with their words of caution in his ears, he worried about Jake and all the eager volunteers who were marching toward the field of battle with only a few months of playing soldier on a practice field.

But he wasn’t worried about his own danger. He wouldn’t be engaging in battle. He’d be the observer Jake had accused him of being. Rightly enough. He’d be drawing the pictures to make the people who read the news hear the echo of the artillery fire in the safety of their parlors. He and others. Matthew Brady would be there with his photography equipment that captured the images on glass plates. Adam had seen the van that carried the immense amount of equipment the man needed for the magic of those pictures. Adam preferred his sketchpads. Much lighter traveling.

But Brady’s van wasn’t the only vehicle horses were pulling down the dusty roads behind the army. Not everybody was content to sit in their parlors and wait for the news to be delivered to their doorsteps. A glut of carriages choked the road. A few like Brady’s van carried reporters, but more carried citizens tagging along to witness the spectacle of the Rebels’ defeat. Congressmen and their wives. Foreign observers and diplomats. Ladies and gentlemen. Many of them had servants following along with hampers of food, as though marching off to battle was simply a good excuse for a pleasure jaunt and picnic.

Adam found the Massachusetts regiment and rode alongside Jake. The boy had at least relented enough to move from a foot soldier to the cavalry. That was the best Adam had been able to do for Phoebe and his mother. And he’d only been able to do that by convincing Jake he’d have more opportunity to engage the enemy on horseback. An infantryman might be limited to one charge at the enemy, but a man on horseback might charge and wheel about and charge again. Adam had no idea if that was really true, but it was surely safer to be on a horse than marching on foot across an open field in the face of artillery fire. He intended to do all he could to see that Jake survived the battle. Something Jake seemed to give no consideration to at all.

“You will remember not to do anything foolhardy,” Adam said as they jogged their horses slowly alongside the marching men.

“You mean charge the ramparts to save the day?” Jake laughed. He was in such high spirits that he was almost floating above his saddle. “It’ll be good to finally have some ramparts to charge.”

“I’ve talked to some of the old soldiers who say the troops aren’t battle ready,” Adam warned.

Jake waved his hand in dismissal. “Those old geezers.” He looked around to be sure none of the veteran soldiers were near enough to overhear him. “I mean we’re glad they’re along and all. They’ve been a great help getting us in shape. But I want you to tell me how a man can be battle-hardened the way they say we need to be without going into battle.”

“I don’t guess he can.”

“So they were bound to be green at their first battle too. But green or not, we’re going to chase those Johnny Rebs all the way back to Richmond and teach them a thing or two. We’ll give you plenty of fodder for your pens.”

“Just don’t you be fodder for the Confederate cannons.”

“I wager they won’t even stand and fight. We’re thirty-five thousand strong. Thirty-five thousand! Nothing can stand against a force that big.”

“They’ve been amassing troops too.” Adam looked over at Jake and saw a hint of worry under Jake’s bravado. He looked so young, his blond whiskers scarcely thick enough to put a beard on his chin. Maybe Adam shouldn’t be pushing reality at the boy. There was no turning back for any of the soldiers now. Not with honor.

“They don’t have that many, do they?” Jake took off his hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead. The uniforms were hot in the July sun. “Somebody said only twenty thousand under Beauregard, the scoundrel. We’ll pay him back for Fort Sumter. In spades.”

“What about Johnstone?” Adam couldn’t seem to help himself. “Rumor has it he has upwards to ten thousand men or more.”

“Out toward Shenandoah. Not where General McDowell has us heading. The general has it planned out. I’ve heard he sent some troops out that way to keep Johnstone’s bunch occupied. We’ll have Beauregard beat before he even knows to holler help. You just watch.”

“That’s what I do best.”

“Every man has his duty,” Jake said.

Adam heard the jibe in Jake’s words, but he just kept his horse in a steady jog alongside his brother and pretended he didn’t. He didn’t want angry words between them on the eve of battle.

The next couple of days they heard reports of a few skirmishes, but nothing of importance as the army continued south. They came across places the Confederates or perhaps citizens with rebellious leanings had thrown trees across the roads to impede the movement of the Union artillery and slow the advance of the troops. The delays hindered General Mc-Dowell’s battle plan, and discipline among the citizen soldiers was lax. Men wandered away from their ranks at will to fill their canteens or pick handfuls of blackberries. No voice of command rose above the melee of the army’s advance to keep the volunteers in line.

Early Sunday, the Union army met their first real resistance at the Bull Run stream near Manassas. Men accustomed to sitting on church pews on Sunday mornings lined up for battle against brothers and friends. Even to Adam, who hadn’t regularly attended Sunday services since his school days, it seemed wrong to fire the first volleys to tear apart the country on a Lord’s Day.

But when he said as much to one of the reporters taking notes on the formation of the troops, the man snorted a laugh through his nose before he said, “Those boys down there will be doing more praying this day than they ever did in any church building. You can take my word on that. And the people back home are gonna want to read all about it. Unanswered prayers and all.”

“What makes you say they’ll be unanswered?” Adam asked.

Bud Keeling had been writing for the
New York Times
since before Adam was born. He had the reputation of going anywhere to chase a story. And it was rumored that sometimes he wrote the story and sent it in before the event even happened so the
Times
could beat all the other papers with the headline. He had once told Adam that being first with the news paid off better than accuracy and that things pretty much happened the same, time in and time out. Or at least the part people wanted to read about.

“You been getting religion, Wade?” he asked now as he looked around at Adam with an indulgent half smile. “If so, maybe you should tell me why you think they’ll be answered. And how you think the good Lord up above decides which prayer to answer when Billy Yank meets Johnny Reb after they fire their loads and fix their bayonets. Both good boys with mamas back home down on their knees in church praying their sons will come home in one piece.”

“I don’t know.” Adam’s eyes went to the Union soldiers firing at a badly outnumbered group of Confederates trying to stop their advance. General McDowell’s feint had worked and the Rebels were caught almost totally by surprise except for a few Rebel companies left to guard the bridges over Bull Run. It seemed Jake might be right and they would have a clear road all the way to Richmond. The artillery guns flashed fire and the shells whistled as they passed over top the Confederate force to crash through the trees on the hill before plowing into the ground and throwing up plumes of dirt.

“Don’t nobody know the answer to that one. Anybody tells you they do, you can know they’re lying.” Bud pushed his hat back on his head and spat on the ground. “Me and you, we just have to tell the story. Each in our own way.”

Adam drew the lines of the artillery guns belching smoke. The Confederates weren’t running. Instead they were lining up to march into the face of the Union guns. He wondered, if he was down there as a part of that line, would he be afraid? “You ever been scared, Bud?”

“What’s the matter? You think I’m not human?” Bud didn’t wait for Adam to answer. “You get around a man what claims to have never been afraid, you give him a wide berth. He’ll get you killed. A good dose of caution can keep a man breathing.”

Adam nodded toward the men running forward, loading and firing their guns at one another on the field below them. “No chance for caution on a battlefield.”

“I don’t know.” Bud frowned into the bright sun as he stared down at the battle. “Look how the boys in blue are just flopping down on the ground while the gunners fire over their heads at the Johnny Rebs.” Bud scribbled something down in his notebook before he went on. “Don’t seem to be hitting much though. Firing high. Whoever’s giving the orders better be telling them to mount a charge before the Rebs have time to bring up reinforcements.”

Adam drew some quick lines to show the Union soldiers on the ground, waiting the order to charge. The midday sun beat down on them without mercy. Even so, the Union was winning the day in spite of what Bud thought of their methods. Adam felt a terrible sorrow for the Confederate soldiers lining up for a last-ditch effort to slow the Union’s advance. Their line was thin. Adam couldn’t see their faces, but he could see how they stood shoulder to shoulder ready to march into the jaws of death. Their bravery was almost visible in the air above their heads. All at once they began their charge with a terrible cry that seemed to come from deep within them. Terror and courage exploding in an eerie scream that echoed through the Rebel line. And the battle that should have been won already by the Union soldiers went on.