Confederates (53 page)

‘We care too much concerning the British government,' the president barked, and the intelligence officer shrugged.

Poor Major Pember, more shaken now, asked the officer if he had any proof that Searcy and Mrs Whipple knew each other for any reason that had to do with the passing of intelligence.

‘No,' said the intelligence officer. ‘But I've got to say this: it seems to me
that
is a fair presumption.'

Dora, blushing inwardly perhaps, weeping somewhere in her chest, but not giving the court the benefit of seeing her lower her eyes, noticed that when Major Pember sat down again he no longer looked at her with little encouraging lifts of his eyebrows.

So she ended in front of the prosecutor herself. She answered his questions in a level voice, and the interrogation went along at a clipped pace, without hesitations. She was determined not to give him the chance to be pompous.

First he asked her, had she got information about regimental and divisional movements from patients in Chimborazo?

She said: ‘Yes, sir, but it was often inaccurate.'

‘And did you pass this information to Pleasance?'

‘Yes, sir, after trying to separate out the unreliable material.'

‘And did you pass to Mr Pleasance information obtained from the English correspondent, the Honourable Horace Searcy?'

‘On one occasion only. Yes, sir.'

And so it went. She made no explanations. She knew explanations weren't any use, would be to these men a worse insult than blunt honest answers.

‘And what was the nature of the information Mr Searcy passed to you?'

‘The Union generals show an unwillingness to believe that the resources of the Confederacy are stretched and that the Confederate States have problems in gathering more than 70,000 men in any one zone of war. Mr Searcy's information regarded the size of the army in Virginia, the size and disposition of the various corps.'

She glanced across at her own lawyer, who was cringing at all these free admissions she was making. The president of the court, who'd been patting his whiskers during the earlier evidence of the intelligence officer, was fairly hauling on them now. ‘Ma'am, do I hear you right?' he asked. ‘What was your purpose in passing on these figures and so forth?'

‘You know the purpose, sir, fully as I do. It was in the hope that the Union generals would behave with more purpose than they have up to now displayed.'

You are certainly destroying yourself, Dora Whipple, she thought, but there's nothing you can do with yourself to stop it.

After she returned to her seat, even the prosecutor made a chastened speech. He accused her of no foul intentions. He just said again the judges had no choice. Everyone in court, apart from Dora Whipple, seemed to be suffused with a great sadness. Even when the president began to speak, Dora heard him with composure.

‘Ma'am, this court believes that you have done fine work amongst the sick and wounded. Did you not see any contradiction between
that
work and those politics of yours?'

She sighed, because she had to give the old answer, the one she'd given already to Searcy.

‘Sir, I simply believe this rebellion can end but one way, and that the greatest mercy is to attempt to end it quick.'

The president said, almost apologetically, ‘We all on this bench believe
that
, ma'am, that it can end but one way. In the triumph of the Confederacy. I don't suppose you happen to mean that?'

‘Sir, my heart cries out for the boys in Chimborazo. And in this town, sir. But I know that the fact that my heart cries out is in no way evidence.'

At some stage they made her stand, her counsel standing beside her. Poor Major Pember had gone pale, and the president of the court and the other two judges sat there looking like victims.

‘This court,' said the president, in a voice you had to lean forward a little to hear, ‘finds you guilty of high treason against the Confederate States. The statutory penalty for a civilian is death by hanging. This court therefore has no choice but to allocate a date, namely next Tuesday September 18 at nine o'clock in the morning, as the date of your execution. We do, however – in view of your sex – recommend you to the mercy of the President of these States. I just don't know, ma'am, what hope you should put in our recommendation. The court admires your demeanour, ma'am, but notes you have condemned yourself with very little help from the prosecution. May God have mercy on you, ma'am.'

Dora Whipple simply sat. There was nothing more that they could do to her, there was no leverage they could use on her. She had even taken the solemnity out of the judges and the starch out of the prosecutor. A terrible fierce calm grew within her. So they'll hang me? Well, that means I shall be with Yates Whipple soon.

She found though that, when her counsel helped her up towards the door of the school where her guard stood, her legs would not take her weight. Major Pember whispered in her ear: ‘They've made it Tuesday so the President will have time to act. I am sure, ma'am, he'll decide for mercy. Please don't distress yourself, dear lady.…'

It was just what he had been saying all along.

‘Let go of me,' she said. He looked confused.
‘Let go of me!'

He took his arm from beneath her elbow and she stood alone, persuading her legs to hold firm. At last she took a tentative step and found she did not fall. So she proceeded down the steps of the schoolhouse.
Well, they'll hang me
.

Already the outside world looked to her like someone else's county which you visit for just a few days.

17

It was some crossing! It was the sort of thing that caught you up the way that banquet in Manassas had, that banquet Bolly died of. You got the feeling that it was no use having personal opinions about going into Maryland, there was a sort of great opinion working in that mass of men. It pushed along some North Carolina boys, who didn't think it quite right to cross into the North, just as sure as it pushed someone like Usaph, who approved of it all anyhow. And Cate it pushed too – Cate in a daze – pushed him along as sure as it pushed Wheat.

It was a Biblical morning, and Maryland shone beyond the water like the bountiful country it was. On the Maryland bank of the river stood a little village. Oaks grew out over the water on both sides and wore in their branches the flowers of the trumpet vine. The white flowers and crimson berries of trailing arbutus shone on the far bank, the army's path was over and amongst the wildflowers which grew everywhere – lobelia, tobacco plant and goldenrod and lupin and May apple – all scarlet and blue on both the banks. And partridge and ruffed grouse rose up protesting out of the crabgrass.

Cavalry came down there to White's Ford at dawn and squinted awhile at the far bank, which was high, before crossing. When they did cross, the first thing they found, beyond that high bank and across the fields, was the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. Half a dozen barge men and farmers had tied up their barges there for the night. Three of these barges had melons on them, and the horsemen bought melons from a farmer-bargee who took their Confederate dollars deferentially, even though he felt a little cheated and would rather have got his melons down to the markets of Washington without hindrance. Whatever he felt, this was the first time ever that Confederate money had spoken in the North. The farmer was ignorant of that historic fact.

After the cavalry a band came through White's Ford, playing ‘Dixie' in the mild mountain air, and behind them a boy carrying the flag of Virginia, the great blue flag with the maiden slap bang in the centre trampling on the tyrant. And then the first infantry regiment went down into the river. The 10th Virginia. At the bank, its soldiers broke their ranks and stripped their britches off amongst the wildflowers or rolled the legs high, and they took off their shoes and strung them round their necks and bundled up their powder in their blankets, and carried all they owned on their heads like so many negro washerwomen, and waded in. The water was so good they would have stayed and swum if it had been any other river. The band waded too, holding their instruments high, drummers toting the drums on their heads. But as soon as they'd battled up the high slope on the far side, then they formed up again and took a stance in the meadow there and began in on ‘Maryland, My Maryland'.

‘The despot's heel is on thy shore,

Maryland, my Maryland!

This torch is at they temple door,

Maryland, my Maryland!

Avenge the patriotic gore

That flecked the streets of Baltimore,

And be the battle queen of yore,

Maryland! My Maryland!'

Tom Jackson came on right behind the 10th Virginia. He was riding a big cream-coloured horse, for Sorrel had bolted off in the Leesburg area, lured away by the bluegrass pastures. Jim Lewis the slave had stayed back there to find him. With Jackson rode his usual retinue, including foul-mouthed old John Harman, the quartermaster.

The 10th Virginia ahead and everyone behind were singing and hollering when they saw Stonewall. And Stonewall did a pretty grandiose thing for once. He splashed two-thirds of the way across, and then parked his big cream horse and his staff right there in the water, and he dragged his dirty old forage cap off and sat bareheaded under the genial sun.

Now there were more bands and regiments crossing, and the tune of ‘Maryland' fought the tune of ‘Dixie', and ‘Dixie' fought the ‘Bonnie Blue Flag'. And everything fought the Rebel yell, that resonant howl which was like the baying of some mean animal that meant to eat flesh.

While all this noise went on, the staff thought their thoughts. Kyd felt all the flush of a boy coming home. He'd been born in Shepherdstown on the south bank of the river, but grew up on Ferry Hill over the river. When the army was properly across he'd ride upriver to see his mother and father and sister; he would liberate them and taste their admiration. Because he'd been a student and a militia private when he last saw home and now he was coming back as Stonewall's adjutant and friend. If that wouldn't make a man's parents sit up and glow a little, he wondered what would.

The sight of the Potomac's steep and tangled banks worked powerfully on Kyd today. The last time he'd been in this area was a clear night last year when he'd led a little patrol down to the river. With field-glasses he got a view of his father's house on Ferry Hill burning. The flames broke from the windows of the gallery where his father and mother would sit at evening drinking a cocktail and looking south over the hills of Virginia.

Later Kyd's younger brother crept over the Potomac to join the Confederacy, and from him Kyd learned that the burning of the gallery had happened at the end of a party held by some Yankee subalterns there. It was the result of stupidity not malice. The barn had burned later for the same cause. Most of the house could still be occupied. His father and mother and sister were prisoners in the house though – Yankee privates were allowed to go into the rooms of the womenfolk and root through bureaux looking for jewellery; for some brutal reason a Yankee sergeant had attacked petite Miss Douglas's feather bed with a bayonet and torn it apart. AH the fences right up to the door of the Ferry Hill mansion had been torn down for campfires, the wheatfields had been turned into artillery parks, the lawn was decorated with rifled Parrotts, and rifle pits stood in front of the Greek revival doors. All the corn and fodder and hay on the property had been forfeit to the United States.

Sitting mounted with Tom Jackson in midstream, Kyd relished the quiet ferocity that rose in him now.

Bulky and profane Major Harman felt satisfied because the bottom of this ford was pebbles, and firm. It would take waggons.

Surgeon Maguire amused himself identifying the plants that grew all over the embankments of the river. He was pleased to see the lobelia tobacco plant with its chunky red flower growing in wild numbers. A tincture could be made up from that plant which Maguire considered the best expectorant and tonic for sufferers from chest disorders and pneumonia. And if the campaigning in the North that was beginning today should drag on until late autumn, there'd be lots of chest disorders. One of the things Maguire liked about the lobelia tincture was that it had that smell about it, like real tobacco, and that made it easier to get down soldiers' throats. It tasted good and, unlike real tobacco juice, didn't burn going down.

The Shenandoah Volunteers crossed before nine o'clock; Cate in a daze, most others singing and making noises. And in Usaph, such a certainty that this was the act that would end it all, this barefoot crossing which all the millions and the malice of the North had not in the end prevented!

By then Stonewall had got out of the river and you could see him and the staff atop the far embankment, their position marked by a large Confederate flag just about as big as a country ballroom. Sandie was talking low there in his general's ear.

‘Lawton says no more than 250,' Sandie was saying.

‘Folly,' said Tom Jackson. ‘Folly.'

‘Lawton says there's no use punishing them. You'd never get a court-martial to sentence men like that.'

‘Surely justice can be universal,' said Tom Jackson. ‘Surely they are deserters in the truest sense.'

‘I suppose it's that we can't spare the men to go after them.'

Some hundreds of North Carolina boys had deserted in the night and Tom Jackson would certainly punish them if he could reach them. North Carolina people often played this game of being the sanest and most regretful of Rebels and therefore the most morally impeccable. The governor of that state, Zebulon Vance, struck these moral airs whenever he made a speech, and regularly attacked Jefferson Davis for trying to control the troops of North Carolina and employ them this way or that without taking account of their fine spiritual fibre or of the opinions of the said Mr Vance.