Hell or Richmond (66 page)

There was still time. Not much, but enough to do them real damage. If the order came soon. Gordon had repeatedly ridden forward to scout matters for himself, even dismounting and scurrying out to Law’s rifle pits. He had seen an opportunity even grander than the one he’d discovered on the morning of that second day in the Wilderness. But now this spectacular chance, this gift from the heavens and Ulysses S. Grant, looked about to be thrown away. The Yankees had been as befuddled and vulnerable as the Persians in the lapping surf at Marathon. But Lee had been no Miltiades this day.

The comparison soured. What was the use of his classical pretensions? Asinine, all of them. The last three weeks had made that clear enough. His rhetoric had roused men falsely, coaxing them to their deaths to swell his vanity. If anything, he had been a vulgar Siren, his song as fatal as it was alluring. What had he to offer men from the Greeks, when the truth was that he could not read their alphabet? What did he really know of the Romans, beyond schoolboy Latin and a few legal terms?

As for legal affairs, that very morning a letter had caught up with him, another missive from a judge threatening action over a defaulted loan. What did such nonsense matter in these hours? Must so much be made of a sum so small it barely reached one thousand dollars? Amid a war such as this? The way men clutched money seemed absurd to Gordon. Women were for clutching, money for spending. And he had spent what came his way. Now it was gone, and creditors had to wait.

Worse, the coffee had run out, the last beans from those treasure sacks seized back in the Wilderness. His officers had not rationed it, but consumed it with abandon. Money was to be spent, and coffee was to be boiled and drunk down hot. They were spendthrift people, his kind, and he was not last among them. For such as they were, the day sufficed, and tomorrow could only dawn brighter in the mind, if the mind had to be bothered with tomorrow. It was their glory and their weakness, this passion for delights to be seized right now. How far into the future had they peered when they began this war, cocky as roosters? How many of them had looked beyond the chance to wear a dashing uniform and add a rank to their visiting cards? How many had foreseen the carnage? Not one. The intoxication of the moment had been all that mattered to them. They had not even counted their iron foundries.

They were a backward-looking people, he saw that now. Instead of thinking through the complex demands of modern war, they had celebrated battles fought by their grandfathers. Or the grandfathers of their grandfathers. They had decorated the past the way a plantation mistress did up her mantels at Christmas, covering cracks and stains with branches and boughs already dead, but charming in their scented illusion of life. What was his love—no, his tawdry exploitation—of the classics, if not a means of clinging to the past, of robbing the achievements of long-dead men, all for the sake of a gimcrack, threadbare elegance? It was an affectation so cheap and false it was vile.

Was there a single thing about his people that was true, or solid, or worthy in itself? Beyond this spiteful sacrifice of blood, ennobled only by their stubborn pride? The Yankees were right that the war was born of slavery: the enslavement of his people by the past, their Negro chattels only one manifestation. His men were dying for a graveyard romance.

The Yankees were men of the future. He would not say such a thing to any peer, nor to the rapscallions who fought under his command. But Gordon saw it as clearly as a veteran knew a death wound.

He and Fanny would have a future, though. He would fight to the end, even die if death was ordained, but should the Lord let him survive the war, this folly’s end was not going to be
his
end. The present day might stink of death, but tomorrow smelled of industry, power, and money, of government by the clever and fortunes for the astute. He had no intention of betraying his heritage. But he sensed it was more malleable than men knew, than men wanted to know. The South would not be finished by this war, but it would be changed. And the men who understood how to change while praising continuity would be the masters of all that rose from the wreckage.

As for his fellow Southerners, he was astounded by their courage and ever more appalled by their neglectfulness. What could you make of a people who failed to grasp such an opportunity as the one lingering before them even now? John Brown Gordon had never felt as pessimistic about his infant nation as on this sweltering, waiting-for-the-rain evening, nor had he ever felt more lust for a fight. If the war was to be lost, he did not want it lost from inattention.

He wanted to cry aloud, “For God’s sake, let us attack!”

A courier galloped up in the softening light, exciting a last burst of hope, but the man only asked for directions to the supply trains.

Eight p.m.
Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia

The doctor left Lee’s tent with a worried look. After he passed the three aides without a word, Walter Taylor said, “We should all go in together. And tell him.”

Marshall looked doubtful.

“No,” Venable told his comrades. “Only one of us. And I’m the logical choice.”

“It would be stronger coming from the three of us.”

“No. It would look like we conspired.” Venable held his hands upturned in front of him, weighing the air. “We can’t have him feeling cornered. Or betrayed. And I’m on his bad side already. Over that damned buggy.”

“He needed it,” Marshall put in.

“He’s not interested in what he needs. He hates to need anything. Or anybody. You know that, for God’s sake.” With time racing by, Venable added, “Walt, he trusts you and likes you. Better than anyone else. We can’t afford to damage that.” He turned to Marshall. “And Charlie here. Comes to getting out orders, he knows what the old man wants before the old man knows it himself. He needs the two of you, needs to trust you both. If any of us is going to be cast out, it has to be me.”

His two friends opened their mouths to protest, but Venable shushed them.

“Take yourselves off. I’ll handle this.”

He turned his back on his friends and walked to Lee’s tent. He didn’t need to open the flap to scent the old man’s sickness.

As he stepped inside, a grasshopper leapt away, landing on Lee’s boots. They were still covered with mud and, perhaps, worse. Venable decided to have a word with Lee’s body servant. Afterward.

Lee lay on his cot in tawny light, covered to the armpits with a blanket. Sweat jeweled the old man’s exposed skin, spotting his forehead with diamonds. His eyes were closed, almost clenched. Like his fists.

“General Lee?” Venable said.

The eyelids did not flutter, the head did not turn.

“General Lee, can you hear me?”

Nothing but a brief tic at one corner of his mouth.

Venable reached down and did something he suspected no man had done for many a year: He gripped Lee’s shoulder and shook it. With some force.

The old man’s eyes popped open. Venable saw fear.

“General Lee, you are not fit to command this army. You must send to Richmond for General Beauregard.”

The old man’s eyes found Venable. The aide watched as the familiar gaze moved from alarm, to doubt, to resolve.

“No,” Lee said.

Eleven p.m.
Headquarters, Army of the Potomac, Quarles’s Mill

Rawlins coughed. The hacking announced his arrival like a trumpet. As Humphreys watched, Grant’s chief of staff drew off his waterproof and tossed it to an orderly. His eyes burned.

Rain battered the roof of the old house.

“All of you,” Humphreys said, “clear out.”

When the shabby parlor had emptied, he signaled to a guard to shut the door.

Rawlins looked feverish. There was no doubt in Humphreys’ mind: The man was a consumptive, rotting away.

“I would’ve come to you,” he said.

Rawlins shook his head. “Better this way.”

Humphreys looked down, then up again. “John, things can’t go on like this.”

“I know.”

“Meade’s a tough old bird. But he has his pride. Shaming him in front of his own staff…”

“Dana isn’t worth a pound of horseshit.”

Humphreys refrained from pointing out that only weeks before, Rawlins had set the precedent for embarrassing Meade in front of his subordinates. Rawlins and the better of Grant’s paladins had grown quieter, though, as the casualties mounted and Lee didn’t up and quit. But even beyond that, Humphreys had come to see the value of Grant’s right-hand man. At first, he had thought Rawlins a boisterous ass, but under the press of relentless campaigning, he had discovered that the small-town lawyer was the only man who could really challenge Grant, who could temper the general in chief’s worst impulses, and who could keep Grant on the straight and narrow. Grant’s great strength—his determination to see things through, no matter the cost—was also his weakness. Only Rawlins could whisper contrary advice and not be rebuffed, once Grant had been captivated by an idea.

“Well, do what you can. Please. Meade’s as dutiful an officer as I’ve ever served under. But humiliating him hardly brings out his best qualities.”

“Meade’s a good man,” Rawlins agreed. Nearing another cough, he cleared his throat. “Grant knows that. Otherwise, he’d be back in Philadelphia.”

“Sheridan—”

Rawlins held up a hand:
Stop.
“Nothing I can do about Sheridan. Maybe have a word with Dana, he’s a burr under everybody’s saddle. But Grant likes Sheridan just the way he is. And he did finish Stuart, just the way he promised.”

“The man’s an insufferable egotist.”

Rawlins half closed one eye and the other shone. “You’re wrong there. He’s plenty sufferable. To Grant, anyway. Phil entertains him, that’s the thing. Grant likes a good story, a joke, a laugh.” Rawlins stepped closer. Humphreys thought he saw dried blood in the man’s beard, below his lip. “That’s the thing of it, see. Grant
values
George Meade. Values him highly. But he doesn’t
like
him. Not that he dislikes him particularly, either. They’re just different animals. Talk military matters, and they understand each other. More often than not, anyway. But when it comes to sitting under a tree and talking friendly, Meade and Grant don’t even speak the same language.” Rawlins thought about what he had just said, then added, “Sometimes, even I can’t figure what Grant’s got in his head.”

Humphreys could see it all. Meade was diligent, experienced, and masterful. He was courageous and, left to himself, decisive. But he wasn’t especially likable, nor was he an easy man. Meade wasn’t the hearty or obliging sort. Friendly to a chosen few, he held the rest of humanity beyond an invisible picket line. Humphreys could not imagine a friendship between young Lyman and Grant, but the Harvard man and Meade got on just swimmingly. On the other hand, Meade despised Grant’s raw-mannered western men. And Meade’s pride was nicked as easily as the finish on a costly lacquered cabinet.

Humphreys, too, often felt impatient with Meade. But he recognized that Meade had persevered under crippling restrictions for those long months after Gettysburg, only to see Grant brought east and given the free hand he never had been permitted. It was easy enough for a Plug Ugly like Sheridan to mock Meade’s patrician ways or to taunt him into foolish displays of temper, but there wasn’t a more honest man in the Union than George Meade. On the other hand, honesty sprang from innocence, and Meade never grasped the devious nature of others. He was all rectitude and no reckoning. From what Humphreys heard, Meade’s father had been the same way, trusting that a good act would be appreciated, only to be fatefully disappointed.

Meade needed a protector. And Humphreys felt the lot had fallen to him.

“I suppose we ought to sit down, talk this out properly,” he said. “Shall I send for coffee?”

“No need to sit. And I’ve drunk enough coffee to piss me a river.” Rawlins pointed across the room to where a door laid atop provision barrels served as Humphreys’ desk. “Show me where we are on that map of yours. I don’t like what I’ve been hearing. And Grant’s just lighting one cigar off the other.”

Humphreys led the way. “Bobby Lee’s played another one of his tricks. Situation’s unclear in front of Warren, but it looks like Hancock’s walked into a trap.” He shifted a lantern closer to the map and traced what he knew of the enemy lines with the dull end of a pencil. “There’s a heavy concentration in front of Hancock. From the rail junction back to the river, their lines are shaped like a jackknife three-quarters unclasped.”

Arms folded, Rawlins leaned in over the map. “And ready to snap shut.”

“Exactly. What makes no sense is Lee waiting to spring the trap.” Humphreys pointed a finger toward the roof, which sounded as if it could barely resist the rain. “And I don’t think he’s going to attack in this.” For a bad moment, he imagined the tragedy that almost had come to pass. “Lee had a magnificent opportunity. And he just didn’t take it. I, for one, can’t fathom it. It’s just not the way he does things. And if he decides to attack tomorrow, after all, he’s going to pay a price he won’t much fancy. Win’s entrenching, as fast as his men can dig.”

“Mud soup,” Rawlins said. He stifled another cough. Humphreys smelled odorous breath, a scent of mortality.

“If I’m correct about what I think I see,” Humphreys continued, “Warren and Wright will come up against a well-prepared defense on our right, as well.”

“Burnside’s already had a bad time of it. This afternoon,” Rawlins noted. “Far as I’m concerned, putting the Ninth Corps under you has been long overdue. Should’ve done it at least a damned day earlier, saved some lives.” He turned his face from the map to Humphreys. “You heard about Ledlie, I reckon?”

“Drunk. Falling off his horse during the attack. Meade’s furious. Young Chandler was a favorite in the army. And quite the darling of Boston’s high society.”

“Meade ought to relieve the man. Court-martial the sonofabitch. The order’s been published, he has the authority.”

Humphreys shook his head. “He’d like to. But if his first order to Ninth Corps cuts out one of Burnside’s boys, he starts off on the wrong damned foot. Bad blood. On top of the spilled blood.”