On Secret Service (26 page)

“My pa gave me that pick,” Sledge said.

Jovially Colonel Mars replied, “So what's that got to do with me?”

“It's mine. Give it back or I'll take it back.”

“Hey, here's a brave one,” Colonel Mars said to his companions. The boy captains leveled their muskets. Lon flashed warning looks, but Sledge ignored them or didn't see. “Take it away from me if you can, Yank.”

Sledge had a moment to reconsider but he didn't. He stepped forward, raising his big fists. Colonel Mars pulled the pepperbox from his red sash and shot him in the forehead.

Sledge rolled on the ground and lay still. His bowels let go. Lon trembled with shock, struck dumb by the sudden, senseless killing. Colonel Mars squinted at him.

“How about you? Want to die for a toothpick?”

Church bells rang in Richmond, the notes sweetly floating over the summer countryside. A hare peeked from a wild raspberry bush and retreated. Philo Greenglass lay dead with a hole in his skull and a mask of blood around his eyes. Lon remembered the mission, numbly shook his head. Colonel Mars smiled, showing his rotted teeth.

“All right, then. March.”

The final days of the Peninsula campaign took Stuart's men behind enemy lines again. On June 25 the general led two thousand riders out of Richmond to rendezvous with Jackson's infantry marching swiftly and secretly from the Valley. Stuart's force included elements of Fitz Lee's First Virginia, Rooney Lee's Ninth, Wickham's Fourth, the Jeff Davis and Wade Hampton Legions, and Pelham's artillery. It was among Hampton's South Carolinians that Fred Dasher spied Charlie Main. They hailed one another, brought their horses together.

“My God, Charlie, you look grand. Not a day older, and brown as mahogany.”

Charles Main, a lean and ruggedly handsome young man, touched his cheek. “Still carrying this leather face from two years ago, when I quit the Second Cav down in Texas.”

“You think we can win this war?”

“Hell, Carrots, I don't know. Sometimes I think we're fighting for all the wrong reasons. Let's meet and talk soon as McClellan's whipped. Adios.”

 

Stuart guided Jackson's foot cavalry to McClellan's unprotected right flank. Jackson was a pale, cadaverous man, not yet forty. Instead of a regulation uniform he wore a soiled, worn-out uniform and, pulled down over one eye, a shabby cap from Virginia Military Institute, where he'd taught. Fred first saw him sitting on a rock consulting a map. He could scarcely believe this mundane person was the famous Stonewall.

Fighting soon engulfed them. With shells coming in hot and fast, shattering trees, blowing up the earth, lifting men and horses in the air and dismembering them as they died, Fred rode in a charge that routed seven hundred Union lancers whose quaint weapons proved useless. His detachment demonstrated in front of McClellan's White House base. The show of force was so effective, the Yanks torched the plantation house and its outbuildings and sped their infantry to safety by boat. To ruin captured Yankee locomotives, Pelham's artillery blew holes in the boilers from a range of fifty yards.

The troopers foraged in the ashes and blackened beams of the lovely old house. They found crates of unspoiled delicacies, and whiskey. Fred drank his share, temporarily soothing a bad case of war nerves. The land between the Chickahominy and the James was like nothing he'd ever seen, a horrific wasteland of burned forest, fallen trees, fields littered with maggoty corpses, streams fouled with rotting mules and horses. Smelling the air, many a soldier couldn't keep food down.

After seven days of fighting, McClellan fell back, Richmond rejoiced, and the cavalry rested.

 

Jeb Stuart reported to Lee and returned with a major general's commission. He recommended many in his command for promotions, including Fred. Fred wasn't cheered. He felt the war, or his part of it, was on a downward path.

Exhausted in soul and body, he was unwilling to forgo the dangerous medicine he took for relief. He feared he was becoming a sot. He dreamed awful dreams, brightly colored, full of noise. In them, the little girl at Garlick's Landing died, then died again, endlessly.

He arranged a meeting with Charlie at cavalry headquarters, a farm near Atlee's Station north of Richmond. They relaxed and visited in the warm shade of a huge oak. On the farmhouse lawn, General Stuart romped with his children while his handsome wife, Flora, rested in a rope swing hung from a hickory limb. A summer breeze carried the chuff-chuff of a military train on the Virginia Central line.

Fred and Charlie laughed and reminisced about the Military Academy. Legs stretched out, a little cigar clenched in his teeth, Charlie observed that the cavalry had become the eyes and ears of the Army, so he and Fred were in effect spies in the saddle. Then he confessed that he was, as he put it, entangled with a woman. She lived in Spotsylvania County.

“Tell you the truth, Fred, it's because of her that I'm beginning to hate the damn war. Fellow might be killed any day of the week, bang, no warning, and I don't think it's right to fall in love with that hanging over you. Trouble is, I did. Don't know where it will lead.”

“What's her name?”

“Augusta Barclay. Widow woman. God, she's handsome, and sweet. How about you? Anyone special?”

Fred shook his head. Much of his life had been devoted to the old Army, and his few brief love affairs hardly deserved the name. Usually he relied on red-light houses. Of late he'd felt a great need for a woman. He envied Charlie.

Along the sunlit railway, a train of flatcars passed with soldiers hollooing and waving hats. Fred decided they were new recruits who hadn't seen the elephant. The whistle sounded, long and mournful. Fred and Charlie brushed themselves off and prepared to say good-bye.

They embraced like brothers. Charlie said, “We'll talk again when, as, and if we're all done with this fuss.” He set his battered slouch hat on his head. “You sure you're all right, Carrots? You look pale as the inside of a flour sack.”

Fred saw Garlick's Landing. He saw the girl die. He hadn't spoken of it. He itched for a shot of whiskey.

“I'm fine. You take care. Regards to your lady.”

“Thank you. Godspeed, Major, sir.” Fred had revealed his coming promotion. Smiling, he returned Charlie's mock salute. He watched his handsome brown-faced friend go jauntily in search of his horse. He stood in the hot shade, silent and sad.

 

He spent the rest of July and the early part of August at a training camp at Hanover Court House, drilling new men. He was secretly pleased to hear that John Mosby, foolishly endangering himself on a scouting mission, had been captured by Yankee cavalry. In August he heard that Mosby was free in a prisoner exchange.

McClellan was moving his Peninsula Army up the Potomac as possible reinforcement for John Pope's new Army of Virginia. Pope advanced to an exposed position somewhere between the Rapidan and Rappahannock rivers. Lee decided on a preemptive strategy, a move against Pope before the two armies united.

After observing Pope's Army from a hilltop called Clark's Mountain, Lee sent Stuart and a small escort to probe enemy positions. Fred was part of the group, along with Mosby. They made camp at a farm outside Verdiersville just before midnight on August 17. The men stretched out to sleep on the fragrant lawn while Stuart settled on the farmhouse porch.

In the silence of the starlit night, Fred woke to the sound of horses approaching on a nearby road. He kicked free of his blanket. On the porch, Mosby roused Stuart. “Yankee cavalry, sir. Be here any minute.”

They ran for their horses. Stuart vaulted onto Skylark so vigorously his plumed hat fell off. Stuart and Fred and the others galloped away from the farm in a hail of gunfire and narrowly escaped the pursuers. Stuart was incensed over the loss of his hat.

A day later, Pope inexplicably began to retreat north to the Rappahannock. Lee sent Stuart's men to spy on the enemy Army, harass its lines of communication, and impede the withdrawal. This time Stuart took fifteen hundred riders and two fieldpieces. Inordinately jolly after escaping capture, he shouted as they rode out, “Boys, we're going after my hat!”

Their first objective in the enemy's rear was a railroad bridge over Cedar Run at Catlett's Station, on the Orange and Alexandria line. To reach it they circled wide to Warrenton, northwest of Catlett's. At a tavern where they paused to rest at dusk, a lieutenant brought a lanky white-haired Negro to Stuart. “Pickets caught him outside of town, General.”

“Didn't take a whole lot of catching,” the black man said. “My name is Simon Biggs. I'm a teamster, and a free man. Blasted Yankees impressed me like Englishmen used to shanghai sailors. Been driving their blasted freight wagons six months now. I got too much ‘nigger, do this, nigger do that,' so I ran off.” Sitting at a plank table near Stuart, a tin cup of stale beer in hand, Fred reflected that neither side in this war had a monopoly on meanness.

“And where exactly did you come from, Mr. Biggs?” Stuart asked.

Simon Biggs understood that he commanded the situation, no matter how many pistols and sabers surrounded him. He stretched the moment, fastidiously straightening the frayed collar of his old gray work shirt. He squinted at Stuart and smiled in a foxy way.

“Why, General, I come from the headquarters camp of another general, John Pope.”

In the stillness Fred heard a fly buzzing. Mosby, ever eager to draw attention to himself, jumped off his bench and strode to Stuart's table, the better to listen. Watching, Fred drank from the tin cup, looking like he'd swallowed poison.

“Is the camp near?” Stuart's voice held a suppressed tension.

“Close by Catlett's Station.”

“Is Pope himself there?”

“Not sure. He was a while ago. All his baggage is piled up, though. I can show you.”

Stuart shook hands. “Thank you, Mr. Biggs, delighted to have your cooperation.” To the assembled officers Stuart said, “In the saddle in two minutes.”

On the dusty pike leading to Catlett's, a strong breeze buffeted the riders. Clouds sailed underneath the stars and hid them. White fire flickered in the clouds. Leaves peeled from trees as the wind rose. Fred felt raindrops pecking at his cheek.

The wind reached gale force for a few minutes but dropped off as the rain fell harder. The steady fall became a cloudburst. They advanced at a walk while thunder rolled continuouly. Lightning brought an eerie version of daylight. Astride a mule at Stuart's side, Simon Biggs pointed to faint lights ahead. “Yonder's the camp, other side of the stream. Stream's shallow.”

“Then we'd better cross before it floods. Forward, column of twos.”

Close behind Stuart, Fred pulled a bandanna out of his collar and hooked it over his nose to soak up rain. He tugged his hat brim down to shield his eyes. Baron balked and whinnied. A touch of Fred's hand calmed the horse.

They waded the rushing stream and spread right and left on the muddy bank, still a quarter mile from the tents and wagons somewhat more clearly defined by dozens of lighted lanterns. Fred braced himself with whiskey from his canteen. Thunder crashed. Stuart was bareheaded, water streaming from his beard, homage to this journey to reclaim his hat.

Lightning burst as Fred drew his saber. The blade shimmered like Arthur's Excalibur. He'd always loved the gallantry of the Arthurian legends. Reality was different.

“Private Freed, sound the charge.”

Rain slashed Fred's face as Baron leaped forward and they came down upon the Union camp. Lanterns in the tents silhouetted men inside. They seemed to be relaxing, eating and drinking, safe from the rain. Fred raised his voice in a long wailing yell that joined hundreds of others.

He rode with the reins in his teeth and his LeMats in his hands. A boyish sentry stepped in his path, vainly trying to fire his musket. Fred shot him in the chest. Thunder crashed.

Troopers slashed guy ropes so tents collapsed. Caught underneath, men struggled to escape and were shot like fish in a net. Confused sentries ran about, shot or sabered if they didn't instantly throw down their weapons. Stuart's men sheltered torches under their ponchos to light them, then tossed the lit torches into supply wagons. Another sentry lunged in front of Baron, hands raised. “I quit, I surrender.” Fred put a bullet in the man's chest.

As Fred swung down a lane between tents, he heard a chilling scream from one of them. Either some recruit's voice hadn't changed or someone was harboring a woman. He holstered one revolver, protected the other inside his coat, and jumped off Baron. He splashed through standing water and at the tent entrance pulled the LeMat from under his coat.

After the failed Peninsula campaign, boatloads of wounded arrived at the Potomac piers. Many of the wounded died in hospitals, and secondhand shops soon filled up with discarded uniforms. Hanna sorted through the melancholy merchandise, bargained, and made purchases. A stiff-sided backpack of the kind carried in European Armies. A pair of sky-blue kersey trousers, a dark blue four-button sack coat. A chasseur cap with only a tiny spot of blood on the crown. A pair of mudscows, the cheap square-toed Army shoes supplied by contractors. Somehow the shoes were more grisly than the clothes. Who was the poor boy who died wearing them?

If a shopkeeper wondered aloud about a woman buying such things, Hanna said she collected war souvenirs. Why not? Washington was a crazy place that summer. Work crews added to the bedlam on Pennsylvania Avenue by tearing it up for a new street railway. Secesh ladies came across the Potomac bridges with no trouble, to shop or to visit like-minded friends. Odd new paper money circulated: greenbacks from Mr. Chase's Treasury, and shinplasters, notes of all sizes and designs issued by Northern cities.

Lincoln called for more men and inspired a new anthem: “We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand strong.” Trainloads of recruits arrived. Major Siegel worked until ten or eleven each night, complaining constantly of the long hours and low pay. Yet he seemed to revel in his insider's position, carrying home tales of the new and unpopular general-in-chief, Halleck, or the widespread uncertainty about the boastful commander of the new Army of Virginia, Pope, whose drunken troops roistered in the Manassas camps. The Union now had two armies in northern Virginia, Pope's and McClellan's. The latter was slowly being hammered back into shape at Alexandria by its chastened, almost disgraced general.

Hanna hid her purchases in an old armoire in the little house near the Navy Yard. When Pope moved into the field in August, she decided she'd better not delay.

Unfortunately, Derek Fowley had cast her as Juliet in an autumn production just starting rehearsals. When she told Derek she'd be away for a bit, he said he was sick of dealing with “inconsiderate artists.” Hanna laughed, a fatal response. Derek stuck his face two inches from hers and shouted that Zephira Comfort would replace her. Hanna giggled uncontrollably; there was enough of tubby Zephira for two Juliets. She realized the curtain had fallen on her career with Derek.

At one o'clock next morning, the major came home smelling of schnapps. Hanna repeated what she'd told Derek. Siegel flung himself into a chair and yelled, “Where you going? I got a right to know.”

“I'm going to see the camps.”

“You already did it once.”

“I want to go again.”

“What for? You got no business with the soldiers”—the major's pink lips curled into a smirk—“unless you're making money off them like some women do.”

“Papa, that's a nasty joke.”

“I don't care, I don't know what you are anymore, Hanna. You're not a man, but you're a queer sort of woman. You want to take these chances with yourself, I wash my hands.” He knocked the chair over as he weaved to his feet. “I got to sleep. Stanton's called a meeting at seven o'clock.”

Hanna stared after the squat, shuffling figure, wanting to shout as loudly as he had.
You don't know what I am? I'm your daughter trying to be a person you'll care about.
She wondered if the major could ever care about anything but himself, his personal advancement, and how she disappointed him merely by existing.

 

She chopped her straw blonde hair so it was short again. She stuffed corks in her pocket to char and rub on her face, to darken her fair skin and suggest a beard. With her hard-sided European backpack and her blue eyes, she could pass for one of the thousands of slavery-hating German immigrants who'd signed up to fight for Father Abraham.

Her plan for working her way south toward Pope's Army was beautifully simple. She only spoke her native language, German.

Two things made the scheme viable. One was the great number of Germans already in Pope's Army, led by General Franz Sigel. Sigel came from Missouri and, before that, the failed European revolutions of 1848. He commanded one of Pope's three divisions. Hanna had seen him in a Washington parade, a slight, bearded man with a morose expression. Whenever she was stopped and questioned, she answered with a phrase many a German soldier used if he understood no English. “I fights mit Sigel.”

Asked about her unit, she answered,
“Schimmelfennig, Brigade Erste.”
Colonel Alexander Schimmelfennig was another 1848 exile from Germany. If other questions were put to her, she mimed helplessness.

Some who stopped her wanted to know what she was doing traveling alone. “
Ich bin krank.
Sick.” Everyone knew of the Union's huge invalid corps in Washington. Hanna was waved on, often with a compliment. Deserters didn't walk boldly, as she did. They skulked, and they never went south.

Pope's Army lay somewhere below the Rappahannock. A Friday evening near the end of August found Hanna short of her goal, caught in a violent thunderstorm. She limped into a large camp on the Orange and Alexandria railway. A sergeant of the guard intercepted her, shouting above the roar of the rain, “Name and unit?”

“Hugo Rauch. I fights mit Sigel.
Schimmelfennig, Brigade Erste. Ich bin krank.
Sick.” She pointed and pantomimed being lost. “Schimmelfennig where?”

“Damn 'f I know. This here's General Pope's headquarters camp.” Which, to a casual glance, looked lightly guarded. The sergeant indicated a large walled tent, brightly illuminated. “That's his baggage yonder. General himself, he ain't here.”

For a camp in a war zone the place seemed curiously relaxed. Hanna smelled coffee and bacon. Her stomach growled. She'd eaten her last biscuit at noon.

The sergeant took her to a second lieutenant lounging in one of the tents. He said they were shorthanded. Before continuing in search of his unit, Private Rauch could earn a meal by making himself useful. They found an old oilcloth poncho and a musket. At half past nine Hanna was standing guard in the wagon park, huddled in the lee of a big freighter.

She congratulated herself on getting this far. Despite her hunger and wet clothes, she was in good spirits, planning how she'd steal away and dry her uniform when the sun shone again.

Between thunderclaps she heard horsemen, and bugling. Then came pistol fire, and a chilling cry that had to be the rebel yell she'd heard about. It roared from hundreds of throats. Her stomach heaved, an unexpected reaction to seeing the elephant.

A ball struck the wagon behind her, tearing out splinters that stung her cheek. She fumbled with the musket as riders crossed her line of sight. Bursts of lightning revealed bearded faces, wet horses, uniforms of rain-soaked gray. Some of the riders wore hats with black plumes. Confederate cavalry, operating behind enemy lines.

An officer ran out of a tent with his dinner napkin tucked in his collar. A reb shot him and the napkin turned red as he tumbled into the mud. Tents were set afire. Men shouted that they'd found cases of food and wine. Fighting her fear, Hanna crept away. A reb on foot charged out of the dark, showing his saber in the lightning flash. The reb grabbed her musket, then her arm. Hanna raked his face with her short, broken nails.

Spitting mad, he stuck his saber in the mud and bear-hugged her, trying to break her spine. As they danced grotesquely in the rain, he exploded with a stupefied, “Huh?” His hand groped the front of her sack coat, hurting her bound breasts.

“Mary and Joseph! Lieutenant Buford? Sir, wait'll you see the bird I caught!”

Moments later Hanna was shoved into a tent where a lantern burned on the ridgepole. The man who'd caught her, a youthful Confederate trooper with yellow hair, knocked her cap off.

“Who are you?”

“I fights mit Sigel.”

“Sigel recruiting girls these days?” The lieutenant came in. “We got us a female tricked up as a foot soldier, Lieutenant Buford.”

“Well, I heard of cases of that,” the lieutenant drawled. He was tall, with a black-plumed hat and a coarse, jowly face. Hanna crossed her arms on her chest. “Hold her.” The trooper yanked her arms behind her. Buford seized her collar and ripped the sack coat open, popping buttons.

He reached under, squeezed her breasts. A smile spread over his damp face. “You caught a rare and tender bird indeed, Sergeant. Should we have a little feast?”

The trooper's eyes gleamed as he caught on. “Is it safe?”

“If we're quick. I'll go first. Put out the lantern and keep watch.”

Hanna threw herself at the canvas wall, intending to tear it or burrow under it. Lieutenant Buford hooked her leg with his boot. She sprawled, landing hard. The lieutenant's feet straddled her hips. When she tried to crawl away, he stamped on her calf. The pain made her gasp.

The sergeant blew out the lamp hung from the ridgepole with baling wire. The last things Hanna saw were the lieutenant's smug smile and his red member growing from the gap in his trousers.