Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (37 page)

He didn’t care to think that getting whipped might be good for a man. He didn’t care to consider that at all.

Ask Breathed. What did his medical books say of such phenomena?

“Let ’em get close,” Lee ordered, for the benefit of any man who could hear him over the racket. The horses weren’t worth much now, and the party he had gathered fought dismounted. “Just wait, they’ll come on sure. Just let them get close.”

“Might care to slip down from the saddle yourself, sir,” a captain suggested. “Air seems a trifle populated.”

Lee pulled up a beard-spreader smile. “And let one of your bandits steal my horse? Rather chance it with those Yankee sharpshooters.”

“Hoss?” a private asked in mock incredulity. His tone conjured the porch of a country store and genial times. Better times. “Genr’l, I took that critter you’re settin’ astride for a milk-cow. What have we come to, what has this army come to?”

Lee played along, waiting for the Federals to make their move. All he could do now was wait. “Cow? I’d cut myself a beefsteak right this minute!”

That was about true. Hadn’t had so much as a cracker all day. Starved himself back to health, was that it? he wondered. Queerest thing: Even the dizziness had slipped away.

The dizziness was gone, but the Yankees weren’t. Their pride, their haughty pride, had grown intolerable. They didn’t even bother to wield their repeaters, just came on with sabers, as if mocking men who had beaten them steady for two years, then gave them a time for another year and a half. As if to say, “Yes, we have these fine new rifles that shoot jackrabbit fast, but we don’t even need ’em for your sort.” There was a cruelty in their condescension fiercer than the bite of blades on flesh.

“Get ready, boys.”

The men tightened their grips on their weapons, coiling their innards. Across yet another inglorious field, Yankees trotted to and fro, up to some new deviltry.

Horse artillery rushed up on the flank. The cannoneers wore blue jackets, not gray.

Lee believed he heard fighting off behind him, down in the streets of Winchester, and hoped it was a fevered hallucination. Anyway, didn’t do any good to ponder it. His place, his purpose, was here, and nowhere else. To hold until the rest of the army escaped.

Escape.
A shameful, unaccustomed word.…

“They’re coming!”

Bugles sounded. A band resumed its mockery. The Yankee gun section on the flank dropped its trails with handsome speed. In moments, the crews were ramming home their first shells.

“Let them get close,” Lee called, speaking of the cavalry. There was nothing to be done about those guns, except bear the torment.

As the Union force advanced, increasing its pace to a canter with fine discipline, the horses first created a rumble that challenged the clamor of battle. But when they lowered their sabers and spurred to a gallop, their hoofbeats overwhelmed all other sounds.

A few of his men, the worst of them, didn’t wait to fire, but ran for the town. Lee let them go, figuring they’d be cut down all the quicker.

The artillery on the flank opened up. One round fell short, but the next smashed into a tree that anchored Lee’s line, hurling branches downward and men upward.

“Steady!” he called. He could make out the eyes of the horses. A few more yards, and he’d read the eyes of the men.
“Steady now!”

Shells from some blessed, unseen Confederate battery struck smack amidst the first wave of blue-clad horsemen. Mounts tripped and riders tumbled. Lee noticed that the men in the second rank had drawn their carbines, rather than sabers.

Yankees weren’t taking chances, after all.

More bugles. But more artillery rounds shrieked overhead, plummeting toward the Yankees, flaying man and beast.

Lord Jesus, did he have a fighting chance?

His loss of consciousness was brief, if bewildering. He came to on the ground, grasping for the reins. Quicksilver pain raced over him, invading every part of his body at once. Lee fought for air. The wetness sheathing him wasn’t sweat this time, he could tell that much.

“Get him out of here,” a voice—raw with dread—commanded. “Carry him to the rear, we’ll hold the bastards.”

He tried to speak, but could not. The pain had crushing weight. Teeth, too. It bit with rabid fury, surpassing all previous wounds.

Pounding hooves. Men shouting. Clashing metal. Bring up your guns, Major Breathed. Where was Lomax? He needed to speak with Wickham, had to …

“Get him out of here,” the voice repeated.

THIRTEEN

September 19, 6:00 p.m.

Winchester

Fanny Gordon stood in the street before the Lee house, all but choking on the dust and pleading with the soldiers to turn back. She never had imagined such a scene. To witness this army, and her husband’s own men, running from the Yankees …

“Please,” she begged, “go back and fight. Think of your honor!”

“Honor got kilt a ways back,” a scarecrow told her.

But the soldiers were respectful, overall. Many knew her by sight. Those who did shied away, ashamed. Others plodded by, sullen. Even those who just plain ran were careful not to touch her. Dismayed officers tipped their caps in embarrassment. The passage of these hundreds retained no order, with flags and soldiers ajumble. Little united these men beyond their direction.

A cannonball smashed through a roof but didn’t explode, content to cause a storm of splinters and dust. Glass chinked.

“Best go inside, ma’am,” a grubby boy in a ravaged straw hat counseled.

She felt tears welling, but fought them down. John would not approve of a weeping wife at a time like this.

Was he all right?
Might she … was it possible … that she might have cause for weeping?

Fanny Gordon whipped that thought away. Not her John. He’d be out there to the last, thrashing Yankees. Then he would ride off in an aura of glory. Alive and grinning.

“Please! Go back,” she begged. “Think of your mothers and wives!” Assailed by a swallow of dust, she coughed and struggled to ask, “Are there any Georgia men among you? Any Georgia men?”

A half dozen soldiers from her husband’s old brigade made their way toward her.

“Ain’t fitting for you to be out here, Mrs. Gordon,” a sergeant warned her. His tone was of supplication, not command.

“And it isn’t fitting for Georgia men to retreat.”

Sunburned faces blushed. “We’ll fight ’em again tomorrow,” a private said. “Just not today, ma’am. Today just didn’t go right.”

Anxious to rejoin the flood, the once brave, emasculated men shuffled about until the sergeant asked, “Can we do something for you, ma’am?”

“Go back and fight.”

The sergeant tipped his cap and the others nodded. Leaving her. But not to return to the battle.

“Wait! Is General Gordon all right?”

The Georgians were already submerged in the crowd, in the mob that had been a proud army.

Fanny glanced toward the porch, ensuring that young Frank remained indoors, where Laura Lee had promised to restrain him. A rambunctious boy, her second son was more like John than was his doe-eyed brother. She had broken her own rules by bringing Frank along on this visit, afraid—although she could not quite admit it—that the six-year-old might go through life with no memory of his father.

An ambulance fought through the crowd, so packed that bloodied limbs dangled over its drop-board. Behind it, more crimsoned men clung to a caisson. Rifle fire erupted, suddenly closer.

Why didn’t any of these men turn and fight? There were so many of them. Surely they could make a stand, perhaps defeat the Yankees even now?

It was all she could do not to shriek at them.

She coughed up more dust.

Then she saw him, just as he spotted her and turned his horse.

Don’t embarrass him,
she warned herself.
Behave like the lady you know deep down you aren’t. Don’t you run and hug him, don’t you start things.
After a decade of marriage, desire seized her still when she pressed against him, and in his arms her thoughts were not genteel.

As he forced his way through dejected men, with Yankee hurrahs hog-call close, she balled her fists and locked them on her hips. Ferocity was her only means to control herself.

John.
Hat missing and locks awry. Filthy, his forehead gleamed as if smeared with lard. Even with that scar, he was still the handsomest man in the Confederacy.

When he drew a foot from a stirrup to dismount, she snapped, “John Gordon, you stay on that horse of yours. And you tell me the meaning of this spectacle.”

Her sternness did the impossible, making him smile. Fleetingly.

Bending from the saddle, he asked, “Do I see before me my Penelope? Or is this Aphrodite descended to earth?”

“You hush.”

“Fanny, go back in the house. You do no good out here.”

“Well, you don’t seem to be doing much good yourself, General Gordon.
Do
something with these men.”

“Hasn’t been our day. Don’t blame these boys.” He gestured toward the drop-shouldered stragglers avoiding the man on horseback and his queen. Those who glanced toward them did so warily.

She would not cry. She was determined not to let him see one tear.

“Go in the house now, Fanny. It’s too late to leave. When the Yankees come, identify yourself to one of their field officers. They’ll treat you with—”

She flared. “You see to your division, John Brown Gordon. The woman you married can manage fine by herself.”

Gordon’s eyebrows tightened. “Where’s ’Neas? He should be seeing to you.”

“Fool ran away. When they started shelling the town.”

“I’ll whip that nigger.”

“You just whip those Yankees. I’ll see to ’Neas.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He saluted, smiling again. “Reckon I’d best see to it, then. You go inside now, though, look after Frank. He’ll be unsettled.”

She wanted to scream, “I love you,” to just shriek it. To grab his stirrup and never let go, to keep him.

When she raised her face to her husband, her features trembled.

“Go on,” she said. “Go on now.”

And he turned his horse—not in flight like the others, but toward the Yankees again, rallying a passel of soldiers who had remained with their flag. She watched as he charmed them, watching until they all disappeared behind a wall of buildings, her husband leading soldiers ragged as vagabonds.

I will
not
cry.

Aeneas had run off, probably north this time, but that was only part of the day’s saga. She had risen early, setting off in the cool dark to join her husband at Martinsburg, meaning to surprise him, only to find herself in the midst of Rodes’ Division as it hurried back to Winchester, trailed by Federal cavalry and rumors. One of Rodes’ gallants had deployed his men to guard her as other soldiers hurried to mend an inopportune break of her buggy’s tongue. She had returned to the Lee home just as the fuss became a battle.

That house would
not
be her refuge or her prison. She did
not
intend to be trapped inside with a bevy of silly women.

And she had her finest stroke of luck that day: The remnant of a Georgia company appeared, still led by its lieutenant. The men not only recognized her, but seemed bewildered at the sudden sight of her.

“You, Lieutenant! All of you!” she called. “If you men can’t stand and fight, at least go out back and hitch the dapple-gray up to my buggy, the one with the green seat.”

The men halted. Every one of them.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she demanded. “Hoping to lay eggs?”

The lieutenant began to issue the order, but a few men were already moving. And though the others did not move one step back toward the Yankees, they did face about to defend her while she waited.

Quick as bugs in June, the soldiers brought her wagon around the house. Fanny didn’t pause to fuss over private necessities, just ran inside to wrest Frank from Miss Laura Lee, a handsome ’fraidy-cat. After grabbing a mostly unpacked carpetbag—hoping for the best—she hastened back out to the street, as if the waiting buggy might evaporate.

A ragged sergeant stood holding the reins. Another soldier lifted Frank to his seat. She told the boy, “You sit still. And if you start to cry, I’ll tan your backside.” But the boy seemed more excited than afraid.

“
You.
And
you,
” she called. “Those wounded men there, load them in back.”

It sounded like the Yankees were atop them. Not all of the Georgia men had remained.

“Mrs. Gordon, you need to go fast now, you don’t need to be encumbered—”

“You load those wounded men, or you’ll feel this whip.”

The soldiers did as told. One man she took aboard was a groaning young captain, a pretty thing hours before, who would not live to see his mother or sweetheart.

I will not cry. They will
not
see me cry.

She gee-upped the ancient horse, hoping the patched-up buggy tongue would hold.

As her vehicle joined the thinning stream of soldiers, she heard one of the Georgia voices announce, “That there woman’s the toughest man in this army.”

Fanny Gordon longed for night to fall. So she could burst out weeping.

6:15 p.m.

Winchester

As Hayes followed his 36th Ohio into the town, it was clear that the hard-fought day had ended in triumph. Pursuing the broken Rebs, his men had chased them with chants of “Kernstown! Kernstown!” And the Union sympathizers, a minority but an elated one, emerged from their homes before the fighting had fully passed, cheering on the dirty men in blue and holding up flags that had remained hidden for years, even when Union troops occupied the town.

It was different now, everyone sensed it. The Confederates—not Early, not anyone else—would never return again: Their might was broken. The seesaw swap of possessions in the Lower Valley was done.

And Rud Hayes just wanted water.

Surely thirsty too, his horse shied and nickered. Somehow, Will McKinley, smack in the midst of the battle and riding about to deliver orders from Crook, had found time to dispatch a man to retrieve Hayes’ horse and lead it forward. The lad was a magnificent bundle of innocent, endless energy, bound for bigger things when this war was over.