When This Cruel War Is Over (33 page)

Read When This Cruel War Is Over Online

Authors: Thomas Fleming

BOOK: When This Cruel War Is Over
12.96Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Janet looked more than a little unhappy.
Paul followed her out to the gazebo, where Colonel Todd was sitting with a tall glass of bourbon. The colonel had read the Republican tide-is-setting-against-us letter in one of the Kentucky papers. His optimism was soaring. “I think this is going to be easier than we ever expected. Lincoln seems as good as finished, even without the push we're going to give him.”
“It looks that way,” Paul said. “Have you thought of waiting him out? Letting events take their course—without launching this attack?”
“Why in the world should we do that?”
“It might be better for everyone if this was settled politically.”
Colonel Todd and Janet were both gazing at Paul with hostile eyes. “After going this far, at so much risk and trouble, that doesn't make much sense,” the colonel said.
“Politics aside,” Janet added, “we've got a moral obligation to the Confederate government. They've supplied us with the money and guns. To take all that help and do nothing would amount to betrayal, in my opinion.”
A moral obligation to the Confederate government.
The western confederacy, if it came into existence with Gabriel Todd or someone like him as its president, would be a southern satellite. Paul had known that since their visit to Richmond. Why was it troubling him now? Did seeing Moses Washington have something to do with it?
Suddenly Paul was back five months, his Gettysburg wound making him unsure of his balance on a horse, teaching the black troopers how to use a cavalry saber. He saw the excitement, the pride, on their faces when they discovered they could wield this fearsome instrument. He remembered everyone laughing when Jasper Jones confessed, “I was afraid I was gonna cut my own damn head off the first time I swung that thing.” Soldiers. He had made them soldiers and they had made him a soldier again.
Janet suggested a walk before dinner. They strolled down Hopemont's long curving drive. “Why don't you want to
fight?
” she asked. “I thought we were
together,
heart and soul, in this thing.”
Paul struggled to be honest and persuasive at the same time: “I've seen battles, Janet. Seen the dead—and the wounded, who are a lot worse to look at than the dead. A battle should be fought only if it's absolutely necessary.”
Janet whirled on him. “I'm going to share this battle with you. I'm riding with the troops. Father doesn't know it. I've arranged it with Rogers Jameson. I'm going to cross the Ohio with his men.”
Paul saw what Janet was doing. She was challenging him to match her commitment to the conspiracy. She
was testing his love. That was almost as demoralizing as what she was proposing to do.
“Janet—you can't. I absolutely forbid it.”
“On what grounds? You have no authority over me, Colonel Stapleton.”
“Surely love gives a man some kind of claim.”
“Not if you abandon the most important part of the compact we made that morning beside the Ohio.”
There it was again, the fatal entanglement of their love and the sacred cause, the dream of victory. Desperately Paul told himself he forgave her. She was like any soldier on the eve of battle. Wildness was rampaging in her soul.
“I can't protect you,” he said. “No one can protect another person in a battle.”
“I don't want to be protected,” Janet said. “Once and for all, you must stop treating me as your
possession.
I've shared so much of this business—I want to be there for the victory. I want to see Indianapolis burn—or surrender. I want to hear bullets whistle.”
“They don't whistle. They hiss—or hum like swarming bees. Sometimes they snap like firecrackers.”
“I want to hear them.”
Did she see what she was doing? What she was forcing him to do? No. In her rising battle fury she thought she could test him and he would obey her. But he had another alternative. He could betray her in the name of love. Even though he knew the betrayal might annihilate love's future.
Rogers Jameson came to supper. He drank Gabriel Todd's whiskey and they debated strategy and tactics for the march to Indianapolis. Rogers still resisted anything that sounded like a complicated plan. Paul let Todd do most of the talking. Predictably, they got nowhere.
Afterward, Paul followed Rogers Jameson onto the lawn and stopped him as he was mounting his horse. “General,” he said. “Miss Todd tells me she plans to
cross the river with you and your men. I don't think it's practical—or necessary.”
“She's perfectly welcome as far as I'm concerned,” Jameson said. “I'm sure Adam will greet her with open arms.”
“If you have any hope of deserving the title of general, you'll retract that remark immediately,” Paul said. “A general's first responsibility is to resolve conflicts between his ranking officers, not encourage them.”
Contempt mingled with dislike on Jameson's fleshy face. “Calm down, Colonel,” he said. “I won't let her go beyond Keyport. That won't be dangerous. The town'll surrender without a shot. Them stupid Germans of Gentry's will run for their lives. We'll give Colonel One-Arm a taste of Greek fire and send Janet back here 'fore we head for Indianapolis.”
The next morning, one of the German soldiers brought Paul a message from Gentry:
Please return
.
Urgent military problems require your attention.
He showed it to Janet and they decided it would be best for him to obey the summons; a refusal might arouse suspicions. They were only twenty-four hours away from the great explosion. “We'll meet you in Keyport,” Gabriel Todd said.
In his cellar office, Gentry greeted Paul with a cheerful hello. “How are things at Hopemont?” he asked.
“Fine,” Paul said.
“You won't be able to say that tomorrow night. I'm putting you under arrest, Major.”
At first Paul thought Gentry was joking. But it was clear that he was extremely serious. “I'd like to hear the charges, Colonel,” he said.
“I've got a document—and a living witness—that you're the chief of staff of a rebellious army organized by the Sons of Liberty. But I have a better reason for arresting you now. I don't want you shot for treason.”
Gentry spun his chair and stared up at the picture of
Lincoln on the wall of his office. “Believe it or not, Major, an old fool like me still believes in love. I'm trying to help you preserve it in spite of how defeat and her father's disgrace will affect Janet Todd's feeling for you. It's your only chance—and mine—to rescue something valuable from this stinking war.”
“If I wanted any romantic advice from you I'd have asked for it!” Paul said.
“This isn't romance. It's reality. Tomorrow night, General Burbridge is going to surround Hopemont with a thousand cavalrymen. He's going to arrest Gabriel Todd, Rogers Jameson, and the colonels of the George Rogers Clark Brigade.”
“I should be there. There may be gunfire. Janet has taken to seeing herself as a soldier—”
Gentry shook his head. “You're staying here.”
“Like hell I am. I'll go where I damn please as long as I've got this gun in my holster!”
“Sergeant Schultz!” Gentry called. He jerked a string on his desk, and a bell tinkled outside the house.
The storm cellar door clanged open. Boots clumped toward them. Schultz appeared in the office doorway, a pistol in his hand. Behind him loomed three of his biggest men, hefting rifles.
“I'm arresting Major Stapleton for insubordination,” Gentry said. “Take his gun away from him and lock him in your office in the barn until you hear from me.”
“I hope you know what you're doing,” Paul said as Schultz pulled the pistol from the holster on his hip.
“So do I,” Gentry said.
TETHERING THEIR HORSES TO A sapling, Janet Todd and her father walked into the hot, still woods at the far end of their property. Birds twittered listlessly around them. The drought continued, all but extinguishing life from the land. In a valise Janet carried the folded figure of a man that she had cut from an old bedsheet. She had given him a face and a soldier's kepi and a pair of epaulets on his shoulders.
She pinned the figure to a tree and retreated a dozen steps. From the valise she took the Colt repeating pistol her father had used in Mexico. Since she insisted on riding to Indianapolis with the Sons of Liberty, Gabriel Todd had decided she should know how to use a gun.
Janet flipped open the chamber and inserted six bullets while her father watched approvingly. He had all but stopped drinking two weeks ago. The change in him was marvelous. Janet thought he already looked five years younger. As the calendar marched toward their day of deliverance, Janet had felt renewed love and admiration for this man.
Feet planted firmly, she raised the silver gun with two hands. She had been amazed by how heavy it was when she first hefted it. “All right,” Gabriel Todd said. “Remember, squeeze, don't pull. Fire one bullet at a time.”
Blam!
The gun exploded and the figure fluttered slightly.
“Good shooting. That hit him in the chest.”
Blam!
“Even better. That hit him in the head.”
Would she be able to hit a living man that way? Janet was not sure. If he was wearing a blue federal uniform, perhaps. But what if he was some ordinary Republican farmer, trying to resist their revolution? She told herself it was kill or be killed—and in her case possibly raped as well.
She put six bullets into the sheetman. The last four were in his arms and legs. She had let those wandering thoughts distract her aim. In a battle, if there was one, there would be no time for thoughts. Paul's description of Gettysburg and Antietam made that clear.
They rode back to Hopemont through the empty fields. None of their hands had returned. They had probably joined the Union Army—a guaranteed refuge for runaways now. General Burbridge had issued a proclamation assuring every black who joined up protection from his hapless master.
“Will the western confederacy legalize slavery?” Janet asked.
“I doubt it,” Gabriel Todd said. “We'll simply tolerate it in states where it already exists, like Kentucky and Missouri. It would be a mistake to bring that question before the legislature.”
Janet sensed his discomfort and dropped the subject. Every time they discussed the future confederacy, problems like slavery loomed. Janet had gradually become aware that her father was concealing grave doubts about his brainchild. The northern tier of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio had been settled by New Englanders and other migrants from the East. The settlers of the Ohio Valley had been from the South. The two sections were divided on almost everything, from religion to slavery to politics.
But the calendar, that relentless agent of change, had already carried them beyond doubts. It was August 28. Everything was in place. The Confederate armies were still holding their own before Atlanta and Richmond.
For fifty miles on both sides of the Ohio River the Sons of Liberty were oiling their Spencer repeating rifles. At this very moment, perhaps, additional Confederate agents were arriving in Chicago with their valises of Greek fire.
“I wish you'd give up this idea of riding with us,” Gabriel Todd said.
“My mind is made up, Father,” Janet said.
“I'm not just worried about your safety. I'm thinking of your mother. She'll be left alone—”
“The servants are still loyal. They've gotten over Lucy.”
She had spent hours in the slave quarter nursing Lucy's mother, Lillibet. Janet told her Lucy was alive and free—and she was sorry her father whipped her so badly. Janet also said her father never should have sold Maybelle. She promised he would never do anything like that again. Lillibet returned to her kitchen and the other house servants also went back to work.
Gabriel Todd abandoned the argument. “Just promise me you'll do exactly what I tell you if any shooting starts.”
“What will that be?” Janet asked.
“I don't know. It depends on the situation.”
I'm not a mere woman, Father. I'm an adventuress.
She wanted to say something like that to explode his image of her as a creature who needed and wanted protection. But he would never understand.
Adventuress,
with its overtones of sexual license, would shock him.
On Hopemont's veranda they discovered Rogers Jameson waving an envelope. “Adam's in Kentucky with his men!” he said. “He sent Pompey ahead with this letter for Janet.”
The letter had gotten badly crumpled in the hours it had spent in Pompey's pocket. Janet smoothed it against her thigh while Jameson talked about how eager his Sons of Liberty brigade was to begin the march on Indianapolis.
He peered into Hopemont's open front door and added, “Good thing that Yankee chief of staff of yours ain't on the premises. This letter could turn him green.”
“I'm sure Colonel Stapleton and Colonel Jameson will let Janet choose between them when peace is at hand,” Gabriel Todd said.
Janet was glad she had never mentioned Adam's aborted challenge to a duel during his July visit. Her father obviously favored Paul and would be dismayed by Adam's preference for a violent solution.
“I suspect your ambush last week has scared the liver out of Colonel Gentry,” Gabriel Todd continued. “I bet he's got Stapleton designing redoubts all around his property.”
“We'll toss a coin to see who gets the pleasure of shooting that one-armed two-faced scum,” Jameson said.
In the front parlor, Janet smoothed Adam Jameson's letter again and again. She did not want to open it. She did not want her mind and heart confused by anything but the machinery of victory. She only wanted to think about men and guns, about guns and men. She would think about love when the killing ended.
But she had to open the letter. There might be important information in it.
Dearest Janet:
We're on the march at last. I have a plan to augment our ranks. When I reach the Bluegrass, I'm going to declare that region of Kentucky part of the Confederacy and announce we're drafting every man of fighting age. I have a feeling a lot of young men are only waiting for a push to declare for the South. It will also be a first step toward combining or at least connecting the southern confederacy with the western confederacy. My men will be the
link between the two countries. I like that idea, don't you?
I keep thinking of the loyalty, the courage, you displayed on my behalf the day Burbridge raided Rose Hill. I'm looking forward to repaying that swine for his insults to you and Momma. The humiliation we inflicted on him that morning is only a down payment on the full punishment he deserves for that and all the other crimes he's committed against southern supporters in Kentucky. My men are in superb shape. We've spent every day of the last month training to fight from the saddle or dismounted.
In regard to our route, I've decided to swing west of Daviess County into Henderson County and join you from that direction. The federals have pretty large detachments blocking the more direct and obvious routes. I'll ride ahead with forty picked men and join you and your father and Pap for a final talkover the night of August 28.
Whatever happens, the thought that you and I are together in this thing heart and soul has given me the rarest of gifts for a southern soldier at this point in the war: hope. God is involved here somehow, Janet, bringing us together in His own way. I believe that with all my soul.
Love,
Adam
Hot tears rose in Janet's throat. Paul Stapleton had never linked their love to God and the southern cause that way. His love for her had enlisted him under its banner, had opened his eyes to its justice. But other sentiments—his West Point oath, the looming figure of his brother, the general—made such simple enthusiasm impossible.
She knew all this. She had accepted it as part of the bargain she had forged with herself, with Paul, with God. Why did Adam's words shiver her resolution? Was it that accuser's voice, whispering,
You wanted him?
Did she feel some sort of obscure need to expiate a sin? Adventuresses did not worry about such things.
As they sat down to dinner about three o'clock, hooves clopped in the driveway. Janet opened the front door to discover Mrs. Virginia Havens descending from her carriage. The spiritualist seldom kept a consistent schedule. She showed up pretty much as she pleased, once she was sure of a warm welcome.
Janet rushed into the dining room. “It's Mrs. Havens, of all people. Shall I send her away?”
Gabriel Todd thought for a moment. “No, let her come in. Maybe it's time I joined you for a session. It might make your mother feel better if something happens to me on our adventure.”
They were all riding into the valley of the shadow of death. Janet remembered Paul's warning that Lincoln and the Union Army were not going to accept this revolution in their rear passively. She nodded and invited Mrs. Havens to join them for dinner.
Mrs. Havens was dressed in white as usual—and was as spherical as ever. She clutched a Bible in her hand and chattered about a “perturbation” in the atmosphere. Some sort of large spiritual event was about to occur, she was convinced of it. “It may well be a kind of gathering of the souls of the dead,” she said in her husky voice. “I begin to think there's a kind of intermediary world where the newly dead await their loved ones. Especially soldiers who die violently.”
“I believe the ancients called it the shore of the River Styx,” Gabriel Todd said, glancing wryly at Janet.
Mrs. Havens had never heard of the River Styx. Or of Charon, the ghastly boatman who ferried the dead
across its dark still waters to Hades. Janet was thoroughly familiar with the myth. Although St. Mary of-the-Woods's nuns were French Roman Catholics, they gave their graduates an excellent classical education. It was one of the reasons that her father had selected the school for her. This pagan faith of the old Greeks and Romans was all Gabriel Todd really believed.
Odd, how formal a father's relationship with a daughter was. Gabriel Todd never shared his inmost thoughts about so many things—love, sex, marriage. When it came to God, Janet realized with a pang that she could not escape St. Mary's. Beyond or beneath all her doubts and her defiant embrace of an adventuress's role she still believed in the vast mysterious being they had worshiped there.
As Mrs. Havens labored up the stairs ahead of them, Gabriel Todd whispered in Janet's ear, “Do you think she'd stay with Mother if we offered her enough money?” Janet nodded yes.
In her bedroom, Letitia Todd embraced Mrs. Havens. Her mother was totally unaware of their plans for tomorrow, of course. That made it more poignant when Gabriel Todd said, “Darlin' wife, Mrs. Havens here has convinced me I ought to join you for this excursion. I almost hate to admit it but she's put a patch of faith on my heathen soul. I don't know how she did it—”
“I've prayed and prayed for something like that to happen,” Letitia said.
Mrs. Havens beamed and Janet drew the window drapes, reducing the room to semidarkness. Mrs. Havens lit a single candle in a silver holder in the center of the table. She recited her incantation to the God of the dead and urged the Todds to concentrate on their loved ones to facilitate communication from the spirit world.
They waited in silence. Nothing happened. The spirits
remained silent. “Lord God of the dead, your servants are here, looking for wisdom and consolation,” Mrs. Havens said. “Are you listening to our plea?”
More silence.
Mrs. Havens renewed her plea three more times with the same negative result. “I can't understand it,” she said. “We seem to be in some sort of vacuum. I can sense my messages are not going beyond this room. Yet as I rode up the drive I sensed a spiritual host hovering around me. I was certain that there would be rich communication.”
Was it possible that Mrs. Havens was not a fraud? The medium apparently did not concoct those spiritual voices in which she spoke. She waited humbly for some sort of power to take possession of her vocal chords. That was why the voice that had taken command at the end of her previous visit had frightened her so badly.
“Why is this happening, Mrs. Havens?” Letitia asked.
“There's another presence here, more powerful than the voices of the dead. Someone or something who is determined to deny us the consolation we seek. Some kind of angelic emissary, I think. I sense anger emanating from him, sealing up the windows of the room like shutters of steel.”
“Why—oh why?” Letitia Todd wailed. “I've prayed and prayed for the boys' souls, exactly as you told me.”

Other books

ATasteofRome by Lucy Felthouse
America America by Ethan Canin
Secrets of a Wedding Night by Bowman, Valerie
Walkers by Graham Masterton
The Silken Cord by Leigh Bale