Valley of the Shadow: A Novel (19 page)

Breckinridge attempted to smile along. “I don’t believe Mr. Blair would begrudge us this calming beverage. On such a night. He’s a gentleman of infinite hospitality.”

Early leaned in over the table, almost toppling a wine bottle. “I’ll tell you this, though. I will
not
take any pains with that other house, his son’s. What will be, shall be. The man’s the damned postmaster general of the scoundrel government making war on all of us.” He smiled grimly. “Francis Preston Blair can provide hospitality for the generals. Let his son’s four walls provide for the infantry.”

Breckinridge nodded, but the gesture had no meaning. It was as if he had not heard a word of Early’s tirade. “Really, the dinners here were magnificent. White-shouldered women in Worth gowns … bejeweled … so fine, so very fine.…”

“Tompkins,” Early said, “you go on down and bring us up another armful of bottles of this slop. It does drink easy, I’ll credit the Frenchies with that much.”

Pendleton missed a stretch of conversation after that. Breckinridge’s vision of women … of white shoulders … had summoned his wife to mind, the frustrated joys and the startling disappointments. He had expected prompt bliss from his marriage, in those rare days and nights stolen from the war, assuming that satisfaction was ordained, inevitable. Even Jackson, prickly as a hedgehog, had taken ease in his beloved’s company. Or look at Gordon: When Gordon and his wife appeared together, they fairly shone. It was as if they completed each other, growing radiant in one another’s company, their happiness a paradise, a refuge. Even the public affection they displayed barely remained within the bounds of decorum, one caress short of scandal. John and Fanny Gordon were … happy.

Pendleton told himself patience was in order. Events had transpired too swiftly, due to the war. His wife was young and his rare visits after their broken honeymoon all had been too brief, hardly permitting simple familiarity. Yet he could not reason away his wife’s revulsion at marriage’s private aspects, her frozen horror. Her ignorance and dread had been bewildering, leaving him uncertain of what to do. And when he did what men did, hoping the deed would change her, it left Kate weeping and him feeling like a brute.

Still, there would be a child in the coming months. Perhaps she might warm to him afterward?

In the mornings, dressed, she would smile and kiss him, calling him pet names, treating him as she might a favored doll. But midnight made her shudder and withdraw.

He sometimes imagined asking advice of Gordon, who exuded mastery. But Sandie Pendleton knew that he would never discuss his wife with another man.

How it shamed him that his thoughts often strayed to harlots as he embraced his wife.

“Sandie?”

He woke. Glad of the interruption. “Sir?”

“Order go out to Johnson?” Early’s voice had slowed to a faint slur.

“Yes, sir. Over an hour ago.”

Early turned back to the gathering of generals. “Fool Point Lookout business. Called it off. Let Johnson and his men come on back and make themselves useful.”

“Horses are going to be blown,” Rodes said. “Lot of hard riding.”

“Better now than later. I need this army all gathered up. Here.” He turned his bent torso from one side to the other. “You enlisted men, all of you. Clear on out. We need to have us a parley ’twixt the generals.”

None of the orderlies waited for a second command.

“All right,” Early began, “I want your views. What to do, whether to attack. I’ll give you my opinion once I’ve heard everybody out. Y’all talk now.” He smirked. “Gordon, you’re not shy. You start things off.”

A man of flawless posture, whether on horseback or at table, Gordon still managed to straighten another degree. “I fear … our hour has passed, sir. You saw the reinforcements pouring in.”

Early’s smirk tightened. “Go on.”

“In my view, we were just too late. A half day, a day, it hardly matters now.”

“I suppose I should’ve marched the men harder, that your point?”

“No,” Gordon said. “Looking back, I believe that every man here did his best.” He held up empty palms. “Fortunes of war.”

“I thought you’d want to climb the walls of that fort yourself, come morning.”

“The heart goes one way, the rational mind another.”

Early shook his head. “Rodes?”

“I’m with John. The men we saw come up, the way they filled in the lines … those were veterans, that easy way they had … no wasted effort.” Rodes smiled, eyes aglow in the candlelight. “I don’t know if anything we might accomplish now would be worth the risk. After all, we’ve pulled Grant’s plan for the summer up right short and raised merry hell. Whipped the Yankees, from Lynchburg to the Monocacy. Campaign’s served its purpose.”

“I’m not sure the whipping was all on one side day before yesterday,” Early told him. His eyes flared and subsided again. “How are you minded, Ramseur?”

“Dogs have had a good run, sir. Every hunt has an end.”

“Mr. Vice President?”

“If those
were
veterans we saw … Army of the Potomac men … I don’t think the fortifications can be taken. Not without a cost so high it would destroy this army. Leave it weakened to helplessness, anyway. Burning a few—”

Early rose from his chair. A glass broke on the Turkey carpet. “I
disagree,
gentlemen. We’ve come this far … and I do
not
intend to just throw up my hands. Not when we’ve come this far.” He patted himself down, as if feeling for his tobacco pouch. “We attack at first light. That’s my decision.” He grunted and turned. “Sandie, call in the orderlies again. I feel the need for another bottle of this captured treasure.”

For the first time since Early had taken command, Pendleton spoke up.

“Sir … perhaps … given the possibility of further Union reinforcements overnight … perhaps the attack might be delayed? Until you’ve had the opportunity to inspect the—”

“Hell and damnation,” Early said, taken aback. “Even Sandie thinks I’m a damned fool now.” He snorted, but with a surprising lack of meanness. “God almighty, you’re right, son, right as a fair wind. Wine just has me going. Only makes sense to have a look in the morning, not play the fool.” He considered the solemn faces of his generals. “But all of you better be set to attack the minute I give the word.”

Every man murmured his assent, the inevitable loyalty.

“Now somebody get me another bottle of this Frenchy swill.”

July 12, 5:30 a.m.

Fort Stevens, Washington, D.C.

Major General Horatio G. Wright prayed for the Johnnies to be damned fools and attack. He had two divisions of his corps ready to fight, as well as the local agglomeration of glorified militia, impressed clerks, and invalid veterans—the latter garbed in embarrassing pale blue uniforms. And there were guns. Plenty of guns. If the unblooded artillerymen in Fort Stevens and elsewhere along the line could not employ their batteries effectively, his infantrymen would do it for them. And the fort itself was formidable, even if he would have made a number of improvements, had he been in charge of the city’s defenses.

The damnable problem was that no one really seemed to be accountable, no one possessed clear authority. He’d received a plethora of orders and countermanding instructions the previous afternoon, a mad confusion of conflicting objectives and contradictory purposes. At last, he had just followed the orders that made the most sense, riding into the right fort at a gallop, just in time to see the Confederates filing into the fields beyond a streambed.

The Johnnies had looked exhausted, and their skirmishers had lacked their usual spunk. He had wanted to go at them, as soon as Frank Wheaton came up, but the idiot who ranked him sent out his own sorry troops instead, and a poor lot they were. Permission to do too little had been granted a great deal too late—but this morning offered another chance at vengeance.

Let them come on. Just let them try it now. He meant to give Early and his tribe of ragamuffins Cold Harbor in reverse. Let them come down that long, easy slope with all the batteries hammering them. Let them ford that stream and try to come up the last half mile of open ground, let them struggle toward the earthen walls, howling all they wanted. Horatio Gouverneur Wright intended to slaughter them.

And when they were bloody and broken, his best brigades would advance to finish the business. Let bloody Upton at them, and they’d never presume to cross the Potomac again.

He stood on the walls of the fort in the blooming light, scanning the orchards opposite, counting Early’s batteries, and marking the picket lines. There would be no more blind assaults, no more Cold Harbors. He had no taste for charging madly and squandering his men. He just wanted Early to come on and swallow his medicine.

The imperfections in the fortifications, the evident lack of upkeep, annoyed him, though. He could not help noting every minor flaw. Oh, the bastion and redans were strong enough, they’d do the trick, but in the steadier days before the war he would have cashiered a young engineer who took so little care.

Well, better to be a corps commander here than a captain of engineers in the Dry Tortugas. He doubted there was any spot on earth so forlorn and grim. And Florida had not been a great deal better, a territory of impossible denizens, man and beast. War had brought some advantages, that was true enough.

Still, Wright was a builder at heart, not a destroyer by nature. And when peace came, he’d return to the engineers—with sufficient seniority not to draw the wretched assignments that tortured junior officers.

He raised his field glasses. Yes, let them come on. And we’ll thank them properly for killing Uncle John Sedgwick, for all the blood spilled between the Rapidan and the James, then the mess at Petersburg in June.

When Sedgwick fell at Spotsylvania, Wright had been unsure of his own ability to lead a corps in battle. Now, but two months later, he felt as if he had been in command for years, it seemed as natural as sitting in a saddle.

A man was flesh and blood, though, general or private, and his kidneys prodded him to climb down from the parapet. When he turned to go, he saw Emory Upton crossing the yard in evident pursuit, clearly in need of another tongue-lashing about jumping the chain of command. Upton was insufferable, a bothersome Christian of the sort that must have driven the Romans to persecution, and a brilliant soldier with a thirst for blood. A newly anointed brigadier, Upton doubtless had another one of his schemes to offer up. And truth be told, the little Bible-pounder had shocked them all at Spotsylvania, breaking the Rebel lines, then doing it again in the early fighting at Cold Harbor, a saint with a murderer’s soul.

Wright only wished he could have another cup of coffee before dealing with the man.

“Clarke,” he told an aide, “fend off General Upton until I’ve at least had time to piss. I don’t need him trying to help me with that, too.”

Down in the yard, Upton realized that he had Wright’s attention. The fox-faced bugger saluted with a grin.

If Early does come on, Wright decided, he was definitely going to turn young Upton loose on him.

Moments later, as the corps commander stood over the piss trough, footsteps marched up behind him. Without turning his head, he said, “Oh, Christ, Upton!”

“Ahem.”

It wasn’t Upton, but Charles Dana, the assistant secretary of war.

Wright secured himself. “My apologies, Mr. Dana.”

“Bad form of me to intrude. Under the circumstances. But I thought it might be my only opportunity to catch you alone.” He rumpled his features. “I suppose we might move a few steps away from this ammoniac perfume, though.”

They walked together, climbing the ramp to a side parapet. Upton either was under physical restraint or, for once, was displaying sound judgment and keeping his distance.

Up on the wall, they paused by an unmanned howitzer.

“The president may come up. To have a look at things,” Dana said. “He’s a man of infinite curiosity.”

Oh, Christ, Wright thought.

“Anyway,” Dana continued, “we wouldn’t want any embarrassments. If Early does attack, we’ll spirit the president off. But he does have a penchant for lingering.” Dana looked away for an instant, as if checking for spies, and met Wright’s eyes again. “Frankly, the man can get in the way at times. Means well, though.”

“And if Early doesn’t attack?”

“Oh, fire some guns, send out some skirmishers. Make a little show. You understand. And for God’s sake, laugh at his jokes. Nothing makes him happier.”

“Anything else, sir?”

Dana shook his head. “I shouldn’t think so. You’ll manage.” The assistant secretary sighed. It had the studied quality of a performance. “You realize that I’m speaking to you in confidence, Wright. Frankly, the secretary and I have little faith in some of your nominal superiors here in the city, the command situation appears to have been lacking. We expect
you
to do what’s required.” Dana straightened his frock coat, as if about to meet men of greater importance. “But err on the side of caution. Another setback now would be inconvenient. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes.”

Dana joined his hands together, a gesture poised between prayer and strangulation. “Then here’s to a glorious day! The ‘Salvation of Washington,’ in the nick of time! Rather dramatic, I must say.” He turned to go. But after a few paces, he confronted Wright again. “Look here … do you believe that Early’s going to attack? A serious attack, I mean?”

Dear God, if only he would, Wright thought. And do it immediately. I’d give them all a show.

“No.”

July 12, 6:30 a.m.

Silver Spring, Maryland

Gordon found Early and Pendleton standing at the edge of an apple orchard, peering across the open ground between them and the city’s fortifications. Early held a pair of field glasses at his waist, but seemed transfixed. The army commander looked bruised and battered by life.

Gordon had drunk little the night before, had left the conclave of generals as soon as courtesy permitted, and had doused himself with cold well water upon waking. He felt alert and ready. Wary, though.